Student Loans – Democrats’ #MeToo hypocrisy and other commentary

Cuomo watch: Democrats’ #MeToo Hypocrisy

Gov. Cuomo should be facing “explicit calls to resign from President Biden on down, if you apply the standard that Democrats set for similar allegations against Republicans,” reason Axios’ Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen. “And it’s not a close call.” During the #MeToo moment, Democrats “led the charge” in purging powerful men in politics, media, fashion and the movies for exploiting and harassing young women. Their silence now “seems more strange — and unacceptable by their own standards — by the hour.” Their only plausible explanation would be to claim Cuomo’s three accusers “are exaggerating or misremembering things.” Yet that’s “precisely what Democrats said was unacceptable in GOP cases.”

Media desk: Nursing-Home-Scandal Deflection

Cuomo is “finally getting his comeuppance,” but it’s odd that the backlash is for a few “icky” comments and not “for killing thousands of nursing-home residents,” notes Spectator USA’s Amber Athey. The media are trying to establish “a pattern of abusive behavior” to distract from the real scandal, which “might force progressives to challenge many of the lockdown policies they have so eagerly embraced since last year.” Alas, “introspection and mea culpas aren’t the left’s strong suit”; they would rather cover up the “far more serious and damaging story” — and it’s obvious which that is: “I don’t much care if Andrew Cuomo is a bit sleazy. I do care that, in his arrogant incompetence, he might have killed my grandmother.”

Education beat: Beyond Student-Debt Relief

There is a better way to deal with student debt than loan forgiveness, argues Beth Akers at National Review. It’s called income-driven repayment, and it ties monthly payments to borrowers’ income, minimizing “moral hazard” and, “in a true progressive manner,” delivering more benefits to people who took on debt to go college but didn’t see the ­return they expected in the form of a high-paying job. Compare that to loan-forgiveness programs that would “encourage students to borrow more than they would have otherwise, attend more expensive schools and make less of an effort to constrain living expenses.” Universities would also hike prices. IDR loans are already available, but they need to be “replaced with a single user-friendly” plan that can be “universally marketed and better understood.”

Foreign desk: Beware Playing Politics With MBS

President Biden seeks an easy human-rights win by tightening the screws on Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Muhammad bin Salman — but, warns Karen Elliott House at The New York Sun, “playing politics with an ally in such a dangerous part of the world” is risky business. Biden recently released an old intel report linking MBS to the killing of a Saudi journalist, inviting “relentless pressure from Democrats on the left of his party” to squeeze Riyadh. But “the Biden team is exposing its own hypocrisy,” since the president is determined to ­renew talks with the Tehran regime, which has gallons of dissident blood on its hands. Then, too, Team Biden ignores the fact that “MBS has, over the past four years, engineered a breathtaking expansion of individual liberty” by curbing the religious establishment — reforms that a hard-line stance from Washington could undo.

Centrist: Due Process Matters

In today’s “hair-triggered culture of Twitter attacks and ‘canceling’ opponents, due process is treated as hopelessly arcane and inconvenient,” observes Jonathan Turley at The Hill. As Gov. Cuomo is proving, it’s “rarely valued until its loss becomes personal.” When now-Justice Brett Kavanaugh faced sexual-assault allegations, Cuomo “effectively called Kavanaugh a rapist, without any due process.” Still, now that the governor is facing his own allegations, “Cuomo deserves due process,” even after “loudly denying it for others.” Yes, it would be easy to leave the guv “to the mob and call it poetic justice,” but real justice demands that he “receive all of the due process he denied others — not because he deserves it, but because he embodies the costs of ignoring it.”

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board