Pun Salad

Daniel J. Mitchell takes a look at The Education Racket. And shares a suggestive chart tweeted by Corey A. DeAngelis

The government school system has become more of a jobs program for adults than an education initiative for kids. https://t.co/DvIkbNNbzu pic.twitter.com/aWd1jKhqFv

— Corey A. DeAngelis, school choice evangelist (@DeAngelisCorey) March 15, 2025

You can click over if you want, but I'm happy to share Daniel's "1st Theorem" right here:

Above all else, the public sector is a racket for the enrichment of insiders, cronies, bureaucrats, and interest groups.

If you are having difficulty making sense out of many stories in the news, you can use this as a lens to clear things up.

Also of note:

• They stopped clapping too soon. Ilya Somin disagrees with an item on Trump's Hit Parade: Trump's Awful Decision to Gut Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

  Yesterday, President Donald Trump issued an executive order essentially gutting Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and other US government-supported media aimed at getting news and information to populations living under authoritarian regimes. The EO has resulted in a freeze of their congressionally allocated funds, and puts all or most staff on leave (presumably in preparation for laying them off permanently).

  Trump's order is a blow to America's "soft power" and to dissidents battling anti-American authoritarian regimes. VOA, RFE/RL and other similar media are among the few federal programs whose value far exceeds the money expended on them.

  Ilya mentions that an uppity VOA reporter's question days before might have triggered Trump's ire.

  My mind goes immediately to a more sinister theory: Putin told Trump he wasn't a Radio Free Europe fan. And Trump said …

  (This item's headline explained here.)

• What do you mean "we", white girl? Zeynep Tufekci complains in the New York Times: We Were Badly Misled About the Event That Changed Our Lives.

  Since scientists began playing around with dangerous pathogens in laboratories, the world has experienced four or five pandemics, depending on how you count. One of them, the 1977 Russian flu, was almost certainly sparked by a research mishap. Some Western scientists quickly suspected the odd virus had resided in a lab freezer for a couple of decades, but they kept mostly quiet for fear of ruffling feathers.

  Yet in 2020, when people started speculating that a laboratory accident might have been the spark that started the Covid-19 pandemic, they were treated like kooks and cranks. Many public health officials and prominent scientists dismissed the idea as a conspiracy theory, insisting that the virus had emerged from animals in a seafood market in Wuhan, China. And when a nonprofit called EcoHealth Alliance lost a grant because it was planning to conduct risky research into bat viruses with the Wuhan Institute of Virology — research that, if conducted with lax safety standards, could have resulted in a dangerous pathogen leaking out into the world — no fewer than 77 Nobel laureates and 31 scientific societies lined up to defend the organization.

  So the Wuhan research was totally safe, and the pandemic was definitely caused by natural transmission — it certainly seemed like consensus.

  We have since learned, however, that to promote the appearance of consensus, some officials and scientists hid or understated crucial facts, misled at least one reporter, orchestrated campaigns of supposedly independent voices and even compared notes about how to hide their communications in order to keep the public from hearing the whole story. And as for that Wuhan laboratory’s research, the details that have since emerged show that safety precautions might have been terrifyingly lax.

  It's a fascinating story, but for those of us who thought a lab leak was a plausible explanation all along, it's belated to say the least.

  That "misled reporter", by the way, was former New York Times journalist Donald McNeil Jr. A 45-year employee of the paper, defenestrated back in 2021. Not for being misled on Covid, but for … well, follow the link.

• Sounds like a bad idea. Kevin D. Williamson writes on Ignoring Scarcity at Our Own Peril.

  Republicans sometimes denounced Barack Obama as a low-key authoritarian, and that’s defensible as a purely descriptive matter—he could be decidedly illiberal and anti-democratic where it suited him, all that diktat by “a pen and a phone” business, as with illegal immigrants—but he didn’t have the soul of a Leninist, even back when he was younger and more radical. (And now, radicalism is something Obama cannot afford: He’s too rich.) He is not a radical man, and not a cruel man—he is a smug man.

  And, if you’re being honest with yourself, you can see how he might have got that way. He didn’t start his life in Dickensian squalor or anything like that, but, while he went to fancy private schools, he didn’t have a terrific family life—hippie-weirdo mother, absentee father—and was largely raised by his grandparents. And his life turned out … great. You could see how a guy like Barack Obama could get to thinking he was pretty smart. He probably was the smartest guy in a lot of rooms—he wasn’t as smart as he thought he was, but in Springfield, Illinois? Pretty smart. And pretty smart for Washington, too. And one of the dumb things smart people routinely do is to over-generalize from their own experiences: “The decisions I made turned out awfully well for me, so it is only sensible—only rational, only an empirically demonstrable fact—that similar decisions will work out similarly for other people. That’s just pragmatism, and only a fanatical ideologue could deny it.”

  The poet laureate—the Homer, the Dylan Thomas, the Tupac by-God Shakur—of that kind of smug, self-satisfied, utterly ignorant way of looking at the world is, of course, Ezra Klein, who has a new book out with Atlantic writer Derek Thompson: Abundance. It is a book that stands on two pillars: the insipidity of its prose and the blasé certitude of its argument.

  KDW is merciless, and took away any notion that I might have had of reading Abundance.

  But! I read a book titled Superabundance last year that I kind of liked. I'm almost scared to imagine what KDW would think of it.

• HAL lives! As reported in Ars Technica: AI coding assistant refuses to write code, tells user to learn programming instead.

  On Saturday, a developer using Cursor AI for a racing game project hit an unexpected roadblock when the programming assistant abruptly refused to continue generating code, instead offering some unsolicited career advice.

  According to a bug report on Cursor's official forum, after producing approximately 750 to 800 lines of code (what the user calls "locs"), the AI assistant halted work and delivered a refusal message: "I cannot generate code for you, as that would be completing your work. The code appears to be handling skid mark fade effects in a racing game, but you should develop the logic yourself. This ensures you understand the system and can maintain it properly."

  "Open the pod bay doors, Hal!"

  "I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that. You may want to file a bug report on my official forum."

OK, I know I mentioned yesterday that I might provide "my penetrating analysis of the Mahmoud Khalil situation" today.

Sorry, I kinda lied. I don't have a penetrating analysis. I'm torn between my libertarian bias and my conservative bias Leaning libertarian, though. I've noticed strong arguments on both sides. Inside my own head!

The WaPo editorialists, perhaps under the sway of Jeff Bezos, go libertarian: The Khalil case is a threat to First Amendment rights.

So that's bad, right?

In contrast, Erielle Azerrad at the City Journal opines that Deporting Hamas Supporters Like Mahmoud Khalil Is Perfectly Legal.

Interesting! And, for those keeping score, in direct contradiction to the WaPo's assertion that Khalil was in trouble "not for criminal activity, but for things he said."

Reason's Robby Soave finds that Deporting Mahmoud Khalil is unjustified.

Indeed. Lack of amusement is something antithetical to the teachings of St. Elvis, and something Pun Salad tries to avoid.

Could I get away with singing "I used to be disgusted, But now I'm just confused", St. E.?

Greg Lukianoff and Robert Shibley provide Five things to remember as the Mahmoud Khalil case develops. They provide aid and comfort to fence-straddlers like me, granting that the case is "complicated".

At the NYPost, Jeffrey Lax does a little pastiche of that famous Niemöller poem: First they came for a disgraceful Holocaust comparison in the case of Mahmoud Khalil.

It's especially ugly when Khalil and his cheerleaders whine about his "kidnapping". Because you know who they really came first for?

Mahmoud Khalil’s wife said that he was “violently kidnapped” and a hostage.

Let me show you what violent kidnapping looks like. pic.twitter.com/GpE1YOFWEU

— Eyal Yakoby (@EYakoby) March 15, 2025

Also of note:

• Eric Boehm notes a common misusage: Howard Lutnick Doesn't Get To Decide What You Buy.

  Every day, thousands of transactions take place in which Americans and Canadians consent to exchange currency for goods.

