Tax-take collapse, Alvin Bragg’s on trial, too and other commentary

Eye on NY: Tax-Take Collapse

“New York’s latest tax collection data indicate New York’s just-passed state budget was based on rosy assumptions about income tax receipts that are not materializing,” fumes the Empire Center’s Ken Girardin. “April tax receipts came in just shy of $11 billion — more than $4 billion below the estimates published by the state Budget Division in February.” Crucially, an expected $12.3 billion in personal-income-tax collections turned out to be $7.5 billion — a drop of 49% from April 2022. Oops: The budget’s “authorized FY24 spending exceeded then-forecast receipts by about $1 billion.” The state’s coming budget gaps “have likely grown significantly,” so: “Buckle up.”

Crime desk: Stretched-Thin City Cops

“The George Floyd protests” sent “shockwaves through the ranks of law enforcement,” argue Ian Adams, Justin Nix & Scott Mourtgos at City Journal, with veteran cops fleeing “large urban departments for the relative calm of smaller, suburban departments.” This “devastating loss of personnel” is pushing down hiring standards (which “may have contributed to the tragic killing of Tyre Nichols,” for example). Large police departments across the nation have “reported higher rates of resignations and retirements than what would be expected based on pre-2020 observations,” “jeopardizing the quality of policing in America.” “This crisis is nationwide,” which means it’s “time to consider federal funding to reverse that trend” — à la “then-Senator Joe Biden’s 1994 Crime Bill” — via “grants to help cities bring in a new generation of officers.”

Conservative: Teachers Committed to Untruth

“I thought it was a bad thing when the teachers’ unions fought to keep schools closed during the pandemic,” muses Andy Puzder at Fox News, but then he saw the Colorado Teachers Association’s recent resolution that “capitalism inherently exploits children, public schools, land, labor and resources.” In fact, he notes, “as free-market capitalism spread across the globe beginning in the early 1800s, economic productivity per person (GDP per capita) has soared, while the percentage of people living in extreme poverty” has sharply dropped. “In a capitalist economy, the level of your personal success depends on how well you meet the needs of others,” which is “closer to altruism than greed.” Yet “students in Colorado will never learn any of this in school – not if the union that represents their teachers has its way. Rather, they will be fed a Marxist laundry list of grievances by the very people their parents trust to educate them.”

From the right: Alvin Bragg’s on Trial, Too

“In one of the worst decisions” by a prosecutor, Manhattan’s Alvin Bragg charged ex-Marine Daniel Penny with manslaughter for keeping a “deranged” Jordan Neely in a fatal chokehold to protect subway riders, thunders The Wall Street Journal’s William McGurn. Even before Neely’s death, Bragg was “notorious” as a DA who’d “go easy on repeat offenders but throw the book at a bogeda worker defending himself against a thug — not to mention his political grandstanding in indicting Donald Trump.” Now Americans see “a prosecutor who can’t distinguish between a mentally disturbed man prone to violence and a law-abiding citizen who served his country in uniform.” A GiveSendGo fund has raised $2 million-plus for Penny, and the comments are telling: Bragg may soon find he’s “as much on trial” as Penny.

Neocon: DEI in Retreat?

“Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), like trans activism and ‘defund the police’ before it, is falling out of favor with the American people. So DEI is rebranding. And in the real world, that means retreating,” snarks Commentary’s Abe Greenwald. “DEI consultants are changing tactics” by labeling the goal as “belonging,” which is really “pre-DEI civility. And here’s a useful rule: First comes the rebranding, then the renunciation,” just as “defund the police” became “reform the police” then “its champions began to drop it cold.” In short, “DEI is a multi-billion-dollar industry, and from 2020 to the present, it was the Gold Rush. But it’s still just a small part of American industry in general,” and if “C-level executives are moving beyond DEI, the rivers and mines will soon be tapped out.”

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board