Pun Salad

Andrew Heaton asks: Is this the dumbest healthcare law?.

Some text:

For "live free or die" fans: New Hampshire is one of the 12 states without a Certificate of Need law. And the only one in New England.

On the more general topic, local Dr. James Fieseher appears in my lousy local newspaper, Foster's Daily Democrat to assert: America needs a national healthcare system (archive.today link)

Reader, didya ever notice how much mischief is buried in that word "system"? There's that hidden implication of something carefully planned by benevolent experts. We don't need no stinking markets!

Anyway, Fieseher's article is an unsurprising and unholy mixture of fallacy and finger-pointing. I won't debate the whole thing, but things go wrong for him almost immediately:

Of course, "auto insurance" is part of our "transportation system". But it doesn't pay for our cars, gasoline, routine maintenance, and the like; we are expected to pay for that stuff ourselves. This doesn't make our "transportation system" perfect by a long shot, but it gets most people where they want to go.

Should "health care" work more like that? Sure.

Is that what Fieseher wants? Ha. No.

Also of note:

• Grumpy economist John H. Cochrane was asked to be one of the five participants in a WSJ forum with a question-begging title: How Can We Reduce Income Inequality? (WSJ gifted link) His response:

  It’s easy to reduce income inequality: Imprison the billionaires. Burn the evil capitalist businesses that generate their wealth and seduce us with wonders—iPhones, software, electric cars, Amazon, Walmart, miracle drugs, and so on. There, feel better?

  Our billionaires kept a fraction of the benefit they generated for us by starting these innovative businesses. Their great wealth remains reinvested in those companies to serve us even better in the future. Just what is the problem?

  It is right to worry about people of lesser means. But how does a kid who works at a carwash in Fresno even know how many billionaires there are, or what their net worth is?

  We should worry about opportunity. Teachers’ unions destroyed his schools. Construction restrictions make moving to good jobs impossible. Business regulations, taxes, minimum wages and occupational licenses limit his opportunities. Social programs trap him by taking away a dollar of benefits for each dollar of earnings. To provide opportunity, start by getting out of the way.

  Many people who worry about inequality hope to improve this kid’s life by taxing the innovators to send him a few more government checks—so long as he stays poor. But there aren’t enough billionaires to make a dent in the government’s ravenous appetite. And what a horrible vision: entrenched misery and idleness, in a stagnant society devoid of innovators, made only a bit better by a dwindling government check and dysfunctional social-service programs.

  Others who decry inequality want taxes to reduce the political power of the wealthy. But that hands even more power to the government. Fairly won inequality does not threaten democracy. Confiscatory taxation does. Don’t kill the golden goose.

  There is more at his substack: Inequality at WSJ.

• Sorry, I've got more on that guy in Maine. Or rather, Robby Soave does at Reason: Graham Platner has made #MeToo Democrats and their enemies switch sides.

  Expecting any level of ideological consistency from partisan political actors is a fool's errand; even so, the amount of sheer hypocrisy generated by the Graham Platner scandal is striking.

  In response to fresh allegations that Platner, the presumptive Democratic candidate for Senate in Maine, was abusive in his past relationships, conservatives who in the past have been correctly discerning of the motivations behind certain sexual misconduct claims are now heralding these accusations as all but confirmed. In fact, they have assailed The New York Times, which published a detailed story about Platner's dating history and alleged violent episodes, for not going further in its indictment. Meanwhile, many Democrats who gleefully and uncritically embraced the "believe all women" mantra of the #MeToo era are broadly dismissive of the Times story, even though the evidence of wrongdoing is arguably more compelling in this case.

  Things are fluid enough that I feel I should visit the news sites before I post Platner-related items to find out whether he's dropped out.

• Beware of staffers bearing crullers. This NHJournal article received a Pun Salad chuckle: Donut-Wielding Staffer Put NHDems' Platner Problem on National TV.

  A doughnut-wielding staffer trying to block a video camera with a breakfast pastry put Stefany Shaheen in the national news and shone a spotlight yet again on Granite State Democrats dodging questions about their Nazi-tattooed neighbor, Graham Platner.

  For weeks, U.S. Senate candidate Rep. Chris Pappas and his fellow Democrats have refused to answer questions about Platner’s problematic behavior, including his Nazi SS tattoo, his statements praising a Hamas attack on Israelis, his insults targeting Black people and gay people, and, most recently, his sexting with multiple women in recent months despite being a married man.

  Shaheen, who is seeking the NH-01 Democratic nomination, was confronted by a Republican tracker asking whether she supported Platner’s Senate campaign. Shaheen did not answer. Instead, according to video of the incident, a campaign staffer repeatedly shoved a pastry into the camera as the tracker pressed the question.

  Also at Fox News: 'Meet the Press' interview cut short as Trump clashes with Kristen Welker. No donuts were involved, apparently.

• I'm old enough to remember when Democrats were better liars. Or at least they were better at consistent messaging. Jeff Maurer observes: “The Common Man Is a Racist Douchebag” Is Not the Populist Message Some People Think It Is.

