Pun Salad

Jeff Maurer observes that We Seem to Be Re-Learning Free Speech Principles From Scratch.

Well, some of us.

Congratulations to Jeff for avoiding bad words in his first two paragraphs.

Also of note:

• Also going over the basics, again: Rachel Lu. Who's bemused by Hayek Among the Post-Liberals.

  I first picked up F. A. Hayek sometime around 2010. Everyone was doing it; it was the right’s Hayekian moment. I had not had occasion to read Hayek, having written my dissertation on Scholasticism. I was unable to find a Latin translation of The Road to Serfdom, so I had to settle for reading it in my native language, but I still managed to capture a bit of the heady sensation of stepping into a different world. Hayek introduced me to the logic of limited government. I still think he is as good an introduction as one can find, at least for readers too mature to be delighted by John Galt.

  We are now living through a profoundly un-Hayekian moment on the right. The battle between liberals and post-liberals rages on with no real sign of abating. The Road to Serfdom turned 80 this year, and Hayek’s fans noted the occasion, but much of the right today has become accustomed to talking as though Hayek, and classical liberalism generally, is archaic or discredited. The Hayekian moment feels like ancient history.

  It’s not, though. Hayek used to be cool. Today my enduring fondness for him marks me clearly as a rotting-flesh Reaganite, but in fact, I originally cracked the cover only to please my populist interlocutors, years after Reagan was cold in his grave. It really makes one think about the dizzying progression of fads American conservatism has been through in the twenty-first century. The volatility is depressing, and yet there is an interesting sense in which conservatism has been mapping the road to serfdom, exploring its highways and byways by aggressively testing the limits of Hayekian reasoning. I’m not sure we’ve found them yet, but we may have learned some things along the way.

  It has been a long time since Maggie Thatcher removed a copy of Hayek's The Constitution of Liberty from her handbag, slammed it on the conference table, and declared "This is what we believe."

  We could use that again.

• After the election, he'll have more flexibility. Apparently, higher-ups decided having a bunch of cranky Black voters denied their nicotine delivery system of choice would be a bad idea. The NR editors chronicle Biden’s Menthol-Ban Backpedal.

  It has been a goal of progressives for years to ban smoking. Not quite able to convince enough people to go all the way, they have settled for piecemeal measures, such as banning smoking in public places or raising excise taxes on tobacco products.

  One of those piecemeal measures was supposed to be banning menthol cigarettes. This measure was exigent because it was also anti-racist, progressives said. Menthols are popular among black smokers, so banning them would help improve disparate racial health outcomes, the argument goes.

  Like many “anti-racist” arguments, this one sounds more racist the more you think about it. Not being able to ban a product in general but settling for only banning the version of it popular with black people doesn’t put very much faith in the decision-making abilities of black people, who are fully capable of evaluating their decisions just like anyone else.

  If you'd like to see the Progressive Future, let me point (again) to the Tobacco-, Smoke-, & Nicotine-Free Policy of the University Near Here. Excerpt:

  The TSN-Free policy applies to all University of New Hampshire facilities, property, and vehicles, owned, or leased, regardless of location. Smoking and the use of tobacco products shall be prohibited in any enclosed place, including, but not limited to, all offices, classrooms, hallways, waiting rooms, restrooms, meeting rooms, community areas, performance venues and private residential space within UNH housing. TSN products shall also be prohibited outdoors on all UNH campus property, including, but not limited to, parking lots, paths, fields, sports/recreational areas, and stadiums, as well as in all personal vehicles while on campus. This policy applies to all students, faculty, staff, and other persons on campus, regardless of the purpose for their visit.

  Gee, do you think they forgot anything?

• Best headline of the day. The award goes to Virginia Postrel: TMI and Monsters from the Id.

  My friend and former Chapman University colleague John Thrasher recently introduced me to the concept of pluralistic ignorance. This is a social science term describing situations in which individuals know their own thoughts and behaviors but assume most people are different, when in fact they aren’t. The classic example is college students who don’t drink that much themselves but assume their classmates are always getting drunk, when those others also drink moderately.

  John’s twist is to suggest that the breakdown of pluralistic ignorance explains the recent erosion of political and social norms of behavior—an erosion so extensive that “conservative Christians” who once upheld traditional norms of propriety in family and business life now avidly support Donald Trump, who is proud to be an unscrupulous operator and a serial adulterer.

  VP assumes a certain amount of cultural literacy. You probably know about "TMI". But "monsters from the id"? I have a soft spot there, the very first movie I saw in a theater in Oakland, Iowa. And as a five-year-old in 1956, it scared the crap out of me.

• We shouldn't wait until he double dares us. Do it now! Jimmy Quinn paid attention to what a UN official said, and it is glorious: U.N. Official Dares America to Slash Its Budgetary Contribution.

  On Wednesday, the United Nations’ top human-rights official, Volker Türk, practically dared Congress to slash America’s massive contribution to the U.N.’s main budgetary fund, called the regular budget, when he spoke out about “a series of heavy-handed steps taken to disperse and dismantle protests” across U.S. college campuses. He expressed concern that law enforcement was using force in a disproportionate way.

  Obviously, anyone is entitled to his view on the anti-Israel college demonstrations and steps taken by university administrations and law enforcement in response, no matter how ridiculous.

  But Türk’s statement — in his official capacity as the U.N.’s high commissioner for human rights — is an abuse of authority that won’t go over well in Washington.

  Or in New Hampshire.

And, really, it shouldn't be a plus in a candidate for high office. Jim Geraghty notes we got two guys who, in reality, would be flunking the job interview badly: Our Oblivious Presidential Candidates.

Consumer note: you really get a lot of weird results when you search Amazon for "oblivious".

Also of note:

• Speaking of weirdness… Someone named Yanis Varoufakis observes that we are living in The Age of Cloud Capital.

  I have no idea what he's talking about, but he persuaded the gatekeepers at Persuasion that his thesis was insightful enough to publish:

  Capitalism is now dead, in the sense that its dynamics no longer govern our economies. In that role it has been replaced by something fundamentally different, which I call technofeudalism. At the heart of my thesis is an irony that may sound confusing at first but which I contend makes perfect sense: the thing that has killed capitalism is… capital itself. Not capital as we have known it since the dawn of the industrial era, but a new form of capital, a mutation of it that has arisen in the last two decades, so much more powerful than its predecessor that like a stupid, overzealous virus it has killed off its host. What caused this to happen? Two main developments: the privatization of the internet by America’s and China’s Big Tech. And the manner in which Western governments and central banks responded to the 2008 great financial crisis.

  And it just gets loopier from there.

  If capitalism were dead, or even seriously ill, you'd think that would have shown up in my investment portfolio. So I'm dubious. Or maybe oblivious (see above).

  Still, for a guy I had never heard of, Yanis is actually pretty famous.

• A good idea? Clyde Wayne Crews has a decent proposal: Subsidy-free capitalism may require a constitutional amendment.

  As I described over at Forbes, the absence of subsidies among the enumerated powers of the federal Constitution hasn’t deterred their rise to a dangerous prominence. Despite evidence showing the shortcomings of economic and social engineering subsidies, market interventionism remains popular and unabated much to the chagrin of free enterprise advocates who have yet to persuade policymakers—who often know better—to reject them.