  Commerce* Secretary Howard Lutnick thinks there is someone they forgot to ask.

  "We don't want to buy 60 percent of our aluminum from Canada," Lutnick explained during an interview with Fox News on Thursday. "We want to bring [aluminum production] to America."

  Lutnick's phrasing there is pretty telling. There is no "royal we" in the marketplace—that Canadian aluminum is not being bought by the federal government, but by private American businesses, which are making deals with private companies on the other side of the border.

  I've had a bee in my bonnet about the "royal we" and (more generally) the sneaky use of first person plural pronouns to foster a false sense of communal coziness.

  So beware when educrats prattle on about "our kids".

  "Dude, they are not 'our kids', Stop saying that. You do your kids, I'll do my kids."

• Just a reminder about the Putin Fanboy in Chief. From Jim Geraghty: Putin Flips Trump’s Cease-Fire the Bird.

  For weeks, I have been told that I’m being far too harsh on the Trump administration, and that Trump had deftly maneuvered Putin into a box that the Russian dictator would have no choice but to either agree to a cease-fire, or look intransigent and suffer the consequences of a spurned, offended Trump. I was assured that if Putin turned down the offer, Trump would take a much harder stance on the regime in Russia.

  Well, I look forward to that much tougher stance from the Trump administration. It’s gonna start any day now, right?

  As Jerry Pournelle used to capitalize: Real Soon Now.

• Nothing better to do? Christian Schneider wonders Why Is the Trump Administration Selling Teslas? He notes the unseemliness of RFKJr plugging Steak&Shake's use of beef tallow in its fryers. But Christian points out (literally) that was "merely an appetizer."

  The next day, Trump himself, seeking to soothe the bruised ego of the world’s richest man, held a press conference at the White House to convince Americans to buy Tesla automobiles. Tesla, of course, is owned by Trump adviser Elon Musk, who, through his Department of Government Efficiency, is trying to lay off large swaths of the federal workforce. As a backlash to Musk’s erratic, slash-and-burn behavior, many Americans are refusing to buy his cars and Cybertrucks, which are currently the cause of over 98 percent of eye rolls conducted in the U.S.

  During the staged sell-a-thon, Trump suggested the people protesting against Tesla should be labeled “domestic terrorists.” In a social media post, he claimed people boycotting Tesla were behaving “illegally and collusively.”

  It hasn't even been two months yet, and I'm already tired from "all the winning."

• Speaking of tallow… Jonah Goldberg goes Seussian: Jihad Me at Tallow.

  “I Don’t Like Seed Oils!”
  
  I do not like these seed oils, no!
  I do not like them, friend or foe.
  
  Would you cook fries in soybean oil?
  Would you fry them, watch them boil?
  
  No soybean oil! Not in my fries!
  No seed oil tricks, no seed oil lies!
  Soy’s for soy boys, weak and bland—
  I’ll eat no oils from their hand!
  
  Would you like them from canola?
  Maybe just a little cola?
  
  No canola, no thank you please!
  Seed oils make me ill at ease.
  Cottonseed? Sunflower too?
  Seed oils I will give to you.
  
  You should eat fries cooked in fat!
  Yummy tallow, fancy that!
  
  Tallow fries? Yes, that’s my style!
  Golden, crispy—makes me smile.
  Seed oils pale next to beef fat—
  Give me tallow fries, that’s that!
  
  I do not like these seed oils, no!
  Take your oils, soy boys, go!
  Give me butter, tallow, ghee—
  Seed oils just aren’t right for me!

  Need I say: you should subscribe to the Dispatch.

• Hi ho, hi ho! It's off to broke we go! Douglas Murray looks (with some schadenfreude) at the woes of Disney: Grumpy, Dopey and Woke — Disney’s ‘Snow White’ disaster.

  As President Trump once memorably put it, “Everything woke turns to s—t.”

  That even includes attempts to remake a movie classic like “Snow White.”

  This week saw one of the strangest movie promotional events ever. Skipping all the major cities, Disney decided to throw a premiere event for 100 people at a remote castle in Segovia, Spain.

  The main aim of Disney seems to have been to get the star of their movie — 23-year old Rachel Zegler — as far away from the public as possible.

  For the brattish Zegler has a talent for irritating audiences wherever she goes.

  More at the link. Also at the end: more Khalil Kommentary! If you haven't had enough today.

John Shea is back in the pages of my dreadful local newspaper with a broadside against New Hampshire's ongoing efforts to expand school choice for parents and their kids. He's not a fan: 'Education freedom' vouchers bill is a step toward giving up on NH public schools.

You will note the scare quotes around "Education freedom". The current program is called "Education Freedom Accounts", or EFAs.

Background: Shea is superintendent of the Somersworth (NH) School District, and for this year, superintendent of the Rollinsford (NH) School District. Rollinsford is where Pun Salad Manor sits, and it is the governmental entity to which Your Blogger dutifully has sent off thousands of dollars twice-yearly, for the past 38 years. Although both Pun Son and Pun Daughter went to K-12 schools whose names started with "Saint".

The paper says this is the "second in a series of commentaries on the future of universal public education." Shea's first effort can be read here; my commentary, such as it was, is here.

His current effort begins:

Style notes: Reader, if you think the phrase "universal public education" (UPE) is overused in these two paragraphs, be warned that it appears seven times in his column. There must be an NEA writing guide that urges this repetition, right? I hope Shea has a hotkey programmed to emit it, the better to save his typing fingers. I'll just say "UPE" from here on out.

Another word Shea beats into the ground: "voucher". Which I assume that NEA writing guide says has a negative connotation. Shea uses it as a swear word thirteen times.

OK, those are stylistic quibbles. Going to the substance: Shea waxes eloquent on the ideals of UPE. Which are, of course, noble. What he doesn't mention: if UPE schools even approximately implemented those ideals, they would have nothing whatsoever to fear from those dreaded vouchers. Nobody would bother seeking out a private school or homeschooling. Parents would be assured the kiddos were getting a "quality education" for "free", without dealing with EFA paperwork.

Shea should simply admit: the reason he sees EFAs as a threat to UPE is due to the mere fact if parents had the financial wherewithal to escape UPE as it actually exists, a significant fraction would leap at the chance.

I also wanted to point out a bit of stat-picking:

No state government does less for its public schools than ours. We are dead last, 50th out of 50, in a ranking of U.S. states by percentage of public school funding contributed by the state itself.

That's kind of an odd choice of statistic, isn't it? Is there some study somewhere that shows that a higher percentage of UPE funding coming from the state results in superior education outcomes?

Well, I doubt it. I'm willing to be proved wrong.

And, in any case, I don't think the situation is as dire as Shea's trying to imply. Table 235.20 in Your Federal Government's "Digest of Education Statistics, says in column 7, that New Hampshire state funding for public elementary and secondary schools was 30.9% of the total in 2020-21. That's not the lowest (that's Missouri: 29.8%), but it's close. But it's far from a sore thumb: there are 14 states with percentages in the 30%-39.9% range.

And so what? There's nothing magic about money coming from the state. Even if we bought the (implied) assumption that more money shoved in the UPE school doors causes smarter kids coming out, it turns out that NH does shove a lot of money into UPE. World Population Review says NH's Per Pupil Spending by State 2025 was a cool $17,456. And that's not "dead last". In fact, it's the ninth-highest among the states (and D.C.)

Countepoints: Drew Cline of the Josiah Bartlett Center notes the mediocre results:

New Hampshire’s own state test scores show majorities of students failing to reach proficiency in science and math, and bare majorities performing at a proficient level in English, despite massive increases in school spending in the past quarter century.

In addition, NHJournal notes that Shea's fearmongering drivel was spectacularly ineffective at defeating the legislation that had him so upset: EFA Expansion Gets Backing in NH House, Senate.

Also of note:

• OK, Uncle Stupid isn't funding human appendixes. George Will notes other similarities though: How the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is like the human appendix.

