Pun Salad

You-know-who is dead:

Here's hoping nobody's gonna go after Trump's little dog, too.

(Sorry, that doesn't really work: he doesn't have a dog. Still…)

Also of note:

• That's a very strained parallel, Katherine. I usually agree with the small-l libertarian party line at Reason, and often link to the print edition's lead editorials from editor-in-chief, Katherine Mangu-Ward. But she lost me with her latest: What the ICE crackdown and China's one-child policy have in common. After describing the horrific Chinese policy…

  Today, China's population is shrinking, births are collapsing, and the same government that once punished pregnancy is now begging for it with subsidies, propaganda, and social pressure, all of which have so far failed to reverse the trend. Even after decades of highly directive engineering and violent enforcement, the "right" number of people remains stubbornly out of reach.

  ***

  The same category error animates today's immigration crackdowns in the United States. Population control is technocratic arrogance at its most intimate and brutal.

  The Trump administration is attempting to violently control the country's population numbers. Officials insist that there is an optimal number of people, that this number can be known in advance, and that the state is justified in taking extraordinary measures to reach it (perhaps as many as 100 million deportations). Human beings are reduced to variables in a giant math problem—too many or too few, surplus or shortage—rather than agents whose individual choices matter.

  Geez, Katherine, I'm pretty sure the primary rationale behind Trump's "immigration crackdown" is not "population control". That might be part of the argument, but it's not among the ones at the forefront.

  The comments on Katherine's editorial are much more brutal than my mild criticism. I'm sure she'll be back to form next month.

• Ah, but Reason is redeemed! Thanks to Nick Gillespie, in (heh) the Nick of time, who reminds us stupid people: It's the Spending, Stupid!

  With a few days' perspective on the State of the Union address, which grows ever closer in spirit and content to outtakes from the prophetic 2006 comedy Idiocracy, it's worth revisiting one of Milton Friedman's most enduring insights. "Keep your eye on one thing and one thing only: how much government is spending," the libertarian Nobel laureate counseled. "That's the true tax." Don't be distracted, he added, by talk about balancing budgets or cutting marginal tax rates. Focus on how much money the federal government spends each year, because that's the ultimate indicator of how much it costs.

  Friedman was talking in the late 1970s, when top marginal income-tax rates were 70 percent and debates were focused on lowering the tax burden and, by implication, government spending. Back then, deficit spending was something that mostly happened during wartime or recessions, rather than being taken for granted the way it has been since Jimmy Carter occupied the White House. If you cut the amount of money the government brought in, went the general argument, you also cut the amount of money it could spend. Friedman was emphasizing that whether spending is paid for in the moment, it is the best proxy for government involvement in everyday life. It has to be paid for eventually, either by raising taxes, reducing services, or by inflating the currency—all actions that make us subordinate to politics and politicians.

  Ah, but who's really being stupid? The politicians that keep spending money they don't have, or … could it be the people who keep electing them?

• Meanwhile, down in Connecticut… It's the usual rational discourse with which we've grown accustomed: Sign stolen, thrown across room: Hostile crowd greets TPUSA at Wesleyan University.

  The “unofficial” chapter of Wesleyan University’s Turning Point USA ended up exiting a campus student center following an encounter with a hostile crowd at which a TPUSA sign was stolen and tossed across the room.

  According to The Wesleyan Argus, the TPUSA table at the Usdan University Center lasted only about an hour as an “unidentified” student snatched and threw a sign that read “Dump Your Socialist Boyfriend.”

  Another student caught the sign and ran away with it.

  Sigh.

  Not that it matters, but Amazon reveals a lot of merch—mostly t-shirts—ordering you to

  Dump Your   (ideological/political/religious affiliation)     (romantic partner)  

  I'd prefer a "Mind Your Own Business" shirt myself. If I had had one, I could have worn it to one of my rare efforts of actual reporting at Pun Salad.

• It's the continuing enshittification of everything, I tell ya! Jonathan Turley, like me, is no prude. But he's getting pretty tired of modern discourse: I Do Solemnly Swear: How Profanity Has Taken Hold of American Politics.

  “Respectfully, f–k off.” Those words by California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s spokesperson, Izzy Gardon, summed up the current race to the bottom of American politics.

  Democrats appear in a competition of the profane where voters are now subject to a virtual carpet-bombing of f-bombs and other indecent language.

  Gardon’s response was to a standard media inquiry after Newsom’s controversial statement to a black interviewer.

  In an Atlanta event, Newsom declared: “I’m like you … I’m no better than you. I’m a 960 SAT guy … literally a 960 SAT guy. You’ve never seen me read a speech because I cannot read a speech.” It was widely denounced as racist, but Newsom insisted that he was only talking about his struggle with dyslexia.

  The spin quickly fell apart after his statement, “I’m like you … I’m no better than you,” which suggested he thought the audience in Atlanta had low scores.

  Reporters followed up to ask for proof about his disability, including his claim that “I cannot read.” The response was an f-bomb from Gardon.

  It has worn out its shock value, and is rapidly getting tiresome. Is it supposed to appeal to people? Who?

• Watch for the Wizard of Oz reference. For some reason, I never watched Tina Fey's 30 Rock sitcom. It was on in pre-TiVo days, I think. But I'm now working through it via Prime Video, and it's hilarious. Even Alec Baldwin is good. But this little ditty showed up at the end of a recently-watched episode, and see if you are not as charmed by it as I was:

Recently on the book blog: