Pun Salad

… as Reason reporter Christian Britschgi says, Trump is giving everyone what they want in the dumbest way possible.

You can probably provide plenty of evidence of that from memory; click over to see how many you've missed or forgotten already.

Also of note:

• OK, now I'm starting to think I'll read it. Despite Kevin D. Williamson's dismissal, George Will likes it better: Progressivism explains much of what the new book ‘Abundance’ deplores.

  Many years ago, after reconstruction of Manhattan’s West Side Highway took 35 years, Daniel Patrick Moynihan noted that the more challenging construction of the George Washington Bridge took just 39 months. Moynihan, New York’s four-term Democratic senator, lamented that whereas Americans once celebrated people who built things, “in the 1970s, civic reputation began to be acquired by people who prevented things from happening.”

  Many decades later, two center-left journalists, Ezra Klein (the New York Times) and Derek Thompson (the Atlantic), know that this problem has worsened, and that solving it is a prerequisite for reviving the Democratic Party. In their book “Abundance,” they properly applaud what Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania did when, in 2023, a tanker-truck explosion collapsed a bridge in Philadelphia’s section of Interstate 95, a crucial artery for East Coast commerce.

  If all the environmental, diversity, equity, inclusion of minority-owned firms, and other laws, rules, and procedural fetishes had been adhered to, just issuing the construction contract would have consumed 12 to 24 months. Because Shapiro shredded laws and red tape, I-95 was reopened in 12 days.

  I should point out that not all "progressives" are happy with Ezra and Derek. One of my reads, TechDirt, is pretty good on civil liberties issues. But they've gone all-in on Trump-hatred, which means they shower abuse on anyone who suggests that Trump might find some worthy targets for cuts in the drunken-sailor spending of the Biden Administration. Aid and comfort to the Orange-haired Enemy! So, according to their recent headline: Jon Stewart And Ezra Klein Help GOP Paint Infrastructure Bill Broadband Grants As A Useless Boondoggle. After making excuses, Karl Bode laments:

  Apparently thinking he was helping matters, NY Times columnist Ezra Klein recently went on Jon Stewart’s podcast to jump into this complicated policy issue and complain about the infrastructure bill. Unfortunately, when he gets to BEAD, his complaints lacked context and only help paint the entire program as an irredeemable waste:

  “This is, I want to say something because it’s very important I say this, this is the Biden administration’s process for its own bill. They wanted this to happen. This is how liberal government works now.”

  At the end of the interview Stewart is shocked to “learn” that a whole BEAD subsidy program was a complete and abject failure simply because Democrats really like bureaucracy and shot themselves in the foot for their own amusement (which isn’t true):

  “I’m speechless, honestly. It’s far worse than I could have imagined. But the fact that they amputated their own legs on this is what’s so stunning.”

  Klein and Stewart’s inference that BEAD is entirely a useless boondoggle were then picked up by numerous right wing pseudo-news outlets who further advertised the BEAD program to millions of Americans as a supposed pointless waste.

  Karl simply takes the bureaucratic skim-off of massive amounts of taxpayer dollars as a given. Need I say: read both sides, make up your own mind.

• Just a TechDirty aside. I recently read The Technological Republic, co-written by billionaire NH resident Alexander Carp, CEO of defense contractor Palantir. (Click on the image below for my report.)

  Now, Carp has self-described himself as a socialist, and he voted for both Hillary and Kamala over Trump. But he also is a patriot who wants America to be safer from bad guys who wish us ill. Which made me wonder how the TechDirt crowd felt about him. Well, Tim Cushing didn't like him at all: Palantir CEO Sure Seems Pleased His Tech Is Capable Of Getting People Killed.

  As if things weren’t terrible enough, the techbros of the world have decided the one-two punch of Donald Trump and Elon Musk will make them even richer than they already are, even if it means making the world a worse place to live… or suddenly die.

  Palantir has been on the leading edge of surveillance tech for years, making the world worse by inflicting cities with “predictive policing” and similar “advancements.” Taxpayers are stuck paying the tab for AI-assisted crunching of tainted cop data, ensuring the same old shitty, racist policing will just cost more than it did the last time around.

  I think it's fair to say Tim's mind was previously made up on this issue.

• Compare and contrast. Specifically, compare and contrast this NH Journal story with (see above) Josh Shapiro's 12-day reopening of I-95 after the Philadelphia bridge collapse: After 1,200 Days and Billions of Dollars, Biden's NH Bridge Still Needs Repairs.

  On an icy morning in November 2021, then-President Joe Biden picked a tied-arch bridge with a rusty steel-grid deck spanning the Pemigewasset River in Woodstock to tout the trillion-dollar Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act he’d just signed.

  The 86-year-old iron relic, which funnels traffic in and out of North Woodstock, had been on New Hampshire’s red list of structurally unsafe bridges since 2014 — when Biden was serving as vice president.

  Surrounded by the four Democrats in the state’s federal delegation, Biden stood at the foot of the bridge and pledged, “America is moving again, and your life is going to change for the better.”

  And now, 1,234 days later, Biden’s gone, billions of dollars have been spent, and the bridge in Woodstock is still red-listed.

  By the way, the "86-year-old iron relic" refers to the bridge, not Biden. Joe is only 82, and is not made of iron.

• Wordplay is appreciated at Pun Salad. Walter Donway looks at NIH: The $47-Billion Sacred Cow Is Scared.

  Tocsins are ringing over the Trump administration’s initial attempts to rein in the National Institutes of Health (NIH) $47 billion annual budget. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced a 25 percent reduction in staff, amounting to 20,000 job cuts across the NIH, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). Some 28 divisions will be consolidated into 15 to centralize functions related to addiction, mental health, and safety. Predicted annual savings are $1.8 billion. The administration has directed the NIH to terminate hundreds of research awards (out of some 50,000 a year), including over 100 ongoing clinical trials. Cuts have led to the suspension of programs like the NIH postbaccalaureate program.

  A March 17 New Yorker piece, “Health Hazard,” assailed potential reductions as an attack on science itself leading to the deaths of children. The protests to all appearances are universal; not one article to the contrary. We have lost the ability even to imagine an alternative. “Creative destruction,” however it might apply here, is literally inconceivable. We cry out with one voice “to arms, to arms, we are attacked”!

  The response, here, is the same as to the Administration’s broader assault on “big government”: the NIH system has become an automatic funding machine that directs tens of billions of taxpayer dollars each year to mostly the same major institutions, leading laboratories, and, in many cases, the same scientists. One happy family.

  Walter says: slash away. You remember what Einstein didn't say about insanity, right?

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