Pun Salad

I think the MSM has run short on synonyms to describe government agencies getting less than they think they deserve.

But more needs to be done, my friends, because…

Dominic Pino has some wise words for Independence Weekend: Americans Must Declare Independence from the Federal Retirement State. (NR gifted link)

Well, we know the story. Especially because I keep tiresomely harping on it. Skipping down to Dominic's bottom line:

Americans shouldn’t look to the government for sustenance at any stage of life. Voters should want to declare their independence from the federal retirement state on their own terms, before a fiscal crisis forces the issue, and politicians should want to restore to the people the power over their own personal finances. Yet in this supposedly populist age, the elites continue to lie about entitlements with, so far, no political consequences from the voters.

I know my state keeps electing the same liars, telling the same lies, every few years.

Also of note:

• A worthy debate. Skeptic hosts one about the future of America. First up is Mark Skousen, making The Case for a Free & Prosperous Society.

  In July 1778, during the American War of Independence from Great Britain, then-American ambassador Benjamin Franklin received a letter from a British official using the alias Charles de Weissenstein, hopeful that he would agree to begin negotiations for a peace settlement.

  Franklin wrote a lengthy reply but never sent the letter, stating, “Your Parliament never had the right to govern us, and your King has forfeited that right through his bloody tyranny.” Full independence was Franklin’s goal, but he took the time to outline his philosophy of an “independent state.” He wrote, “We purpose, if possible, to live in peace with all mankind.” He saw no need for “fleets or standing armies,” believing that “our militias … are sufficient to defend our lands from invasion.” Franklin argued there was no need to expand beyond a “small civil government” with “no offices of profit, nor any sinecures or useless appointments, so common in ancient and corrupted states.” He concluded, “We can govern ourselves for a year with the sums you pay in a single department,” summing up the role of the state in one sentence: 

  A virtuous and laborious [industrious] people may be cheaply governed.

  Today’s federal government is a far cry from Franklin’s vision of a laissez-faire state. As Thomas Jefferson presciently observed, “The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield, and government to gain ground.”

  Mark makes an urgent recommendation to start moving back toward Ben's vision. It's not impossible. But my inner cynic adds "… also not likely."

• But there's a counterpoint. And you probably wouldn't be permanently brain-damaged by reading The Case for Democratic Socialism. from Ben Burgis, a columnist from the real-deal socialist magazine, Jacobin. You know, named after the famed fans of the guillotine.

  The United States has long been one of the most antisocialist nations in the developed world. Socialist parties have been elected to power in many countries over the course of the last century. This happened several times even in the United Kingdom, a nation linked to the U.S. by history, cultural affinity, and a diplomatic special relationship. While the UK’s Labour Party has long since drifted to the political center, when it first became one of the country’s major parties, Clause IV of its constitution, drafted by Sidney and Beatrice Webb in November 1917 and adopted by the party in 1918, committed the party to:

  Secure for the workers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry and the most equitable distribution thereof that may be possible upon the basis of the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange, and the best obtainable system of popular administration and control of each industry or service.

  No political force with similar goals has ever been a major part of American politics.

  You can probably guess where my sympathies lie. But (as if I needed to tell you) judge for yourself.

• Oh, and just a reminder. It's from Miranda Devine at the NYPost, passing along the latest from the CIA: Obama’s Trump-Russia collusion report was corrupt from start. Reporting on the early DC fireworks:

  A bombshell new CIA review of the Obama administration’s spy agencies’ assessment that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election to help Donald Trump was deliberately corrupted by then-CIA Director John Brennan, FBI Director James Comey and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who were “excessively involved” in its drafting, and rushed its completion in a “chaotic,” “atypical” and “markedly unconventional” process that raised questions of a “potential political motive.” 

  Further, Brennan’s decision to include the discredited Steele dossier, over the objections of the CIA’s most senior Russia experts, “undermined the credibility” of the assessment.

  Of course, you should be open to the possibility that under President Newsom in 2029, another "review" will come down the pike saying this one was full of beans, the Comey/Brennan/Clapper stuff was totally cool, and…

Amidst our celebrations today, let's give some serious thought to Kevin D. Williamson's Declaration Against Idolatry.

KDW is more religious than I, and I think (or, more accurately, hope) that we can secure the blessings of liberty without being (in John Adams' words) a "moral and religious people”. But KDW has a powerful argument on his side: in the absence of religion, it's pretty darn easy to slip into idolatry.

Do I need to make that more explicit?

Also of note:

• "Other than that, though, it's fine!" Just kidding. Veronique de Rugy is not a fan: The $4 Trillion 'Big, Beautiful Bill' Breaks the Bank and Violates Congress' Own Budget Rules.

  Here we go again. This week, the Senate finally passed its version of the "One Big Beautiful Bill Act," and the House signed off.* What was already an oversized mess has been supersized into a $4 trillion ode to unseriousness.

  This isn't tax reform. It's a bipartisan piñata stuffed with pork, gimmicks, and—of course—debt. We're told to cheer because the bill makes permanent a few pro-growth policies, including 100 percent bonus depreciation and research and development expensing. However, a few pearls in a vast ocean of bad policies are nothing to celebrate. It's like marveling at newly painted rooms in a burning house.

