Pun Salad

Via Daniel J. Mitchell, an easy-to-understand visualization of government sending programs:

That's from a Cato Policy Analysis from Chris Edwards and Ryan Bourne titled, aptly enough, Federal Government Spending Is a Leaky Bucket. From the introduction:

So check it out, if your blood pressure is safely under control.

In the past, I've called this the "D.C. Shuffle". It's a dance move often accompanied by the spenders claiming they have done you a great favor, taxpayer.

And I've noticed that the biggest advocates of government spending often deride free-market economics as "trickle-down". Look at that diagram; doesn't this deserve the "trickle-down" epithet?

Also of note:

• Whom the gods would disappoint they first make greedy. Veronique de Rugy nots a truism: From London's Tennis Courts to California, Aggressive Taxes Always Disappoint. If you don't follow professional tennis, this might be news to you (as it was to me):

  Last week, nearly every elite men's tennis player skipped one of London's marquee tournaments. Only one of the world's top 10 showed up at Queen's Club, the traditional Wimbledon warmup; stars including Alexander Zverev, Daniil Medvedev, Taylor Fritz and Ben Shelton were playing 300 miles away in Halle, Germany. A culprit was likely Britain's tax code, which doesn't stop at taxing prize money earned on British soil.

  It also taxes a slice of a player's global endorsement income, prorated by how many days of the year they happen to spend in the UK. Fail to advance far enough in the tournament, and the tax bill on your sponsorship deals can exceed your payout. So, the players who get to choose where they compete are now choosing somewhere else.

  "(I)t's not about the money for playing," retired superstar Rafael Nadal once explained. "They take from the sponsors. ... This is very difficult. I am playing in the UK and losing money."

  File this story under "how people dodge taxes by leaving." Evidence for the phenomenon was piling up long before California billionaires began their high-profile relocations to Nevada and Florida ahead of a proposed wealth tax on the ballot this November. And it's not the only reason these taxes disappoint.

  So Atlas is not only shrugging, he's not playing pro tennis either. Vero notes the wannabe plunderers are trying to come up with schemes that make mobility and refusal more difficult.

• If you want me, I'll be over in Tomorrowland. Peter Suderman provides his observations of The DSA and the Democrats' retreat into economic fantasyland. Focusing on a probable CongressCritter come January 2027:

  Of the trio of candidates who swept to victory in New York this week with the backing of Mayor Zohran Mamdani—all of whom are or have been associated with the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA)—none has generated more attention than Darializa Avila Chevalier.

  Chevalier, who has never held office before, is a 32-year-old community organizer who this week won a Democratic primary in New York against incumbent Adriano Espaillat. Like many DSA-affiliated up-and-comers, Chevalier has a long history of incendiary social media posts. As Reason's Liz Wolfe noted yesterday, she's called former President Joe Biden a "rapist" and a "war criminal." She once posted "fuck Kamala Harris." Remember, she just won a Democratic primary.

  She also described the United States as a "fucking disgrace," though it's apparently not quite so disgraceful that she doesn't want to take the title and salary of U.S. congressional representative. As center-left writer Jeff Maurer wrote, it will be extraordinarily easy for Republicans to portray her as a radical, anti-America lunatic "because she is a radical, anti-America lunatic."

  But Chevalier is not just an unusually unhinged, radically anti-American social media leftist; she's also a committed economic socialist who supports creating a four-day, 32-hour work week with no pay reduction, free government-sponsored childcare, free pre-kindergarten, Medicare for All, and a federal rent control system, presumably because rent regulations have worked so well in New York. Somewhat confusingly, she also supports both a universal basic income and a federal jobs guarantee, which raises the question: Why would you need a federally guaranteed job if you have a federally guaranteed income?

  In any case, after reading several academic studies, conversing with some economists and pollsters, and trying to assess her policy agenda neutrally, I have concluded that she is, in technical terms, cuckoo bananas.

  Cuckoo bananas? Since when has that been a disqualifier for political office?

• I envision a remake of "The Odd Couple". The WSJ editorialists celebrate A Roundup Supreme Court Victory. (WSJ gifted link)

  Mass torts spread like weeds and may be even harder to stop. The good news is that a 7-2 Supreme Court majority on Thursday eradicated one major scourge by ruling that federal law pre-empts most state claims involving the pesticide Roundup (Monsanto v. Durnell).

  Plaintiff attorneys have filed thousands of lawsuits in state courts against Bayer, which owns Monsanto, claiming that Roundup’s main ingredient glyphosate gave them cancer. They also say Bayer should have warned about the alleged risk. But as Justice Brett Kavanaugh explains in the majority opinion, such claims are expressly pre-empted by the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (Fifra).

  Shorn of all the legal analysis, the WSJ notes the bullet this decision dodges: "The real plaintiff goal is to loot Bayer, no matter the plain letter of the law."

  But what I really wanted to point out: the dissenters were Ketanji Brown Jackson (I expected that) and … wait a minute … Neil Gorsuch?!

  That's an odd couple, indeed.

• Almost needless to say, but I'm saying it anyway. Jim Geraghty is being sarcastic. Say, I'm Starting to Think These Iranian Mullahs Might Not Be Trustworthy.

  In perhaps the least surprising news ever, Iran is breaking the promises it made in the memorandum of understanding.

  Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps attacked a Singapore-flagged cargo ship Thursday in the Strait of Hormuz, according to two senior U.S. officials, testing the deal signed last week by the U.S. and Iran to end the fighting and reopen the vital shipping lane.

  The attack, which damaged the ship’s bridge but left no casualties, according to U.K. Maritime Trade Operations, took place near the coast of Oman hours after the Iranian paramilitary’s navy warned ships not to use routes through the waterway that the regime hadn’t sanctioned.

  When you write that the memorandum of understanding is a terrible deal, you get told by fans of this administration that you’re rushing to judgment, that it is far too early to come to that conclusion, and, just wait, the president and vice president know what they are doing and everything will work out just fine.

  No, the deal is not getting better with time.

  And don't hold your breath waiting for that four-dimensional chess stuff to manifest itself.