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The rise of trust-fund commies

The Democratic Socialists of America has a class problem that its own rhetoric is designed to obscure. Its rising stars — Zohran Mamdani, son of a Columbia professor and an acclaimed filmmaker; the Ivy-credentialed activists staffing progressive nonprofits; the heirs animating the movement’s core — reveal a pattern the movement cannot honestly explain. The face of American socialism is increasingly young, college-credentialed, and conspicuously well-bred. This is not coincidence. It is structure. The pattern is older than the DSA. Engels co-authored the Communist Manifesto while ...

Orchids & onions

ORCHID: To the Youngstown Board of Education for finding a viable and fiscally responsible solution to its ongoing transportation issues. The board last week agreed to outsource its busing needs to Petermann Bus Co., an Ohio-based private company with experience in school transportation. According to Superintendent Jeremy Batchelor, no current drivers or bus aides will lose their jobs. The contract also will reportedly save the financially-strapped district about $3 million per year while providing service to all students, including high schoolers who had been excluded from district ...

Get all the lead out responsibly but realistically

The public-health jury has been in for some time now, and its verdict on lead pipes is clear and stark. Lead pipes providing drinking water to American households are guilty of serious, toxic and sometimes life-threatening health risks to children and adults. For children, lead leached into drinking water is tied to behavior and learning problems, lower IQ, hyperactivity, slowed physical growth and hearing problems. For adults, the dangers include heightened blood pressure, hypertension, decreased kidney function and reproductive problems for both men and women. That’s why state ...

Artificial intelligence: A modern Tower of Babel?

On May 25, Pope Leo XIV released his first encyclical, “Magnifica Humanitas: On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence.” This pastoral letter has been much anticipated by the Catholic Church, and immediate news headlines expressed intrigue that the pope addressed the moral dilemma of AI and compared it to the story of the Tower of Babel in Genesis. He also discussed Nehemiah, the cupbearer to Persian King Artaxerxes I during the 5th century B.C. In a detailed breakdown of the pope’s central points in “Magnifica Humanitas,” Our Sunday Visitor ...

Fraudsters run amok

At first, it didn’t sound right. Someone must have miscalculated. How could there be so much fraud that has robbed taxpayers of billions of dollars without anyone seeming to notice? Worse, it appears they didn’t seem to care. Vice President JD Vance convened a meeting on Tuesday of his Task Force to Eliminate Fraud. Fifteen Republican attorneys general showed up. Almost two dozen Democrat attorneys general didn’t come, citing short notice. Their invitations went out on Friday, so they probably had a good excuse. Vance urged all of them to help in rooting out more fraud than has so ...

Sonny Rollins knew not to die young

How is it that the “Saxophone Colossus” Sonny Rollins lived to 95? Aren’t jazz musicians supposed to die at tragically early ages? Actually, that’s a myth that Rollins and others proved flawed. It’s true that Bix Beiderbecke, king of the cornet, was gone at 28, Charlie Parker at 34, Dinah Washington at 39, John Coltrane at 40. Billie Holiday made it to 44 — not young, but an age that should have been before her time. Some musicians, classical and rock, as well as jazz, reach especially advanced ages. The music stimulates their mind, connects them with others and lowers ...