  We've been told to cheer because the bill removes or trims $147 billion of the House version's worst handouts. But as an Arnold Ventures analysis points out, the Senate also added $186 billion to the pot. That's a net increase of $39 billion in pork.

  Ah well. Since I'm old, I noted that there might be a sugarplum in there for me: an additional "senior deduction"; I'll have to wait until (probably) sometime in February 2026 to see if it works.

• "Other than that, though, it's not great!" Jeff Maurer pledges his allegiance: I Support the Big, Beautiful, Bill Because I Think Coal is the Future, Find Uninsured Poor People Funny, and Am Rooting for a Debt Catastrophe.

  Is the “Big, Beautiful, Bill” good or bad? That depends on your priorities. We know the bill’s basic shape: The 2017 tax cuts will be made permanent, there will be cuts to Medicaid and food stamps, and green energy subsidies will be pared back. Whether you consider that good or bad depends on your values.

  Me: I’m all-in. I think this is the right bill at the right time. Though the details are still being hammered out, Congress is most of the way to a bill that addresses this country’s woes with surgical precision. Kudos, sirs and madams! You have proven yourself equal to the moment. Because — in my humble opinion — we sorely need three things: 1) A less-accessible health care system; 2) Commitment to 19th-century fuel sources, and 3) A debt crisis so severe that it could give rise to a pre-civilizational economy in which power is held by warlords and exemplary prostitutes.

  Yes, he's kidding. I think.

  Just an additional comment: the unstated desire for Democrats is an eventual "single payer health care system". So any movement away from that goal, anything that might make people not dependent on government footing the bills, is to be bitterly opposed. And, shout it with me at the top of your lungs…

• Holman W. Jenkins, Jr. has some good news on that front: ‘People Will Die’ Isn’t the Policy Clincher It Seems. (WSJ gifted link)

  And, yes, Remy's #1 example from his 2017 video is still singing the same tune:

  Creating a government program means creating a beneficiary who may be worse than bereaved if the benefit is later taken away. Thus a three-word formula has rushed to the fore in criticism of the Trump agenda: “People will die.”

  These words appear in the Factiva database of news sources 883 times in the past six months in relation to the administration, 211 times in relation to DOGE, and 185 times in relation to the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

  This usage augurs well for the media’s replacement by an algorithm but otherwise applies straight-edge reasoning to a complex problem. When a program goes away, after all, people may adapt and find new solutions for themselves. They may choose not to die.

  Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) has been a fiery proponent of “people will die” opposition to spending cuts. But people will die no less from Ms. Warren’s failure to push through new programs or expand existing benefits to new classes of Americans. People will also die if enticed to rely on programs that politicians know aren’t sustainable and must be changed. Medicare and Medicaid are certain to produce long waiting lists in the future. Social Security benefits are already scheduled to be cut sharply as soon as 2033 under existing law.

  Ah, if only Elizabeth could promise me Life Eternal…

• Just read it. Neal Stephenson reflects on his 30-year-old (!!) book, The Diamond Age and how he views Emerson, AI, and The Force.

  OK, go read The Diamond Age first, if you haven't. (My own report is here.) I'll wait…

  Ah, good, you're back. Here's Neal:

  Thirty years on, I think I have enough distance on this to grade my performance. I’m happy with the fact that the Primer, as described in the novel, doesn’t invariably produce great results. That seems like a measured and realistic outcome. Nevertheless it’s clear that when I wrote this thing I was influenced by a strain of techno-utopian thinking that was widespread in the mid-1990s, when the Internet was first becoming available to a mass audience. In those days, a lot of people, myself included, assumed that making all the world’s knowledge available to everyone would unlock vast stores of pent-up human potential.

  That promise actually did come true to some degree. It’s unquestionably the case that anyone with an Internet connection can now learn things that they could not have had access to before. But as we now know, many people would rather watch TikTok videos eight hours a day. And many who do use the Internet to “do research” and “educate” themselves are “learning” how Ivermectin cures COVID, the sky is full of chemtrails spewed out by specially equipped planes, and vaccinations plant microchips in your body.

  And yet…

I can't find it online though, probably because it's considered racist to start a joke with "Confucius say…". I did find the punchline, though, on the sign at your right.

But what reminded me of the joke was this reminder from Jim Geraghty: Even Presidents Have to Obey the Law.

But it isn't. And that's not all. Jim goes on to detail that the administration is failing to send legally-appropriated education funding to states.

Not to be a Constitution nerd, but the Presidential oath of office demands incoming executives "faithfully execute" their official duties; and one of those duties is to "take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed".

So to adopt that old joke: "Confucius say: Presidential failure to ban TikTok is… grounds for impeachment."

Doesn't work quite as well as the original, sadly.

But do you need more grounds? Nick Catoggio has another, asking the musical question: To Bribe or Not to Bribe?.

A number of internet pundits with whom I usually sympathize are gloating about Trump's "win" here. My guess is that they are letting their MSM-hatred overpower their distaste for bullying executive power used for personal gain and ego-massage.

And, not that it matters, when you just Google "poison coffee", there are a disturbingly large number of results from news sources, alleging actual or attempted murder plots against spouses over the years.