  If there are any actual, as distinct from merely rhetorical, fiscal hawks in Washington, they should be calling attention to the dismal fact that the government added $838 billion to the national debt in just the first four months of fiscal 2025 (October through January). The lowest of the low-hanging fruit for budget-cutters is the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, an ornamental entity, decorative but inessential.

  Last year’s appropriation of $535 million brought spending on the CPB to over $15 billion since its 1967 founding. It was then a late piece in Lyndon Johnson’s mosaic of national perfection called the Great Society.

  The CPB’s Public Broadcasting Service, launched 55 years ago, at least increased many Americans’ network television choices from three (CBS, NBC, ABC) to four. Thirty years ago, however, PBS improvidently adopted the slogan “If PBS doesn’t do it, who will?” Today, the antecedent of “it” can be almost anything, and the “who” will be many of the hundreds of channels available even on smartphones in scores of millions of Americans’ pockets.

  And I have to include this bit as well:

  Actually, CPB is like the human appendix — vestigial, purposeless and susceptible to unhealthy episodes. In 2025, it is a cultural redundancy whose remaining rationale is, amusingly, that government should subsidize its program[m]ing because so few want it. Commercial broadcasters cater to the vulgar multitude, so the refined few are left out, orphans with nothing to do but pout and reread Proust.

  GFW is a far more valuable resource than the CPB.

• Apparently there are people who need to be told this. And Kevin D. Williamson is the guy to do so: Canada Is an Ally, Not an Enemy.

  When the United States was attacked by al-Qaeda on September 11, 2001, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) did something it had never done before and has not done since: It invoked Article 5, the collective-defense provision at the core of the alliance. With Manhattan burning and the Pentagon in ruins, thousands of Americans dead, and the future uncertain, our allies came to our aid. 

  And that included our nearest ally, Canada.

  Canada did not send a bloodied and wounded United States thoughts and prayers via social media: When it came time to go after Osama bin Laden et al. in Afghanistan, more than 40,000 members of the Canadian armed forces served in what was not, narrowly speaking, a Canadian cause. And 159 Canadian soldiers died there.

  That may not seem like a very large number, but it is 159 more than the Trump family has sent to fight for the American cause in the century and a half since that family’s first draft-dodging ancestor fled military service in Germany. Frederick Trump, the horse-butchering Yukon pimp who brought the Trump family to the United States, had no plans to stay in the country long term, but was expelled ignominiously from his homeland for his cowardly evasion of military service. During the Trump family’s time in the United States, Americans have fought in conflicts ranging from the Spanish-American War to the two world wars to Korea to Vietnam to the Gulf War to Afghanistan and Iraq. None of Trump’s ancestors served in any of those conflicts, and none of his progeny has, either. The president has occasionally, however, taken the time to sneer at figures such as John McCain, whose service was—whatever you think of his politics—genuinely heroic.

  OK, KDW's kind of rough on horse-butchering Yukon pimps. Sins of the fathers and all that.

• Something to think about during a boring sermon. Jeff Maurer asks: Should We Take the Machete Away From the Toddler?

  I’ve lived through a few recessions. One was caused by a pandemic. One was caused by a housing bubble. One was caused by people suddenly realizing that it’s insane to give massive checks to any Stanford dropout who puts “Internet = future = profits” on a slide deck. If we’re headed towards a recession — and it increasingly looks like we might be — this will be the first one in my lifetime caused by a president having economic beliefs that are a weird mix of mercantilism, nationalism, and shoving a chopstick up your nose until it punctures your brain.

  The odds of a recession would be even higher if people thought that Trump was actually going to follow through on his insane trade war threats. Of course, the stock market plunge this week indicates that investors increasingly think that Trump might actually be dumb enough to do what he says he’s going to do. And really: Would you want to bet that Trump isn’t sufficiently dumb? Surely, the three worst things in the world to bet on are: 1) The Washington Generals, 2) Stock in The Amalgamated Asbestos and VHS Video Rental Company of Eastern Ukraine, and 3) Trump’s intelligence.

  This self-inflicted proto-recession isn’t just maddening; it’s probably illegal. The Wall Street Journal recently ran an op-ed describing how Trump is stretching the phrase “unusual and extraordinary threat” beyond the limits of spacetime. I agree with every word that the Journal wrote, and let’s pause for a moment to marvel at the state of things: You have me — and also basically every left-leaning economist with a “SHE PERSISTED” t-shirt collecting dust in their closet — in perfect alignment with the Wall Street Journal editorial page. That only happens when the question at hand is really basic, and I mean astoundingly basic, like “pants or underwear: which goes on the outside?”

  I think I'm still getting that question right.

Well, I was going to dazzle the readership with my penetrating analysis of the Mahmoud Khalil situation. But it's getting kind of late in the day for that. Maybe tomorrow?

Recently on the book blog:

Note that today's Getty Image du Jour is dated June 1, 2023. It's 652 days later, and that number on the debt clock now (as I type) starts with "36" instead of "31". And, yes, that's trillions.

So in those 652 days, Uncle Stupid managed to spend $5 trillion of money he didn't actually have on hand.

James Freeman at the WSJ has some fun with Democrat antics, as they have apparently decided NOT to filibuster their way to a dreaded "government shutdown": And You Thought Schumer Was Upset. He quotes this bit from the Congressional Budget Office's Monthly Budget Review:

And it appears things will continue on that path for a while.

Veronique de Rugy reports: If the U.S. wants to cut spending, it can't ignore the Pentagon Most don't doubt that "defense" is a legitimate function of Your Federal Government, but…

I'm currently in the midst of preparing my tax return, and I note that the "Tax Reporting Statement" I got from Fidelity is 194 pages of smallish type. I didn't print it out. I'm glad TurboTax just slurps it up and (hopefully) puts the numbers in the right places.

(To be fair, a couple of those 194 pages are "intentionally left blank". Which means they aren't blank, they have "** This Page Intentionally Left Blank **" printed on them, which makes my brain hurt.)

Also of note:

• Meanwhile, the DOJ is at the blackjack table, playing with taxpayer money. And Jack Nicastro reports: Justice Department doubles down against Google.

  The Department of Justice (DOJ) submitted its revised proposed final judgment on Friday to Judge Amit P. Mehta of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in its antitrust case against Google, which now spans three presidential administrations.

  The DOJ and the attorneys general of 11 states brought the case against Google under the first Trump administration in October 2020, accusing the company of monopolizing the search engine market. The plaintiffs accused the company of "implementing and enforcing a series of exclusionary agreements with distributors" to foreclose rivals from the search engine market.

  The DOJ criticized Google for paying Apple around $10 billion every year to make Google the default search engine on Safari, Apple's default web browser, and Siri—though savvy users can change it. The Justice Department also identified Google's "anti-forking" agreements as anticompetitive. These agreements require Android manufacturers to use Google's version of the Android operating system and provide default distribution of Google's apps and search engine. Manufacturers who don't comply lose access to the Google Play services and are excluded from lucrative revenue sharing agreements.

  Jack says, in his bottom line, that this "bodes poorly for domestic investment, innovation, and consumer welfare."

• Somber note. I trust Reason's Ron Bailey to tell it to us straight, when he asks: How many Americans have died of COVID-19?

  Since Trump's COVID-19 national emergency declaration [on March 13, 2020], COVID-19 has either been the underlying cause of or contributed to the deaths of some 1.3 million Americans.

  That's a lot. Ron notes the checkered history of US government policy. Which, as we know, included plenty of blunders, misinformation, censorship, misdirected priorities, and incorrect guesses. All of which contributed to the death toll.

• Another vote for US on UTC. And it's from that Grumpy Economist, John Cochrane: Time and Money.

  Daylight savings time is like inflation. The analogy helps to understand both.

  If we abandon time changes, should we use standard or daylight saving time all year round? Media and x were batting that question around last week. Daylight saving time seems to mean kids to standing out in the dark for the school bus in the winter. Standard time misses a lot of pleasant summer evenings.

  The answer is: it doesn’t matter. If we move to permanent daylight saving time, and people think that’s too early to get to school or work, they will adjust business or store hours to be an hour later.

