Urban beat: Why NY Won’t Clean Up Canal St.

“The counterfeit market on Canal Street operates in plain sight,” laments City Journal’s Daniel Edward Rosen, because of “inconsistent policing and lax prosecution” — as well as an “unreasonably high legal bar for proving felony charges.” To stand up “felony charges” for counterfeiting, prosecutors “must establish that the retail value of the genuine versions of the fake goods exceeds statutory thresholds” of $100,000, which explains why “felony arrests on Canal Street so rarely become felony prosecutions.” But the “NYPD has also struggled to maintain a sustained presence on Canal Street.” Then, “in March, the city repealed” its own criminal penalties against unlicensed vendors; the “city’s posture on vending generally is moving toward less enforcement, not more.”

Mideast: Gazans Finally Learn Their Lessons

“Palestinians Want a Two-State Solution” in Foreign Affairs is “a rare optimistic essay” on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, observes Commentary’s Seth Mandel. Its authors “review Palestinian opinion surveys over time and show a clear trend toward a willingness to negotiate,” with Gazans now even more willing to talk than West Bank Palestinians. The authors seem to think such “pragmatism fell from the sky,” when the reasons are obvious: Gaza-based “Palestinians started and then lost a war, and now they are open to a negotiated end to hostilities.” They’re “finally seeing procrastination as a net-negative.” In the past, Israel always “sweetened” offers; now, it “finally took no for an answer.” Palestinians at long last realize “they have something to lose by refusing to end the conflict.”

From the right: Lawfare Must Be Punished

Ben Weingarten at The Federalist argues that “the anti-Trump lawfare of the last decade,” which “sought to silence, bankrupt, and jail its political opponents,” has escalated the threat to “new heights.” Jack Smith’s “team carried out a fishing expedition on behalf of the Biden administration and Democrat Party.” And because of the “Big Brother” climate they created, “sources will dry up” and “abuses, no longer revealed, will fester and multiply.” We should demand “justice,” “hold the wrongdoers to account” and “ensure they [are] prohibited from working in government ever again.” Alas, based on past misdeeds,“we can expect almost none of this to happen.” “Indifference to weaponization” and lawfare is ultimately “fatal to our republic.” Worst of all, the lawfare “genie can never be fully back in the bottle.”

Free-speech watch: Cleese Case Is a Warning

Why did a British Muslim group report comedy legend John Cleese to Prevent, a “government program designed to stop people from becoming terrorists”? asks Andrew Doyle at The Washington Post. It’s because he made fun of their religion and called himself “Islamosceptic” — which is hardly a sign of terrorism. Meanwhile, the same group has expressed support for “an Islamic caliphate, Sharia (Islamic principles and law) penal codes and physical jihad.” But Cleese is supposedly guilty of something worse: “cultural nationalism”, i.e. possibly thinking that “Western society is under threat from mass migration.” “Almost certainly” Prevent will not take this claim seriously, “but the fact that such complaints are raised at all shows that the old consensus on free speech is no longer secure.”

Democrat: DC Needs ‘Spending Discipline’

“As endless deficits spook the bond market,” contends Rahm Emanuel at The Wall Street Journal, “restoring fiscal sanity will require spending discipline” and curbing “tax expenditures.” The “tax code’s various loopholes” are “costly and encourage the wrong behavior.” Indeed, the code is so complex “that some children of wealthy families attend retreats to learn how to manage their inheritances,” even though “nearly half of all taxpayers” could theoretically “file at the touch of a button” given the IRS’ current access to “sufficient information.” Tax laws should be “tightened,” preventing wealthy people from “borrowing against their equity” on a tax-free basis and “closing the loopholes” that “allow companies to stash profit in overseas tax havens to avoid U.S. taxes.”

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board