Pun Salad

¹⁹ Evildoers will bow down in the presence of the good,
    and the wicked at the gates of the righteous.

The Proverbialist hedges his bets by not being specific on when this is all supposed to happen. Millennia later, we're still waiting…

The president has been on a tear against the nation’s leading online retailer lately, suggesting in a series of tweets and comments that Amazon doesn’t pay sales taxes and takes advantage of special low prices from the United States Postal Service.

These allegations are false. But more to the point, it is wrong for the president to target a specific company in this fashion — particularly since Trump has openly tied his anti-Amazon crusade to his hatred of the Washington Post, a newspaper owned by Amazon head Jeff Bezos.

Not that it matters, but: I would wager, dear reader, that I've been an Amazon customer for longer than you; my first order was November 18, 1995, about a month after it announced itself to the public as a retailer. I'm a fan. Trump's a dope.

Because where else would I get a "Set of 3 Flying Flingshot Howler Monkeys Plush Toys with Sound"? I mean, really, where? I have no idea.

Betsy Newmark has much more on Trump v. Amazon.

White House economist Peter Navarro, whose boss claimed credit when the stock market was rising, now thinks it should be ignored. After Monday's plunge, he said, "The market is reacting in a way which does not comport with the ... unbelievable strength in President Trump's economy." Rest easy, Navarro advised. "The economy is as strong as an ox."

He should hope so, because its burdens are growing. Donald Trump's trade salvos against China moved Beijing to slap new tariffs on U.S. products. He has threatened to end NAFTA, which would wreck the supply chains of U.S. manufacturers and deprive farmers of vital markets. He's itching for a full-scale trade war, and he's likely to get it.

The tycoon who raised high hopes in the corporate sector has revealed a powerful anti-business streak. Get on his bad side and you may kiss your profits goodbye. He's a perpetual danger to every company in America.

As we know, it's a mixed bag with the Trump Administration. Because…

The federal government’s auto fuel economy standards have for decades posed a simple problem: They kill people. Worse, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has covered this up. The Environmental Protection Agency, which since 2009 has helped manage the Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards, known as CAFE, also played a role in burying their deleterious effects. But change finally is coming.

On Monday EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt announced he is re-examining the stringent standards set by the Obama administration in 2012. This might finally bring some honesty to the issue of CAFE’s lethal effects and push the safety issue to the forefront of the debate over government efficiency mandates. Or it might not.

Out on a limb, there, Sam.

Sam is with the Competitive Enterprise Institute, an organization that (among many other things) documents how government regulation has given us lousy dishwashers and bad washing machines.

New Hampshire Attorney General Gordon MacDonald should do what his Republican counterpart in Arkansas, Leslie Rutledge, and his Democrat counterparts, Eric Schneiderman in New York and Xavier Becerra in California seemingly won’t. He should investigate the required state public filings of the charity started Oct. 23, 1997, and originally known as The William J. Clinton Presidential Foundation.

I'm not sure if NH law applies to the Clinton Foundation, which (apparently) has its legal headquarters in Arkansas.

The National Institutes of Health spent $30,000 on a conference dedicated to researching a "novel" practice: teaching people how to cook.

The government lent its support to the "inaugural 2018 Research Day on Teaching Kitchens and Related Self Care Practices" held by the Culinary Institute of America and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health this February.

The conference was back in February, held in scenic Napa Valley, CA. Not previously known as an area where people did not know how to cook. But I would imagine a lot of pretentious wine was consumed.

Are higher taxes good or bad for the US economy? @RealDonaldTrump feels strongly both ways. pic.twitter.com/mAFrsLZyDP

— Mark J. Perry (@Mark_J_Perry) April 4, 2018