  As of this writing, Graham Platner scandals include:

  • A Nazi tattoo that Platner explains1 by saying (in so many words) “I know very little and make poor decisions — anyway, vote for me!”;

  • Being a man in his 40s who not only knows what Kik is, but who created a profile on that app with a semi-nude pic;

  • Texting with 28% of the female population of Maine while married;

  • An ex-girlfriend describing him as a hard-drinking, abusive asshole;

  • Serial lying about the provenance of the Gus T. Oysterman character that he plays and about the finances of his alleged oyster empire;

  • Enough assholish Reddit statements to make you want to swim to the bottom of the ocean and yank out the big plug that powers The Internet.

  Those are the scandals as of this writing — 7:46 PM Eastern Standard Time on Thursday, June 4, 2026, Anno Domini. Though one suspects that Republicans might be sitting on a gargantuan opposition research folder that they’re going to drop on Platner like Wile E. Coyote getting crushed by an anvil the second it’s too late for Democrats to pick someone else.

  So, pass the popcorn. Or the donuts.

Our Amazon Eye Candy is a recycled item from five years ago today, used to illustrate Elizabeth Nolan Brown's article on The Bipartisan Antitrust Crusade Against Big Tech.

But that was, and is, part of a larger war that "progressives" are fighting, as described at the Freeman: The Ghost of “Neoliberalism”.

Gee, I wonder if Maine's favorite progressive has learned the word? Googling…

He sure has! Jacobin editor-at-large David Sirota managed to coax it out of him: Graham Platner On Why America Went From Obama To Trump.

Tsk! Obama was too neoliberal for Graham!

Not that I'm obsessed with the guy or anything, but… It's an all-Platner linkfest today:

• In case you were wondering about his grassroots campaign… The WSJ is pretty diligent in recounting The Messy Rise of Graham Platner. (WSJ gifted link) This bit jumped out at me:

  SULLIVAN, Maine—One of this year’s biggest political gambles began at 5:30 a.m. one day last July, when liberal activists Daniel Moraff and Leanne Fan showed up at the home of Graham Platner, a combat veteran and oyster farmer in this forested town.

  Moraff and Fan had no ties to Maine or to the Democratic Party’s election machinery, which made their mission all the more audacious: to recruit a working-class candidate to run for the U.S. Senate on a populist platform. The idea, Platner recalled telling his visitors, was “quite literally the weirdest thing I’ve ever heard.”

  I.e., not exactly a groundswell from Platner's friends and neighbors impressed with his homespun wisdom born out of hardworking callused-hand experience. Who are Moraff and Fan?

• As it turns out, there are more accurate labels than "liberal activists". The NYPost is more on target in its labelling, inviting us to Meet the champagne socialist duo who groomed rich kid Graham Platner into 'working-class' candidate.

  Graham Platner has done a better job of hiding his privileged roots than the Nazi tattoo on his chest — a move which is by design.

  The embattled Maine candidate for US Senate is vocal about his disabled-war-veteran, rugged-oyster-farmer, “working-class” persona — and less so about his attendance at an $80,000-a-year boarding school, his lawyer father, or his major architect grandfather.

  That’s because he’s been coached on how to present himself, molded to present a specific image — and, in a sense, manufactured.

  The truth is he was discovered and coached by a pair of Ivy League-educated radical Democratic socialists, replicating a playbook they’ve used in Nebraska and Iowa. That revelation could be more damaging than the tattoo, sexting women other than his wife, blasting fellow veterans and admitting to masturbating in a port-a-potty, as it strikes at the heart of Platner’s alleged authenticity.

  Moraff and Fan are longtime members of the Democratic Socialists of America. And somehow have the funding to wander around to states (like Maine) and recruit candidates (like Platner) who might have appeal to the "working class." At least the ones whose parents sent them to $80K/yr boarding schools.

• Is there worse to come? Erick Erickson seems to think so. And the results won't be pretty.

  The man has a Nazi tattoo. He said soldiers in combat deserved to die. He blamed Susan Collins for sending him to war, despite volunteering repeatedly, even going back with Blackwater. He bragged about killing people. He fantasized about rape and said rape victims deserved some blame. He bragged about taking leave to have sex with prostitutes in Southeast Asia. And he claimed he can’t get in a porta-potty without masturbating and fantasizing.

  Soon we’ll get the even worse allegations against him and what he did to women beyond fantasy.

  Just remember that the Democrats have stuck with him. Eventually, the PodBros, Bulwark, and the rest will abandon Graham Platner. Once they’re done blaming the Jews, the victims, the women around Platner, the Republicans, and others — they’ll abandon him. What’s coming will force them to abandon him.

  And when they finally flee, remember they were comfortable with him through all of these things — things that all point to where the next accusations will be.

