Top 10 editorials of 2023
Washington Examiner
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Next year is a presidential election year, but this year was consequential too. Many of the storylines of 2023 will have a huge impact on 2024. Below, we have compiled the top 10 editorials of the year gone by to help you remember what has set the stage for the year to come.
10. Florida isn’t hostile to black people, but these blue states sure appear to be: In yet another blow to the once-proud organization’s credibility, the NAACP issued a “formal travel advisory” about Florida, claiming the state was “openly hostile toward African Americans.” — which, as the editorial points out, must have been news to the thousands of black people who move to Florida from other states every year. Not only do black people in Florida have a lower employment rate than black people in other states, but black communities in Florida are growing, not shrinking, as they are in California and New York.
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9. How you paid for that rich person’s beachfront house: There are plenty of dumb things the federal government wastes your tax dollars on. Perhaps the most infuriating is beachfront luxury housing for rich people. One $5.5 million home in Connecticut received $150,000 from the Department of Housing and Urban Development to clean up after Hurricane Sandy. For years, there had been an income cap on program beneficiaries, but President Barack Obama waived it. The Federal Emergency Management Agency also pays wealthy homeowners an average of $550,000 to elevate their waterfront properties, and the National Flood Insurance Program has been subsidizing the construction of beachfront mansions for decades. Not only are all of these programs unfair, but they also drive up the cost of damage from hurricanes. It is far past time to stop subsidizing the rich in this way.
8. Massachusetts denies Catholics the right to adopt: The Democratic Party’s war on the free exercise of religion continued in full force this year. The commonwealth of Massachusetts decided to reject a married Catholic couple’s application to become foster parents because their Catholic “faith is not supportive” of the state’s push for transgender medical procedures. Two years ago, in Fulton v. Philadelphia, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the city could not bar Catholic Social Services from placing children in foster homes even though the Catholic group would not approve of same-sex couples as parents. This should be a slam dunk legal win for Mike and Kitty Burke. But they should not have to go to court and defend their right to adopt from attack by bureaucrats who do not like their religion.
7. When challenged on her lies, Kamala Harris slinks away: During the first Democratic presidential primary debate in June 2019, then-California Sen. Kamala Harris attacked then-Vice President Joe Biden for opposing busing back in the 1970s. Busing moved children around to mix races in schools. The exchange in the debate was a good moment for Harris, but when reporters followed up and asked if she supported busing today, Harris dodged the question and dropped the issue. She pulled a similar stunt this year, accusing Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) of creating racist Advanced Placement history standards, only to duck for cover when DeSantis challenged her to debate the issue.
6. Electric vehicles are a bad bargain for everyone: Ford. Honda. General Motors. Volkswagen. Unless the name of your car company is “Tesla,” you massively cut back on the production of electric vehicles this year. Customers don’t want them — why would they? — so they simply aren’t selling. Dealerships around the country are overstocked with EVs no wants. They are too expensive, too unreliable, and too hard to recharge. According to a Texas Public Policy Foundation study, thanks to all the subsidies and regulations that go into producing them, they are also far more expensive than their high price tags. The foundation estimates that taxpayers are footing a $49,000 bill all told for each electric vehicle sold.
5. Gavin Newsom admits California is failing: Give Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) credit for having the courage to defend himself on Sean Hannity’s television show. During his appearance, he basically admitted that his state is failing. “People are losing trust and confidence in our ability to build things,” Newsom told Hannity. “People look at me and ask, ‘What the hell happened to the California of the ‘50s and ‘60s?’” Yes, what did happen to it? It used to be a net importer of people, not an exporter. The Democratic Party is what happened. A state that once built one of the world’s largest water systems now prioritizes fish over farmers. Environmental regulation strangles construction, and the price of homes and energy has skyrocketed. If Newsom wants to know what happened to California, he should look in the mirror.
4. The political pressure on Biden family corruption is working: The Bidens almost got away with it. But for one federal judge in Delaware, the first family might have avoided adverse consequences for its graft in taking millions of dollars from foreign leaders, enriching themselves, and not paying taxes on their misbegotten earnings. Thanks to House Republicans, Judge Maryellen Noreika was able to ask some pointed questions of both the Justice Department and Hunter Biden’s lawyers. Their unique, unprecedented, and utterly improper plea deal seemed to give Hunter Biden immunity for far more illegal acts than the Justice Department was letting on. Noreika ended up rejecting the deal, and now Hunter Biden has been indicted on serious charges.
3. Biden’s IRS army isn’t coming for billionaires — it is coming for you: When crafting the arrogantly misnamed Inflation Reduction Act, President Joe Biden included a provision giving the IRS an extra $80 billion to hire more staff to ostensibly collect more taxes from millionaires and billionaires. But as a Government Accountability Office study published this year shows, the only way for the IRS to get that money is to audit poorer people. Audits of households making $5 million or more a year net the IRS $4,800 per man-hour, but there aren’t enough $5 million-plus households to pay $80 billion. The second most lucrative audit for the IRS is low-income taxpayers who take the earned income tax credit. Those earn $3,231 per hour. That is where the money is. That is who Joe Biden’s IRS army will be targeting.
2. Democrats buckle under Biden border chaos: The southern border has been in crisis since Joe Biden’s first day in office after he ended former President Donald Trump’s effective and successful “Remain in Mexico” program. For the first two years of his presidency, Democrats didn’t care. They were content to let border communities in Texas and Arizona suffer. Plus, big corporations want cheap labor. This year, however, things began to change. The cost of housing, feeding, clothing, educating, and providing healthcare for illegal immigrants began to pile up. First, New York began to squawk, then Washington, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles. Democratic mayors of big cities are now begging Joe Biden to solve the border crisis he created. Will the president finally take responsibility for the fiasco he caused and make needed policy changes to bring order to the border? Only 2024 will tell.
1. America needs the Florida model: “Business is booming,” a Florida business owner told the Washington Examiner for our Sunshine State series. While the rest of the nation suffered a fall in housing construction, Florida kept right on building. This is just one of many reasons so many people are moving there. Some commentators claim blue-state refugees are flocking only to the blue cities within red states, confident that Democrats provide schools, social services, and “diversity” that attract highly educated workers. But that’s not true: The fastest-growing counties in red states like Florida are those that vote Republican. Second, it is the red-state governors who often have to step in and stop blue-city governments from making the same mistakes that blue-state refugees are fleeing. In Florida, the governor has the power to overrule local reductions in law enforcement budgets and get rid of soft-on-crime prosecutors. The verdict is in: People love the Florida model, and they are voting with their feet.