Pun Salad

… while reading this news story in the WSJ on Friday: Racist Text Messages About Slavery Sent to Black People in Several States

The CNN story thought it relevant to imply possible connections (emphasis added):

Children, college students and working professionals have received the mass texts from unrecognized phone numbers in the wake of the presidential election. The hate-filled rhetoric reminiscent of the country’s painful and bigoted past has been reported in at least 30 states from New York to California, and the District of Columbia.

Now, this could be exactly what it appears to be, and what some people seemingly desperately want it to be: a bigoted mastermind somehow obtaining cell phone numbers of only black people, hate-spamming them from behind an anonymous account set up from behind a VPN.

But my question is: has anyone kept track of what Jussie Smollett is up to these days?

Also of note:

• From beyond the grave, unfortunately. Dominic Pino finds the election was, in part, Milton Friedman’s Revenge.

  “Milton Friedman isn’t running the show anymore,” said then-candidate Joe Biden in early 2020, and he got elected and proved it. Never mind that Milton Friedman was never running the show — the federal government has by and large ignored his policy advice for decades. The Biden years generated takes like “The End of Friedmanomics” at the New Republic in 2021, or the retrospective “When Milton Friedman Ran the Show” from the Atlantic in 2023.

  Democrats’ economic agenda the past four years was about as anti-Friedman as possible, and they implemented it successfully. This is a key point — Democrats can’t accurately say that their agenda was not tried.

  The key tenets were government spending and regulation. The spending was to boost demand. Sometimes it was to boost demand for specific goods, such as electric vehicles or higher education. Overall economy-wide demand was boosted by massive budget deficits. Even with a growing economy, soaring stock market, and low unemployment, Biden wanted — and got — budget deficits as a share of GDP greater than those during the Great Depression.

  The Biden administration’s regulatory burden far exceeded even the Obama administration’s. According to Dan Goldbeck of the American Action Forum, at this point in Obama’s first term, final rules imposed by his administration had cost $490 billion. Final rules imposed under Biden so far have cost $1.7 trillion.

  … and much more.

  So there's something to be optimistic about on spending and regulation.

  

  Now if only someone could get Trump's attention long enough to read him Friedman's thoughts on free trade from his 1962 book Capitalism and Freedom, Amazon link at your right:

  Given that we should move to free-trade, how should we do so? The method that we have tried to adopt is reciprocal negotiation of tariff reductions with other countries. This seems to me a wrong procedure. In the first place, it ensures a slow pace. He moves fastest who moves alone. In the second place, it fosters an erroneous view of the basic problem. It makes it appear as if tariffs help the country imposing them but hurt other countries, as if when we reduce a tariff we give up something good and should get something in return in the form of a reduction in the tariffs imposed by other countries. In truth, the situation is quite different. Our tariffs hurt us as well as other countries. We would be benefited by dispensing with our tariffs even if other countries did not. We would of course be benefited even more if they reduce theirs but our benefiting does not require that they reduce tariffs. Self-interests coincide and do not conflict.

  I believe that it would be far better for us to move to free trade unilaterally, as Britain did in the 19th century when it repealed the Corn Laws. We, as they did, would experience an enormous accession of political and economic power. We are a great nation and it ill behooves us to require reciprocal benefits from China, Mexico or Europe before we reduce a tariff on products from those countries. Let us live up to our destiny and set the pace not be reluctant followers.

  It would be great if Trump could give Friedman even more revenge.

• If you don't hear screaming, you're not doing it right. Over at Reason, Veronique de Rugy has advice: How Donald Trump and Elon Musk Could Cut $2 Trillion in Spending.

  The best way to cut $2 trillion out of the budget is to ax everything the federal government does that it shouldn't be doing in the first place. It's time we rediscovered the exercise of thinking critically about government and the role it should or shouldn't play in our lives. Questions like, "Is that the role of government?" or "Should the federal government pay for that?" haven't been seriously considered in years. The muscle of fighting for first principles has atrophied among Republicans as it's no longer in style to call for small government.

  Once you ask these questions, it's obvious that most of what the government does, it shouldn't. For instance, there's a lot of spending that goes to activities that are supposed to be the states' responsibility under our federalist model of government. Thus, federal grants-in-aid to the states are the first programs I would cut. These grants assault federalism, create perverse incentives, and reduce state and local government efficiency and accountability.

  Take, for example, federal grants to state education departments. Federal aid incentivizes schools to shift their priorities to meet federal grant requirements rather than local educational needs. Schools also waste time and money complying with these complex federal requirements. Another example is federal transportation grants, which prompt states to build mass transit systems to get federal matching funds when roads might better serve their communities. There are plenty more examples.

  It's a long article, and Vero has more worthwhile ideas. Maybe Elon could put her on the team?