• Making a pun I wish I'd thought of… is the always-reliable Jeffrey Blehar, with his headline: Graham Platner, the Mainechurian Candidate. (archive.today link)

  A mere five days ago — after the latest round of scandals facing presumptive Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner, who hopes to unseat Republican incumbent Susan Collins in Maine — I posed a simple question: “What Other Skeletons Are Lurking in Graham Platner’s Closet?” Now we know quite a bit more about a man whose public profile seems to have been assembled around the overturned building blocks of a failed and profoundly selfishly lived life.

  Yes, we’d already discussed so very much, primarily the fact that every single biographical point in Platner’s political narrative — as sold to Mainers — was an upper-class, downwardly mobile fraud, as phony as Jasmine Crockett ever was. The man is a privileged failson of Maine Democratic elites with a biography nearly entirely fraudulent. (He claimed to be a reluctant Marine war veteran; he in fact volunteered out of a frankly stated desire to “kill people.” He claimed to be a hardscrabble oysterman; he in fact claims a 100 percent disability status in order to live on a government pension while selling his hobbyist haul to his restaurant-owning mother.)

  Speaking of mom, her restaurant's website is here. On US Route 1, a mere 3 hour and 21 minute drive from Pun Salad Manor. Featuring (yes): "The area’s only oyster bar serving Maine’s Waukeag Neck Oysters harvested locally from Frenchman Bay." $22 will get you six of the ocean boogers.

• But what does Jeff Maurer think? He notes that it's not just Democrats nominating phony slimeballs: The Platner/Paxton Symmetry/Asymmetry. Just a sample:

  Am I downplaying Platner’s flaws? Boy I don’t think so — just how hard am I supposed to roast this clown? Platner’s mistakes — all 105 of them — paint a clear picture of a guy with terrible judgement who is also an edgelord asshole. Recent news that he either cheated on his wife or tried hard to cheat on his wife but failed (which is worse?) didn’t faze me, because my take on Platner was already “He’s an unstable shithead”. Platner also continues to talk like a total dummy: Here he is complaining about “collapsing housing markets” even though the problem with housing is that prices are too high! Literally the only thing Platner has going for him — besides the piercing blue eyes of a Yeti — is that he might serve as a check against a guy who has all his same flaws times 100.

  That last bit deserves a footnote:

  The similarities between Trump’s defects and Platner’s are pretty striking (if not identical in scale). A history of philandering and being shitty towards women? Check. Uncomfortable proximity to extremist views? Check. Gobsmacking economic ignorance? Check. Odd affinity for the bad guy in a foreign conflict? Check. Obvious liar? Check. Asshole? Check.

  Maybe more tomorrow. Unless something comes along even more amusing between now and then.

George Will tries to provide a reality check: Democrats’ midterm ‘blue wave’ dreams face an icy challenge. (WaPo gifted link)

The last time I confidently predicted an election outcome was … President Hillary in 2016. That was enough to make me swear off predicting elections. I'll report on polls and prediction markets, fine.

And, as long as I mentioned it: the Lott/Stossel Election Betting Odds site gives the GOP a 54.9% chance of keeping hold of the US Senate, as I type. The Democrats have a 75.6% chance of taking over the House.

Also of note:

• WHO: Do you trust? Bjørn Lomborg writes at the WSJ "Free Expression" newsletter: Global Warming or Just Getting Old?

  The World Health Organization is at it again. A top commission—stacked with a former European Union climate commissioner, a former prime minister of Iceland, other former ministers and environmental campaigners—has recommended that the health body declare climate change a global health emergency. The commission’s headline evidence is a Lancet study showing heat deaths in Europe are rapidly rising, reaching 63,000 a year. This study shows that European heat-death risk has risen 82% since 1990.

  But the study and the commission report both ignore a crucial factor: Heat mortality risk rises sharply with age, and Europe has aged dramatically. Since 1990, the share of Europeans over 70 has increased by 78%. Aging alone explains virtually all the observed increase in heat deaths.

  Bjørn (I like to type his name with a slashed o) also notes that the WHO ignored the decline in cold deaths. That decline was about 250 times larger than the age-adjusted rise in heat deaths.

  So maybe ("at my age") I should break down and buy an air conditioner?

• Gee, that's too bad. You can almost hear Jim Geraghty chuckling as he typed this morning's "Morning Jolt" newsletter: The Graham Platner Candidacy Keeps Getting Worse.

  The claim from Graham Platner on MS NOW last night was that his girlfriend from 2013 to 2015, conservative activist Lyndsey Fifield, knew that the tattoo on his chest was a Nazi SS Totenkopf, and she told her friends that he had a Nazi tattoo, but she never told him that she recognized it as a Nazi tattoo, never discussed it with him, and that she is lying when she says he referred to it as “my Totenkopf.”

  “I feel like, you know, we’re kind of rehashing the thing we’ve been through. I’ve had that tattoo for 17 years,” Platner whined last night.

  Well, when the tattoo on your chest is the insignia on the hats of the guards in the concentration camps of the Holocaust, people are going to have a lot of questions, and they’re going to have a very hard time believing that a “military history buff” who chatted about World War II on Reddit threads never recognized it over an 18-year period.