  Subsidies famously privatize profits while socializing losses. They distort markets and steer talent into unproductive ventures; they can hinder genuine regulation by shielding actors from liability. Moreover, subsidies are accompanied by regulatory strings and chains, which in Biden’s America means the coercive promotion of progressive policies and an expansion of the administrative state’s reach.

  The history of state-level subsidies offers valuable lessons, as described in an important Mercatus Center paper called “Outlawing Favoritism: The Economics, History, and Law of Anti-Aid Provisions in State Constitutions.” While most 19th-century state constitutions contained or added clauses to prohibit private aid, loopholes emerged, leading to a resurgence of subsidies.

  I would very much like to see "subsidy-free capitalism". But Crews' proposal for a constitutional amendment? Summary: you need two-thirds vote in both houses of Congress, plus three-fourths of state legislatures to say yes.

  If you've got that kind of political support for an amendment, you have way more than enough support to just repeal existing subsidies and not enact new ones. Problem solved, with a lot less fuss.

• The FDA wants to get back into the business of killing people. Okay, maybe that's a tad overblown, but … no, it's pretty much what's going on, as described by Ron Bailey: FDA Once Again Stands Athwart Biomedical Innovation, Yelling 'Stop!'.

  As earlier threatened, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has just issued new rules that will significantly slow down the development of new diagnostic tests. Specifically, the agency requires that all laboratory-developed tests (LDTs) be submitted to its regulators before the tests can be offered to patients and physicians. As I explained earlier, LDTs are in vitro diagnostic (IVD) tests for clinical use that are designed, manufactured, and performed by individual laboratories. They can diagnose illnesses and guide treatments by detecting relevant biomarkers in saliva, blood, or tissues; the tests can identify small molecules, proteins, RNA, DNA, cells, and pathogens. For example, some assess the risks of developing Alzheimer's disease or guide the treatment of breast cancer.

  Until now, the FDA had not sought to exercise regulatory control over the development and deployment of such tests.

  "LDTs are being used more widely than ever before—for use in newborn screening, to help predict a person's risk of cancer, or aid in diagnosing heart disease and Alzheimer's. The agency cannot stand by while Americans continue to rely on results of these tests without assurance that they work," said FDA Commissioner Robert M. Califf in a press release.

  The bureaucratic delay and expense involved in getting tests approved under the proposed rules guarantees stifled innovation, which means… yup, more people not getting diagnosed, which means… more corpses. Sad!

  But, as Bastiat would observe, if he were around: those dead folks are "unseen"; what's "seen" is only the FDA, working diligently to "protect" us.

• It's a funny business. If you are a book reader, you might be surprised to learn: No one buys books. Elle Griffin did the research, and …

  In 2022, Penguin Random House wanted to buy Simon & Schuster. The two publishing houses made up 37 percent and 11 percent of the market share, according to the filing, and combined they would have condensed the Big Five publishing houses into the Big Four. But the government intervened and brought an antitrust case against Penguin to determine whether that would create a monopoly.

  The judge ultimately ruled that the merger would create a monopoly and blocked the $2.2 billion purchase. But during the trial, the head of every major publishing house and literary agency got up on the stand to speak about the publishing industry and give numbers, giving us an eye-opening account of the industry from the inside. All of the transcripts from the trial were compiled into a book called The Trial. It took me a year to read, but I’ve finally summarized my findings and pulled out all the compelling highlights.

  I think I can sum up what I’ve learned like this: The Big Five publishing houses spend most of their money on book advances for big celebrities like Britney Spears and franchise authors like James Patterson and this is the bulk of their business. They also sell a lot of Bibles, repeat best sellers like Lord of the Rings, and children’s books like The Very Hungry Caterpillar. These two market categories (celebrity books and repeat bestsellers from the backlist) make up the entirety of the publishing industry and even fund their vanity project: publishing all the rest of the books we think about when we think about book publishing (which make no money at all and typically sell less than 1,000 copies).

  It's a long, but interesting, read. Not book-length.

For some reason, I still follow my ex-CongressCritter (and all-time toothache) Carol Shea-Porter. And I felt this demanded a reply:

"Joe Biden is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I've ever known in my life."

— Paul Sand (@punsalad) April 28, 2024

Don't recognize the reference? Reader, you got yourself some movie-watchin' to do.

Also of note:

• Where is Nina Jankowicz on this? Scott Johnson notes revisionist disinformation on one of the "major" networks: Rathergate: 100 proof fraud.

  The Daily Beast’s John Fiallo reports that Dan Rather returns to CBS News today 18 years after his involuntary departure. Fiallo writes (emphasis added):

  The former CBS News anchor Dan Rather will make a brief return to the network Sunday, appearing in a live interview 18 years after his controversial exit. Rather, 92, is slated to be profiled on CBS News Sunday Morning through an interview with correspondent Lee Cowan, the network announced. The segment will, in part, promote the soon-to-be released documentary Rather, which chronicles the legendary newsman’s “rise to prominence, his sudden and dramatic public downfall, and his redemption and re-emergence as a voice of reason to a new generation,” the doc’s producers wrote in a statement. Rather’s falling out with CBS began with his 2004 60 Minutes II report about George W. Bush’s National Guard record that relied on documents CBS failed to authenticate—something the then-president skewered the network for. The incident shattered Rather’s reputation, despite the documents never being proven to be forgeries. The controversy, which was dubbed “Rathergate,” was dramatized in the 2015 film Truth. Rather’s return to CBS will air at 9 a.m. EST on Sunday.

  The documents “were never proven to be forgeries” in roughly the same sense that Alger Hiss was never proven to be a Communist spy. Fiallo to the contrary notwithstanding, the proof is overwhelming. Indeed, there is no proof to support the authenticity of the documents. None. Zero. Nada.

  What follows is a recap of the largely blog-driven debunking of CBS's effort to smear Bush with a pre-election hit piece. It's a great story, long, and worth your while. The effort to rehabilitate Dan Rather and the other shoddy journalists involved in the sham is pathetic and disgusting.

  So I'm not kidding, Nina Jankowicz! Your "American Sunlight Project" mission statement promises to "Expose deceptive information practices and the networks and money that drive them." Who's behind this effort to deceive the American people?

  Of course, it could be that you're a partisan hack, Nina. Gee, I hope not.

• Specifically, the kind that's funny, and doesn't involve mass murder. Andy Kessler notes the increasing relevance of The Other Kind of Marxism.

  Today’s politicians are steeped in Marxism. Not Karl, but Groucho, who is supposed to have said: “Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them . . . well, I have others.”

  On Jan. 22, 2021, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said of Donald Trump’s second impeachment: “Make no mistake, a trial will be held in the United States Senate and there will be a vote whether to convict the president.” Fast forward to a week ago, when articles of impeachment were delivered to the Senate against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. Mr. Schumer said: “Impeachment Article 1 does not allege conduct that rises to the level of high crime or misdemeanor . . . and is therefore unconstitutional.” No trial. No vote.

  This tossing of principles can be found everywhere. In 2020 President Trump tried to ban social-media app TikTok over national-security concerns. Now Mr. Trump is against a ban, writing last month on Truth Social: “If you get rid of TikTok, Facebook and Zuckerschmuck will double their business. I don’t want Facebook, who cheated in the last Election, doing better.”