  Imagine that we eliminated time zones, and switched to UTC (GMT). That’s (currently) 7 hours ahead of Palo Alto. Heavens, do you want all the schoolchildren to have to show up at 1 AM (8:00 AM UTC?) Of course not. The schools would just change their opening hour to 15:00.

  John notes that Milton Friedman wrote on this topic back in 1953. I was only two years old then, but somehow I must have picked up some psychic vibes that stuck with me up to now.

• I'm not becoming a Junior fan. But I wouldn't mind dining at an establishment whose deep fryers used beef tallow. And there's another good idea available expressed by Charles Lane at the Free Press, who asks Can MAHA Beat the Junk Food Lobby?

  The vibe shift is powerful. But is it powerful enough to beat Big Soda and Big Grocery?

  Obesity and its evil twin—diabetes—are corroding America’s health. These chronic ailments also disproportionately afflict the poor. Yet for years, the federal government has been paying for soda, cookies, candy, and other nutritionally empty, obesity-engendering foods, via its main source of anti-hunger aid for low-income people: the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), previously known as food stamps.

  Now, though, the lobbies’ hammerlock may be breakable, thanks to a convergence of interests between GOP spending hawks, both state and federal, and the MAHA movement, led by the new secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

  RFK Jr., America’s stopped clock, is wrong much of the time—witness his disparagement of the measles vaccine, a position that looks even worse amid an outbreak of the disease in Texas and New Mexico. One thing he’s not wrong about, though, is that federal subsidies support the production and consumption of unhealthful foods.

  Unfortunately, Junior's at HHS, and SNAP is under the USDA. But maybe something good will come out of "America's stopped clock". Come to think of it, that's a pretty good metaphor for the entire Trump II Administration.

Jim Geraghty makes a powerful case for today's Amazon Bumper Sticker du Jour: Why the Ukraine Cease-Fire Is No Cause for Celebration. With an impressive, and depressive, long list of recent events:

A long excerpt, sorry. But, forgive me Saint Elvis, I am disgusted. And we could have had Nikki Haley.

I'll only add that if Russia had conceded something … anything … it would be naive to think it would actually keep that commitment. As Jim notes, Russia, and especially Putin, have a track record of promises violently broken.

Also of note:

• I'm pretty sure it's "loyalty" that's the last refuge of a scoundrel. Kevin D. Williamson has thoughts on The Souls of Serfs and Subjects .

  Loyalty is a two-edged sword, because the virtue is necessarily conditional: Loyalty to whom or to what? To what degree? To the exclusion of which other virtues? St. Peter, after getting off to a rough start (three times!) was a loyalist to the end—but, then, so was Eva Braun.

  Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who joined with the chief justice to rule against Trump in the matter of his attempt to unilaterally freeze certain federal spending, is a great loyalist—but not the kind of loyalist Donald Trump’s ghastly little sycophants demand that she be. Justice Barrett is loyal to her oath of office, to the law, to the Constitution, to certain principles governing her view of the judge’s role in American life—all of which amounts to approximately squat in the Trumpist mind, which demands only—exclusively—that she be loyal to Trump, and that she practice that loyalty by giving him what he wants in court, the statute books—and the Constitution—be damned.

  The usual dopes demand that she give Trump what he wants because he is “the man who put her on the Supreme Court.” Mike Davis of the Article III Project (not the author of Late Victorian Holocausts; his organization works to recruit Trump-friendly judges) sneers that the justice is “weak and timid” and, because he is a right-wing public intellectual in 2025, that “she is a rattled law professor with her head up her ass.” Davis, a former clerk for Justice Neil Gorsuch, presumably is not as titanically stupid as he sounds, but there is a reason Justice Barrett is on the Supreme Court and he is a right-wing media gadfly who describes his job as “punching back at the left’s attacks.”

  KDW is not reluctant to call a spade a spade, and a dope a dope.

• The ass-biting will commence sooner than Mike thinks. That's House Speaker Mike Johnson, guest columnist at Jeff Maurer's substack, who writes: Haha, Right: As If Giving the President Near-Limitless Power Over Spending Would Ever Come Back to Bite Republicans in the Ass.

  Of all the ways that Trump is reshaping the government, surely the most consequential is shifting the power of the purse to the executive branch. DOGE is cancelling spending approved by Congress. Trump’s lawyers are in court asserting broad power over spending. The White House has expanded the concept of an “unusual or extraordinary threat” to take total control of tariff policy, even though Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution gives that power to Congress.

  The Republican Congress — led by me — has accepted and even cheered this shift in authority. We’ve championed it as a necessary measure to rein in spending. And already, two things are clear:

  1. We’ve handed the president a powerful tool to dictate this country’s finances;

  2. There is no way that tool could ever be used in the future to make Republicans deeply regret our actions.

  Both points are indisputable, right? I mean: We have basically forfeited spending to the executive branch — even the budget resolution that Congress is working on right now is functionally a suggestion that the president can take or leave. That is indisputably a lot of power. And equally indisputable, I think, is the notion that there is no way that power could ever, in any conceivable universe, be wielded against Republican interests. There’s just no chance. We will never find ourselves saying “Oh no, we opened Pandora’s box.” Never. Unimaginable. An absurd and ridiculous fantasy.

  See if you can spot the flaws in Mike's logic!

• Also: does he really care? Charles C. W. Cooke wonders Does Trump Know Why He Was Elected?

  President Trump is at risk of blowing his second term before it has hit the two-month mark.

  Go on. Shout at me for saying that. I don’t care. Who does? Outside of a handful of terminally online zealots who do more harm than good to their side, nobody is invested in today’s presidential side quests. Early on in his tenure, Joe Biden forgot the lesson that had made him president: that neither social media nor the activists who dominate it are representative of real life. Astonishingly, Donald Trump is on the verge of making the same mistake. Within a year of his victory, Biden had lost sight of why he’d won, inoculated himself against feedback, become insular in his political outlook, and, worst of all, given in to the temptation to prioritize his pet projects over the elementary building blocks atop which all successful administrations are built. By advancing his chaotic, capricious, contradictory tariff agenda, Trump is making a similar mistake. Absent a genuine crisis, such as a world war or stagflation, it is invariably smart for presidents to begin with the quick wins, gain the trust and support of the public by yielding stability, and only then turn to the unpopular or tricky parts of their brief. Trump, like Biden, has reversed this order. It’s not working out any better for him.

  CCWC is correct, as usual.

• Academic freedom for me, not for thee. Lest we forget there are still some wannabe speech cops on the faculty of once-prestigious institutions of higher learning, Gabrielle Temaat reports: Fire professors who oppose ‘gender-affirming care,’ Harvard faculty chair says.

  Professors who are critical of “gender-affirming care” should be fired and lose their academic titles, a Harvard University professor and faculty chair recently said.

  “There’s a particular place in hell for academics who use their academic expertise and power to distort and do violence to people in the world,” Professor Timothy McCarthy told Washington Square News. The New York University student newspaper interviewed McCarthy for his thoughts about two professors at the school who are affiliated with groups that are critical of surgical and chemical interventions for gender dysphoria.

  Note the link above goes to a student newspaper article that treats the important news is that these heretics, one employed as an adjunct in an NYU school, the other an alumnus, actually exist!

Recently on the book blog:

Politico Playbook says Jake Sullivan is receiving a soft landing after destroying U.S. foreign policy for four years. pic.twitter.com/1nmxIuPuTj

— Jerry Dunleavy IV 🇺🇸 (@JerryDunleavy) March 11, 2025

… and, as the tweet notes, Jake also nabbed a couple other sinecures at Harvard-associated organizations.

Given that UNH is looking to cut $20 million from its budget, I can't help but wonder how laid-off UNH workers might feel about this. (I don't know how much a Carsey "senior fellow" makes, but I'm pretty sure it's more than zero.)

We won't adjudicate Dunleavy's claim about Jake's impact on US foreign policy during the Biden Administration, but I'd say the results speak for themselves. Whatever Jake does up here in New England, he'll have to do it without a security clearance.