  Jim also links to Lyndsey Fifield's tweet that expresses her disappointment with the coverage her accusations against Platner received in the NYT, after weeks of back-and-forth with their journalists.

• Already? It doesn't seem possible that it's Friday already, but here's Nellie Bowles, who's back with her TGIF newsletter. RTWT, but I smiled at:

  → Jill Biden worried Joe was having a stroke onstage: Jill Biden gave an interview to CBS News (a great network, if you haven’t heard of it) about her book, and described how she felt watching Joe Biden in that fateful 2024 debate: “I was frightened, because I had never ever seen Joe like that before or since. Never. . . . I don’t know what happened. As I watched it, I thought, ‘Oh, my God, he’s having a stroke.’ And it scared me to death.” I really get that. I’d feel the same way, Dr. Jill. Which is weird because afterward, that same night, she went onstage with Joe and led a chant of “four more years” and congratulated him for “answer[ing] every question.” In other news, Joe Biden has his own book, which he said comes out in September.

  In our last Biden family update—god bless these deli Kennedys—Hunter Biden is on X engaging with everyone who writes to him. He’s funny, he’s sarcastic, he’s got that Biden charisma mixed with some former crackhead energy. It never fully leaves your system, not really. Polymarket is putting the chances of Hunter Biden announcing a bid for president before 2027 at 11 percent.

  It most definitely was not. I would never have forgotten my drugs.

  — Hunter Biden (@HunterBiden) June 1, 2026

  And then:

  WTF timeline are we on. Someone called me the MAGA whisperer and I’ll gladly take the title. Left, right, D or R we all want the same things. We’re being divided on purpose by the Epstein Elite Oligarch class because as long as we’re at each other’s throats, they get fat and rich…

  — Hunter Biden (@HunterBiden) June 4, 2026

  Oh, he’s running. Once you start talking about the Epstein Elite Oligarch class, it’s game over. Someone print the lawn signs and tell the hookers to put on their Sunday thongs—we’re going on the road.

  Despite my disavowal of predictions above, I'll go out on a limb here: Hunter will not be elected President in 2028.

Bernie copying Trump, who copied Bernie, who copied Lenin. https://t.co/L6D12LcbYH

— Scott Lincicome (@scottlincicome) June 1, 2026

… and that playbook seems to be referenced here.

I imagine Elizabeth Nolan Brown asking in her best Dirty Harry voice: Do you feel lucky, punk? The question posed in her latest "Sex & Tech" newsletter is more specific: Do you trust the government to control AI?.

So it's at least better than what Bernie Sanders is demanding. That's a pretty low bar to clear.

James Freeman is slightly less impressed than ENB: Trump and AI.

What's the problem?

To repeat for the nth time. There's nothing wrong with AI that Uncle Stupid can't make worse.

Also of note:

• Betteridge's Law of Headlines confirmed once again. Varonique de Rugy wonders, rhetorically: Will Single-Payer Health Care Champions Ever Offer Something Credible?

  Single-payer health care has been the progressive left's signature domestic demand for four decades. It has generated presidential campaigns, mass rallies, congressional cosponsors and an inexhaustible supply of Twitter righteousness. What it has never generated once is a workable legislative proposal.

  Brookings Institution economist Jessica Riedl has spent years waiting for one. Her challenge is simple: Show us a progressive bill that specifies (a) a provider payment system that actually saves money under America's existing, already expensive health infrastructure, and (b) a financing mechanism to replace the roughly $32 trillion in private premiums and out-of-pocket costs that would need to be covered by federal taxes over the next decade.

  Despite hundreds of legislative proposals and multiple presidential campaigns built around the issue, no one has met the challenge.

  I'm sure Jessica is not holding her breath.

• I've done something similar in Monopoly. As described by Jeffrey Blehar: George Santos Bets Against Himself. (archive.today link) You may remember George was furnished a literal "Get Out of Jail Free" card by President Trump last year. Alas:

  Some fraudsters make comebacks, but I doubt there will be any such for George Santos. Because as it turns out, character is usually destiny. We discovered yesterday that Santos is now being investigated by the Department of Justice and the Commodity Futures Trade Commission for . . . you guessed it, fraud! Specifically, insider trading on the notorious political betting market Kalshi.

  You might be wondering how Santos could be an “insider” in any event, given that he’s an ex-con living in New York. Well, one thing he knows for sure is himself. And in a brazen con job, he first announced that he would be attending January’s State of the Union address. Since Kalshi brags about having “markets in everything,” even the utterly trivial, there was a lot of money flowing around that night, with bets placed on which political celebrities would be in the House gallery. With his Twitter confirmation, the “odds” of his attendance soared in the market. And then Santos secretly bet heavily against himself attending. Needless to say, he wasn’t there (on Twitter he claimed “airport delays” had prevented him from making it). And he cleaned up with the deception, until Kalshi noticed to whom it was paying out tens of thousands of dollars.