  In August 2020, Joe Biden told ABC’s David Muir, referring to Covid: “I would shut it down. I would listen to the scientists.” By October 2020, Mr. Biden insisted, “I’m not going to shut down the country, I’m going to shut down the virus.” Lockdowns continued.

  Kessler is correct that Groucho is "supposed to have said" that quote. The Quote Investigator is on the case, and finds the evidence inconclusive.

• Better stay away from those that carry around a fire hose. Jeffrey Blehar demonstrates the increasing relevance of a song written nearly sixty years ago: You Don't Need to Be a Weatherman to Know Which Way The Wind's Blowing at Columbia.

  If you have a heart, then it is tough to sit in the position that I do and savage dumb college kids all day without at least a twinge of guilt. They are kids, after all — the one thing they definitively lack, especially en masse, is maturity. And those of us lucky enough to be born and raised before the iPhone era will never fully understand how the advent of “everything now” infinite content, panopticon online peer pressure, and the status opportunities afforded by public performance on social media have permanently warped the younger generation.

  Bluntly put, subjecting young people to these conditions is a great way to sow the seeds of narcissistic sociopathy. So should we be surprised that we’ve now reaped a harvest of elite college youths who, from our older perspective, come across like uniquely narcissistic sociopaths? What commands the most attention about the campus protests against Israel is not the vehemence of the hatred on display, but the ultimate vapidity of the majority of students involved.

  These students may not necessarily know what they want, but they certainly enjoy the social frisson of what they’re doing. They are led only by their all-conquering personal need for psychological validation. But that does not make them any less of a civic threat — their belief in their innate virtue rather than in any political principle other than the cause of the moment makes them easily molded clay for people with actual agendas.

  Futher advice: Don't follow leaders, watch the parking meters.

• On the Oppressor/Oppressed axis… John Hinderaker describes The Power of Weakness.

  Modern liberals have distilled the true essence of Marxism, which is the idea that every human relationship is exploitative. Lenin summed it up as “who/whom”–who is doing what to whom?

  Of course this idea is ridiculous. Most human relationships, whether personal or economic, are not exploitative. But Marx’s idea has a perennial appeal to the discontented, and is endlessly malleable to suit the neuroses of the day. Thus, modern Marxists have no interest in the purported oppression of the “proletariat.” Far from it! But the Marxist model can easily be made to fit other preoccupations.

  He embeds a couple of perceptive Elon tweets, here's one of them:

  The axiomatic error undermining much of Western Civilization is “weak makes right”.
  
  If someone accepts, explicitly or implicitly, that the oppressed are always the good guys, then the natural conclusion is that the strong are the bad guys.

  — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 26, 2024

  It sounds as if Elon might have read Arnold Kling's The Three Languages of Politics, which observed that progressives hammer controversies into an "oppressor-oppressed" heuristic. The Kindle version is a mere $3.99, and it's money well spent.

• That's right, he said zero. Articles from the new dead-trees issue of Reason, which has an AI theme, are coming out from behind the paywall, and this one by Andrew Mayne is wonderfully contrarian: In the AI Economy, There Will Be Zero Percent Unemployment

  I'm an AI developer and consultant, and when OpenAI released a preview in February of its text-to-video model Sora—an AI capable of generating cinema-quality videos—I started getting urgent requests from the entertainment industry and from investment firms. You could divide the calls into two groups. Group A was concerned about how quickly AI was going to disrupt a current business model. Group B wanted to know if there was an opportunity to get a piece of the disruptive action.

  Counterintuitively, the venture capitalists and showbiz people were equally split across the groups. Hollywood producers who were publicly decrying the threat of AI were quietly looking for ways to capitalize on it. Tech startups that thought they had an inside track to disrupting Hollywood were suddenly concerned that they were about to be disrupted by a technical advance they didn't see coming.

  This is the new normal: Even the disruptors are afraid they're about to be disrupted. We're headed for continuous disruption, both for old industries and new ones. But we're also headed for the longest period of economic growth and lowest unemployment in history—provided we don't screw it up.

  If you needs some palate-clearing optimism, this is a good choice.

Recently on the book blog:

President Dotard's increasing signs of unawareness and detachment from reality don't seem to have hurt him with the bettors:

Fun fact: the Stossel/Lott betting-odds site also tracks the bets placed on the GOP VP nominee. If you really want to see a precipitous drop in probability, check what's happened to Kristi Noem's odds in the past few days.

What is it with politicians and dogs, anyway?

Also of note:

• Equal time. We've been pretty hard on President Wheezy recently. So just a reminder that the Other Guy is no prize either. Jeff Maurer brings us The Trump Trial Opening Arguments, But With Jokes. (Subhed: "'Trump's just sleazy' is the DEFENSE")

  [The prosecution's] starting point was a 2015 meeting between Trump, Michael Cohen, and National Enquirer publisher David Pecker, who has the porn-y-est name in this story despite the fact that it involves an actual porn star. In that meeting, the trio allegedly discussed how the Enquirer might help Trump, which provided the trial’s first bombshell: The National Enquirer might not be a trustworthy source of news. This was a shocking charge against the august publication that broke landmark stories like The 20 Worst Beach Bods of 2009 and I’m Being Haunted By Lucille Ball’s Ghost. In much the same way that Watergate testimony shed light on unsavory aspects of the Nixon White House, this trial has revealed that the publication that tried to tie Ted Cruz to the JFK assassination might be politically motivated.

  The prosecution alleges that the trio discussed a “catch-and-kill” system that worked like this: If someone claimed to have dirt on Trump, the Enquirer would buy the story, not publish it, and Trump would pay them back. It’s like when a movie studio buys a script from a talented writer, doesn’t produce it, and instead makes Harry and the Hendersons 2: Squatch in the City. But this plan would have a nefarious purpose: It would seek to keep voters from thinking that Trump is a lecherous, philandering pervert. Even though that’s exactly how Trump portrayed himself for 30 years prior to the meeting.

  The alleged plan worked well at first: Pecker is said to have squashed a story from a doorman who said that Trump fathered a child out of wedlock. That story could have been damning to Trump, because if he has an unknown child, then why does he keep running duds like Don Junior and Eric in front of the camera? The plan eventually faltered, though, because Pecker failed to account for the fact that Donald Trump is the cheapest bastard who ever walked God’s green Earth. After Pecker secured the rights to Playboy model Karen McDougal’s story for $150,000, Trump didn’t pay him back. The catch-and-kill plan floundered, though it would still prove to be by far the most effective program of Trump’s political life.

  You know who would have paid back Pecker? Nikki Haley, that's who.

• They call me Mister… Kevin D. Williamson has a bone to pick with titles: Mr. Trump in Court.

  Todd Blanche, one of the unhappy attorneys defending Donald Trump in one of the criminal actions against him, insisted this week the former president deserves to continue to be called “President Trump” out of respect, that this is something the former game-show host and quondam pornographer “has earned.” That is pure drivel, of course, but Trump, who has a thing about titles, has insisted for years that employees and sycophants continue calling him “President Trump.”

  The continued use of the title “president” before Trump’s name is, of course, a violation of republican norms. We do not have aristocratic titles in the United States—we have job titles, and we have only one president at a time. (Goodness knows one is enough.) Trump isn’t the first ex-president to cling pathetically to the title, though Trump’s insistence takes on a special valence because he also insists that he is the rightfully elected president and attempted to stage a coup d’état in 2021 to hold onto the office. So there is more at work here than etiquette.

