Feb
7
2025

Any Resemblance to Pun Salad Manor is Purely Coincidental

I really should straighten up the place, though…

But I appreciate Jeff Maurer's suggestion: Will Elon's Team of Elite Math Twinks Tell Him That You Can't Close a $1.8 Trillion Budget Gap By Eliminating a $0.04 Trillion Agency? He makes light of the young males who are fine-tooth-combing the budget, calling them (in what he admits is a cheap shot) "Seal Team Sexless". Still…

And I’ll admit: I kind of get it. If I put aside my belief that none of this is legal and my longstanding conviction that all humans under 25 are only fit to spin large signs advertising sub sandwich shops, then I sort of get the appeal. I like nerds! They often do good work! In theory, nimble minds with cutting-edge tools could find things that other people would miss.

But if that’s true, then surely, inevitably, one of these geniuses MUST tell Elon that eliminating USAID doesn’t make a frosty fuck’s bit of difference to the overall budget picture. USAID’s budget in 2023 was $43 billion; the budget deficit last year was $1.8 trillion. So, if you took the entire USAID building with all its employees inside, dumped it in the Potomac, and sent every recipient of USAID money an “enjoy your AIDS” singing telegram, that would close 2.4% of the budget deficit. It would reduce overall government spending by 0.64%. Surely, one of Elon’s baby geniuses will inform him that this is not the fast track to solvency that it’s being made out to be.

Ah, but if you repeat that trick (approximately) 42 times elsewhere in the budget, you've solved the problem! Good job, twinks!

Just sayin': the Corporation for Public Broadcasting budget is based on a $535 million appropriation. That's even smaller than USAID, but it's low-hanging fruit. Chop it down!

Also of note:

  • And here's another $448 million that could go. That's the FY2025 budget request for your Federal Communications Commission, which is apparently not doing much these days except irritating Joe Lancaster. Who explains How the FCC's 'warrior for free speech' became our censor in chief.

    When Donald Trump announced the appointment of Brendan Carr to the top spot at the Federal Communications Commission, he called Carr "a warrior for Free Speech." Carr, in turn, pledged to "dismantle the censorship cartel and restore free speech rights for everyday Americans." But Carr's statements and actions both before and since taking on his new role indicate someone all too comfortable wielding government power against media companies for politically disfavored speech.

    "I think he's the most anti–free speech FCC chair that we've had, as long as I can remember," says Techdirt founder Mike Masnick. "And I think that's a little terrifying, especially as he is presented by himself, Donald Trump, and the media as being a free speech warrior….Yet, over and over again, we see that he's constantly trying to attack and suppress and punish speech."

    Fire him, close his shop, sell the office furniture.

  • A reminder of Star Trek's continuing impact on language. This WSJ editorial's headline takes it for granted that its readers are familiar with the concept of a "mind meld": A Josh Hawley-Bernie Sanders Mind Meld. Their target is legislation proposed by Josh and Bernie to "cap" credit-card interest rates at 10%.

    Remember when economists and Republicans criticized Kamala Harris for proposing price controls on groceries? Well, a cap on interest rates is a price control on credit. When you put a price control on something, you are asking for less of it. Apologies for this lesson in Econ 101, but that’s where we are with the political class these days.

    It’s true that credit-card rates have climbed over the last decade. This is what happens when inflation rises and the Federal Reserve raises interest rates in response. The average monthly annual percentage rate on new credit cards is 24.3%—meaning that someone will pay $20.25 in interest a month on a $1,000 unpaid balance.

    For a Republican, Hawley is a fountain of bad ideas. And note that Trump endorsed the cap on the campaign trail.

  • Playing the blame game. John Tierney in the NYPost is doing it. That horrible helicopter/jet crash over the Potomac? Blame FAA's woefully outdated air safety.

    The recent rash of near-collisions is the result of chronic mismanagement that has left the system with too few controllers using absurdly antiquated technology.

    The problems were obvious 20 years ago, when I visited control towers in both Canada and the United States.

    The Canadians sat in front of sleek computer screens that instantly handled tasks like transferring the oversight of a plane from one controller to another.

    The Americans were still using pieces of paper called flight strips.

    After a plane took off, the controller in charge of the local airspace had to carry that plane’s flight strip over to the desk of the controller overseeing the regional airspace.

    It felt like going back in time from a modern newsroom into a scene from “The Front Page.”

    It was bad enough to see such outdated technology in 2005.

    But they’re still using those paper flight strips in American towers, and the Federal Aviation Administration’s modernization plans have been delayed so many times that the strips aren’t due to be phased out until 2032.

    Further reading: this two-year-old Cato article referenced a 2005(!) GAO study, which (in turn) noted that flight-control duties had been successfully privatized in "Australia, Canada, Germany, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom" which "had cut costs, boosted investment in new technologies, and either maintained or increased safety".

    Hey, DOGE kids! You should check that out!

  • The Blogfather's Rose-Colored Glasses. Glenn Reynolds (at least) puts a question mark on his headline: Donald Trump, the libertarian president? But he is actually serious:

    Trump the libertarian? Yes. And how.

    Since 2016 I’ve had people ask me why I, as a libertarian, support Donald Trump. I think we’re seeing why now.

    It’s true that Trump’s instincts, particularly in his first term, weren’t especially libertarian. Oh, the claims that he was an authoritarian, possibly a Fascist, maybe even a Nazi, were obvious bullshit from the beginning. But he showed no particular enthusiasm for limited government.

    Still, by that point I saw the government apparat as deeply corrupt and dysfunctional, and dangerously close to making its position so entrenched as to be unassailable through ordinary politics. Anyone promising to shake it up looked good to me, and in 2016 Trump had the added advantage of not being Hillary Clinton. I knew what her instincts were.

    Glenn probably makes the best case possible. But (for example) the word "tariff" doesn't appear in his article.