Pun Salad

Our Eye Candy du Jour is panel three from Zach Weinersmith's Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal. Appropriate, in more ways than one! By which I mean: two.

And in our "Fish Rots From the Head" Department, the WSJ editorialists bemoan An Agenda-Less GOP Congress. (WSJ gifted link)

After a quick review of other current Congressional obsessions, the WSJ sees nothing that "will change government policy in a way that enhances freedom, helps the economy, or improves the social fabric."

Which (I think) pretty much reflects the interests and preferences of the guy in the White House.

Also of note:

• They had to destroy the club in order to save it. If you kept a straight face while reading about the death spiral of the Sierra Club last week, there's another challenge for you at Jerry Coyne's site: Social Justice wrecks the Sierra Club. He has lengthy excerpts from the NYT exposé, but as a bonus he links to the Sierra Club's Equity Language Guide. It's 26 fun-filled pages. For example:

  Use caution with terms that may subtly, yet profoundly, evoke and reinforce racial stereotypes, such as “urban,” “vibrant,” and “hardworking.”

  • Instead, just say what you actually mean—and consider whether what you meant to say has embedded stereotypes that should be removed.

  OK, I get what the "urban" stereotyping might indicate racially, but "vibrant" or "hardworking"? Clueless.

• Because they are yet another check written on the bank accounts of our children and grandchildren? Jack Salmon explains Why Congress Should Let the Enhanced ACA Subsidies Expire.

  This time, there’s no shutdown to hide behind. The question before Congress is simple: Should taxpayers continue footing the bill for a pandemic-era program that primarily benefits upper-income households and insurance companies?

  The debate has been muddied by a deliberate conflation of two very different policies. The Affordable Care Act’s original premium tax credits were targeted to lower-income families—those earning up to 400% of the federal poverty level.

  The enhanced credits, by contrast, eliminated that income cap. Suddenly, households earning half a million dollars or more became eligible for taxpayer-funded subsidies. The idea was to provide temporary pandemic relief. But like most “temporary” benefits, the policy has proven politically addictive.

  Jack's bottom line (after some geeky graphs): "Extending the enhanced subsidies means endorsing a policy that has outlived its purpose, failed the efficiency test and warped the market it was meant to improve."

• Ranks right up there with failure to cast the One Ring into the Cracks of Doom. Gabe Fleisher writes on probably the most important of Wheezy Joe's failures: The Failure to Trump-Proof.

  There were also many pieces of legislation Biden could have championed to implement reforms of the executive branch with Trump’s potential revival in mind. Instead, he ignored — or actively opposed — many of them. Here are two examples: the ARTICLE ONE Act and the Presidential Ethics Reform Act.

  The ARTICLE ONE Act stands for the Assuring Robust, Thorough, and Informed Congressional Leadership is Exercised Over National Emergencies Act. It was a bipartisan bill that would have fundamentally changed national emergency law in this country. As it currently stands, a president can declare a national emergency over anything — there are 48 currently in effect, some dating back to 1979 — and Congress can pass a resolution terminating it… but that resolution is subject to a presidential veto, which means it isn’t exactly a very helpful check on presidential power. (This is precisely what happened in 2019, when Trump declared a national emergency in order to redirect Defense Department funds to build his border wall. Bipartisan majorities in both chambers of Congress approved a termination resolution, but Trump simply vetoed it.)

  The Brennan Center for Justice has catalogued 123 added powers that can be unlocked by the president when he declares a national emergency, several of which Trump has used in both his first and second terms. (He has declared nine national emergencies since January.)

  If you trust President Bone Spurs with those keys to chaos, fine. But just chant the mantra "President Ocasio-Cortez" to yourself until you change your own mind.

• At least to 60. Kevin D. Williamson has some faint praise: A Few Democrats Show They Can Count. Among the arithmetically literate pictured: my state's senators, Maggie and Jeanne. (archive.today link)

  The first thing is learning to count.

  On one level, politics is about principles and values. At another level, it is about math. The Democrats angry about the compromise that resulted in the reopening of the federal government are confused about which level they are operating on. 

  Congressional Democrats shut down the government in an attempt to extort Republicans into backing certain health care subsidies that were set to expire. Our constitutional system contains many chokepoints of different kinds—a feature, not a bug—and exploiting those is what you do, within reason, when the math is against you. Supermajority requirements empower legislative minorities, just as procedural mandates and the Bill of Rights protect minority interests outside of the legislative chamber. We do not follow strictly majoritarian conventions, nor should we: Majorities get things wrong—violently wrong, tragically wrong—all the time. That’s why the Founding Fathers so often used the word “democracy” in a monitory fashion. 

  And rightly so.