  Perhaps most hurtful of all:

  Nikki Haley is still “ambassador,” as though she were an envoy from some faraway planet where Republicans didn’t suck quite so badly.

  (Classic movie quote here.)

• We used to call this a "reality distortion field". Charles C. W. Cooke observes, sagely: Donald Trump Is Now Whomever His Critics and Backers Need Him to Be. I'm out of gifted NR links this month, so read what you can, or, better, subscribe:

  It is fitting, perhaps, that a man who launched his reelection campaign by transmuting himself into a series of gaudy nonfungible tokens would eventually be transformed into an avatar. Donald Trump has long served as a Rorschach Test, but, as he heads undeterred into his third bid for the presidency, he has become something more protean besides. At this stage, there are thousands of Trumps, each tailored to the predilections of the observer. Trump is a myth, an archetype, an emblem. How can it be that a country full of people who speak the same language cannot agree on the elementary facts that attach to the man? Simple: Because each involved in the debate has pulled a different trading card from an increasingly extensive pack.

  Take the question of Trump’s involvement in the recent bill that provided $60 billion in military aid to Ukraine. There, the plain details are these: Rather than emphatically oppose further funding for Ukraine, Donald Trump submitted that “Ukrainian survival and strength . . . is also important to us”; rather than attempt to sink it behind the scenes, Trump contrived the idea that the aid should be cast as a “loan” — an idea that was adopted, and that proved crucial to its passage; rather than criticize Speaker Mike Johnson for his role in shepherding the package through the House, Trump said publicly that Johnson is a “good person” and “a good man,” who is “trying very hard.” Given his previous rhetoric, it is unclear precisely why Trump did and said these things, but do and say them he most decidedly, indisputably, unequivocally did.

  Or, at least, the real Donald Trump mostly decidedly, indisputably, unequivocally did. The fictionalized versions of Trump did whatever those writing about him needed him to do. Thus far, two fabricated variations of the man have emerged. One, as contrived by his enemies, fought desperately against more help for Ukraine. The other, as contrived by his fans, did nothing worthy of critique. And never the twain shall meet.

  CCWC notes, amusingly, that a Bill Kristol commentary on Trump "made no attempt to hide that it had been written backwards from its foreordained conclusion". I read a lot of stuff like that, the light only slowly dawning on me that I've been wasting my time.

• Getting back to phoniness… Yes, I used to call this Sunday feature "The Phony Campaign". But now phoniness is the water we goldfish swim in, so it's not so much a revelation any more.

  But here's a WSJ commentary of a pol who vanished from our radar last month. Kenneth L. Khachigian wonders: What Ever Happened to Gavin Newsom?

  ‘Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?” If Simon & Garfunkel were political pundits they might ask: Where have you gone, Gavin Newsom? When Joe Biden’s stumbling, mumbling fortunes seemed to slip away, the left crowned Mr. Newsom as the obvious heir to the throne. It was near impossible to click on a link or touch the remote without seeing him romp across America, preaching California’s acceptance of abortion or flying off to China to shake hands with Xi Jinping.

  But Mr. Newsom never knew where to draw the line on primping. When he hired a portrait photographer to accompany him to China and take pictures of him at the Great Wall, even the left-leaning Politico magazine couldn’t refrain from lampooning his portrait, as he attempted to look presidential at a faux Asian summit.

  The staged visit exposed the governor’s most fatal political flaw—his lack of authenticity. That phony factor is one he can’t escape and was summarized in a recent exposé by the nonprofit news organization CalMatters: “Governor Newsom has long touted his baseball career, including that he played at Santa Clara University. But he was never on the roster, among other misperceptions of his accomplishments. Newsom hasn’t corrected his record.”

  And, given the competition, why should he?

Recently on the book blog:

You can just call me the Mary Poppins of disinformation 💁🏻‍♀️ https://t.co/eGV9lpctYn pic.twitter.com/WVQFA2bPmq

— Nina Jankowicz (@wiczipedia) February 17, 2021

Robby Soave is among those noticing: Nina Jankowicz, Disinformation Czar, Is Back in Action.

The American Sunlight Project has a mission page that includes "three areas" on which they promise to "focus" their activities:

Alliterative! The mark of serious Effort!

But they haven't done any of that as yet. Their "Welcome" page is (as expected) full of Nina's self-promotion, dubious claims about the past, partisan gripes about the present (extremists!), and apocalyptic visions of the future. And there's the Project's "Letter to Congress" which is actually addressed to three GOP Congresscritters (Jordan, Comer, Bishop) from Nina and "Co-founder and Chief Communications Officer" but also (according to the Google search page) a movie actor. It's an insult-filled demand that the relevant congressional committees release "unedited transcripts and video recordings" of interviews and depositions. Uh, fine.

I strongly suspect George Soros is heavily funding the American Sunlight Project. Sunlight does not extend that far, though: according to the NYT story, it's a 501(c)(3) organization and "does not have to disclose its donors, which Ms. Jankowicz declined to do".

Previous Pun Salad mentions of Ms. Jankowicz: here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here here, and here. She really was the gift that kept on giving, and I'm glad she's trying again.

Also of note:

• But speaking of overrated… (and we were) George Will takes a look and likes (some of) what he sees: The leakage of universities’ prestige amid protests is most welcome.

  Do not emulate the Chicago politician who said he would not “cast asparagus” at opponents. Do cast aspersions at “elite” (just a synonym for “expensive”) institutions of what is still called, despite an ocean of contrary evidence, higher (than what?) education.

  Parents paying $89,000 for a child’s year at Columbia University might be nonplussed about the university’s explanation of its recourse to remote learning: “Safety is our highest priority.” Clearly education is not.

  Otherwise, the university, instead of flinching from firm measures to make the campus conducive to learning, would have expelled all students participating in the antisemitic encampment that panicked Columbia into prioritizing “safety.” Imagine how stern the institutional responses would be, nationwide, if the antisemitic and anti-American disruptors of education were violating really important norms by, say, using inappropriate pronouns.

  You will want to read to the very end, because the three last words in GFW's column are:

  … emotional support rabbit.

NHJournal has the video you won't see on the local TV news:

Yes, the enthusiastic (but small) crowd enjoyed mindlessly repeating the catchy chant: “It is right to rebel / U.S., Israel, go to hell!”

It's part of Michael Graham's report: 'U.S., Israel, Go to Hell!': Pro-Palestine Activists Bring Campus Protests to UNH.

Regrettably, Graham doesn't identify the UNH facule.

The protester's demands: an "immediate ceasefire", of course, a demand made only of Israel. Nothing about hostages.

The headline on the WMUR report linked above is:

Protesters demand University of New Hampshire divest from Israel-based companies

But laater in the same story:

[Protesters} are calling for leadership at UNH to divest from companies that support Israel.

WMUR, those are two different things. But, fortunately, UNH is likely to do neither.

In related news, Jeff Maurer asks us: We're All Noticing the Hypocrisy, Right?.

I was previously unaware that episodes of Baywatch ended like that. I'm pretty sure I never watched one the whole way through.

But, reader, be aware that Maurer's next paragraph begins: "Meanwhile, right-wingers have gone the other way." We've seen that here in New Hampshire recently.

Also of note:

• What could go wrong? Plenty. Joe Lancaster notes some busy regulatory bee-buzzing: FCC Set To Reinstate Net Neutrality Rules That Seem More Unnecessary Than Ever.

