Pun Salad

Steven Greenhut asks a good, albeit unmusical, question: Where have the 'Don't Tread on Me' Republicans gone?

Yes, today's Eye Candy is swiped from Steven's article.

And, yes, that's the Gadsden flag snake with a MAGA hat, a ball gag, and a tight leash. A little risqué, but what are you gonna do?

And, yes, today's headline is a reference to that old Commie's song. Sorry.

Also of note:

• 

  An insult disguised as a label. Phil Magness writes on a nebulous smear at the Freeman substack: Neo/liberal?

  If you follow economic policy debates, you’ve probably heard a stream of attacks on something called “neoliberalism.” A purported ideology, neoliberalism is often said to have guided American and Western economic policy since shortly after the end of World War II. It’s also blamed for a long list of economic grievances, ranging from real events such as the 2008 Financial Crisis to exaggerated claims about the “hollowing out” of American manufacturing. Just how neoliberalism gave rise to these episodes seldom finds any coherent elaboration among users of the term. In fact, despite allegedly running the global economy for some 80 years, the ideology has almost no adherents who would willingly describe themselves as “neoliberals.” Instead, it has become a catch-all word for almost every economic complaint, while lacking any semblance of a coherent definition.

  Nobody seems to know what neoliberalism even means, except for blanket assertions that it’s blameworthy and bad. That hasn’t stopped academia from constructing an entire field of “neoliberalism studies,” consisting of tens of thousands of articles and books about the subject. Robert Lawson and I recently surveyed this literature in an attempt to understand the meaning of the concept. The results appear in our new book Neoliberal Abstracts, which presents a representative collection of 100 published and ostensibly scholarly articles about neoliberalism.

  Amazon link to the cited book on your right. It's cheap, a mere $9.95, which works out to under a dime per abstract!

  So what's the deal with the cover's cat lady? Google Lens is unhelpful. But given the clues later in the article, I assume it refers to an included abstract for the scholarly article titled Fat Cats and Porky Pooches: “Pet Obesity,” Moral Panic, and Multi-Species Possibilities, found in the journal "Society & Animals Volume 30 Issue 1 (2022)":

  Fat feline and canine bodies are increasingly medicalized in stories from veterinary journals that describe a “rising tide of pet obesity.” The construction of “obesity epidemics” and “pandemics” drive the storylines of these journals that claim fat bodies are at risk of increased pain during life and early death. Despite the authoritarian tone of the stories, few certainties and agreements exist within the literature. Yet the stories weave together with a fatphobic culture, technoscience, humanism, and neoliberalism to shape the types of choices available for “responsible pet owners” and practicing veterinarians. Laced with fatphobia, veterinary knowledges have the potential power to literally reshape the bodies of companion animals. For more accurate descriptions of reality and more diverse futures, science needs new stories that recognize and construct heterogenous [sic] ways of being and relating within and between species.

  Reader, beware: if you keep rolling your eyes like that, they are likely to fall right out of your neoliberal head.

• I, for one, miss the Tea Party days. David Harsanyi thinks Protest Culture Is Annoying and Un-American.

  Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) likes to argue that the "whole point" of protesting is to make people "uncomfortable."

  Debate. Dissent. Running highly misleading political ads on TV. These are all part of our great tradition of political discourse. In this as in so much else, the Democratic darling is incorrect. Taking to the streets to disrupt the lives of average citizens is a leftist ideal, not an American one. It's antithetical to the highest virtue of republicanism, namely minding your own business.

  But decades ago, American leftists began conflating "activism" with patriotism, and millions of young people were convinced that protesting was an expression of good citizenry. These days, caring is often given more reverence than wisdom, knowledge or achievement, let alone patriotic activities like working, getting married and raising kids.

  David is, like me, sorta libertarian. But I think he's slightly off-base here. Certainly, in that brief window of notoriety enjoyed by the Tea Party movement, we were found "annoying" by many commentators. On the other hand, we never attempted to "disrupt the lives of average citizens".

• Don't cry for him. The new-look WaPo editorial board continues to amaze and delight. Latest example: Javier Milei brings Davos back to earth. (archive.today link)

  Most world leaders attend the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, to pontificate on global affairs. Argentine President Javier Milei delivers economics lectures instead.

  Since his surprise win in December 2023, the economist-turned-president has made it his mission at Davos to make an unabashed and optimistic case for capitalism. This year was no exception. Guiding the audience through economic theories touted by economists Murray Rothbard, Thomas Sowell, Israel Kirzner and Adam Smith, Milei made the case that a capitalist system is not simply more “productive” but the “only just system” for advancing freedom.

  He speaks from experience. When he entered the Casa Rosada, inflation was running at 25 percent month-on-month. The resource-rich country had fallen into abject poverty. Milei’s relentless pursuit of free market reforms is working. He turned a fiscal deficit of 15 percent of his gross domestic product into a small fiscal surplus, slowing the inflation rate to 2.8 percent, and reducing poverty levels from nearly 60 percent to around 30 percent.

  The WaPo commenters are, predictably, freaking out. Specifically, they point to the so-called "$20 billion bailout" the US provided to Argentina last year. This is old and inaccurate news, apparently. From a few weeks back: Argentina has repaid US for currency swap deal.

• I just hope they don't notice that I attended my class reunion in Pasadena back in 2023. The California tax snoops are looking for deep, pickable pockets, as reported by the WSJ: The Hardest Part About Being a Billionaire in California: Proving You Left. (WSJ gifted link)

  A proposed billionaire tax has some of the richest Californians eyeing the exits. First they’ll have to contend with the state’s dogged tax collectors.

  California has one of the nation’s highest personal income-tax rates on high earners. It’s also home to officials who pore through phone logs, look for country-club memberships and even double-check visits to the dentist—all to figure out what really functions as home.

  This can be a tricky question. The superwealthy might have a house in the Bay Area or the Hollywood Hills, but also spend time in a Paris apartment, a Florida compound or a yacht off the coast of Greece.

  Also, California has few hard-and-fast rules on residency. Tax advisers say you’re generally considered a resident if California is your “domicile”—a true home base to which you plan to return. A person domiciled in California who spends time elsewhere is sometimes still expected to pay state income taxes.

  If Ayn Rand were still alive, this would probably motivate her to write another 1,168-page novel.