Also of note:

• Just one little problem. Since we've been talking about the Constitution, this is a good place to register Pun Salad's agreement with Bradley A. Smith's thesis: Campaign Regulations Are Unconstitutional.

  The Supreme Court has repeatedly stated that “the First Amendment has its fullest and most urgent application precisely to the conduct of campaigns for political office.” But it has declined to review, and in some cases affirmed, many campaign-finance laws that directly abridge First Amendment rights. Can the government legitimately exercise this power over our “fullest and most urgent” political speech?

  The justices should ask these questions in National Republican Senatorial Committee v. Federal Election Commission, which they on Monday agreed to hear. The NRSC is challenging federal limits on how much a political party can spend in coordination with its own candidates—as if it were a bad thing for a party and its candidates to work together. The Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, sitting en banc, reluctantly upheld the restrictions on the basis of a 2001 Supreme Court precedent, FEC v. Colorado Republican Federal Campaign Committee, (known as Colorado II) calling them a “legal last-man-standing.” But most of the judges strongly encouraged the high court to re-examine that precedent.

  Since Colorado II, the legal and practical landscape of campaign finance has shifted dramatically. The Supreme Court, with increasing rigor, has held that only preventing quid pro quo corruption—the exchange of official acts for money—can justify restrictions on spending to finance political speech. Broader theories about “the amount of money in politics,” “undue influence” or “leveling the playing field” are no longer winning arguments. The several opinions in the Sixth Circuit reveal deep skepticism about the current regulatory regime.

  But the problem goes deeper than the need to define “corruption” and balance it against the “urgency” of political speech. There is no constitutional basis for government to regulate political speech through campaign-finance laws.

  I've noted in the past that it's apparently a strong wish among Democrats to "partially" repeal the First Amendment.

• SCOTUS wimped out? George Will disapproves: The Supreme Court puts off restoring the Voting Rights Act’s shine. (WaPo gifted link)

  Sixty years ago this summer, Congress enacted the nation-transforming Voting Rights Act. Soon, however, Congress and a deferential Supreme Court, by reverse alchemy, turned the gold of the VRA into the lead of today’s racial distribution of representation. Last Friday, the Supreme Court delayed, pending reargument next term, deciding a case that could reverse the VRA’s tarnishment.

  On the final day of the 2024-2025 term, the court issued 404 pages of decisions, concurrences and dissents in six cases. Singularly important, however, were the six pages of Justice Clarence Thomas’s dissent from the court’s decision not to decide the case concerning the patent racial gerrymandering in Louisiana’s redistricting map.

  Gerrymandering is pretty bad, racial gerrymandering is particularly odious. I am somewhat gratified that the WaPo's AI summary of the comments seems to agree!

  As always, I recommend my crackpot scheme for fixing things, a form of "proportional representation".

• Don't worry, there are a lot more seriously bad ideas in his head. Megan McArdle says: Zohran Mamdani has a seriously bad idea — for grocery stores. (WaPo gifted link)

  It seems bizarre, in the year of our Lord 2025, to be debating whether the government should run the grocery stores. History has thoughtfully answered this question with multiple experiments, from the old Soviet Union to modern-day Venezuela. The answer is: “No! Absolutely not! Are you crazy?”

  But here is Zohran Mamdani, the winner of New York’s Democratic mayoral primary, suggesting that the city needs a “public option” for groceries: five pilot stores, one in each borough, to help bring prices down and provide oases in the city’s “food deserts.” Forget the old-school communist talk about socializing the means of production — Mamdani wants to socialize the means of consumption.

  So very well, let’s lay out the problems with this idea, starting with the fact that almost everyone in the city has a grocery store within walking distance, except for the inmates at Rikers Island and the residents of a few outlying neighborhoods in Queens. There’s no obvious market gap for the city to fill.

  You will see (if you look) a lot of free-market types correctly pointing out that the grocery sector has very slim net profit margins; there's simply not much "consumer gouging" going on.

  One exception seems to be Whole Foods Market; I read founder John Mackey's memoir a few weeks back, and he (softly) boasted about Whole Foods' very healthy margins. I think this means affluent folks don't mind getting gouged at the supermarket that much, if they can satisfy some psychological need in doing so.

Recently on the book blog:

Recently on the movie blog:

After more than 50 years, it's probably time to watch this again. Written, directed, and produced by Francis Ford Coppola, sandwiched in between The Godfather and The Godfather Part II. It's a little movie, non-epic, but nevertheless very watchable.

It's also Gene Hackman's movie. He disappears into the character of Harry Caul, a wizard with a singular talent for surveillance, recording conversations the participants would prefer kept secret. He is guilt-ridden over the horrifying results of a previous gig, but that has not dimmed his craving for snoopery. He's also somewhat paranoid, compulsive about his own privacy. But still very Catholic-religious. Which only makes the developments here more poignant.

The supporting cast is pretty good too: the "Director", an uncredited Robert Duvall, hires Harry to spy on his wife (Cindy Williams) to see if she's cheating on him. (Spoiler: she is, with Frederic Forrest.) The director is assisted, creepily, by Harrison Ford! While Harry's assisted by a gabby John Cazale! His obsessions wreck his romantic relationship with Teri Garr! He is betrayed by competitor Allen Garfield!