  Of all the modern technological advances, the internet is certainly one of the most impressive. For most consumers, it went from an inscrutable concept to a ubiquitous presence within a quarter of a century.

  We owe much of that explosive growth to the freedom and openness that early internet adopters enjoyed thanks to minimal government regulation.

  This week, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will likely reinstate net neutrality rules to promote fairness in internet access. But these rules seem less and less necessary all the time, while threatening the very openness that built the internet in the first place.

  If we're lucky, the damage will be mostly in wasted time and resources by lawyers for the government and the affected businesses, reflected in your cable or cell bill.

• "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means." Veronique de Rugy is sick and tired, and has her own demand: Stop the 'Emergency Spending' Charade Already.

  This week, Congress moved closer to passing four separate bills with $95 billion in funding for Ukraine, Israel, Indo-Pacific allies and the domestic submarine industrial base. This funding has been debated for months, with much of it intended for wars that have been going on — and likely will continue — for a while. In other words, it's not new or surprising. Yet once again, it will be labeled "emergency spending," a tool allowing legislators to double down on their fiscal irresponsibility.

  Before I explain my objection to their behavior, I would like to make two points. The first one might be the most important: I don't want you readers to get the impression that Congress is only irresponsible when using the emergency label to spend money. Congress is irresponsible all the time. Legislators have accumulated $34 trillion in debt without any real collective thinking about how to pay for it. The deficit is at 5.6% in a time when America is at peace and the economy is growing. They have done much of this deficit spending outside of the emergency process.

  Second, there's nothing wrong with using the emergency label to pay for truly unexpected spending. When an unexpected catastrophe hits, legislators should have a way to appropriate money quickly without having to wait for the next budget to be passed. That's what, in theory, supplemental bills are for. The emergency label provides Congress with some legroom. Legislators should not have to think through where every dollar will come from while a short-term crisis is underway.

  The label is used for the worst reason: it allows Congress to avoid the spending rules it made for itself.

• An argument against interest. I'm a patron of the Portsmouth (NH) Public Library, and shell out $90/year for that since I don't live in Portsmouth. I estimate that works out to $1.00-$1.50 per checked-out book for me, a pretty good deal. So my eyebrows raised a bit by Marc Joffe's hey-kids-what-time-is-it headline at Cato: It’s Time to Take a Hard Look at Public Libraries.

  Like mom and apple pie, the public library seems so intrinsically good that it should be beyond criticism. But like any institution that consumes millions of tax dollars, public libraries should not be free from scrutiny. And the facts are that neighborhood libraries have largely outlived their usefulness and no longer provide value for the public money spent on them.

  […]

  The public library’s historical functions of lending physical books and enabling patrons to view reference materials are being made obsolete by digital technology. An increasing proportion of adults are consuming e‑books and audiobooks in addition to or instead of printed books, with younger adults more likely to use these alternative formats.

  Well, lame response: many libraries, including PPL do offer audiobooks and e-books for checkout.

  Joffe makes other arguments too. But the real argument is one Joffe doesn't make explicitly: public libraries represent a net subsidy from non-readers to readers. Which, given well-known correlations, almost certainly means an income transfer to the well-off (I include myself) from the not-quite-as-well-off.

You may have seen this elsewhere:

NOW - Biden: "Four more years. Pause." pic.twitter.com/PW1HBgaCVu

— Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) April 24, 2024

I'm old enough to remember Jonah Goldberg's classic column where he meditated on Republicans reading their stage directions. His classic example was George H. W. Bush during the 1992 campaign in Exeter, New Hampshire, where he actually uttered the three words in today's headline.

But, yeah: President Dotard doubled down on that.

There's even a TVTropes page about this malady; their lead example is from Friends, featuring Joey's clueless audition for a role:

Even more amusing, the official White House transcript transcribes "Pause" as "(inaudible)".

Also of note:

• So who had "Illegal FTC Power Grab" on their Biden impeachment bingo card? Get your dauber out. Eric Boehm notes, at Reason: Ban on Noncompete Agreements Is an Illegal Power Grab by the FTC.

  More than 30 million Americans have signed employment contracts that limit their ability to switch jobs to a competing company, and those contracts are regulated by laws in 47 states.

  The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) swept all of that aside in one fell swoop this week, as the commission voted down party lines to ban future noncompete agreements and to block the enforcement of many of those existing contracts. (The retroactive ban on noncompete agreements does not apply to senior-level employees.) Even for an agency that has sought in recent years to stretch its regulatory reach, the new FTC rule banning noncompete agreements is a stunning expansion of federal power—one that courts almost certainly will be asked to rein in.

  Banning noncompete agreements is "not only unlawful but also a blatant power grab," said Suzanne P. Clark, president and CEO of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, in a statement. "This decision sets a dangerous precedent for government micromanagement of business and can harm employers, workers, and our economy."

  "Other than that, though, it's peachy keen."

• If only Nate Silver had been around 55 years ago. I might have followed his advice:

  Just go to a state school. The premium you're paying for elite private colleges vs. the better public schools is for social clout and not the quality of the education. And that's worth a lot less now that people have figured out that elite higher ed is cringe.

  — Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) April 21, 2024

  He expands on that at his substack: Go to a state school.

  Wait, was I serious about this one? Yeah, more or less. If I were advising a friend’s son or daughter facing Decision Day, I’d tell them to pass on the Ivy League and go to a high-quality state school instead under some conditions. Let me articulate some exceptions:

  And the exceptions are amusing:

  • If the student’s identity were deeply tied up into being a Princeton Man or a Cornell Woman or whatever, then I’d think that was a little weird — but by all means I’d tell them to go, I’m not here to kink-shame.

  • I’d also tell them to go with the elite private college if (i) they had a high degree of confidence in what they wanted to do with their degree and (ii) it was in a field like law that regards the credential as particularly valuable.

  • And I’d tell them to strongly consider going if they came from an economically disadvantaged background and had been offered a golden ticket to join the elite. I’m not super familiar with the literature on the selective college wage premium, but it’s among this group of disadvantaged students where the benefits seem to be concentrated.

  I should note that neither the University of Nebraska (where I lived as a high schooler), nor the University of New Hampshire appears on that list of "high quality state schools".

• Some people forget that due process is a civil right. But not KC Johnson, so he calls it like it is: Biden’s Civil Rights Rollback.

  Last Friday, the Biden administration followed through on a promise: to roll back civil rights for college students accused of sexual misconduct. The new regulations come under Title IX, the federal law that prohibits sex discrimination in education. Set to go into effect in August, they will restore some of the worst excesses introduced when Biden was vice president under Obama.

  One of the most concerning is the return of the “single-investigator” model that was barred under Trump. This means “one administrator can act as detective, prosecutor, judge, and jury on a Title IX complaint.”

  […]

  The new rules damage due process in more ways than one:

  • Accused students will lose the right to have access to all evidence gathered in the university’s Title IX investigation;

  • They will lose the right to have a live hearing to adjudicate the claim against them;

  • They will no longer be able to have an adviser or attorney cross-examine adverse witnesses;

  • And the Biden administration has voided the basic requirement that any investigation open with a written complaint.

  It's a return to the bad old days of college star chambers.

• No current plans. Keeping up with a story we looked at on Monday, "NBC Boston" reports: Gov. Healey nixes idea to add tolls at Mass. state borders.

