Pun Salad

In Reason, Matt Welch has a small review of a recent biography:

Charitably, Matt doesn't mention King's fondness for left-wing tyrants. Back in 2002, Reason was far less Carole-complimentary: Who Am I?

Disclaimer 1: if Ms. King sang "He Hit Me (And It Felt Like a Kiss)" for Fidel, it doesn't seem to have been reported.

Disclaimer 2: as far as I know, Ms. King did not warble for Milosevic. And she was far from alone among celebs, as National Review pointed out back in 2008:

Disclaimer 3: I was unable to find any evidence that Ms. King crooned for Chávez either. Not that it would have been surprising.

But she brought her enthusiastic, and also obsequious, support up to Rochester, NH during the 2008 election campaign, as slavishly reported in my lousy local paper, Foster's Daily Democrat: Carole King sings praises of Obama in Rochester (archive.today link). The whole article is an embarrassment, but this is especially revealing:

Yeesh!

Also of note:

• Can someone please disable the President's Caps Lock key? Kim Strassel writes on The GOP’s Government Enablers.

  It was once a Republican article of faith—mostly because it is true—that government is the cause of most problems. Donald Trump’s GOP is finding a more politically expedient bogeyman. Welcome to the age of the Bernie Sanders-JD Vance coalition against Big Business. Say goodbye to prosperity.

  A case in point: The president this past weekend floated a solid proposal. Rather than continue to dump government subsidies into the government-created and government-micromanaged system called ObamaCare—which is failing because of, well, government—why not hand that cash to individual Americans, giving them more choice over their care? “Republicans should give money DIRECTLY to your personal HEALTH SAVINGS ACCOUNTS,” Mr. Trump wrote on Truth Social.

  It’s a smart concept, one that moves toward a free-market system in which consumers control dollars in ways that produce more transparent, portable, cost-effective and results-oriented medicine. Only the president in the same post undermined the premise by asserting that the reason to adopt his plan was to get revenge on the Democrats’ buddies in the “insurance industry,” which is “making a ‘killing’ ” while the “little guy” suffers. That is, move toward a free-market system so as to stick it to business. Work through that logic.

  That reflects Trump's demagogic mindset: you can't just have a good idea, you need an enemy to deploy it against.

  Kim goes on to describe this tactic wielded against "big pharma", meatpackers, airlines, … Someone needs to tell Republicans that they can't compete with Democrats on the anti-business tactic; they will always outbid you.

• On the LFOD watch. The Google news alert rang for Joshua Stearns' article in the Brown Political Review: Live Libertarian or Die.

  Warning: that's "Brown" as in "Brown University". The article isn't very good, other than as an example of over-the-top hatred for the Free State Project. Sample:

  Croydon, New Hampshire—a town of about 800 nestled amongst rolling hills and pristine ponds, where an 18th-century one-room schoolhouse still operates—lies just miles from American playwright Thornton Wilder’s fictional Grover’s Corners. Croydon’s idyllic atmosphere was shattered in 2022, however, when a group of ultra-libertarians, members of the Free State Project (FSP), hijacked the annual town meeting and voted to halve the town’s school budget, a cut which would have effectively abolished in-person education for Croydon students. In an amazing rally of unity, the townspeople fought back. After going on what one school board member described as a “witch-hunt” for Free Staters and calling an unprecedented second annual town meeting, the townspeople overwhelmingly voted to restore the school budget.

  Imagine if your neighbors moved to your state with a hidden agenda: to destroy it from the bottom up. It may sound like fiction, but this has been unfolding across New Hampshire for over a decade. Despite less open organizing and increased public awareness of the FSP since the events in Croydon, the project’s threat has grown to unprecedented heights. Now, operating silently through the State Legislature, the movement’s agenda is hidden in complex legislation, allowing its vision to inch ever closer to realization. Alarmingly, few seem to realize.

  Small fact check: Croydon is about 50 miles away from Peterborough, Wilder's "Our Town". I posted on Croydon back in April and July of 2022. Don't have much to add, but read for yourself, explore the links, and decide for yourself how honest Stearns is being.

  And while you're at it, here's the FSP's website. Check it out, too. Feel the "project's threat"!

  Not that it matters, but: I've lived in New Hampshire continuously since 1981, a couple decades before Jason Sorens proposed the Free State Project in 2001. Even then, I had no "hidden agenda" to "destroy" New Hampshire "from the bottom up." To be honest, that hasn't occurred to me.

• Meanwhile on Planet Reality… The Josiah Bartlett Center seems a little disappointed that we won't be first, but they wonder: Will N.H. be the second state to leave RGGI?

  Pennsylvania shocked Northeast energy policy nerds this week by withdrawing from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI). To get a state budget passed, Gov. Josh Shapiro agreed to remove Pennsylvania from the 11-state carbon cap-and-trade program, making it the first state to exit since RGGI was created in 2005.

  RGGI is supposed to reduce regional carbon emissions by first capping those emissions, then requiring certain power plant operators to buy one credit for each short ton of carbon dioxide emitted. States can use revenues from the sale of those credits to subsidize energy conservation projects or politically favored power generation.

  But of course RGGI applies in only 11 (now 10) Northeastern states, and those states, along with their neighbors, still need energy. In theory, power generation from gas or coal-fired power plants should increase in areas just outside the RGGI region as it decreases within the region.

  There's no shame in being #2, New Hampshire!