It ain't a feelgood movie, but I liked it anyway.

Another concoction from Christopher Moore, mashing up real people with fictional characters (and not-really people), magic, sex, violence, and deadpan humor. And there may have been a kitchen sink in there somewhere. It centers around early 20th century Vienna, about which Moore rhapsodizes:

Vienna, a shining jewel on the Danube; birthplace of the waltz, X-rays, psychoanalysis, mathematical genetics, tiny spiced sausages in a can, and before long, Surrealism, just as soon as the trout hit the cream cake.

It begins when artist Gustav Klimt discovers an apparently drowned girl washed up on the banks of a Viennese canal. He is fascinated by her coloring, and he's a painter first. Also second, third, and … well, "normal human being" is pretty far down the list. So he trundles her off to his studio, where it develops that she's not dead! At least not any more. He names her "Judith", after the deadly Jewish widow whose story doesn't make it into standard Bibles.

That's only the beginning. We eventually learn Judith's nature and colorful history, including her troubled relationship with Adam, Frankenstein's monster. She befriends Klimt's numerous models/bedmates. She goes to therapy sessions with Freud and Jung. She thwarts people who are trying to kidnap her. She acquires a loyal croissant-loving dog, Geoff, … who is also more than he seems at first.

I don't think you'll have to worry about seeing a movie based on this book. A faithful adaptation would probably put the filmmakers into jail before the movie was finished. (A lot of those models were pretty young.)

Moore did a lot of impressive research on Klimt, his retinue, Freud, Jung, and history. There is a long Afterword with details on the actual people, and where and why he took out artistic licenses. All in all, it's a little long, because Moore is very much a "I can't leave this out" kind of writer.

My mole at the University Near Here forwarded me the letter sent out yesterday by President Elizabeth Chilton to "colleagues":

Notes:

• Nadine Petty's former title was "Chief Diversity Officer".
• Getting rid of diversity statements for job applicants is a good thing. It's been a bugaboo here at Pun Salad since 2018.
• As President Chilton notes, a lot of DEI-influenced web pages have been drastically revised, or simply memory-holed. For example, compare UNH's current the Diversity, Equity, Access & Inclusion page with its May 3 incarnation.

On the other hand, some of the lower-level outposts of wokeness are still around. The UNH library still has its guide to Racial Justice Resources. (Ibram X. Kendi? Check. Ta-Nehisi Coates? Check. Robin DiAngelo? Of course. Thomas Sowell? Uh…) UNH's Paul College is (as I type) still advertising the 1619 Project, etc.

All this combines with cutbacks in state and federal funding. Almost enough to make me feel sorry for UNH. But then I remind myself that they didn't do any of this until they were forced to.

Also of note:

• In other New Hampshire education news… Drew Cline, at the Josiah Bartlett Center, explains How both sides lost the ConVal school funding case. And also explains what the "Conval school funding case" is:

  On Tuesday morning, the New Hampshire Supreme Court for the first time ordered the state to spend a minimum amount of money—$7.356.01 per pupil—to educate public school students.

  The state therefore lost this landmark school funding case, Contoocook Valley School District v. State, as it had tried to avoid such a decree. But a closer read suggests that ConVal and the other school districts that sued to force an increase in state education aid also lost.

  What follows is a lot of calculation, but this is key:

  Instead of a ruling ordering an increase in state aid so large that it would require a new state tax, the districts won a ruling that obligates the state to spend only $247.22 more per pupil than it has committed to spending in the Fiscal Year 2026.

  Drew also points out that it's ludicrous to think "the New Hampshire Constitution actually obligates the state to determine the cost of an adequate public education and then fully fund it." But that horse legally left the barn.

• Good and hard. Allison Schrager writes on The new divide.

  These are tough times for New York–based Pension Geeks. Voters here seem determined to destroy one of the world’s great cities. I understand many residents — especially those frustrated that their liberal arts degree and creative non-profit job do not afford them even a middle-class lifestyle in New York — want to see change. The affordability issue is real. But clearly, our education system has failed many people if they think socialism and more price controls are the answer.

  Pretty much every position New York’s next probable mayor holds deeply offends me. It’s hard to know where to start. I’m told I should take comfort that many of his policies can’t be enacted anyway. Though we saw in the de Blasio administration that a mayor who is hostile to the police (and actually wants more homeless people on the subway?!) can have a very noticeable and catastrophic impact on public safety — and that hurts the poorest New Yorkers most.

  Apparently support for the Zohran came disproportionately from wealthier demographics. The ones who can afford to insulate themselves from the resulting socialist crapfest.

• "Other than that, though, it's fine!" Veronique de Rugy examines Magical Thinking at the CEA. That's the "Council of Economic Advisors", and it's been stuffed with Trump cheerleaders. So:

  The Council of Economic Advisers’ new analysis of the One Big Beautiful Bill reads more like campaign literature than serious economic forecasting. The headline claims of booming GDP growth, surging wages, and miraculous deficit reduction are based on assumptions so rosy they make the 2017 dynamic-scoring debates look conservative. The CEA asserts that the bill will reduce deficits by $4.9 trillion over a decade and bend the debt curve downward. But independent experts have pointed out that the actual fiscal impact is likely to increase primary deficits by between $2.2 and $3.5 trillion. That is a swing of up to $9 trillion.