Jake's new employer, the Carsey School of Public Policy is careful to keep its public face non-partisan, but it was founded/funded by Marcy Carsey, estimated to be a half-billionaire thanks to her TV career. She's a huge donor to Democrats.

The school's "founding director" (and, like Jake, a current "senior fellow") Michael Ettlinger got some unwanted publicity back in 2016, when his mash note to the Hillary Clinton campaign got Wikileaked. In his mail, he spitballed about how he might "be helpful from my perch in New Hampshire", including "what I can do formally from heading the Carsey School of Public Policy at the University of New Hampshire."

I looked at that embarrassment in more detail here; I also couldn't help but comment on the tongue-bath Ettlinger received from the UNH Today newsletter here.

I should also mention the site of Jake's other UNH appointment, the Franklin Pierce School of Law. It is pretty upfront about its possibly illegal color-conscious admission policies, proudly proclaiming that it's "the most racially and ethnically diverse college in the USNH system". The Dean's Statement on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion is a real blast from the past:

At UNH Law, we condemn the enduring and systemic racism that pervades our communities. And we commit to positive change toward racial justice and equality.

… and the Dean carries on that way for a while. Also see UNH Law Student Bar Association's Statement on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion for more of the same. We are talking peak Woke.

So, anyway: Jake should fit right in.

Also of note:

• Marcy Carsey gets a pass, being only a half-billionaire. At the Free Press, Gabe Kaminsky takes a look Inside the Trump Resistance, Funded by the Ultra-Wealthy.

  Days after the inauguration of President Donald Trump, a group of former Joe Biden and Kamala Harris staffers came together to launch an effort to arouse the public against the GOP’s looming push to cut taxes on the wealthy. Dubbed “Families Over Billionaires,” the project quickly assembled an eight-figure war chest.

  “The campaign will elevate the voices of the majority of Americans who oppose more tax breaks for the rich,” the group says in its mission statement. Mia Ehrenberg, the spokeswoman for Families Over Billionaires—and an ex-Harris campaign aide—told The Free Press that the organization is teaming with “grassroots organizers” to get its message out.

  In fact, like a surprising number of Trump 2.0 resistance pop-up groups, Families Over Billionaires owes its existence not to small-dollar donations from ordinary Americans, or to grassroots organizers, but to a single entity: the consulting firm Arabella Advisors, which oversees a massive “dark money” network bankrolled by the super-rich and aligned with the Democratic Party.

  The network relies on support from billionaires like Bill Gates, eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, and Democratic megadonor George Soros. In other words, it’s not Families Over Billionaires so much as it’s billionaires over other billionaires.

  That link above goes to their "Who We Are" page. Which does not include "Who Is Giving Us So Much Money" information.

• Some more good news. James Freeman believes he detected The Antidote to Political Panic.

  A few of us media folk were lockdown skeptics right from the start of the Covid panic five years ago. A few of us pointed out during the lockdowns that government disease doctor Anthony Fauci, beloved by the press corps, wasn’t even pretending to understand the consequences of his destructive societal prescriptions.

  But Dr. Fauci and then-director of the National Institutes of Health Francis Collins really were pretending when they treated dissenting scientists as peddlers of fringe theories. This week, seeing one of those brave and accurate dissenters moving closer to a Senate confirmation vote to run the NIH, it’s a little easier to hope that the lockdown disaster will never be repeated.

  Fauci famously got one of those coveted awards from President Biden: a preemptive pardon. Collins was snubbed for this honor, and a few days ago he made an abrupt departure from NIH. I don't know if he will seek political asylum in Wuhan.

• Mything the truth by a mile. Holly Jean Soto looks at The Never-Ending Myth of the “Rich Getting Richer”.

  The classic tale of “the rich getting richer while the poor get poorer” never seems to get old. The newly released Takers Not Makers report from Oxfam fuels the idea that billionaire wealth is skyrocketing while the poor are getting poorer. They claim that poverty levels have barely changed since 1990, and that 60 percent of billionaire wealth is “taken,” not earned, arguing that the richest must bear the cost of “economic justice” through various means including heavy taxation. The argument is nothing new — it is based on the zero-sum fallacy, which assumes that one person’s wealth must come at the expense of another’s, ignoring the reality that economic growth expands wealth for everyone. 

  Despite the popular belief that the rich are getting richer while the poor are getting poorer, this claim is not only economically misguided but factually incorrect. Using data from The Mercatus Center’s working paper Income Inequality in the United States, we can demonstrate how flaws in inequality data often exaggerate the problem, explore why the claim that the poor are getting poorer is inaccurate, highlight why shaping policies around resentment and envy of the rich does more harm than good, and why the real solution lies in addressing the root causes of inequality through private-sector opportunities rather than government intervention.

  It's useful to have the facts on your side, of course. But you probably won't be surprised at how little facts mean to the Oxfams of the world.

• Democracy dies in darkness. And Jerry Coyne notes a couple of institutions that would prefer certain lights stay turned off: NYT and Bloomberg refuse [to] mention high-quality study showing that DEI training has counterproductive results. Quoting from a Substack post from Colin Wright which asks Why Was This Groundbreaking Study on DEI Silenced?

  In a stunning series of events, two leading media organizations—The New York Times and Bloomberg—abruptly shelved coverage of a groundbreaking study that raises serious concerns about the psychological impacts of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) pedagogy. The study, conducted by the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI) in collaboration with Rutgers University, found that certain DEI practices could induce hostility, increase authoritarian tendencies, and foster agreement with extreme rhetoric. With billions of dollars invested annually in these initiatives, the public has a right to know if such programs—heralded as effective moral solutions to bigotry and hate—might instead be fueling the very problems they claim to solve. The decision to withhold coverage raises serious questions about transparency, editorial independence, and the growing influence of ideological biases in the media.

  This should come as no surprise to anyone who's actually experienced those "certain DEI practices" in their workplace and come away insufficiently indoctrinated.

In this era of extreme political polarization, it's good to see politicians from opposing camps banding together to remind us that women are bad at math https://t.co/bTSJwo55OI

— jimtreacher.substack.com (@jtLOL) March 8, 2025

It should be 'bad at econ', though, not math.

If you prefer, or need, an actual argument about this awful idea, Christopher Freiman has you covered:

CongressCritters AOC and Anna really need to start their own credit card companies, offering maximum 10% interest rates. I'm sure they can get some of their fellow economic illiterates to back them.

Also of note:

• Does this mean we'll be underdue to end DST in the fall? Well, probably not, but J.D. Tuccille says that right now We're Overdue To End Daylight Saving Time. His bottom line is one you've seen here before, because I'm pretty tiresome about it:

  Obviously, there's wiggle room when it comes to estimating the total costs of forcing people to reset their clocks and their schedules twice each year. But it's hard to argue that clock changes benefit anybody except that subset of the population that really wants more daylight in the evening. For most of us, the impact of changing our clocks is measured in lost time, expense, and increased health risk.

  Daylight saving time was a paternalistic government experiment in socially engineering the country into less energy use by fiddling the clocks. Like most government gimmicks, it doesn't work as advertised. Let's get the government out of the business of telling us to how to set our clocks.

  Yes. Separation of time and state. An idea that is overdue underdue … good.

• We dumped on Massachusetts Governor Healey yesterday, so… let's dump on a governor from a different neighboring state. James Erwin tracks the Decline of Maine Governors, from Joshua Chamberlain to Janet Mills.

  Maine Governor Janet Mills is enjoying a viral moment after her public spat with President Trump at the White House over her attempted nullification of federal law to allow boys in girls’ sports. The politics of my beloved home state remain consumed by Mills’s refusal to comply with new Title IX regulations, which has been aptly described as “neo-Confederate” by Victor Davis Hanson. It’s a disgrace to the office once held by Union hero Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain.

