New debate rules helped Trump, treat big nonprofits like business and other commentary

“Staged by CNN in an audience-free soundstage in which even competing reporters were banned, the Biden-Trump debate had more ground rules than an Ultimate Fighting match,” grumbles Politico’s Jack Shafer.In advance of the debate, “many assumed that these new rules would hurt Trump” given that “he feeds off live audiences.” That wasn’t the case as the new format “prodded him in a relatively measured and dignified direction.” In contrast, Biden’s “halting speech and inanimate affect were on obvious display.” On-screen, the men “occupied conjoined video squares,” which meant Biden’s “wrinkled, aged face was on display all evening.” While the Biden-Trump debate “reset the form, returning it to its 1960s origin,” it did nothing to help Biden.“The enduring image of the night is a hollow-eyed Joe struggling to keep up with the kinetic Trump.”Rather than hiking corporate income taxes to help offset the cost of extending the 2017 tax cuts, Republicans should push to tax “business enterprises that masquerade as nonprofit entities,” argues Scott Hodge at The Wall Street Journal. In 2019, such groups pocketed “$186 billion in net income from sources such as royalties, broadcast rights, insurance reimbursements, ticket sales and membership fees — much of it untaxed.” Though many nonprofits are true charities, “most of the largest” ones “function like businesses,” including “credit unions, hospitals, universities, athletic associations and consulting firms.” Should such groups be considered “nonprofit” when most of their income comes from business-like transactions? “Broadening the corporate tax base” to include nonprofits’ business income can “raise new revenue in a less economically damaging manner.”French President Emmanuel Macron “shocked the nation” by calling snap parliamentary elections “after a humiliating defeat in June’s European parliament election,” reports Politico’s Cle...