  There are serious problems with the analysis. It includes double-counting tariff revenue and interest effects, it mixes budget windows, and it conflates level increases with changes in the growth rate. It projects that deficit as a share of GDP in FY2025 will be smaller than in FY2024, even though the deficit as a share of GDP for the first 2/3 of FY2025 is over 13 percent higher than in FY2024. According to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, the calculation errors alone could amount to $3 trillion. This is extraordinary.

  Even worse, the CEA analysis relies heavily on policies that do not even currently exist, such as hypothetical discretionary spending cuts and deregulatory actions that haven’t happened yet (and sadly will take time to be adopted even if they are ever to be approved). It then assigns them massive economic effects. For example, the CEA claims that deregulation will raise annual economic growth by 0.29 percent, based on a one-time cost estimate of Biden-era regulations. But as Marc Goldwein points out, that estimate might support a one-time increase in the level of GDP, not a sustained increase in the annual growth rate.

  Vero's not optimistic about the OBBB, so neither am I. I have to admit that things are, so far, looking pretty sweet investment-wise.

• As long as we still have Lee Child and Robert Crais… Lou Aguilar writes at the Spectator about the testosterone shortage at the library: Male Novel Readers Are Not Fiction.

  A New York Times article last Wednesday teased both a fascinating mystery and its solution, “Why Did the Novel-Reading Man Disappear?” But the author, Joseph Bernstein, delivered neither, only a rambling circumstantial essay full of standard feminist drivel and distortion. The most popular novels in the 19th Century, for instance, were not written by women as Bernstein claims but by men like Dickens, Tolstoy, Dumas, Collins, Twain, and many more. The works of now beloved female novelists such as Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility) and Bronte sisters Charlotte (Jane Eyre) and Emily (Wuthering Heights) took much longer to be recognized as classic — in Emily’s case, after her death.

  But then the title of the piece is false. Novel-reading men have not disappeared. Novels for men have — from mainstream publishers, if less totally than male-driven fare from Hollywoke. Bernstein touches upon the reason then instantly excuses it. “Starting in the 1980s, a new generation of women came to dominate the publishing industry.” The idea, he adds, “that liberal politics have destroyed the space for male readers — seems like a huge oversimplification. And many people who care about the future of the male fiction reader are keen to avoid it.”

  I've written before about my impression of the "New Fiction" table at the Portsmouth (NH) Public Library. And their Staff Directory is still very feminine.

  But it's very much a chicken-and-egg problem: Woman book-buyers buy woman-authored books for their female clientele. Which probably discourages men from trying either to write, or read, guy books. Which feeds back to…

I read Kevin D. Williamson automatically, but even if I didn't, his not-too-subtle Hayekian headline would suck me in: The Road to Smurfdom.

Taking out Iranian nuke-producing sites was great, sure. But…

Ah, there's the Smurf reference, right at the end.

KDW's "Wanderland" essay for this week is long and wonderful. Let me, for the nth time, recommend that you subscribe.

Also of note:

• An even less subtle Hayek reference. Seen in today's WSJ, a burning question from Gary Saul Morson and Julio M. Ottino: What Would Hayek Think of AI? (WSJ gifted link)

  It keeps happening—some shiny new idea or technology promises to solve all our problems. Give power to experts to arrange affairs “scientifically,” and poverty, oppression, disease, war and all human ills will disappear. Today, we are asked to trust artificial intelligence.

  The International Monetary Fund promises that “AI can enhance democratic institutions by ensuring citizens’ voices are truly heard.” Power wielded by a few experts can enhance democracy? Isn’t that what the early 20th-century Progressive movement promised? For that matter, isn’t that the thinking behind Soviet “scientific socialism”?

  Although the authors' queries are good, I have to say that the IMF's insertion of "truly" in front of "heard", is a major needle-scratch for me. I can't read it any other way than "Let's figure out a way to dupe the masses into thinking they've been listened to."

  Maybe what we really need is an AI that tells people: "That's the dumbest idea I've truly heard today."

  (Related link: ChatGPT Wasn’t Supposed to Kiss Your Ass This Hard.)

  (By the way, the IMF-published essay to which Morson and Ottino refer is from 2023, by Yale Poli Sci Prof Hélène Landemore: Fostering More Inclusive Democracy with AI. Let me know if you trudge through it and find anything substantive.)

  Morson and Ottino make the Hayekian connection:

  Hayek called this “the fatal conceit”—the assumption that central authority can gather and use all relevant knowledge. Just as Soviet planners couldn’t capture the distributed knowledge embedded in economic decisions, today’s AI systems can’t aggregate and optimize all relevant social knowledge. Human behavior is too complex. Cultural context is too important and can’t be formalized.

  This isn’t an argument against AI, but rather for humility about its limits. AI works best as a tool that enhances rather than replaces human judgment. It can help us process information, identify patterns and generate options. But it can’t substitute for the irreducibly human work of navigating competing values, managing trade-offs and living with uncertainty.

