Pun Salad

And so does Don Boudreaux, who tells us What the Economics of Envy Can't Answer.

I guess I'm not surprised by the Pope, but hasn't he heard of the Tenth Commandment?

Anyway: Don proposes a number of "probing questions" to ask folks whose go-to solution to every social woe is "tax the rich". Here's one:

Maybe not a question to pose at the holiday table, but you be you.

Also of note:

• Could be a good title for a Bon Jovi song. Veronique de Rugy thinks the US is Living on Borrowed Credibility.

  New research by Zefeng Chen, Zhengyang Jiang, Hanno Lustig, Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh, and Mindy Xiaolan on three centuries of fiscal history offers a sobering lesson for today’s United States.

  The Dutch Republic, eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Britain, and the modern United States all became dominant safe-asset suppliers in their eras. In each case, investors – both domestic and global – were willing to hold more of the hegemon’s debt than its future primary surpluses could justify. The bonds of a hegemon carry a convenience yield (a premium investors pay for safety and liquidity), making them overvalued relative to their fiscal backing. The hegemon can thus run persistent fiscal gaps without immediate consequences. In fact, the overvaluation itself temporarily functions as an extra source of revenue, meaning that unfunded spending might not generate inflation in the short run. For a time, markets behave as if the government has a larger stream of future surpluses than it actually does. Until it doesn’t.

  … and when it doesn't, the history says things get ugly very quickly.

• I'll stop posting about the drug boat stuff someday. But today is not that day. Not if Jacob Sullum has anything to say about it. And he does: Boat strike commander says he had to kill 2 survivors because they were smuggling cocaine.

  If we call a cocaine smuggler an "unlawful combatant" in an "armed struggle" against the United States, the Trump administration says, it is OK to kill him, even if he is unarmed and poses no immediate threat. And according to Adm. Frank M. Bradley, who commanded the newly controversial September 2 operation that inaugurated President Donald Trump's deadly anti-drug campaign in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific, it is still OK to kill that cocaine smuggler if he ends up in the water after a missile strike on his boat, clinging to the smoking wreckage, provided you determine that he is still "in the fight."

  Bradley, who answered lawmakers' questions about that attack during closed-door briefings on Thursday that also included Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Dan Caine, knew that the initial missile strike, which killed nine people, left two survivors. But because the survivors had radioed for help from their fellow drug traffickers, The New York Times reports, Bradley ordered a second missile strike, which blew apart both men. That second strike was deemed necessary, according to unnamed "U.S. officials" interviewed by the Times, to prevent recovery of any cocaine that might have remained after the first strike.

  On its face, the second strike was a war crime. "I can't imagine anyone, no matter what the circumstance, believing it is appropriate to kill people who are clinging to a boat in the water," former Air Force lawyer Michael Schmitt, a professor emeritus at the U.S. Naval War College, told the Associated Press. "That is clearly unlawful….You can only use lethal force in circumstances where there is an imminent threat."

• But, hey, what about… Andrew C. McCarthy wonders Is Trump Following the Obama Drone Strike Model? (archive.today link)

  My friend Marc Thiessen makes some excellent points in his Washington Post column today (which I recommended to listeners of our podcast during my discussion with Rich Lowry this morning). He defends the Trump administration against war crime allegations related to the now infamous “double tap” strike that killed two alleged drug traffickers who were shipwrecked (because of the first missile strike) off the coast of Venezuela.

  Relying on David Shedd, formerly of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Marc observes that double taps are not unusual. In combat, initial strikes often do not eliminate the threat and additional strikes are necessary to destroy the targeted enemy asset. This is obviously why, as I noted on Tuesday, the Trump administration has tried to shift the focus of the second strike from the shipwrecked people (the focus of media coverage initially, to which the administration did not effectively respond) to the remnants of the ship and its cargo.

