Pun Salad

• Not so much snarky as earnest. My tweet in response to our state's senior senator:

  A "major win" that just makes up for a major loss: inflation caused by your out-of-control spending.

  — Paul Sand (@punsalad) October 14, 2022

  And don't ask me about my conservatively-invested nest egg at Fidelity. Maybe I shouldn't charter that private jet to Cancun this winter after all.

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• But for serious analysis… let's look at Romina Boccia's take on the COLA increase. She maintains that Social Security’s COLA Increase Is Based on an Outdated Inflation Measure.

  Social Security just announced the biggest increase in beneficiaries’ cost‐of‐living adjustment (COLA) in 40 years: 8.7%. The trouble is, Social Security is using an outdated measure that’s driving up benefit costs. The so‐called chained CPI would protect seniors’ purchasing power while extending Social Security’s ability to provide benefits.

  Social Security benefits are indexed for inflation to protect beneficiaries from a decline in purchasing power when the prices of goods and services rise. That’s generally a good thing. The 8.7 percent COLA increase, announced today, is a direct result of the 40‐year inflation high, that’s plaguing the post‐pandemic nation. Without this increase in nominal benefits, more seniors would likely experience poverty at older ages.

  However, the index used to calculate Social Security’s cost‐of‐living adjustment needs an upgrade. CPI‑W was the name of the game back in 1975 (10 years before this author was born) when Social Security adopted automatic inflation adjustments. Since then, the measure has become outdated and riddled with measurement errors.

  Click over to a detailed discussion of CPI, CPI-W, CPI-U, C‑CPI‑U, and even CPI-E. Ms. Boccia notes that adopting a more realistic measure of inflation might delay the day the "trust fund" gets exhausted, giving legislators time to adopt a better fix. Or just give them more time to ignore the problem, as they've been doing for decades. Which seems more likely?

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• Well, that's a relief. Kat Rosenfield does her political analysis bit: Sex strikes won't win the midterms.

  American culture will sexualise anything in order to sell it to young people: cars, hamburgers, and for decades now, voting. In 1990, the awareness-raising non-profit Rock the Vote sought to bring youths to the polls with a TV spot featuring a flag-draped Madonna: “Doctor King, Malcolm X, freedom of speech is as good as sex,” she raps, before throwing open the stars ‘n’ stripes to reveal a red string bikini. The ad ended with a threat, or perhaps a promise, delivered in Madge’s trademark breathy lisp: “If you don’t vote, you’re gonna get a spanking!”

  Thirty-two years later, with the 2022 midterm elections looming, these attempts to promote civic engagement have changed their medium but not their message. Youth voter turnout is still seen as a matter of national urgency — only half of people under 30 voted in the most recent presidential election — and multiple organisations are now attempting to follow the Rock the Vote model to lure them to the polls. This brings us to a slick music video entitled “No Voting, No Vucking”, which was released last week. In it, rappers Trina and Saucy Santana narrate the story of a young black woman who matches with a promising-looking man on the dating app BLK. There’s just one, critical red flag: he doesn’t vote!

  The music video is grating to my elderly ears, and (worse) it's lascivious without being actually sexy:

  Sorry. Thought you should see for yourself. Ms. Rosenfield doubts that this will cause increased youth turnout.

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• It's the new Loyalty Oath. Theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss calls himself an anti-theist, in favor of reducing "the influence of what he regards as superstition and religious dogma in popular culture." Consider his recent WSJ op-ed to be a natural extension of that: Now Even Science Grants Must Bow to ‘Equity and Inclusion’.

  America’s largest research funder in physical sciences isn’t the National Aeronautics and Space Administration or the National Science Foundation. It’s the Energy Department’s Office of Science, which gives money to university programs throughout the country and oversees the 10 major national laboratories, from Livermore to Los Alamos.

  Its brief includes energy and research into fundamental questions: the structure of matter, the nature of the cosmos, high-energy and nuclear physics with large accelerators, materials physics with X-ray synchrotrons, fusion and advanced scientific computers. And now, social justice.

  Starting in fiscal 2023, which began Oct. 1, every proposal responding to a solicitation from the Office of Science is required to include a PIER plan, which stands for Promoting Inclusive and Equitable Research, to “describe the activities and strategies of the applicant to promote equity and inclusion as an intrinsic element to advancing scientific excellence.” In the words of the announcement, “The complexity and detail of a PIER Plan is expected to increase with the size of the research team and the number of personnel to be supported.”