• "Human sacrifice! Dogs and cats living together! Mass hysteria!" Jonathan Turley notes the Ghostbusters-style predictions from the "liberal" SCOTUS ladies: The End is Nigh: Liberal Justices Predict “Chaos” and the Demise of Public Education Without Mandatory LGBTQ Material.

  The decision in Mahmoud v. Taylor was a roaring victory for parents in public schools. The Montgomery County, Md. school system fought to require the reading of 13 “LGBTQ+-inclusive” texts in the English and Language Arts curriculum for kids from pre-K through 12th grade. That covers children just 5-11 years old.

  The children are required to read or listen to stories like “Prince & Knight” about two male knights who marry each other, and “Love Violet” about two young girls falling in love. Another, “Born Ready: The True Story of a Boy Named Penelope,” discusses a biological girl who begins a transition to being a boy.

  Teachers were informed that this was mandatory reading, which must be assigned, and that families would not be allowed to opt out. The guidelines for teachers made clear that students had to be corrected if they expressed errant or opposing views of gender. If a child questions how someone born a boy could become a girl, teachers were encouraged to correct the child and declare, “That comment is hurtful!”

  Hey, at least the child was "truly heard" before being told to STFU.

• So would repealing mandatory attendance laws. For more on Mahmoud, here's J.D. Tuccille, making the obvious point: School Choice Could Fix the Conflicts That Led to the Supreme Court's Mahmoud Decision. His bottom line:

  Importantly, the philosopher John Stuart Mill, who believed parents should be required to educate their children, nevertheless rejected government-run schools because they create such conflicts. "That the whole or any large part of the education of the people should be in State hands, I go as far as any one in deprecating," he objected in On Liberty. That's because arguments "about what the State should teach, and how it should teach…convert the subject into a mere battle-field for sects and parties."

  And that's what we see in endless arguments and court cases over school officials trying to inculcate students with ideas that are offensive to those students and their parents.

  Mahmoud was a win for parents' right to guide their kids' education. But the best outcome is to get government out of the business of running schools. Then families can choose learning environments that suit them without fighting others over what and how the state should teach.

• A vindication of "Horseshoe Theory". I was scanning through the Political Platform of the "Democratic Socialists of America".

  Executive summary: it's pretty bad.

  But my eye caught on this plank:

  • Abolish USAID, NED, Voice of America, and other governmental agencies that cynically disguise capitalist control as aid and journalism.

  You probably know about USAID and Voice of America. I had to look up "NED"; it is the "National Endowment for Democracy".

  And, yes, all three were targeted by DOGE for elimination a few months back. Relevant articles here (USAID), here (NED), and here (VOA).

  Here's Wikipedia on Horseshoe theory.

… but it's also hilarious, so we'll allow it.

New Yorkers: if you hear voices, vote for the one named Zohranhttps://t.co/oJ1dt7PlxQ pic.twitter.com/iB5wHgrFkE

— The People's Cube (@ThePeoplesCube) June 29, 2025

By the way, I noticed that Twitter's "Grok" AI will now generate a "Profile Summary" for users. Here's what it figured out for me:

Pretty close, although two occurrences of "witty" might be over the top.

Also of note:

• As a humanitarian gesture, allow evacuation first. But otherwise, I agree with Rich Lowry: Blow Up Washington, D.C.’s Brutalist Buildings — and the Sooner, the Better.

  There’s a reason God created dynamite.

  The brutalist federal buildings that have blighted Washington, D.C., for decades deserve the same fate as Carthage after the Third Punic War, and the nation’s capital is finally beginning to move on from these concrete monstrosities.

  The Department of Housing and Urban and Development just announced that it is leaving its godawful headquarters in Washington for a less hideous space in Northern Virginia. HUD Secretary Scott Turner has described the structure as “the ugliest building in D.C.,” which is a dubious claim only because there are so many other buildings in Washington that compete for that distinction.

  He’s not the first HUD secretary to hate the building. Jack Kemp called it “ten floors of basement.”

  Meanwhile, the FBI is also departing its HQ, designated by the U.K. building materials retailer Buildworld as the ugliest building in the United States and the second ugliest in the world.

  Concentrating on D.C., Rich doesn't mention Boston City Hall. Which made the news earlier this year:

  Boston City Hall, known for its brutalist architecture, is now an official historic landmark despite once being named the fourth-ugliest building in the world.

  Mayor Michelle Wu and the Boston Landmarks Commission announced the decision in a press release on Friday. They said the structure has civic and cultural significance.

  Nobody asked me, but here's my opinion about BCH's "significance": it is a grotesque symbol of how far Boston, the onetime cradle of liberty, has driven down the road to serfdom.

• It's the health of the state. David R. Henderson describes Why Libertarians Should Be Critical of War.

  I'm sure that many of you are familiar with the libertarian-designed "World's Smallest Political Quiz." (It’s available on line at http://www.theadvocates.org/quizp/index.html.)

  Let me ask you a question: How many questions does that quiz have on foreign policy? [Someone in the audience answered, correctly, "Zero."] We libertarians have honed our principles and applied them to literally hundreds of domestic policy issues. We've done a great job. The depth of our understanding of how to apply our principles to these issues and of the importance of peace in the domestic realm is truly something for us to be proud of. But we haven't given nearly the same care to examining foreign policy.