  Insider trading scandals on these new political gambling markets are now a genuinely scandalous fact of life. They are also incredibly easy to conceal and difficult to police. Which is why I love George Santos for being so howlingly, stupidly obvious in his fraudulence. It’s downright heartwarming in a way. Did he not think that regulators would inquire into the identity of the one guy in the market who suddenly bet against Santos appearing? Did he not think Kalshi would recognize what was going on?

  Pun Salad Public Service Announcement: You are unlikely to win at prediction markets.

At National Review, Andrew Stuttaford comments pithily on Sanders's AI Interference: From Smash to Grab. (archive.today link)

That's right: our Getty Image du Jour is a pic of the press conference where Bernie and Sandy (AKA AOC) announced that scheme. That was the "smash" part.

Andrew goes on to note Bernie's "grab" followup in the NYT: A.I. Is a Public Resource. You Should Own Half of It. (archive.today link) Bernie sez:

Bernie is 84 years young, and like many older drivers, he can't seem to decide whether to hit the AI brakes, or stomp on the AI gas. Or (to strain this metaphor furtuer) just advocate a bit of real-life Grand Theft AI.

Let's bounce over to Reason where Tosin Akintola observes: Bernie Sanders' AI wealth fund bill shows that he doesn't understand AI or wealth. Among the many things Sanders either doesn't know, or wants to ignore:

Do you ever get the feeling that we're living in the middle of an Ayn Rand novel? (I was going to leave that as a comment on Andrew's NR article, but someone else beat me to it.)

Also of note:

• And yet, somehow always dumb. Jacob Sullum points out: Trump’s self-promotion is always shameless and sometimes illegal.

  President Donald Trump has a long history of naming things after himself, including Trump Tower, the Trump National Golf Club, the Trump Taj Mahal casino, Trump University, Trump Steaks, Trump Vodka, and Trump: The Game. But as he discovered last week, such self-promotion can be legally problematic when it requires congressional approval.

  On Friday, a federal judge ruled that Trump's appointees exceeded their statutory authority when they attached his name to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. The decision was the latest reminder of the president's tendency to trample the rule of law in his rush to glorify himself.

  It was somewhat fitting that Trump wanted to stick his name on one of D.C.'s ugliest buildings.

• He's got a fever, and the only prescription is: Less Israel! The WSJ editorialists reveal The Real Problem With Graham Platner. (WSJ gifted link)

  Maine Democrat Graham Platner’s bid for Senate has looked like it may have a half-life near the bottom of the periodic table, with unsavory revelations about his personal conduct. So what’s his master plan to pull his campaign out of a stall? Ginning up the progressive base with toxic insinuations about the Jews, apparently.

  “Senator Collins is bought and paid for by Benjamin Netanyahu, and she votes accordingly,” Mr. Platner’s campaign account posted on X.com on Monday. The complaint is that Ms. Collins receives donations from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

  But so what? “Unsurprising that Jewish Americans are supporting the candidate who does not have a Nazi tattoo,” as GOP Sen. Tim Sheehy put it in his own post. Mr. Platner has said his now infamous chest tattoo was a drunken mistake and that he didn’t realize the symbol was associated with Nazis. But he’s hardly helping his case by implying that Israel controls American politicians.

  At least one Platner supporter is on the watch for any sneaky Jews that publish "hit pieces". AKA, facts.

  The NY Times journalist who wrote this hit piece, and a number of other hit pieces on Platner, was co-President of her "Students for Israel" chapter in college. https://t.co/g8oj1Oh99Y pic.twitter.com/t2YXdzK63H

  — Mike from PA (@Mike_from_PA) May 31, 2026

Reason's July issue has a dandy idea, illustrated at your right: the Founding Fathers on all-star team baseball cards. Whatever their flaws (and there were more than any modern person would like), they managed to bring about the best darn country ever.

Batting leadoff today is Eric Boehm's appreciation of the $100 bill guy: Benjamin Franklin Reminds Us To Just Do Things. Bottom line:

I spent a few days in Philidelphia when Mrs. Salad attended a conference there. I did not make it to Independence Hall, something I now regret.

Also of note:

• Has he dropped out yet? No? Well, then… I do live awfully close to Maine, so I'm taking an inordinate interest in their US Senate race this year. Graham Platner Is a Cultured Pearl. (WSJ gifted link)

  The problem with Graham Platner isn’t that he’s led a messy life. Many politicians, like most people, are saddled with human baggage. The problem with the Hotchkiss Oysterman is that the particular messes he’s made tell voters a larger story about what a certain type of Democratic man is really like.

  To be blunt: Mr. Platner seems like the kind of guy whose enlightened, forward-thinking views are all skin-deep. While he espouses all the fashionable left-wing pieties, underneath he’s really only a Reddit troll—misogynistic, antisemitic and a big fan of using the R-word to insult people’s intelligence.

  Mr. Platner is a veteran, and we thank him for his service, but he holds opinions about American soldiers that would make North Vietnamese actress Jane Fonda uptight. He’s a married man, but as the Journal reported this weekend, he sexts a lot with women who aren’t his wife. He claims to be an ordinary, red-blooded American male, but . . . what was that stuff about the port-a-potties?

