Pun Salad

The 2016 presidential election was so notable, among other reasons, because it pitted the two least-liked major-party nominees in modern political history against each other.

In an average of the five final high-quality polls of 2016, 41.4 percent of voters had a favorable opinion of Hillary Clinton, and 37.4 percent felt similarly about Donald Trump. That was about 10 points below the candidates in the rancorous 2012 election and about 5 points worse than Trump and President Biden in the historically heinous 2020 contest. 

Well, if you thought 2016 was a race to the bottom, 2024 is shaping up to be a journey to the center of the earth. 

The most recent NBC News poll […] has gotten a lot of attention for its finding that Biden has reached the lowest job approval rating of his term at 40 percent. As one would expect, Biden’s poor showing was driven by voter concerns over rising prices and the economy in general. But the poll also dashes Democratic hopes that Biden would get a boost from the mostly united response of Americans in opposition to Russia’s effort to conquer Ukraine. 

President Joe Biden got elected in part by portraying himself as a moderate, rejecting calls for a wealth tax by his primary campaign rivals, Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.) and Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.).

Now that Biden has made it to the White House, though, he just won't drop the idea, even though, like many of his tax-and-spend plans, he can't manage to get it through the Democrat-controlled Congress.

Biden first floated what I called the "Biden-Wyden wealth tax," after Sen. Ron Wyden (D–Ore.), the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, back in October 2021. It went nowhere, thanks in part to the dynamic duo of Sens. Joe Manchin (D–W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D–Ariz.), who deserve credit for saving Biden from his party's worst policy ideas. It was too much even for Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D–Calif.), who, The Washington Post reports, privately derided the Biden-Wyden wealth tax as a publicity stunt.

With inflation at a 40-year high and March approaching the highest one-month gas price increase on record, this would be a strange moment for legislators to purposefully inflate public works costs for taxpayers. But that could happen, started by a Senate vote this week.

Senate Bill 438 would raise costs on New Hampshire taxpayers for the sole purpose of protecting jobs in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio, Illinois, Indiana and New York. It has 14 co-sponsors, 58% of the Senate.

The bill would require all state-administered public works projects of $1 million or more to use American-made steel. Similar bills are being pushed by the steel industry in state legislatures around the country. It is a classic example of protectionism masquerading as patriotism.

Of all the potential fixes for the climate crisis, none has captured hearts and minds quite like tree planting. It’s a goal that seemingly everyone can agree on: Scientists, politicians, even billionaires are putting their heft behind efforts to green the land with new forests that will capture carbon and—hopefully—lock it away in trunks and soil for decades.

But no climate fix is ever that simple. Multiple studies have found that tree-planting campaigns don’t always deliver the benefits they promise. If newly planted forests aren’t properly cared for and monitored, the trees can die and any carbon they stored will be released back into the atmosphere. Sometimes there aren’t enough seedlings for these programs in the first place. The mass enthusiasm for tree-planting programs has sparked a partial backlash, with scientists arguing that planting trees is important, sure, but we shouldn’t kid ourselves that it’s a silver bullet for the vast challenges of the climate crisis.

Other scientists point to a different problem with mass tree-planting efforts: the trees themselves. What if existing trees just aren’t good enough at storing carbon? If scientists could find a way to increase trees’ carbon-sucking potential, we’d be unlocking more cost-effective carbon capture with every tree planted. A better tree could be what we've been waiting for. We just have to make it.