Pun Salad

I very seldom post stuff to Facebook. But I found this kinda irresistible:

Need a headline reference? Here you go.

Also of note:

• The bull variety, I think. Jeff Maurer does his duty: Oh, Shit -- Kamala Posted Some Policies! And I Bit the Bullet and Read Them..

  To this point, the Harris campaign has been about as policy-dense as your typical Clifford the Big Red Dog book. That’s not entirely her fault; she was a last-minute replacement when her boss’ plan to slather makeup on his brain to make it look ten years younger somehow didn’t work. Some in the media have encouraged Harris to flesh out her plans, arguing that posting “SHE SO BRAT! 🥥🥥🥥” on Instagram does not constitute a policy platform. Yesterday, Harris gave in to this pedantic nitpicking and posted an issues page called “A New Way Forward”, probably because “A New Start” would have made people think of this Arrested Development joke:

  

  [Figure caption elided]

  What’s in Harris’ plan? Words, unfortunately. And words’ sinister cousin: numbers. This ensures that virtually no one will read the plan — even media folks who were hounding Harris about details will get bored around the time they encounter the phrase “long-term capital gains” (second paragraph) and instead write a story about the New Cold War between Taylor Swift and Brittney Mahomes.

  Maurer is remarkably sympathetic, noting that she's more or less consistent about posing as "moderate" as Democrats get these days.

  It doesn't hurt, in that regard, that apparently large swaths of her "issues" page were lifted directly from Joe Biden's now-defunct campaign site. Ed Morrissey comments:

  How ironic can this get? Joe Biden got plagiarized. The man who once claimed Neil Kinnock's origin story in a speech, and reportedly plagiarized his work in law school as well? Not only did Biden get plagiarized, he got plagiarized by the replacement he insisted on endorsing ... and the one who keeps promising a "new way forward" to boot. 

  Meet the new way forward, same as the old way forward, I guess.

• As Joe Biden would say, "Not a joke". The NYPost editorialists apparently got a chuckle anyway: Kamala Harris' freshly released policy ideas are a joke.

  Kamala Harris has finally posted some policy positions on an “Issues” page on her website — but they’re a joke.

  The intro, like Harris herself, uses a ton of words to say next to nothing: She plans on “building up the middle class,” creating an “Opportunity Economy where everyone has a chance to compete and a chance to succeed” and “bringing together organized labor and workers, small business owners, entrepreneurs, and American companies to create good paying jobs.”

  In the next update, she’ll surely come out in favor of apple pie, cute kittens and adorable puppies.

  And when she isn’t spewing platitudes, she’s doubling down with more pablum and outright bad ideas.

  To bring down the record-high costs of basic goods pummeling American families, she’ll “crack down on anti-competitive practices that let big corporations jack up prices,” and push through “a federal ban on corporate price gouging on food and groceries.”

  For a campaign that used "freedom" as a catchword, she's big on "cracking down" and "banning".

• But there are now nicer cars in the IRS parking lot. At Patterico's Pontifications, JVW is following the money: Democrats Spend Dollars to Recoup Dimes.

  Remember the Democrats demanding that $80 billion in additional money be allocated to the IRS over a ten-year period so that all of those super-wealthy tax-cheats can be tacked down and forced “to pay their fair share”? They got most of what they wanted in the end, and despite the Biden Administration’s claims that the money would be used for technology modernization and for “taxpayer services,” over half the money ($45.6 billion) went to “tax enforcement” (read: hiring new agents, lawyers, and bureaucrats) and another huge chunk ($25.3 billion) went to “general operations” (read: new office buildings, travel budgets, etc.).

  But hey, at least the IRS recouped tens of billions of dollars in the first couple of years, suggesting that this program will pay for itself in short order, right? Yeah, not so much:

  The IRS in February 2024 launched an initiative to pursue 125,000 high-income, high-wealth taxpayers who have not filed taxes since 2017. [. . .] In the first six months of this initiative, nearly 21,000 of these wealthy taxpayers have filed, leading to $172 million in taxes being paid.