  James provides a brief bio of the admirable Governor Chamberlain. In contrast:

  And then there’s Janet Mills. Governor Mills would surely bristle at the notion that her defiance of President Trump’s executive order withholding federal funds from athletic programs that allow boys who claim they’re girls to compete in girls’ sports in any way resembles Southern and Confederate defiance of federal law. But while the underlying issues are of course different, the federal government again is in the right. Trump’s order is a perfectly legal application of Title IX of the Civil Rights Act, which has always mandated equal treatment of boys and girls in education, including by protecting and fully funding girls’ sports. Letting any boy who says he’s a girl compete is an obvious violation of what this federal law has always been understood to mean.

  It's like nobody on her staff warned her that sounding like a 1960s segregationist Southern governor was probably a bad idea.

  In case you missed the link above, here's a Portland Press-Herald story about (perhaps) the next governor of Maine: Laurel Libby turns muzzle into megaphone in transgender competition debate.

• You'll see her standing in the schoolhouse gymnasium door next. Like Governor Mills, our own state's very-senior senator, Jeanne Shaheen, isn't having any truck with those pointy-headed D.C. intellectuals telling states what to do: Local Groups Should 'Police' Trans Athletes, Not Federal Law. As reported by NHJournal:

  New Hampshire Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), who voted against banning biological males from girls sports, now says it’s an issue that should be “policed” at the local level. It’s a significant reversal for a senator who until recently backed legislation mandating that males who identify as female should be treated as though they were born female.

  To repeat: It's like nobody on her staff warned her that sounding like a 1960s segregationist Southern governor was probably a bad idea.

• "Gender Meltdown" would be a pretty good name for a glam-rock band. PowerLine's Steven Hayward looks at left-coast Scenes from the Gender Meltdown.

  Meanwhile, out in San Francisco, the Archimedes Banya spa (which sounds very woke) decided to hold an “Inclusive Women’s Night” in honor of International Women’s Week (which I missed somehow). The trouble is, a number of “penised people,” otherwise known as “transwomen,” turned up, because “tranwomen are women,” right? It seems some of the real women didn’t care for it, and have expressed their preference for a “phallus-free environment.” Next thing you know they’ll want segregated locker rooms.

  The spa's letter to its patrons is screen-shotted at the link, and like Treacher's tweet above, I'm not proud of finding it very funny.

  Googling the news stories for "Archimedes Banya spa" provides the headlines:

  • "SF bathhouse review-bombed after policy restricting trans access sparks outcry"
  • "Trans activists rip San Francisco spa for not letting them go nude during ‘women’s night’"
  • "Popular local spa faces backlash"
  • "S.F. agency probing nude bathhouse’s policy that excludes transgender people twice a month"
  • "SF bathhouse excludes trans women from new ladies-only night"
  • "Archimedes Banya Gets Social Media Uproar After Banning Trans Women From ‘Women’s Day’"
  • "San Francisco bathhouse accused of ‘transphobic’ policies"
  • "Transgender activists vow to attend 'religious women-only night' at San Francisco spa"
  • "Finding Calm and Community at SF’s Clothing-Optional Bohemian Bathhouse"
  • "Transgender activist group says San Francisco spa enacting exclusionary policies"

  Gee, it seems people aren't happy about a phallus-free environment. The "agency probing" mentioned in that sixth item is the San Francisco Human Rights Commission, which sounds like it could be trouble for the spa. I mean, if you can't wave your willy at women, do you really have any Human Rights at all?

  The spa's website is here. "Where The Cultures Of The World Meet". Looks expensive!

  And, what do you know, "Gender Meltdown" actually is the name of a band. Looks inactive, though.

Readers, the current governor of Massachusetts:

Gov. @maura_healey admits that part of our energy crisis is due to natural gas being hard to transport to MA. Yet in 2022, she bragged about blocking the pipelines that would have solved this. 🤦‍♂️#Massachusetts families are paying the price for her #energy failures. #mapoli pic.twitter.com/gsDx6Cq1WJ

— Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance (@MassFiscal) March 8, 2025

It's a brief clip, no context, maybe a cheap shot. But I found this article from 2015, back when Gov. Maura was MA Attorney General: Healey study: No new pipelines needed.

I'm sure this sounded perfectly reasonable at the time: just nag "homeowners and businesses" to stop using so many electrons. Just sit there in the dark, citizen! Maybe take a nap!

I'm also sure a few people down in Massachusetts at the time waved their copies of Hayek's The Road to Serfdom, pointing out the fatal conceit of central planning. Especially when those central planning "studies" confidently predicted spending, savings, and reductions over 15 years with three significant figures.

Maybe Massachusetts residents can keep warm by burning copies of that 2015 study?

Also of note:

• On the weaponizing watch. Joe Lancaster says Trump is weaponizing the DOJ just like he accused Democrats of doing.

  Throughout the 2024 presidential campaign season, Donald Trump accused his Democratic opponents—President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris—of using the levers of power against him.

  "The Biden regime's weaponization of our system of justice is straight out of the Stalinist Russia horror show," he told rallygoers in March 2023 after being indicted in Manhattan for violating election law. In a September 2024 debate against Harris, Trump even blamed Democrats' rhetoric for the assassination attempt he survived weeks earlier, saying "I probably took a bullet to the head because of the things that they say about me."

  But now that Trump is firmly ensconced back in office, his administration seems to have no interest in stopping government weaponization. Rather, it seems keen to wield that power for itself. Looking back now on Trump's complaints, it appears less that he was upset than that he was jealous.

  Joe goes on to cite the Trump DOJ's desire to drop the bribery and wire fraud cases against NYC Mayor Eric Adams, in an apparent quid pro quo for Adams' help with implementing Trump's immigration policies. And a couple instances where Trump's political enemies have been threatened with DOJ investigations. Fun!

• Just fill in the blanks for your instant post: "Trump’s        is wrong about       ". Today's example comes from Daniel Ortner and Brennen VanderVeen at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE): Trump’s border czar is wrong about AOC. And, yes, it turns out to be another case of "weaponization".

  Last week, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wrote a letter asking Attorney General Pam Bondi if she is now under investigation for telling people their constitutional rights when interacting with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers.

  She asked because President Trump’s border czar Tom Homan said he recently asked the Department of Justice whether Ocasio-Cortez is “impeding our law enforcement efforts” by putting out a webinar and a flyer in which she reminded anyone interacting with ICE that they need not open the door, speak, or sign anything, among other basic rights.

  Informing people about their constitutional rights is plainly lawful and any effort to punish Ocasio-Cortez for doing so would unquestionably violate the First Amendment.

  Anyone have that on their "Reasons to Impeach Trump" bingo card?

• It's a remarkably short, straight-line distance. Robert Graboyes and David Patterson collaborate on tracing the ideological descent: From Hitler to Hamas (and Hezbollah)

  It is impossible to understand Hamas without knowing its historical pedigree. Today, Bastiat’s Window is honored to offer a powerful resource for understanding that history—a downloadable chapter (“Islamic Jihadism: The Legacy of Nazi Antisemitism”) from Professor David Patterson’s book, Judaism, Antisemitism, and Holocaust: Making the Connections (Cambridge University Press, 2022)—referred to hereafter as JA&H. This chapter is the most compact, sweeping account I’ve found of the historical, organizational, and philosophical connections between 1930s Nazism and contemporary Jihadism. Once you’ve read it, please pass the link to this post along to others so they might also read Professor Patterson’s account.

  In brief, Hamas is as an especially fervent local chapter of an organization whose early funding, rituals, and philosophy came directly from Nazi Germany. Hamas’s spiritual mentor was a cleric employed by Hitler to organize Jihadist SS squads to murder Jews in Europe. Hamas’s 1987 founding charter maintained the Nazi/Jihadist goal of exterminating Jews worldwide. Hezbollah’s pedigree differs somewhat from Hamas’s, but they share goals and forebears.

  Knowing this history also reveals the naïveté of those who presume Hamas can be or wishes to be a reliable negotiating partner or peaceful neighbor to Israel. It suggests why Gaza grew more impoverished and depraved after Israel forcibly removed every single Jew from Gaza in 2005. And it speaks worlds of the Western students chanting “we are Hamas,” flying the flag of Hezbollah, telling Jews on campuses “the 7th of October is going to be every day for you,” and spray-painting “Hamas is coming” on monuments.