  Gov. Maura Healey has joined a chorus of voices pushing back against an idea floated by the secretary for the Massachusetts Department of Transportation about adding tolls at the state's borders.

  So breathe a sigh of relief, commuters. For now.

• If only Ayjay had posted this last year… Alan Jacobs on making rational choices about what books not to read:

  My own strategy for deciding what to read arises from these facts: Literary fiction in America has become a monoculture in which the writers and the editors are overwhelmingly products of the same few top-ranked universities and the same few top-ranked MFA programs — we’re still in The Program Era — and work in a moment that prizes above all else ideological uniformity. Such people tend also to live in the same tiny handful of places. And it is virtually impossible for anything really interesting, surprising, or provocative to emerge from an intellectual monoculture.

  With these facts in mind I have developed a three-strike system to help me decide whether to read contemporary fiction, with the following features:

  • The book is set in Brooklyn: Three strikes, you’re out. 
  • The author lives in Brooklyn: Three strikes, you’re out. 
  • The book is set anywhere else in New York City: Two strikes. 
  • The book is set in San Francisco: Two strikes. 
  • The book’s protagonist is a writer or artist or would-be writer or would-be artist: Two strikes. 
  • The author attended an Ivy League or Ivy-adjacent university or college: Two strikes. 
  • The book is set in Los Angeles: One strike. 
  • The author lives in San Francisco: One strike. 
  • The author has an MFA: One strike. 
  • The book is set in the present day: One strike. 

  I am not saying that any book that racks up three strikes cannot be good. I am saying that the odds against said book being good are enormous. It is vanishingly unlikely that a book that gets three strikes in my system will be worth reading, because any such book is overwhelmingly likely to reaffirm the views of its monoculture — to be a kind of comfort food for its readers. Even books as horrific as Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life — a novel I wish I had never read, and one of the key books that made me settle on this system — is comforting in the sense that we always know precisely whom we are to sympathize with and whom to hate. Daniel Mendelsohn is correct: “Yanagihara’s book sometimes feels less like a novel than like a seven-hundred-page-long pamphlet.” I would delete “sometimes.” 

  I read A Little Life last year, because it was on the New York Times Best Books of the Past 125 Years. Like Professor Jacobs, I found it to be not my cup of tea. (It gets "at least five strikes" under his system.)

I was tempted to do that, but … nah, let's see who's trying to scare their mailing list. "Read this in the next 5 days, or go to the Federal pen. Your choice."

It's FreedomWorks, as it turns out. I've said nice things about them in the past. In 2015 they were useful in quantifying then-Senator Kelly Ayotte's drift away from economic freedom. (A drift that was worse than useless in keeping her seat in the 2016 election.) I liked what their chairman at the time, Dick Armey, had to say in 2008 about some misbegotten privacy-invading legislation.

But Armey quit in disgust back in 2012. And since… meh.

Let them explain (some formatting altered):

Missing is

4. Send us some money.

Yes, of course they get around to asking for that.

So now it's off to the shredder!

Also of note:

• Further hint: if you can't spot the sucker at the table, it's you. Phil Gramm and Mike Solon take to the WSJ opinion pages to offer some fiscal guidance: Who Pays Corporate Taxes? Look in the Mirror.

  In his call for Congress to repeal the 2017 tax cuts and increase corporate tax rates, President Biden asked: “Are we going to continue with an economy where the overwhelming share of the benefits go to big corporations and the very wealthy?” Rep. Richard Neal, ranking Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee, said that extending the tax cuts will do nothing but fill “the pockets of venture capitalists and some business owners.” President Obama’s top economist, Austan Goolsbee, said that debates over who pays the corporate tax are “an argument about whether making corporations pay more income taxes would trickle down into lower workers’ wages.”

  Further on, Phil and Mike note:

  Corporate tax rates, which were the driving force behind the permanent part of the 2017 tax cuts, receive less attention than individual income-tax rates only because Americans don’t understand that corporations don’t pay taxes. A corporate entity is a “pass through” legal structure—a piece of paper in a Delaware filing cabinet. When the corporate tax rate increases, corporations try to pass the cost on to consumers. To the degree that the entire cost of the tax increase can’t be passed on to consumers, those costs are borne by employees and investors. Most economic studies conclude that 50% to 70% of a corporate tax increase not passed on in higher prices is borne by workers, while 30% to 50% is borne by investors.

  If you consume, you pay the corporate tax. If you consume and work for a corporation, you pay the corporate tax twice. If you consume, work and invest your retirement funds in corporate equities, the corporate tax rate hits you three times. Democrats call up the image of the greedy robber baron as a personification of big corporations, but when you pull back the curtain, it isn’t the wizard or the robber baron you see but yourself as a consumer, worker and pensioner.

  I'm retired, so I'm only hit on the "consume" and "invest" punching bags. The "genius" of the Biden strategy is that the plunder out of my pocket is so indirect.

• Among the many things that should not be funded by taxpayers… Michael Chapman of Cato goes after a recent target of criticism: NPR Should Not Be Subsidized by Taxpayers. But that's not all, folks:

  If NPR were private, receiving no taxpayer funds, like The Nation or NBC News, its coverage and “less diverse” audience would likely raise little concern. NPR could be as woke as it wants or as conservative as it wants. The bottom line is that there is no reason why taxpayers should be forced to fund news organizations.

  In the Cato Handbook for Policymakers (9^th Edition), scholars at the Cato Institute write, “In a society that constitutionally limits the powers of government and maximizes individual liberty, there is no justification for the forcible transfer of money from taxpayers to artists, scholars, and broadcasters. … Moreover, the power to subsidize art, scholarship, and broadcasting cannot be found within the powers enumerated and delegated to the federal government under the Constitution.”

  The same chapter says “Congress should eliminate the National Endowment for the Arts; eliminate the National Endowment for the Humanities; and defund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.” (CPB’s FY2024 operation budget is $535 million.)

  For radio and TV, “the selection process is inherently political,” reads the Cato Handbook. “Why are taxpayers in a free society compelled to support news coverage, particularly when it is inclined in a statist direction?”

  Why indeed?

• Not a replacement for "Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman". Andrew C. McCarthy is no Trump fan, but he is merciless on one of Trump's many legal nemeses: Alvin Bragg, Election Denier. An excerpt from one of his (many) articles:

  We have spent much time on the manifold flaws in Bragg’s prosecution, including:

  • A business-records-falsification indictment against Trump that Bragg, the paragon progressive prosecutor, would bring against no one but a political enemy.
  • The impropriety that Bragg, a state prosecutor, is purporting to enforce federal campaign law — without a peep of protest from the collusive Biden Justice Department, naturally — in a matter that both DOJ and the Federal Election Commission (the federal agencies with actual jurisdiction over the matter) decided not to pursue against Trump.
  • The fact that Bragg is accomplishing this by making up his own version of what federal law requires, again, without any pushback from the feds — although you can only imagine the howling we’d be hearing if this were being done to a Democrat.
  • And the fact that this criminal case, mirroring New York attorney general Letitia James’s outrageous civil fraud case against Trump, involves an alleged fraud scheme in which the state can prove no fraud victims — i.e., Trump is charged with falsifying his records with fraudulent intent, but the state is not claiming that anything or anyone, including the state itself, lost a penny.