  And there's a whole bunch of phoniness in his "blue-collar hero" shtick. RTWT, especially if you're a Maine voter.

  But you know, New Hampshire also has a US Senate race this year. NH Journal notes that a major candidate, my CongressCritter Chris Pappas, is clamming (heh) up when asked to comment about Platner. Or using a different, more alliterative metaphor: Pappas Plays Possum on Platner Problems.

  Frankly, I'd like to know the Pappas position on SCOTUS-packing proposals. Slightly more important.

• Oh, right: they're supposed to be working for us. Romina Boccia cracks the employer whip: If Congress Wants a Raise, It Should Do Its Job.

  Congress may finally receive the inflation adjustments lawmakers have spent years blocking. But before legislators get a raise, Congress should first do its most important job: budgeting responsibly.

  A federal judge recently ruled that Congress likely violated the Constitution’s Twenty-Seventh Amendment by repeatedly canceling automatic cost-of-living adjustments for lawmakers’ pay. Since 2009, congressional salaries have remained frozen at $174,000, even as inflation steadily eroded their value by about 31 percent.

  Members fear the political backlash of voting for higher pay. But the broader issue is not whether congressional compensation should keep pace with inflation. The real problem is that Congress routinely fails to fulfill its most basic fiscal responsibilities while operating one of the largest and most indebted governments in the world — an increasingly dysfunctional enterprise.

  What would it take to get them to pay attention? I suggest heading to the Donkey Sanctuary's article on Understanding donkey behaviour

  When looking at problem behaviour, it is important to consider what benefit the behaviour provides for the donkey. Essentially, by establishing the motivation for the behaviour, the cause can be established, and by removing this cause, there will be a change in the donkey’s behaviour. When attempting to establish the causes of behaviour it is important to look at each of the areas contained in this fact-sheet and consider the possible influences of each one, on the donkey’s behaviour.

  I did not google for the equivalent elephant methods.

• Ah, well, I wasn't planning on going anyway. Jeffrey Blehar on what should have been an obvious outcome: ‘Freedom 250’ Collapses into Another Trump Campaign Rally.

  You’ve probably heard some of the sad story already: When Donald Trump took office, he pushed aside the (admittedly moribund) bipartisan “America 250” commission formed in 2016 for his own Trump-branded “Freedom 250” commission — chaired by JD Vance and programmed from top to bottom by the administration. The big focus? A concert series throughout the summer on the Mall in D.C., climaxing in a three-day July 4 weekend spectacular.

  The problem, of course, is that Trump has been persona non grata among the artistic world for years now and is glowingly radioactive after slapping his own name onto the Kennedy Center in a mad fit of vanity.

  It’s important to realize the extent to which that one symbolic act, done in intemperate folly, permanently severed any possible link between American artists and the Trump administration. And don’t blame the artists, who know a naked attempt at PR maneuvering when they see one: By naming Washington’s primary civic performance venue after himself, Trump essentially commanded all who played there to pay tribute to him — an otherwise wildly unpopular president who would never command such respect in any other circumstance. To play at the “Trump/Kennedy Center” was to collaborate in one man’s desire to always make everything about himself at all times.

  I actually went down to the National Mall for the fireworks back in 1976. They were awe-inspiring.

• A worse idea than court-packing? Robert F. Graboyes seems to have found one: Extraordinary Popular Vote Delusions and the Madness of NPVIC.

  The NPVIC is a shaky scheme for circumventing the Electoral College and determining presidential elections by an ill-defined, highly-manipulable, easily-contested, fatally imprecise metric called “the national popular vote” (NPV). Short-sighted people, unaware of the concept of secondary effects, believe the NPVIC would have elected Al Gore over George Bush and Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump and that it will reliably favor Democrats over Republicans in future elections. A modest number of ill-informed Republicans also naively support the NPVIC on goo-goo (good government) grounds.

  The NPVIC would, in theory, force a majority of the Electoral College to support the presidential candidate who won the NPV. It would do so by means of a jerry-built line-up of states who promise on a state-by-state basis to award their states’ electors to the NPV-winner. This plywood-and-tar-paper construct is necessary for NPV fans because there is zero chance that the Electoral College can be abolished via constitutional amendment.

  As discussed below, the NPVIC has the potential to turn every presidential election into a coast-to-coast replay of the Florida 2000 catastrophe—or worse. And Democrats who think the NPVIC would have prevented the elections of George W. Bush (2000) and Donald Trump (2016) need to study up on unintended consequences.

  You might want to bookmark Robert's article if your state's legislators start making goo-goo eyes at NPVIC.

But Jeffrey Blehar keeps it metaphorical: What Other Skeletons Are Lurking in Graham Platner’s Closet?. (NR gifted link)

Jeffrey's story also covers the latest sordid revelations. ("Latest", unless there have been more sordid revelations since his article was posted yesterday.)