  Krauss notes the Office of Science is currently headed by Asefaw Berhe, "most recently a Professor of Soil Biogeochemistry", which isn't a focus of the Office. But she did have "extensive experience working on diversity issues."

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• Maybe, maybe not. Veronique de Rugy takes a look at our likely near-term political future: Divided Government Is Good. In 2023, Bipartisanship Would Be Better..

  The upcoming midterm election has got me thinking about divided government. In normal times, the prospect of newly shared power in Washington might have me looking forward to the resulting slowdown of one party's hyperactive agenda. The Democrats who are in power are indeed pushing a fiscal and regulatory agenda that has become a serious risk to Americans' prosperity and freedom.

  But these are not normal times. Today, I don't know how confident I am in divided government. If it's going to work, Republicans must bring better ideas to the table, and both parties must be more open to bipartisanship.

  Here are just a few of my concerns. Some GOP candidates are either barely fit or altogether unfit for office. Democrats may be no better, but two wrongs don't make a right. More and more, many Republicans abandon serious thinking about policy and governing and instead focus on making Democrats' lives a living hell.

  Fun as that might be, it's no way to run a country. Can't we wangle together enough Democrats and Republicans to (for example) at long last repeal the Jones Act?

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• Don't blow it, SCOTUS. Katelynn Richardson implores Supreme Court Justices to, well, deliver some justice: SCOTUS Gets New Chance To Protect Artists From Forced Speech.

  During its new session, the Supreme Court will have a chance to reassess the Colorado law that has entangled Masterpiece Cakeshop owner Jack Phillips in a decade-long legal battle for his First Amendment rights.

  Lorie Smith, owner of the small graphic design business 303 Creative, is challenging the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act (CADA), which prohibits public accommodations from restricting services based on sexual orientation. It’s the same law that brought Phillips before the Supreme Court in 2018 for declining to make a cake for a same-sex wedding and continues to cause him legal trouble.

  Though Phillips won his 2018 case, the ruling never addressed the core question: Can the government compel artists to speak against their convictions? Instead, it narrowly found that the Colorado Commission of Civil rights demonstrated “clear and impermissible hostility” against Phillips’ beliefs and did not give his claims “neutral and respectful consideration.”

  Here's hoping Ms. Smith prevails.

The subtitle notes that James Burrows directed many episodes of Taxi, Cheers, Frasier, Friends, and Will & Grace. You can look at his IMDB page and find over a hundred more.

Including, if you care, one episode of Paul Sand in Friends and Lovers. Reader, that is a different guy. Just as well: Burrows says: "As affable as he was, Paul was not a series lead. He was too ephemeral and asexual to have the appeal a sitcom star needed at the time." And, indeed, the show sputtered to a halt after one season.

Anyway: I've had bad luck with celebrity memoirs, always looking for, and failing to find, something insightful and revealing about creative genius. This book, perhaps because it's from a guy who's mostly behind the scenes, is much better on that score. Burrows describes his directing and producing process in great detail. You will learn the major differences in the number of cameras used to film an episode. ("The Mary Tyler Moore Show": three. Friends: six.)

But mostly, Burrows tells stories, and they are pretty good, especially if you (like me) loved most of those shows. Great, hilarious scenes are described with script excerpts. Burrows praises … well, nearly everyone he's ever had dealings with: actors, producers, network honchos, you name it. (Only one exception: Rob Schneider, the SNL alum. Burrows doesn't seem to like him at all.)

And there's the time Burrows found himself at a Rita Wilson (Tom Hanks' wife) show at the Café Carlyle, sitting between Bruce Springsteen and Paul McCartney. Who were clapping and singing along to Rita's performance of "Harper Valley P.T.A."

Burrows namedrops nonstop. He occasionally drops into cliché territory ("Comeraderie and kindness are not just the right thing to do, they are the tools for success for any smart director.") But that's OK.

I suspect that this book was produced without Burrows doing much actual typing. The text has a pronounced "as told to" flavor; the cover says "with Eddy Friedfeld", so I suspect that's the guy who did the work of assembling Burrows' oral history onto the printed page.

I'll note that while I loved four out of the five sitcoms named in the subtitle, I found Will & Grace unwatchable. In fact (consulting the IMDB page), I'm not sure if I've watched more than one series he's been involved with since Friends. What changed, sitcoms or me?