  Any one of these infirmities — and I’ve just hit the main ones — should be enough to explode Bragg’s prosecution, to say nothing of all of them in concert. But in focusing on the trees, we miss the forest: Alvin Bragg is an election denier.

  That’s what this case is about. It is an elected progressive Democratic district attorney’s version of “stop the steal” — the fraud that Democrats claim leaves “our democracy” hanging by a thread. Don’t take my word for it. Just read the Statement of Facts, so-called, that Bragg published in conjunction with the indictment.

  The classified-document case is probably the strongest against Trump. Bragg is an enthusiastic Trump-hater with unfortunate power.

• I'm proud to be a cultural appropriator. And so is Martin Gurri, as he writes In Praise of Anglo-Saxons.

  This being an age of social justice, I want to recognize the achievements of today’s most ruthlessly marginalized and stereotyped ethnicity: the Anglo-Saxons. In film, television and the news media, the mandatory depiction of the Anglo-Saxon is either as a plutocrat or a hillbilly. The little Monopoly guy with the top hat and the monocle? He’s an Anglo-Saxon. The inbred yokel in “Deliverance” who kills anyone not married to his own sister? An Anglo-Saxon of the worst kind.

  By Anglo-Saxon I mean everyone originally from the island of Britain, including Scots, Welsh, Cornish and other assorted Celts who for centuries have roosted on the branches of the vast English tree. Let’s face it: To us non-Anglo-Saxons, from a distance, they all look alike. I also include the Scotch-Irish, who are really Scots who lived in Ireland before they left to improve their lives in Appalachia. But I most certainly do not include the actual Irish: If I were to call the Irish Anglo-Saxons, soon after, I’m certain, the Irish Republican Army would be knocking on my door.

  It’s true that the Anglo-Saxons are plutocrats and hillbillies—but they are so much more! Start with sports, the activity that best exemplifies the Anglo-Saxon ethos. Now, it is an irresistible impulse of the human animal to pick up sticks, spheres or both, and play games with them. This has been so in all continents and cultures, from the beginning of time. But only to the Anglo-Saxons did it occur to legislate a game into a sport. They accomplished this by mandating a bunch of arbitrary but unyielding rules (“three strikes and you’re out”) and the usage of words that were sometimes vaguely moralistic (“error,” “penalty”), sometimes weirdly suggestive (“love” for a tied score) and suddenly you had modern tennis, baseball, basketball, cricket, golf, hockey and football, both of the American and the lesser kind.

  It's awe-inspring, ackshually.

Recently on the book blog, one that some regular readers might find of interest:

Jeff Maurer points out the underlying context: The Groups Protesting on College Campuses Don't Think Israel Should Exist.

It's not just the Ku Klux Kollege Kids. Just last week, we mentioned the Action Alerts page of the Community Church of Durham (NH); their lead item demands "Justice for Palestine-Israel" and traces back the real problem to:

As Maurer says, this number is not arrived at by accident. The "problem", according to this Christian church, is linked to the mere existence of the Jewish state.

One more bit from Maurer:

Maurer is more charitable toward the "peace activists" than I am. Should they get their way, God forbid, Jews would be violently purged "from the river to the sea". The activists, safe in America, would shrug and smugly say: "well, I wasn't in favor of that, although Israel was asking for it"… and proceed to their next crusade.

Also of note:

• For those who think otherwise… or if you just want some rhetorical ammo to provide to those asserting otherwise: Israel Is Not Committing ‘Genocide’ in Gaza. (My last gifted NR link for this month.)

  Has Israel erred in service of its aims? Absolutely. The recent accidental killing of seven World Central Kitchen aid workers is a tragedy, and those who played a role have rightly been held accountable. But such is the reality of all war; miscalculations are made, the wrong people get killed. And that is especially true in a war against an enemy that strategically embeds itself within civilian sites for the express purpose of maximizing death tolls among its own people. Yet that hasn’t stopped widespread accusations against Israel of systematically targeting civilians. And while some may be ignorant of the relevant statutes, the Geneva Conventions and other elements of international humanitarian law are clear: The standard for the death of civilians is the word “willful.” No credible source has presented evidence of Israel’s willful targeting of Palestinian civilians.

  These distinctions matter for putting genocide charges into the context of antisemitism. The term “genocide” was coined for the specific purpose of naming the systematic, state-sponsored persecution of the Jewish people during the Holocaust. Recognition of the special nature of Jewish suffering has given way to frequent accusations that Jews seek to benefit from an exclusive claim on victimhood, that they have weaponized the Holocaust as a way to insulate Israel from all criticism and moral obligation, and have turned the Nazi genocide into a get-out-of-jail free card. This manipulation of the Holocaust and the concept of genocide is textbook antisemitism, according to the widely adopted International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition. That it is being used by, among others, deniers of the Holocaust only deepens the irony.

  The world must not ignore the sadistic pleasure taken by those charging Israel with genocide. It is an attempt to neuter Jewish trauma in order to wage political war against Israel. By positing a moral equivalency between what was done to Jews then and what the Jewish state is now doing in its defensive war against Hamas, the atrocities of the Holocaust are delegitimized, and Jews can no longer reap the supposed illicit advantages granted by their history. Indeed, the false charge of “genocide” is what has allowed critics to continue excusing Hamas’s terrorism as a justifiable act of resistance, desecrating Jewish storefronts with swastikas and slurs, or holding signs saying “Hitler would be proud” with total impunity.

  A similarly-weaponized word from Israel-haters: "apartheid".

• Not exactly "contempt" in my case, but… Louis Markos asserts at the Federalist: Contempt For Ordinary Voters Undermines Opposition To Trump.

  A complaint I hear increasingly leveled at contemporary American politicians is that they are out of touch with voters, if not downright contemptuous of them. On a number of core issues, politicians seem less concerned with pursuing policies that are deeply unpopular with ordinary Americans than with upholding the ideologies and self-interests of the ruling elite. Two dramatic examples of this political disconnect with average citizens are the refusal of urban governments to prosecute violent criminals, which has caused a surge in crime, and the White House’s tolerance of mass immigration, which threatens jobs, security, and the rule of law.

  As I survey the current political and intellectual landscape, I cannot help but see a resurgence of the arrogance and disdain of the 18th-century French revolutionaries for those they considered to be incapable of rational thought and moral behavior. But I am moving too fast. Let me slow down and give some historical background.

  Not to kvetch, but I really think the headline should be "underlies", not "undermines".

  Markos's thesis is that today's progressives echo the attitude of Diderot toward the "multitude", which he thought was shot through with "wickedness, stupidity, inhumanity, unreason, and prejudice".

  I am a mild-mannered Trump opponent myself. And I don't get all misty-eyed about the voting public; see my reports on Bryan Caplan's The Myth of the Rational Voter, Jason Brennan's Against Democracy, and Garett Jones' 10% Less Democracy.

• A KDW article outside the Dispatch paywall! So check it out: Pinching Pennies for Putin.

  There is a William F. Buckley Jr. line for every occasion, and the one for Sen. J.D. Vance is: “I won’t insult your intelligence by suggesting that you really believe what you just said.”

