URLs du Jour

2020-03-09

  • At the Daily Beast, Brian Riedl looks at the latest in bad math: In Bernie Land, $42 Trillion in Revenue Pays for $97 Trillion in Spending. It's a horror show, but here's just one of the head-shaking bits:

    Any credible economist will assert that raising taxes by $30 or $40 trillion would substantially harm entrepreneurship and economic growth, which would dampen the new revenues. Instead, Sanders assumes that these taxes would bring a burst of new economic growth that saves $3.6 trillion over the decade from new tax revenues and less need for safety net spending. No economic analysis is provided defending these extraordinarily unconventional assumptions.

    Additionally, the campaign estimates seem to simply ignore much of the revenue lost to the interactive effects of piling various new taxes on top of each other.

    Virtually all campaigns rely on some degree of rosy math and economics to make their promises look affordable. Bernie Sanders is promising the largest non-war government spending binge in world history. Realistically, the campaign remains more than $50 trillion short of paying for its promises, which—combined with the underlying $13 trillion baseline deficit—could push budget deficits beyond 20 percent of the economy. Sanders still has not satisfactorily answered how he would pay for democratic socialism.

    It's probably possible to pay for all the promised free goodies with taxes. But it wouldn't look much like America afterwards. For Bernie, I assume that's the point.


  • At NR, Alexandra DeSanctis has an amusing look at all the misdiagnoses of a campaign flop. Elizabeth Warren Campaign: Sexism Is Not Why She Failed. After looking at feminist post mortems at Medium, the Nation, the New York Times, and the Atlantic

    Shockingly, none of these articles grapple with that rather inconvenient fact: It was Democrats, not hateful Republicans, who voted in the Democratic primaries and who preferred other candidates over Warren. It’s difficult to blame misogynistic conservative white men for Warren’s failure when the people voting against her were Democratic women, very liberal Democrats, college graduates, and African Americans.

    Worth noting, too, is the fact that Hillary Clinton — also a woman — won the Democratic nomination not four years ago and went on to win the popular vote in the general election. Perhaps, then, the problem is not with pervasive sexism but with Warren herself and the way she conducted her campaign. Let’s consider where she might’ve gotten her reputation for insincerity.

    … and, well, we know where she might've gotten her reputation for insincerity.


  • At the Daily Wire, Joseph Curl notes the latest from the eldest female in the family unit that won't go away. NOT SORRY: Hillary Retracts Apology For Hiding Secret Email Server.

    When former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was found to have a secret email server in her house, she apologized.

    But now she wants everyone to know that she’s not sorry anymore.

    In the new Hulu documentary titled “Hillary,” released on Friday, Clinton said she regrets offering the apology, saying campaign advisers told her to issue the statement.

    “We’ll just say what you did was a mistake. It was dumb. It’s over. And that will end it. I wasn’t convinced of that. But I understood the frustration of my campaign,” Clinton said. “So against my better judgment, I said, ‘OK, fine.'”

    I don't like Trump, but I can't see how anyone can read that and not realize how the country dodged a bullet back in 2016. Short summary of the admissions here:

    • She admits she was dishonest in her apology.
    • She admits she was insecure enough to let her "advisers" browbeat her successfully.
    • She dodges responsibility, blaming those anonymous advisers for a decision that was hers to make.
    • She refuses to admit that handling government business on a secret mail server was unacceptably risky, arrogant, and almost certainly illegal.

    Ah, well. As some country song said: how can we miss her when she won't go away?


  • How badly can a deep blue state screw up legalizing pot? Easy. Jacob Sullum at Reason: Even in California, Nearly All Patients With Vaping-Related Lung Injuries Used Black-Market THC Products.

    A new study of vaping-related lung injuries in California reinforces the evidence implicating black-market cannabis products, even in states that have legalized the production and distribution of marijuana for recreational use. In a sample of 160 patients, just 9 percent reported vaping only nicotine—a claim that is doubtful in the absence of blood or urine testing. Just 1 percent of the patients who reported vaping THC identified a state-licensed retailer as the source of the products they used.

    In this study, which was published last Friday in JAMA Internal Medicine, 75 percent of the admitted THC vapers said they obtained the products from informal sources. Among the 25 percent who initially said they had bought vapes from legal sources, just one patient named a licensed retailer. The rest either could not name their sources or said they bought cannabis products from pop-up shops, other individuals, or from a storefront that was not listed in the Bureau of Cannabis Control's database of licensees.

    Although licensed retailers have been selling marijuana to recreational consumers in California since the beginning of 2018, illegal dealers still account for about three-quarters of sales, largely because high taxes, burdensome regulations, licensing delays, and local bans have made it difficult for legal merchants to compete with the black market. This study suggests that the black market also accounts for nearly all of the products used by people with vaping-related lung illnesses.

    To slightly belabor the obvious: the study only dealt with survivors. The dead vapers could not be reached for comment.