I've mentioned before that most politicians are several sigma off the mean on one or more personality traits. Platner seems to be no exception there, and not in a good way.

Also of note:

• You would think that FDR's experience would be a warning. The WSJ editorialists claim: Democrats Promise to Wreck the Supreme Court.

  Democrats are likely to retake the House and maybe the Senate in November, which is reason to ask: What would they do with that power? One emerging answer is that they seem determined to blow up the Supreme Court.

  Listen to Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, the betting favorite to be the next Speaker of the House. “The Supreme Court is a disgrace,” he said in April. “In the new Congress, we’re going to have to do something about this Supreme Court, and let me be very clear: Everything is on the table—everything to deal with this corrupt MAGA majority.”

  He’s serious, and his agent for this task is Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin, who is already making an argument to pack the Court with four new Justices. Why four? Mr. Raskin has a gussied-up explanation that might sound plausible if all you watch is MS NOW.

  “There are 13 federal circuits in America, and traditionally, the Supreme Court has been made up of the number of Justices equal to the number of circuits,” Mr. Raskin said recently. “We’ve got 13 circuits, but we only have nine Justices. So that means that under the best of circumstances, four entire federal regions, four federal circuits will be left out completely.”

  Court-packing should be wildly unpopular, just as it was in 1937, but we'll see. Ask your Democrat candidates this fall about their positions.

• Neither in a literal nor a figurative sense, I'm sure. Could the Libertarian Party tempt me back into its warm embrace? There are encouraging signs in Eric Boehm's article: New Libertarian Party Chair Evan McMahon has no interest in playing kingmaker.

  "The proper approach for a Libertarian candidate to take is to be a libertarian and run," says McMahon, who was elected the party's new chair at its convention last weekend. "Not to seek an armistice with somebody who's going to grow the state, who's going to bomb and kill children in other countries."

  Most of the time, that would be a rather noncontroversial take. In recent years, however, the Libertarian Party has been controlled by a faction that toyed with the idea that the best way to achieve pro-liberty political change is by cozying up with one of the two major parties. In practice, that meant doing things like inviting Donald Trump to speak at the Libertarian National Convention two years ago.

  Instead of playing spoiler, the idea was to use Libertarian voters as leverage to gain a seat at the table (or perhaps a position in the cabinet), even if doing so came at the expense of the party's own nominees. That has been a controversial approach within the party, which has seen membership and donations decline, and has yielded few positive results—yes, Trump freed Ross Ulbricht, but most of his second term has largely been a libertarian nightmare.

  McMahon wants a clean break with all of that.

  Well, good. The Rs and Ds seem to be in competition to see which can repel me faster, so I'm hopeful the LP nominates some non-fruitcakes so I won't have to leave my ballot blank next year.

  Further down, a couple paragraphs of local interest:

  McMahon supported the successful effort at last week's convention to disaffiliate the Libertarian Party of New Hampshire, something he says was "necessary" and had been "a long time coming."

  The former New Hampshire affiliate had endorsed Trump in 2024, rather than backing Libertarian nominee Chase Oliver. The state party has also gained a reputation for posting racist, bigoted, and authoritarian content on social media. The affiliate had become "a toxic group that is doing damage to our brand and to our candidates and our affiliates," McMahon told Reason.

  Well, they certainly drove me away.

• You'd think they'd aspire to at least "fast casual". Megan McArdle says AI fiction is the new fast food. (WaPo gifted link)

  Three things you may not know about me: I am a big woman, 6 foot 2 inches in my stocking feet. My laugh is loud, if not to say piercing. And I never apologize to furniture.

  That’s why I identified so strongly with Auntie Marsha, the hero from “The Serpent in the Grove,” one of five regional winners of the 2026 Commonwealth Short Story Prize.

  “Big in the way of women who never apologise to furniture,” the story tells us, “she had a laugh that shook dust from joists and a voice that could soften to coax a child from a ledge.”

  I seldom apologize to furniture, but for some larger items, it's best to ensure you stay on its good side.

  Anyway, an AI program (perhaps recognizing a kindred spirit) flagged "The Serpent in the Grove" with near certainty as being written without human fingers on the keyboard. Apparently "crazy metaphors" are red flags.

  But Megan makes the counterintuitive observation: AI prose "in some specific ways, is too good."

  It is the literary equivalent of fast food: convenient, cheap, hyper-consistent and relentlessly optimized to tickle our pleasure centers.

  Hm. I wouldn't mind having my pleasure centers tickled. Maybe not a steady diet, but…

Recently on the book blog:

Recently on the movie blog:

A few days ago I read a WSJ article with a headline claim: Dad Books Are a Dying Breed (WSJ gifted link). Well, Father's Day is coming up, and if any of you sons or daughters are in a quandary, I can recommend this book for a Dad Book. I enjoyed it quite a bit, and I'm a dad. QED.