  The IRS in the fall of 2023 launched a new initiative using Inflation Reduction Act funding to pursue high-income, high-wealth individuals who have failed to pay recognized tax debt, with dozens of senior employees assigned to these cases. This work is concentrated on taxpayers with more than $1 million in income and more than $250,000 in recognized tax debt. The IRS was previously unable to collect from these individuals due to a lack of resources. After successfully collecting $38 million from more than 175 high-income, high-wealth individuals last year, the IRS expanded this effort last fall to around 1,600 additional high-income, high-wealth individuals. Nearly 80% of these 1,600 millionaires with delinquent tax debt have now made a payment, leading to over $1.1 billion recovered. This is an additional $100 million just since July, when Treasury and IRS announced reaching the $1 billion milestone.

  So there you have it: in the first year this $80 billion “investment” over ten years has yielded gains of about $1.3 billion. Let’s say that number manages to grow at a robust 35% annually in years 2 through 10. That would only yield a net ten-year return of $76 billion, still below the money allocated for this ridiculous undertaking. And who among us expects the amount recouped to grow by 35% a year for a whole decade?

  A radically simpler tax code is not in the offing, no matter who wins.

• There's nothing wrong with Google that this won't make worse. We got our state's primary election. And a debate. And, as Elizabeth Nolan Brown notes: Google Goes On Trial (Again) Today.

  Google goes on trial today in the second of two antitrust cases brought by the federal government. This time around, the Department of Justice (DOJ) is accusing the tech giant of illegally maintaining a monopoly on digital advertising technologies.

  "Google has used anticompetitive, exclusionary, and unlawful means to eliminate or severely diminish any threat to its dominance over digital advertising technologies," the DOJ alleges in a civil lawsuit joined by eight states. It wants to force Google to divest parts of its ad tech stack, a suite of products that helps broker ad sales between website publishers and digital advertisers.

  Google contends that the government is making a mistake that will harm not just Google but website publishers and digital advertisers. "Ad buyers and sellers have a huge range of choices among ad tech providers, and they exercise those choices daily," wrote Google's Vice President of Regulatory Affairs Lee-Anne Mulholland in a September 8 blog post. "The average advertiser uses three platforms to buy ads—and can choose from hundreds of options. And the average large publisher uses six platforms to sell ads—and can choose from over 80 options."

  ENB notes that the DOJ is griping about Google's acquisition of possible competitors, but those acquisitions were given the thumbs up back when they happened. Seems iffy.

• The real voting scandal. Back when it was an issue, I thought the dark conspiracy theories about Dominion Voting Systems' machines somehow swinging the 2020 election to Joe Biden were hogwash. I still do.

  But John Hinderaker notes something much more concerning: Voter Fraud? What Voter Fraud?

  In Minnesota, our legislature has enacted laws that 1) allow illegal immigrants to get drivers’ licenses, and 2) automatically register those who get drivers’ licenses to vote. Secretary of State Steve Simon assured us that there is nothing to be alarmed about; safeguards are in place, he guaranteed, to make sure that unqualified voters don’t get ballots.

  Now, several honest (and legal) non-citizens have contacted the Republican Party to say that they received ballots in the mail after having obtained drivers’ licenses. Republicans are calling for an investigation, but Secretary of State Simon disclaims any responsibility, pointing his finger at the Department of Motor Vehicles. Of course, he was the one who told us there was no possibility of these new laws enabling unqualified persons to cast ballots.

  How many illegal ballots are cast in every election cycle? No one knows. Liberals assure us that the number is close to zero. But how could we know that? The hallmark of a successful fraud is that it is not discovered. And in most places, little effort is made to detect voter fraud, even when that is possible. Nevertheless, there are a large number of successful prosecutions of illegal voters.

  This is what I worry about, when I worry about such things: rules designed to make voting easy can be easily abused to make voting fraud easy, and also undetectable.

  That said, I'm about to go down to the American Legion hall to cast my primary ballot. Wish me not luck, but wisdom.