  Marc also points out that, in targeting cartels that it has designated as foreign terrorist organizations, the Trump administration is closely following the playbook of President Barack Obama […]

  Andrew notes one legalistic detail: Obama was operating under a Congressional "authorization of military force" (AUMF). Something that Trump lacks! And, for that matter, …

  You know how you know the cartels are not conducting terrorist activity? As we discussed on the podcast today, if the cartels had conducted terrorist mass-murder attacks against the United States, rather than shipping cocaine to the lucrative American market for that drug, we wouldn’t be talking about double taps and Trump’s lack of congressional authorization. If a terrorist ship was loaded with explosives and guns rather than bags of cocaine, everyone would agree that our armed forces would need to strike the target as many times as it took to destroy it. And Trump would already have congressional authorization because, as was the case after 9/11, lawmakers of both parties would be demanding to vote in favor of military force; they would enact an AUMF even if Trump didn’t ask for it.

  Which brings us to…

• Time to simply declare defeat. At Cato, Jeffrey A. Singer calls it An Incoherent Encore in a Failed Drug War.

  With Secretary of War Pete Hegseth embroiled in controversy over the extrajudicial killings of alleged drug smugglers operating a small, short-range boat off the coast of Venezuela, it’s worth examining how this all began.

  President Trump has repeatedly claimed that “narcoterrorists” are on these boats, transporting large quantities of fentanyl and other illegal drugs into the US to poison Americans, and he wants them obliterated. He asserts that each boat destroyed by the Navy with missiles saves 25,000 lives. As of this writing, 22 boats have been sunk, which amounts to 550,000 lives saved since early September—more than five times the nation’s annual overdose toll.

  First, drug smugglers do not sneak into the US, abduct random Americans, and forcibly inject them with fentanyl. They sell products to willing customers. These are voluntary commercial transactions, not acts of terrorism. If Americans did not want to buy illicit substances, traffickers would not profit from smuggling them and would quickly stop.

  Well, at least it seems to have gotten the Epstein stuff off the front pages. I guess that really did turn out to be a nothingburger.

• A lesson for all bloggers. Jeff Maurer is probably wishing he hadn't: I Have Hired A "Disabled" Columnist Who Will Probably Never Write a Column.

  I Might Be Wrong is pleased to announce a new addition to our staff: Cameron Este is our new columnist covering health and well-being. Cameron will join Ethan Coen, our Junior Assistant Film Critic, Jacob Fuzetti, an award-winning war correspondent who covers Hollywood gossip, and Paula Fox, who writes about tech issues and the naughty MILFs who will be joining her live on webcam to dine on her sopping undercarriage.

  Cameron’s credentials are impeccable: He recently graduated magna cum laude from Stanford with a double major in Journalism and Nutrition Science. Of course, I wish I had hired him after I had read Rose Horowitch’s Atlantic article about disability inflation at top universities. Horowitch’s eye-opening finding is that disability claims have skyrocketed at elite universities: The number of students claiming disability at the University of Chicago has tripled in eight years, and it’s quintupled at UC Berkeley in 15 years. Most of the “disabilities” involve lightly-scrutinized claims of sometimes-blithely-diagnosed conditions like ADHD, anxiety, and depression, and they generally require accommodations like receiving extra time on tests or being allowed to use otherwise-prohibited technology. Astoundingly, 38 percent of Stanford undergraduates this year are registered as having a disability.

  Immediately after being hired, Cameron informed me of the flotilla of maladies he possesses that require accommodation. He has ADHD, anxiety, dyslexia, autism, hypertension, a gluten allergy, shape blindness, and Stage 4 Restless Leg Syndrome. He has something called “Sarcastic Bowel Syndrome”, which is apparently when your digestive system responds to certain foods by flooding your brain with sassy put-downs that shatter your self-esteem. He has a wallet full of cards that say things like “I am having a seizure, please keep me away from sharp objects” and “I am experiencing echolocation hypersensitivity, please strangle any bats or dolphins that come near me”. I don’t know how he’s supposed to quickly find the right card in an emergency, especially since he apparently suffers from Sudden Onset Digital Paralysis, a.k.a. “finger narcolepsy”.

  I, for one, have a severe procrastination disability. You might get my Christmas cards before MLKJr's birthday, if I can manage it.