It's by Johan Norberg, a Cato Institute fellow, and the book is a paean to those historical societies that have managed, always imperfectly, to discover the wonders of liberty: free markets, free trade, and free minds. He looks at seven, in chronological order: (1) Athens; (2) Rome; (3) the Abbasid Caliphate; (4) Song China; (5) Renaissance Italy; (6) the Dutch Republic; (7) the Anglosphere. That last one is where I, and perhaps you, live today.

I was totally ignorant about (3) and (4). (They don't seem to come up much on Jeopardy!, whose writers instead seem to be fans of Those Darn Etruscans.) But Norberg told me a lot I didn't know about all seven, and his discussion was lively and informative, with occasional wry observations and interesting bits of trivia. And surprisingly timely in spots: you many have noticed that Xi Jinping mentioned the "Thucydides Trap" during President Trump's visit last month. That sent a lot of journalists scurrying to Google, but if you had read this book you would have known exactly what Xi was talking about! Norberg has a whole section about it.

A bit of trivia I picked up along the way: why the olive branch is a symbol of peace. After planting, olive trees take many years to grow and produce sellable fruit; their presence indicates the farmer has confidence that his property will not be ravaged by war or expropriation in the meantime.

And: after the fall of Rome, Western Europe essentially forgot the Greek language. That's where (I am not making this up) the phrase "It's Greek to me" comes from: a copyist hitting something written that funny alphabet could only shrug his shoulders in helplessness.

And: it doesn't hurt to be reminded about #3's contributions to the modern world: their mathematicians gave us the decimal numbering system, with its zero. And their language gave us the words "algebra" and "algorithm". But also "assassin", so it's a mixed bag.

Well, there's more. Including the huge Song mural of everyday life Along the River During the Qingming Festival, which as a "combination of the Bayeux Tapestry and Where's Waldo".

So it's a lot of fun. But a somber note comes in at the end: you'll note that the "Golden Age" examples 1-6 eventually passed away, a combination of murder and suicide. And it's not difficult to detect analogous symptoms in our own privileged Anglospheical times. Will we be different? Norberg doesn't mention Trump much, but…

I read a previous book by the author, David T. Beito, The New Deal’s War on the Bill of Rights a couple years back; it detailed FDR's (and his Democrat co-conspirators) lousy record on civil liberties, concentrating on Japanese internment during WW2; warrantless snooping on political opponents; trumped-up "investigations" of critical newspaper and radio outlets. I enjoyed it … if "enjoyed" is the right word.

This book covers a lot of the same ground, but covers more of FDR's pre-presidential behavior, and also to his problematic behavior outside the civil liberty arena. As I said about the previous book: it's not a "warts and all" book: it's mostly just the warts. Beito's only unreserved praise is Roosevelt's brave handling of his polio affliction.

Beito finds that FDR's handling of the Depression was poor; although his policies were politically popular, they were ineffective in restoring the private economy. (And, as Milton Friedman taught us, the Federal Reserve also had a knack of making just the wrong monetary moves at the wrong time.) He was inexcusably indifferent to the ongoing abuse of Black America, not wanting to damage his political prospects in with white Southerners. He continued damaging protectionist policies, which probably caused ongoing economic misery in Europe, encouraging the rise of you-know-who. He thought he was good buddies with Stalin during the war, and encouraged see-no-evil policies toward the Soviet Union. Beito criticizes FDR's insistence on "unconditional surrender" of Germany and Japan, which (arguably) prolonged the war and caused additional American deaths, in addition to enemy soldiers and civilians.

And he was indifferent to the plight of European Jewry, passing up numerous opportunities to decrease their death toll.

So: a welcome addition to FDR bios, countering a lot of the usual hagiography.

This book was on the WSJ list of Best Mysteries of 2024. (WSJ gifted link). The author, Nova Jacobs, previously wrote The Last Equation of Isaac Severy, which I dismissed as "not my cup of tea" last year. Good news: I liked this one a lot better!

It is set mostly at CERN, site of much high-energy physics research. Most notable is its Large Hadron Collider (LHC), most famous for proving the existence of the long-theorized Higgs Boson back in 2012.

Ms. Jacobs adds some fictional interest, starting with a different kind of LHC discovery: the tunnel contains the corpse of physicist Howard Anderby, who seems to have been fatally irradiated in the LHC tunnel. Except nobody can figure out how he got in there, bypassing security. And nobody can figure out why the LHC got turned on at that time. It's sort of a double locked-room mystery.

CERN is located on the France-Switzerland border, in a kind of law enforcement limbo. To minimize bad publicity, CERN research group director Chloé Grimaud and Yvonne Faye, head of CERN, ask their erstwhile companion, private investigator Sabine Leroux, to see if she can track down the facts behind Howard's death.

Complicating things: the apparent cybertheft of CERN data by the competing supercollider group in China. And also another corpse found drowned in CERN's (fictional) water tank housing liquid xenon dark matter detection experiment.

The book alternates its timeline between events that happened before Howard's death and Sabine's investigation. The "before" timeline follows postdoc Eve, who becomes infatuated with Howard, and eventually discovers things about him that are … well … kind of Out There. By the time that's revealed, I was having too much fun to mind.