  Even our language reflects the relatively primitive state of libertarian thinking about war and foreign policy. I don't know many libertarians who, in talking about the 1993 Clinton tax increase, say, "We raised taxes." They're much more likely to say, "Clinton and Congress raised taxes." In other words, they put the responsibility on the people who acted. But I frequently run into libertarians who will say, without the slightest hint of irony, "We bombed Nagasaki" or "We went to war with Iraq." In other words, they switch from the clear, clean language of individualism that they use in discussing domestic policy to the dark, obfuscatory language of collectivism in discussing foreign policy.

  I'll admit that when it comes to foreign policy, I tend to let the "conservative" side of my psyche come to the fore. But David (of course) makes a powerful argument as to why I shouldn't do that.

  But I don't think I could ever be a "Blame America first" type. And I'd worry that if the US went full-peacenik, we'd find ourselves being bullied and intimidated by other countries without such compunctions.

• I was almost prepared to dislike this article. But Kevin Frazier won me over with his carefully-described worries: The coming techlash could kill AI innovation before it helps anyone.

  The residents of New Braunfels, Texas, didn't volunteer to help accelerate AI development. Their once quiet corner of the state now buzzes with construction crews building power plants to sustain data centers—industrial warehouses that could soon consume as much electricity as entire cities to power state-of-the-art AI models. Meanwhile, thousands of miles away in Irvine, California, scores of video game developers laid off by Activision Blizzard back in 2024 may still be still looking for their next gig as the entire industry sees AI take over more and more tasks leading to thousands of total jobs being cut.

  These aren't isolated incidents. They represent a small sample of an emerging public techlash that could derail AI development before the technology delivers on its most significant promises to revolutionize everything from education to health care.

  Kevin notes that similar anti-tech sentiments in the past set back civilian nuclear power and stoked unwarranted fears of genetic engineering. Arguably, we're worse off today due to that.

• I'm not sure a "race" is the appropriate metaphor here, but… I appreciate the libertarian sentiment when Stephen Moore says that For America to Win the AI Race, Keep Government's Hands Off.

  At the birth of the internet age in the early 1990s, the U.S. and Europe took opposite approaches to advancing this new economy-changing technology.

  Europe tried the approach of industrial policy: They allowed government to regulate, subsidize and then tax the swarm of new tech companies that emerged.

  Here in the U.S., Congress and the Clinton administration made a wiser choice. We passed laws that kept internet startups regulation-, tax- and lawsuit-free. It was the Wild West of startup technology companies. A Darwinian race to excellence and survival. Some of the big initial companies like AOL, Netscape and MySpace gave way to superior competitors like Google, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon and Facebook.

  We all know the end of this story. For three decades America and Silicon Valley came to entirely dominate these earliest innings of the digital age. Today we have our Magnificent Seven tech companies -- many with a market cap above $1 trillion -- that are, combined, worth more than every company in Europe combined.

  I'm convinced by my usual argument: there's nothing wrong with AI that government regulation and central planning can't make much, much worse.

Unfortunately, Jonathan Turley thinks it's a bad thing: The Chilling Jurisprudence of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. It's about her dissenting opinion in Trump v. CASA. Just a slice:

James Taranto also comments on Ketanji:

An underappreciated passage of Justice Jackson's dissent in CASA is her appeal to the authority of a fictional space alien. pic.twitter.com/IEzqHgIn7j

— James Taranto (@jamestaranto) June 28, 2025

Sorry, the Twitter embedding code does some unfortunate clipping. The full paragraph:

A Martian arriving here from another planet would see these circumstances and surely wonder: “what good is the Constitution, then?” What, really, is this system for protecting people’s rights if it amounts to this—placing the onus on the victims to invoke the law’s protection, and rendering the very institution that has the singular function of ensuring compliance with the Constitution powerless to prevent the Government from violating it? “Those things Americans call constitutional rights seem hardly worth the paper they are written on!”

I take issue with the Martian arriving here "from another planet". Almost certainly, he'd be coming in from Mars, right?

Also of note:

• What would Ketanji's Martian think about this? Veronique de Rugy notes an entirely predictable upcoming disaster: Social Security and Medicare are racing toward drastic cuts—yet lawmakers refuse to act.

  Considering recent news, you may have missed that the 2025 trustees reports for Social Security and Medicare are out. Once again, they confirm what we've known for decades: Both programs are barreling straight toward insolvency. The Social Security retirement trust fund and Medicare Hospital Insurance trust fund are each on pace to run dry by 2033.

  When that happens, seniors will face an automatic 23 percent cut in their Social Security benefits. Medicare will reduce payments to hospitals by 11 percent. These cuts are not theoretical. They're baked into the law. If nothing changes, they will be made.

  I have nothing against cuts of this size. In fact, if it were up to me, I would cut deeper. Medicare is a terrible source of distortions for our convoluted health care market and needs to be reined in. Social Security was created back when being too old to work meant being poor. That's no longer the case for as many people.

