Regarding the March 26 editorial “Bernie Sanders doubles down on his dumbest idea”:
I hope that the Editorial Board will spend some time in Loudoun County to see what these data-center behemoths are doing to our once-lovely area. Our residents greatly hope we might be an example to other counties considering the creation of massive buildings that overwhelm our residential areas and parks and use large amounts of power and water.
Marilyn Silvey, Ashburn
I expected the Editorial Board to take issue with Bernie Sanders’s proposal to impose a federal moratorium on all new data centers until Congress regulates artificial intelligence. But I wasn’t prepared for the nasty and unnecessary attacks on the independent senator from Vermont’s age. The editorial pointed out he is 84 years old, born closer to Thomas Edison’s invention of the lightbulb than to today. Later, the editorial repeated that he is an octogenarian before calling him a Luddite. Attacks on anyone’s gender or race would be unacceptable – the same goes for age.
Megan Durham, Reston
NPS should start with the obvious problems
Regarding the March 24 Metro article “Federal removal of popular bike lanes delayed as cyclists sue, officials say”:
I am glad the federal government’s planned removal of bike lanes along 15th Street near the National Mall has been delayed. It’s ironic that our National Park Service planned to remove the lanes while claiming not to have sufficient resources to address more pressing nearby maintenance issues.
Let’s take a short tour of the National Mall grounds several blocks west of 15th Street. The neglect includes the numerous missing street lamps circling Constitution Gardens, rotted and rickety wooden park benches along Constitution Avenue, and metal walkway pylons lying flat on the ground. Finally, around the Lincoln Memorial traffic circle, look down and notice the rutted and disintegrating street pavement or look up at the four Arts of Peace and Arts of War statues, once beautiful golden bronze but now coated with layers of soot. Perhaps the bicycle lane delay will allow time for the NPS to take a step back and rearrange its maintenance priorities.
Lawrence Impett, Washington
What Social Security is and isn’t
The March 24 editorial “Nobody needs over $100,000 per year in Social Security benefits” was based on the fallacy that Social Security is a welfare program. It is, in fact, social insurance. Workers pay into the program and receive payments to replace income upon retirement, disability or the death of a family breadwinner. These are the “hazards and vicissitudes of life” that President Franklin D. Roosevelt referred to when signing Social Security into law. Means-testing Social Security, as the Editorial Board proposed, would grossly distort a program that has worked successfully for 90 years to provide Americans with basic financial security. Means-testing to the extent that it would save the program significant money could mean reducing benefits for people earning as little as $50,000 per year – cutting deep into the heart of the middle class.
The Post also proposed a flat benefit, which would convert Social Security into yet another welfare program that can easily be gutted. Instead, adjusting the payroll wage cap, which is set at $184,500 per year, is a popular choice and would correct for the growing wealth inequality that increasingly deprives the system of much-needed revenue.
Max Richtman, Washington
The writer is president and CEO of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare.
Setting the record straight on FactCheck.org
In his March 13 Friday Opinion essay, “Federal judges rely on this guide. It just took a sharp left turn,” William P. Barr, whose law firm represents energy clients, challenged the impartiality of the climate chapter prepared for the Federal Judicial Center’s Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence.
In so doing, Barr initially implied that “Kathleen Hall Jamieson, co-founder of the notoriously biased FactCheck.org,” was among that chapter’s “anonymous, expert peer reviewers.” While retaining Barr’s insinuation that Jamieson is not an impartial expert, The Post’s March 20 clarification associated her review with the overall manual rather than the climate chapter.
Instead, Jamieson, a National Academy of Sciences member who directs the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg Public Policy Center, reviewed a single chapter on survey research that was not mentioned in Barr’s essay. Among her qualifications to serve as a reviewer of a chapter on survey research is co-leading an effort to improve the integrity of survey research. In recognition of her “scholarly contributions to our understanding of public opinion,” she was awarded the Roper Center’s Mitofsky Award for Excellence in Public Opinion Research in 2022. One of the surveys Jamieson founded was covered by The Post this month [“A new poll reveals whom Americans trust over the CDC,” news, March 6].
Why co-founding the award-winning FactCheck.org disqualifies Jamieson as a reviewer of the intricacies of survey research, Barr did not say. Nor did he justify his assertion that FactCheck.org is “notoriously biased.”
AllSides rates FactCheck.org as “lean left,” while Media Bias/Fact Check rates it as “least biased” and “very high” for factual reporting. Ad Fontes Media places it in the “middle” as “reliable” with “analysis/fact reporting.” Hardly “notoriously biased.” Indeed, all three rate FactCheck.org as less biased than The Post.
Michael Rozansky, Philadelphia
The writer is director of communications at the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania.
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