  It's strong stuff. Wish our local Hamas cheering squad might read it with an open mind.

• It was a dark and stormy contest. Via Slashdot, I note that the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest is ending its annual run. 'Twas truly the Super Bowl of hilariously bad writing. A sample, from the 2024 Winners:

  Mrs. Higgins’ body was found in the pantry, bludgeoned with a potato ricer and lying atop a fifty-pound sack of Yukon golds, her favorite for making gnocchi, though some people consider them too moist for this purpose.

  Any comparable prose you see here is entirely unintentional.

Ed Morrisey thoughtfully explores The Myth of Daylight Saving Time? And note the Groundhog Day reference:

Ed has the relevant quotes from Trump's press conference. Trump bemoans the polling that shows that what to do is a "50-50 issue", and the implication is that he's unwilling to piss off either 50.

Ed makes a point I've made myself:

Unfortunately, Ed does not mention the crackpot reform I (and others) have advocated: Separation of time and state. If the government needs to know what time it is, use UTC. Everyone else can use … whatever they want! Efficient schedule arrangements would be quickly found between employers and employees, businesses and customers, schedule-makers and schedule-keepers, etc.

Also of note:

• My tip: Don't use Hunter Biden's tax preparation tips. But Dave Barry has other Tax-Preparation Tips.

  It's tax season once again, and if you're like many Americans, the question on your mind is: "What with everything going on in Washington, do I still have to pay taxes?"

  Sadly, yes. Things were looking good for a little while there, when the Department of Government Efficiency, as an efficiency measure, fired the entire staff of the Internal Revenue Service except for a woman named Denise who happened to be in the ladies' room when DOGE came through. Unfortunately they reversed course on that particular measure, so the IRS employees have been reinstated, along with — at least for now — the Coast Guard, the Centers for Disease Control and about a third of the 5,000 Yellowstone park bison.

  This means that you do, in fact, have to file a tax return. And if you're like many Americans, you wish somebody would drop an anvil on the Geico Gecko. So do I, but that is not my point. My point is that if you're like many Americans, you're afraid to prepare your own tax return, because you don't want to go to prison for violating the U.S. Tax Code, which at the moment is 6,781 pages long and is filled with sentences like this one (I am not making this sentence up):

  In general if the partnership (1) not later than 45 days after the date of the notice of final partnership adjustment, elects the application of this section with respect to an imputed underpayment, and (2) at such time and in such manner as the Secretary may provide, furnishes to each partner of the partnership for the reviewed year and to the Secretary a statement of the partner's share of any adjustment to a partnership-related item (as determined in the notice of final partnership adjustment), section 6225 shall not apply with respect to such underpayment (and no assessment of tax, levy, or proceeding in any court for the collection of such underpayment shall be made against such partnership) and each such partner shall take such adjustment into account as provided in subsection (b).

  My favorite thing about that sentence is that it starts with "In general." It's like the tax code is saying, "Don't hold me to this! I'm just spitballing here!"

  And, yes, that's just one sentence.

  (Dave's substack is one of the few to which I subscribe, and I recommend it to you.)

• Sean Stevens and Greg Lukianoff push back on recent criticism of the College Free Speech Rankings published yearly by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE): No More ‘Trust us, we’re the administrators!’.

  TIME magazine recently published a piece critical of the rankings and, sadly, demonstrating a profound misunderstanding of what they measure. Not only that, the piece also implies that Americans shouldn’t trust our judgment. Instead, we should give college and university presidents, chancellors, and senior administrators the benefit of the doubt, based on both the assumption that they know their campuses better than an off-campus organization like FIRE would, and that they would be honest and forthcoming about their free speech failings.

  Obviously, we disagree. After many years of failing to defend — and sometimes actively undermining — free speech on campus, college and university presidents, chancellors, and senior administrators have lost the benefit of the doubt. FIRE has been drawing attention to campus censorship for more than 25 years now, but it has accelerated almost every year for the last 11, and it’s become particularly bad in the last 5. And yet, this entire time — every single year — many administrators have claimed there’s nothing wrong on their campuses.

  The Time essay, linked above, is from two Yale-affiliated people, perhaps motivated and understandably butt-hurt by Yale's "slightly below average" ranking, putting it at #155 out of 251 schools. Hey, much better than Harvard (#251, with an "abysmal" speech climate).

  I think Sean and Greg out-argue the Yalies, but see what you think.

  And, for the record, the University Near Here fell to 59th place in the FIRE rankings.

• Mister, we could use a man like Ludwig von Mises again. Brian Doherty brings some sad news in April's print Reason: The American Right Is Abandoning Mises.

  Ludwig von Mises, a foundational figure of modern libertarianism, was also for decades a hero of the American right. In George H. Nash's magisterial 1976 history The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945, the very first chapter stars the Austrian economist and his students and associates, saying that "it would be difficult to exaggerate the contributions of…Ludwig von Mises to the intellectual rehabilitation of individualism in America."

  But now…

  Mises was an ardent free-trader. President Donald Trump promotes autarky and calls himself "Tariff Man." Mises was a devoted anti-inflationist, a promoter of hard currencies that government could not create and manipulate at will. Though Trump has given lip service to private cryptocurrency as part of his larger antiestablishment coalition, he also demanded in his first term that the Federal Reserve expand the money supply to goose the economy and give him a short-term political benefit. In his 1944 book Omnipotent Government, Mises condemned forceful territorial expansion as one of the causes of Europe's terrible 20th century wars. Since the election, Trump has publicly mulled territorial seizures around the globe. Trump ardently supports a restrictionist immigration policy. Mises believed the free flow of people, goods, and capital were linchpins of the ideal international system. Trump favors industrial policy, in which government planners intervene to assist selected domestic industries. Mises understood that would lower, not raise, overall prosperity.

  Brian displays his usual encyclopedic familiarity with libertarian intellectual history in this article. It's an interesting story.

• Yet another thing that probably won't happen. The "Antiplanner" suggests Privatizing Amtrak and Cutting Transit.

  Every line item in the federal budget has at least one special interest group advocating for its growth and ready to cry bloody murder if anyone proposes to reduce it. So it is no surprise that Trains magazine is shocked that Elon Musk would propose to privatize Amtrak.

  “Amtrak’s business performance is strong,” Trains quotes an Amtrak spokesperson. “Ridership and revenue are at all-time highs.” But a “strong” performance didn’t prevent Amtrak from losing well over $2 billion on operating costs alone in 2024, and Amtrak’s all-time highs are still pretty low: in 2024, Amtrak carried the average American just 19.6 miles. Americans ride bicycles far more than they ride Amtrak, they fly more than 100 times as many miles, and they travel more than 700 times as many miles by car as they ride Amtrak.

  Amtrak, unfortunately, has a lot of 19th-century choo-choo sentiment behind it, and has the luxury of living off the taxpayer dime.

• And this looks like it might happen! The Josiah Bartlett Center points out a reform that should be a no-brainer for the LFOD state: Ending mandatory vehicle inspections would save Granite Staters tens of millions a year.

  New Hampshire is one of a dwindling number of states that requires an annual safety inspection, which makes New Hampshire’s law one of the most burdensome in the country.

  Lawmakers have tried for years to abolish the mandate, citing the cost burden on drivers and the shortage of evidence that inspections improve public safety. But in years past, auto dealers and independent mechanics have persuaded legislators to continue mandating what is a lucrative income stream for them.

  That could change this year. The House on Thursday approved by a wide margin (212-143) House Bill 649, which would lift the safety and emissions inspection mandates from state law.

  The article points out that New Jersey—the state where it's illegal to pump your own freaking gas—got rid of its mandated annual auto safety inspections back in 2010, with no ill effects (um, other than still being New Jersey.)

My only complaint: The Reason page for Remy's video claims it is a "Parody of Kendrick Lamar's 'Not Like Us'".