  I don't want to toot my own horn (too much) but this is the twentieth-year anniversary of this blog post in which I linked to this (still-online!) Will Wilkinson article at the American Spectator. Which (in turn) noted then-Senator Barack Obama demagoguing away at then-President Bush's proposal to (among other things) establish personal retirement accounts, deeming such things "Social Darwinism".

  Gee, whatever happened to that Obama guy, anyway?

• Tomorrow is Bastiat's birthday! And, at the Unseen and Unsaid substack, Jack Salmon notes we now have Eight Years to Fix Social Security.

  There is a line in Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises where a character is asked how he went bankrupt. “Two ways,” he replies. “Gradually, then suddenly.” It’s the perfect epitaph for America’s entitlement crisis.

  According to the Social Security Administration’s newly released “Trustees Report,” the retirement trust fund — the pool from which benefits are paid — is set to be depleted in 2033. When that day comes, retirees will see a mandatory 23% cut in their checks, regardless of income, need, or political promises made on the campaign trail. The rapidly depleting trust fund is partly due to the misnamed Social Security Fairness Act, which increases benefits to state employees with already generous pensions. Medicare's hospital insurance trust fund will also dry up in 2033, with an 11% cut to payments for seniors.

  We’ve known for years that the system is paying out more than it collects. That’s what happens when you design a pay-as-you-go pension scheme in a country with falling birth rates, rising life expectancy, and a Congress that treats long-term actuarial projections like unread user agreements.

  And yet, Washington remains in a state of wilful paralysis. Former President Biden pledged never to touch a penny of Social Security. President Trump has promised the same. Neither party wants to face the fact that if nothing is done, today’s 59-year-olds will reach full retirement age just in time to receive a quarter less than what they’ve been promised.

  It's easy, and somewhat appropriate, to blame the politicians. But to reiterate a point I made in a different post back in 2005: this is a democracy, we're the ones electing these cowards and demagogues. The finger always points back at us.

• Reading the by-line, checking it twice. The WaPo headline puts it plainly: Zohran Mamdani’s victory is bad for New York and the Democratic Party. (WaPo gifted link)

  And it's not from George Will, Megan McArdle, or Jim Geraghty. It's from the frickin' Washington Post Editorial Board.

  Zohran Mamdani, the charismatic 33-year-old who is now the front-runner to be the next mayor of New York, might seem like a breath of fresh air for a Democratic Party struggling to move past its aging establishment. In fact, New Yorkers should be worried that he would lead Gotham back to the bad old days of civic dysfunction, and Democrats should fear that he will discredit their next generation of party leaders, almost all of whom are better than this democratic socialist.

  […]

  Now, a man who believes that capitalism is “theft” is in line to lead the country’s biggest city and the world’s financial capital. His signature ideas are “city-owned grocery stores,” no bus fares, freezing rent on 1 million regulated apartments and increasing the minimum wage to $30 an hour. No doubt these might strike some voters as tempting ideas. But, as with so many proposals from America’s far left, the trade-offs would hurt the people they are supposed to help.

  Fun fact: over 4000 comments on the editorial, and my non-AI summary of the WaPo's AI summary: the readers don't like it.

  For not the first time, and probably not the last, this Menckenim: "Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard."

• And about those city-owned grocery stores… Joe Lancaster checks the history, and finds: America has plenty of experience with government-run stores, and it isn't pretty.

  Some have come to Mamdani's defense, saying city-owned grocery stores are not as radical as they sound—in fact, some states already have them, without becoming socialist hellscapes. Some have compared this plan to states that control liquor sales. But in each case, the comparison is unflattering to Mamdani's proposal.

  When I lived in the D.C. area back in the 1970s, we had the socialist-sounding "Peoples Drug" chain. Despite the name, it was privately owned, but I always told Mrs. Salad I was headed there with a bad Russian accent: "I'm off to Pipples Drugs, dollink. You is needing anything?"

  Here in the Live Free or Die state we have those state liquor stores. Which aren't bad. But if you like the occasional gin-and-tonic, you have to go to two different stores, one for the gin, one for the tonic. Or jump across the border to Maine.

Recently on the movie blog:

Please note the "2" exponent. That's how it shows up in the movie itself, I looked up the Unicode, and I think it looks cooler than just a bare "2".

I watched the previous movie in this series back in 2017 My report here, but I thought it was pretty good. Unfortunately, a major bright spot in that movie, the pride of Portland ME, Anna Kendrick, does not show up in this sequel. But the other bright spot, J.K. Simmons, does! Uh, briefly.

Oh, heck, this isn't much of a spoiler: Simmons' character, Ray King, gets pretty much killed right at the beginning, but he leaves a clue scrawled in pen on his arm: "FIND THE ACCOUNTANT". That's Ben Affleck, whose on-the-spectrum skills serve both to uncover financial skulduggery and other misbehavior. He also is pretty good at fisticuffs, gunplay, explosions, and fast driving. He must have picked that up from being, occasionally, Batman.

He gets help from his estranged, equally skilled hit-man brother, Braxton (Jon Bernthal). (Sorry, a spoiler from the first movie.) All this in support of a thin but complex plot involving a hit woman, her kidnapped child, money laundering, … I had a difficult time figuring that out.

The movie is very violent, but also funny in spots. The chemistry between The Accountant and his brother generates some chuckles.