16 NEWS Talking points
AP
,^ A
lamyQFor the second time in
recent weeks, a college stu-
dent has been given an in-
fluential role in the Trump
administration. Anthony
Labruna, a 22-year-old
senior at Iowa State
University, is now deputy
White House liaison at
the Department of Com-
merce. A senior at George
Washington University
was earlier appointed to a
top job in the Presidential
Personnel Office.
Politico.com
QThe death rate for 45- to
54-year-old white Ameri-
cans with college degrees
has fallen by 40 percent
since the early 1990s; the
rate has climbed 25 percent
for whites in the same age
range without degrees.
A surge in suicides and
deaths from drugs and
alcohol among noncollege
whites is largely respon-
sible for the disparity.
The New York Review of Books
QSUVs and pickup trucks
have become so large that
buy-
ers are
having
trouble
fitting
them
into home garages and
public parking spaces. In
New York, parking lots are
increasingly charging over-
size fees for vehicles like
the Chevrolet Suburban
and Fiat Chrysler’s Ram;
some that already charged
them are adopting “super-
oversize fees.”
USA Today
QPresident Trump’s son-
in-law and senior adviser,
Jared Kushner, has sold
his stake in Cadre, a real
estate startup that invested
in Opportunity Zone
projects, which offer tax
breaks Kushner lobbied to
create as part of the 2017
tax law. Kushner’s holding
in Cadre was worth at
least $25 mil lion at the end
of 2019, up from $5 mil lion
three years ago.
MarketWatch.comCovid-19: The coming lockdown
It could be the opening
sequence “of a pretty good
horror movie,” said Charles
McGrath in The Washington
Post. The malls and sports
stadiums are empty, the park-
ing lots desolate. In movie
theaters, dust gathers on
the seats, “the popcorn in
the popper going hard and
stale.” America’s highways
have “turned into eerie cor-
ridors” and “Times Square is a ghost town.”
These scenes don’t come from a new adaptation
of a Stephen King novel—this is what life could
soon be like in America if the new coronavirus
spreads unchecked and officials decide the only
solution is to close our public spaces. If you want
a glimpse of our future, look at Italy, said Rachel
Donadio in TheAtlantic.com. There, the govern-
ment has locked down the entire country, ban-
ning all public gatherings, closing all “cinemas,
theaters, concert halls, libraries, and museums.”
Travel is restricted to only those facing emergen-
cies, and anyone with even a low fever is quar-
antined. These are the most sweeping restrictions
yet implemented by a Western democracy. “They
may soon become the rule.”Imagine if schools were forced to “close for days,
weeks, months, or even a year,” said Ashley
Fetters and Timothy McLaughlin, also in TheAtlantic.com. Sports seasons
would be canceled, working
parents would have no place
to leave their kids, and sum-
mer vacation could go up
in smoke as schools recoup
lost days. It’s not far-fetched.
Globally, more than 290 mil-
lion children from pre-K
through 12th grade “have
been dismissed from school
due to Covid-19, some for
weeks now.” The outbreak could prove good for
big government and “deadly to your liberty,” said
J.D. Tuccille in Reason.com. Already, authori-
ties are weighing plans to restrict movement and
“proposals for massive federal spending” to sta-
bilize the economy. Make no mistake: When the
threat from the coronavirus recedes, it will leave
behind a “residue of laws, spending, and prec-
edents” that will affect us all for decades to come.But if we want to collectively make it through
this crisis, we have to accept there will be some
infringement on our liberty, said James Traub in
The New York Times. I’m not looking forward to
being placed in a forced quarantine, but should it
come to that, I will accept the “justice of my con-
finement” if my sacrifice means that my neighbors
have a better chance of staying healthy. With “the
flood upon us,” Americans will need to “rise to the
occasion” and “learn how to build dikes together.”Noted
Apparently $500 million doesn’t go as far as it
used to, said Erin Gloria Ryan in TheDailyBeast
.com. That’s how much money billionaire Michael
Bloomberg spent on his now-suspended 101-day
“vanity campaign” for president. On Super Tues-
day, that got him a pile of third- and fourth-place
finishes, about 53 delegates, and a single victory,
in American Samoa. He’d have been better off
doing something fun with the money. Say, mak-
ing “the beloved 2019 film Knives Out 12 times
over” or buying half the Jacksonville Jaguars. Or
if he was serious about winning, said Greg Sargent
in The Washington Post, Bloomberg should have
spent more. “The Samoan model” shows this
would have worked. His “seven full-time staffers”
in a tiny South Pacific territory secured 175 votes
and a win. By that math, with only 2.6 million
staffers he could have scored the nomination.No, Bloomberg’s money won’t bring him to the
Oval Office, but he’s still getting what he wanted,
said Perry Bacon Jr. in FiveThirtyEight.com. He
entered this race in November because it appeared
that the Democrats’ centrist standard-bearer, Joe
Biden, was floundering, leaving the field open
for the left wing, Sen. Elizabeth Warren and
Sen. Bernie Sanders. For $500 million, Bloomberg“got to go on stage in the debates and attack Sand-
ers and Warren,” providing cover for Biden, who
has since recovered nicely. So now the former New
York mayor, whose own ambitions were always
an unlikely backup plan, gets a more moderate
nominee who he believes can beat Donald Trump.
In fact, Bloomberg’s “money bomb” worked well
enough to give Democrats a “blueprint for media
strategy in the general election,” said Charlie
Warzel in The New York Times. His “101-day bil-
lionaire media supernova” elevated a pedestrian
campaigner with baggage into a plausible contender
in a matter of months. He showed what worked
and what didn’t, and in that context his “$500 mil-
lion experiment” was “money well spent.”One other thing the experiment proved was
that “money can’t buy elections,” said Casey
Given in WashingtonExaminer.com. Ever since
the Supreme Court protected the “First Amend-
ment right to spend money influencing politics”
in Citizens United v. FEC in 2010, pundits and
pols have “made careers” bemoaning the role of
money in politics. Bloomberg’s “hopeless cam-
paign” should put this argument to rest once and
for all. Money can buy ads; it can buy events and
campaign staff, but it “cannot buy votes.”Bloomberg: Money for nothing?
Enforcing a quarantine in Milan