Business writer: No, Trump Won’t Kill Meals on Wheels

President Trump’s foes and many journalists tend to “jump into [his] every utterance and decision with . . . the dial turned up to 11,” notes Erik Sherman at Forbes. And “a clear example” is the growing claim that his budget “would kill Meals on Wheels.” That’s “factually incorrect,” since only “approximately 3.3 percent of [the national group’s] funding comes from government sources.” Most, in fact, “is from corporate and foundation grants, with individual contributions the second largest source.” Local MOW groups do rely much more on federal funding — but it comes from programs that Trump’s budget doesn’t cut. “Resorting to hysteria is dangerous,” Sherman says, “and that is [what’s] happening.”

Analyst: Why No Uproar Over Indian-American Killings?

The recent killings of three Indian-Americans in the US “has spooked Indians, even leading to calls that the Indian government issue a travel advisory for America,” reports Shikha Dalmia in The Week. The blanket media coverage over there “is irrational, but understandable,” she says. Yet “coverage in American papers has been relatively muted” in “blissful ignorance.” Indeed, “the vast majority of Americans probably don’t even know about these attacks.” True, “a few killings — one of which may have been a random act — don’t a newsworthy pattern make.” But “if the press must err, it ought to be on the side of more coverage, not less. It’s regrettable that when it comes to these shootings, it didn’t.”

Policy wonk: No More Public-Broadcasting Handouts

Alarm bells have also gone off over Trump’s proposal “to zero out the Corporation for Public Broadcasting,” which is being called “devastating,” says Howard Husock, a CPB board member, in The Washington Post. Fact is, though, in “today’s dramatically changed media environment,” public broadcasting “rarely offers anything that Americans can’t get from for-profit media or that can’t be supported privately.” Because with “near-limitless viewing and listening choices,” there’s no “market failure” that necessitates “a continued federal subsidy.” CPB was formed in 1967 to improve what was then deemed “a vast wasteland” — and that mission has been accomplished. But public broadcasting today “looks far too much like a niche programming service for a left-leaning, upmarket urban constituency.”

Libertarian: End, Don’t Roll Back, Fuel Standards

Another target of outraged Trump foes: His plan to roll back President Barack Obama’s “stringent gas-mileage regulations” requiring average fuel efficiency for new cars of 50 mpg by 2025. But Virginia Postrel at Bloomberg says those standards are “lousy environmental policy” that doesn’t “target the real issue — burning less gasoline.” Instead, they “meddle in corporate strategy, impose enormous hidden costs and encourage drivers to hang on to their old gas guzzlers.” As such, they’re “a terrible way to achieve either fuel savings or lower carbon emissions.” Because “by raising the prices of new vehicles, tighter fuel regulations encourage drivers to buy used ones or simply keep what they already have.” Better, she says, to just “scrap the standards altogether.”

Conservative: Violent Threats to POTUS Now OK?

TV and social-media newsfeeds today bombard us with “threats of violence against conservative figures” including President Trump, notes Kristin Tate at The Hill. Madonna talks about wanting to blow up the White House; Snoop Dogg’s new video features him assassinating “a clown dressed as Trump.” Yet “there seems to be little outrage from the nation’s leading journalists and pundits.” Even if these celebrity taunts aren’t genuine threats, they’re “crass and unacceptable.” But you’d be hard-pressed to find any “mainstream editorials expressing disgust.” In fact, all the left-wing calls for “civility” after the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords “were never genuine,” because “the left only uses such efforts as a cudgel to silence their political foes, then turns around to call them Hitler when needed.”

— Compiled by Eric Fettmann