  Vance came to his heartland populism via an education at Yale Law School, Peter Thiel’s money, Hollywood, and the New York Times bestseller list. A venture capital man who once denounced Donald Trump as unfit for the presidency and who currently is so intimately and uncomfortably attached to Trump that it is impossible to distinguish him from a hemorrhoid, Vance has decided to be the clown prince of a very small kingdom: the realm of people who feel very strongly that the U.S. government should accommodate Vladimir Putin’s imperial project in Ukraine and beyond. Vance is not stupid, and he has seen how far a clown prince can go in Washington. He even has some reason to hope that he is 1,659 days away from being elected president of these United States after serving as Donald Trump’s vice president and riding that lame duck as far as he will waddle.

  It is difficult to feel much other than contempt for what Vance has become and pity for the way he became it. My own background is similar to his in the worst ways, and I sympathize when it comes to the temptation to say to the world, as Vance has, “Tell me what sort of man you want me to be, and I’ll pretend to be that sort of man.” I can understand it, and even forgive it. (Eventually.) But you can never trust a man who has decided to be the Tom Ripley of American politics.

  I liked Vance's book Hillbilly Elegy. Now I wonder how honest he was being there.

An amusing comment on a recent speech by Massachusetts Secretary of Transportation, Monica Tibbits-Nutt:

1) They always tell you to never say or do anything that will get you in the paper. Unfortunately for @MassDOT secretary monica tibbits-nutt, her arrogant statements last wk are going to keep her in print for days if not weeks.
2) This @bostonherald cover is an all-timer. #mapoli pic.twitter.com/js5G759wE7

— chip goines (@chipgoines) April 22, 2024

Chip Goines is not some right-winger: his Twitter blurb admits that he "turned out voters" for Ayanna Pressley's "historic 2018 campaign". His real gripe with Monica seems to be her excessive plain-talk honesty about her goals, values, and plans. Which all seem to involve getting more money from the citizenry.

Monica came to my attention via my Google LFOD news alert pointing me to this Boston Herald story: Massachusetts border tolls idea another way to 'unnecessarily' take money, New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu says.

Howie Carr is a right-winger, and is pretty gleeful: Massachusetts' Secretary of Transportation Monica Tibbits-Nutt is quite nutty.

Yes, Howie, pretty much always.

Relegated to the Memory Hole: the 'millionaires tax' Massachusetts voters OKd all the way back in… 2022. I recall the incessant TV ads in favor. It was of course billed as the "Fair Share Amendment". And it was promised to bring in "billions in yearly support for transportation and public education."

Guess what? Given Monica's demands, it really should have been dubbed the "We'll Be Back For More in a Couple Years Amendment".

Meanwhile, the Boston Globe—yes, even the Boston Globe—reports on the inevitable result of treating your citizens as targets for plunder: People are leaving Massachusetts in droves. Who are they?

In related news: Boston faces $1.5 billion shortfall from declining commercial property taxes, report warns. Covid knocked down the idea of people commuting into the city to work in office, and many did did not return.

All this punctures a big hole in the arguments New Hampshire Democrats have been making for extending MBTA commuter rail up to Manchester. Ridership projections were always too rosy, and now are even more divorced from reality.

And Monica wants your money, commuters.

Also of note:

• What "anti-Zionism" really means. Bari Weiss has a couple of examples: They Were Assaulted on Campus for Being Jews.

  For a second, imagine that black students at Columbia were taunted: Go back to Africa. Or imagine that a gay student was surrounded by homophobic protesters and hit with a stick at Yale University. Or imagine if a campus imam told Muslim students that they ought to head home for Ramadan because campus public safety could not guarantee their security.

  There would be relentless fury from our media and condemnation from our politicians.

  Just remember the righteous—and rightful—outrage over the white supremacist “Unite the Right” march in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, where neo-Nazis chanted “The Jews will not replace us.”

  This weekend at Columbia and Yale, student demonstrators did all of the above—only it was directed at Jews. They told Columbia students to “go back to Poland.” A Jewish woman at Yale was assaulted with a Palestinian flag. And an Orthodox rabbi at Columbia told students to go home for their safety.

  Bari's Free Press has both stories.

• Who's afraid of due process protections? The Biden Administration, as it turns out. Emma Camp reports: Biden's New Title IX Rules Erase Due Process Protections in Campus Sexual Assault Cases.

  On Friday, the Biden administration unveiled final Title IX regulations, nearly two years after the administration proposed dramatic changes to how colleges handle sexual assault allegations. The new rules largely mirror proposed regulations released last year and will effectively reversing Trump-era due process reforms.

  According to the final regulations, accused students will lose their right to a guaranteed live hearing with the opportunity to have a representative cross-examine their accuser. This is accompanied by a return to the "single-investigator model," which allows a single administrator to investigate and decide the outcome of a case.

  Further, under the new rules, most schools will be required to use the "preponderance of the evidence" standard, which directs administrators to find a student responsible if just 51 percent of the evidence points to their guilt. Schools are also no longer required to provide accused students with the full content of the evidence against them. Instead, universities are only bound to provide students with a description of the "relevant evidence," which may be provided "orally" rather than in writing.

  Not good. It seems we are going back to the Bad Old Days of 2011. Thirteen years ago, Joe Biden came up to the University Near Here to announce the Obama Administration's similar travesty. I reported on the visit at the time, and I was way too charitable about it. (In my defense, Biden's description of the rule changes was fuzzy and anodyne.)

• For more on that… Let me gift you a link to Madeleine Kearns' take on the topic: Biden’s Outrageous Title IX Rewrite.

  On Friday, the Department of Education announced its final Title IX regulations, broadening the definition of sex-based discrimination to include “gender identity.” This effectively prohibits all educational entities in receipt of federal funds from acknowledging biological reality when individuals dispute it. As well as undermining free speech and due-process rights, the new rule will have sweeping and disastrous consequences for women and girls, the very people Title IX was supposed to protect.

  The Biden administration is framing the final rule as a delivery of a campaign promise to better protect LGBTQ students from harassment “just because of who they are” and to restore Obama-era kangaroo courts for sexual misconduct on college campuses, which the Trump Department of Education (DOE), under Betsy DeVos, reformed to protect due-process rights and investigatory integrity.

  So: worse than 2011.

• Just say no to Jimmy Wales. Spurred by current events, Emil O. W. Kirkegaard looks at The Wikipedia fundraising scam.

  Wikipedia, and its parent organization Wikimedia, has been making the rounds on Twitter. This seems to be because Chris Rufo is attacking the new CEO of NPR (US public 'radio'), Katherine Maher. It turns out that Maher previously served as the CEO of Wikimedia. This got a lot of people looking into her behavior there, and this brought up the Wikipedia fundraising scam into the limelight. In the interest of making this information more publicly known, I provide a summary of it here as well. Many of the sources I draw on are published by minor accounts and writers, who clearly deserve a bigger audience.

  Kirkegaard has accumulated some impressive numbers, effectively debunking any claim that you need to send Wikipedia money in order to keep the server farm up and running. Instead, you'd be funding the Wikimedia Foundation. Which (in turn) heavily funds woke bullshit. Example:

  The Wikimedia Foundation defines racial equity as shifting away from US and Eurocentricity, White-male-imperialist-patriarchal supremacy, superiority, power and privilege to create an environment that is inclusive and reflects the experiences of communities of color worldwide. These modes of privilege mentioned above function as setting the dominant social, political, legal, policy-oriented, and cultural norms around the world.

  Hey, I just want to know about cannibalism in Papua New Guinea.