Mr. Ramirez is on target, as usual:
While we're at it, here's Mark J. Perry's look at how government has made things more "affordable":
"Chart of the Century" updated through December 2025. pic.twitter.com/rOs3L869JO
— Mark J. Perry (@Mark_J_Perry) January 25, 2026
And at the WSJ this AM, Andy Kessler has words on The High Cost of ‘Affordability’. (WSJ gifted link)
With oil prices flying, you can surely hear someone screaming, “$120 to fill my Ford F-150 pickup? Who’s to blame?” The answer is government, but that won’t stop the affordability screechers from turning the volume up to 11.
They have plenty of practice. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wrote in December: “The American people want leaders who are laser-focused on making life affordable for all.” Sen. Bernie Sanders told the Majority Report in December, “ ‘Affordability’ can’t be another poll-tested slogan that politicians throw around”—as he threw around the word “affordability.”
Donald Trump said in his State of the Union address: “Now, the same people in this chamber who voted for those disasters”—like the Orwellian-named Inflation Reduction Act—“suddenly used the word ‘affordability,’ a word—they just used it because somebody gave it to them, knowing full well that they caused and created the increased prices.” Meanwhile, Mr. Trump’s tariffs increased producer prices. There’s enough affordability blame to go around.
At a Senate hearing last month, Sen. Elizabeth Warren said, “Grocery prices are up. Electricity prices are up. Healthcare prices are up. The cost of building housing is up.” Why? As the comic strip Pogo noted in 1970, “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”
Indeed.
Also of note:
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He watched the Oscars for you and me. So join me in wishing a rapid recovery to Kyle Smith, who reports the dreary news: Trump Was Everywhere on Oscar Night (WSJ gifted link)
They couldn’t stop themselves. Eleven years into the Donald Trump era, Hollywood’s leading swellebrities tried to stage a Trump-free Oscars. They failed. Again.
Showbiz types are aware that they look obsessive, neurotic, catty, partisan and, frankly, weird when they turn their awards presentations into anti-Trump diatribes. They know that bringing their politics to entertainment spectacles is like serving Castor oil at the beach barbecue. They know that their fiercely demented attitude elevates Mr. Trump from merely the most powerful person in the world to a kind of rom-com fixation. “You complete me,” they effectively tell the president every time they can’t get through a simple glad-handing party without bringing him into it.
Even host Conan O'Brien couldn't resist a crude dig. Sigh.
I still (as I type) haven't learned which flick won Best Picture. But I've figured out that Kate Hudson, the only nominee whose performance I watched, did not win.
I liked this though: Sigourney Weaver goes Ellen Ripley on Kate Hudson at the #Oscars
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On a more serious, and sadder, note. Matt Welch eulogizes Brian Doherty, historian of the libertarian movement, dead at 57.
Brian Doherty, a longtime Reason senior editor and the leading historian of the libertarian movement, was found dead Friday morning after a fall the night before in Battery Yates park along the San Francisco Bay. He was 57.
Doherty, who began working at Reason in 1994, was the author of six books, most notably the definitive 2007 study, Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement. Conservative writer Jonah Goldberg called Radicals an "extraordinary accomplishment"; libertarian economist Bryan Caplan dubbed it a "remarkable labor of love."
A quick
grepcounts 38 references to Brian's work here at Pun Salad since 2007, where I panned the NYT's drive-by review of Radicals for Capitalism (and linked to David Boaz's more lengthy evisceration). My own report on Brian's book is here.And my most recent mention of Brian's work was back in January, when he (accurately) summarized for the current print Reason: Trump 2.0, Year 1: A Libertarian Nightmare
R.I.P., sir.
![[The Blogger]](/ps/images/barred.jpg)