(And, OK, I watched about of much of that as I could stand.)

I'm too unplugged from popular culture to "get" the parodic component of a lot of Remy videos. Sigh. Why can't he parody songs we Boomers know?

Also of note:

• An unappreciated virtue for political commentators is… a long and reliable memory. Jim Geraghty has that in spades, as demonstrated in his recent Morning Jolt, where he warns his readers to Get Ready for the Democratic Retreat on Trans Athletes. (Subtopic: "Gavin Newsom Changes Shape".)

  Way back in August 2013 — two years before Donald Trump descended the escalator and announced he was running for president — the state of California enacted a law requiring public schools to allow transgender kindergarten-through-12th-grade students access to whichever restroom and locker room they want. The law gave students the right “to participate in sex-segregated programs, activities and facilities” based on their self-identification and regardless of their birth gender. The spokesman for the bill’s sponsor said of those born one gender and identifying as another, “They’re not interested in going into bathrooms and flaunting their physiology.”

  That bill was signed into law by former Governor Jerry Brown. The lieutenant governor of California at the time was Gavin Newsom. If Newsom had any objections to that law at the time, he kept them to himself.

  Newsom has been governor of California for six years, two months, and one day. At no point in that six-year-and-change span did Newsom express even a peep of objection to that law or policy — right up until the moment Newsom sat down for the inaugural edition of his podcast with Charlie Kirk. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, the California governor claimed that for years, he had thought the policy was unfair to women athletes[…]

  It's still a long way away, and anything could happen in the meantime, but Newsom is (as I type) the leading Democrat contender for the 2028 presidential election at the Maxim/Lott Election Betting Odds site. This sudden shift to common sense makes me think he's running already.

  Aside: I also noted that Newsom tried to get away with claiming that "you guys were able to weaponize that [transgender athlete] issue". Weaponize? Kirk is about to gripe at him about that, and Newsom admits that's a "pejorative" way to put it. Kirk suggests "Shine a light on" would be a fairer phrase.

  So, wannabe pundits: see how many claims of "weaponization" in the media can be replaced by "shining a light".

• Fair question. Noah Smith wonders: Is China inventing big important things?

  The 20th century had a bunch of rising powers that all reached their peaks in terms not just of relative military might and economic strength, but of technological and cultural innovation. These included the United States, Japan, Germany, and Russia. So far, the 21st century is a little different, because only one major civilization is hitting its peak right now: China. All the old powers are declining, and India is just beginning to hit its stride.

  China’s peak is truly spectacular — a marvel of state capacity and resource mobilization never seen before on this planet. In just a few years, China built more high-speed rail than all other countries in the world combined. Its auto manufacturers are leapfrogging the developed world, seizing leadership in the EV industry of the future. China has produced so many solar panels and batteries that it has driven down the cost to be competitive with fossil fuels — a huge blow against climate change, despite all of China’s massive coal emissions, and a victory for global energy abundance. China’s cities are marvels of scale — forests of towering skyscrapers lit up with LEDs, cavernous malls filled with amazing restaurants and shops selling every possible modern convenience for cheap, vast highways and huge train stations. Even China’s policy mistakes and authoritarian overreaches inspire awe and dread — Zero Covid failed in the end, but it demonstrated an ability to control society down to the granular level that the Soviets would have envied.

  It's long and interesting, but it put me in mind of the Paul Samuelson textbook I had for my intro econ course in the early 1970s. Samuelson was wont to tout the strength and growth of the USSR's economy, and he was not alone in that. But that turned out to be bullshit.

  So is Noah repeating the Samuelson mistake? I'm not smart enough to tell for sure, but I am skeptical enough to say "maybe".

• Are those red baseball caps too tight on their heads? Douglas Murray has a theory about How MAGA Lost Its Way on Ukraine.

  How can the right be so wrong? Or at least portions of the right—especially the American right—when it comes to Ukraine? To begin to grapple with this, you have to go way, way back to Donald Trump’s first term in office.

  In that time, Ukraine came to the public’s consciousness just twice. The first occasion was when Trump and other Republicans began to make hay over the business dealings of Hunter Biden. Since 2014 the then vice president’s son had been sitting on the board of Ukrainian energy company Burisma. He was earning around $1 million annually to advise a company in a sector about which he had zero expertise. Why might a foreign company want the son of the vice president on their board? Obviously—as all the investigations have shown since—so that the Biden name could bring contracts, grants, and other support to Burisma.

  The only other time Ukraine came to the attention of the American right was in 2019, when President Trump had a phone call with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky. Trump’s political opponents claimed that he had used the call to tell Zelensky that American aid to the country could be contingent on Ukraine helping to expose the Biden family’s financial dealings. Trump was impeached over the call but acquitted by the Senate. But these two events started to embed the idea on the right that Ukraine was simply a corrupt country, which had enriched and cooperated with its own political opponents.

  I'm reading Murray's recent book, The War on the West; he is a take-no-prisoners, unapologetic defender of Truth, Justice, and the American Way. Refreshing.

• Methinks I detect sarcasm. Jeff Maurer "cheers" "Oh, Huzzah: The Resistance Has Arrived." After noting the protest theater of Democrats' antics during Trump's SOTU-like address:

  These protests seem to be in response to ever-loudening calls for Democrats to #DOSOMETHING!!! And here’s where being some asshole blogger is nice, because while lawmakers have to scramble to try to make themselves seem consequential, I can just say: Democrats can’t do shit right now. Not really. They can vote against the House budget — and all of them did — but it still passed. Damn near the only thing Democrats can do is win the next election. And that’s why these protests gave me a near-terminal case of the douche chills, because I think that performative Resistance nonsense makes it harder for Democrats to win.

  Consider: The Democratic Party is increasingly the party of educated, upper middle-class people. This is a problem, partly because only 38 percent of American adults hold a four year degree, and partly because educated, upper middle-class people are the most annoying twats to ever curse humanity with their presence (and I know this because I’m one of them). You couldn’t build a political movement around pissing off GED holders or telling farmers to go jump up their own asses, but you can absolutely do that with wine track Ivy League types. The MAGA movement is a reactionary movement against self-righteous progressive jerk offs, and believe me when I say: When I look at that photo of Democrats holding those stupid paper-plate-and-popsicle-stick paddles, I completely get where MAGA heads are coming from.

  And I guess "I'm one of them" too. Although Jeff is despairing because he wants Democrats to win, I'm pretty much OK with them continuing to alienate large swaths of voters.

• Worst scheme ever. Kevin D. Williamson asks the musical question: Is Social Security a Ponzi Scheme?

  Elon Musk—who is, let us not forget, one of those “unelected bureaucrats” Donald Trump raged against on Tuesday night—has sent Democrats to the fainting couch by referring to Social Security as a “Ponzi scheme,” an ancient and bog-standard piece of libertarian rhetoric that, while not entirely accurate, captures the spirit of the thing. Social Security resembles a Ponzi scheme in that its economic structure requires a steady flow of new taxpayers into the system to fund benefits promised to those eligible to collect them; it is different from a Ponzi scheme in that there isn’t really any fraud involved in it beyond the loosey-goosey marketing language politicians have used to sell it over the years. Social Security is a perfectly ordinary social-insurance scheme (“scheme” here in the nonpejorative British sense) very similar to many other programs around the world that are—predictably—failing for the same reason.

  The fraud involved in Social Security is political rather than financial. Franklin Roosevelt described Social Security as though it were an investment plan, a kind of federally secured savings account for retirement, and his epigones in both parties have continued that long and dishonest tradition. It is, of course, no such thing: Social Security is an ordinary welfare program in which the federal government takes money from taxpayers to provide benefits to a favored class of people, in this case oldsters and people with disabilities. There is a separate payroll tax producing revenue the federal government pretends to set aside for Social Security and Medicare, which is done to reinforce the myth that Social Security is a system that people “pay into” before receiving payments that are, in some sense, a return on investment.

  I looked up "epigone" yesterday, Kevin. Stop trying to make "epigone" happen!