Jun
2
2026

It's All About the Benjamins

[Ben as All-Star]

Reason's July issue has a dandy idea, illustrated at your right: the Founding Fathers on all-star team baseball cards. Whatever their flaws (and there were more than any modern person would like), they managed to bring about the best darn country ever.

Batting leadoff today is Eric Boehm's appreciation of the $100 bill guy: Benjamin Franklin Reminds Us To Just Do Things. Bottom line:

Near the end of his life, as Franklin sat through the Constitutional Convention of 1787, he reportedly considered another horizon. On the back of the chair occupied by George Washington as he presided over the convention, there was a carving of half a sun. "I have the happiness to know that it is a rising and not a setting sun," Franklin declared as the convention ended—or so they tell you when you visit Philadelphia's Independence Hall, where the famous chair still resides.

It is sometimes difficult to feel like America is still lit by a rising sun. But politics is not what really matters, as Franklin's life reminds us. No doubt he'd argue that there is better still to come, as long as you're willing to chase it.

I spent a few days in Philidelphia when Mrs. Salad attended a conference there. I did not make it to Independence Hall, something I now regret.

Also of note:

  • Has he dropped out yet? No? Well, then… I do live awfully close to Maine, so I'm taking an inordinate interest in their US Senate race this year. Graham Platner Is a Cultured Pearl. (WSJ gifted link)

    The problem with Graham Platner isn’t that he’s led a messy life. Many politicians, like most people, are saddled with human baggage. The problem with the Hotchkiss Oysterman is that the particular messes he’s made tell voters a larger story about what a certain type of Democratic man is really like.

    To be blunt: Mr. Platner seems like the kind of guy whose enlightened, forward-thinking views are all skin-deep. While he espouses all the fashionable left-wing pieties, underneath he’s really only a Reddit troll—misogynistic, antisemitic and a big fan of using the R-word to insult people’s intelligence.

    Mr. Platner is a veteran, and we thank him for his service, but he holds opinions about American soldiers that would make North Vietnamese actress Jane Fonda uptight. He’s a married man, but as the Journal reported this weekend, he sexts a lot with women who aren’t his wife. He claims to be an ordinary, red-blooded American male, but . . . what was that stuff about the port-a-potties?

    And there's a whole bunch of phoniness in his "blue-collar hero" shtick. RTWT, especially if you're a Maine voter.

    But you know, New Hampshire also has a US Senate race this year. NH Journal notes that a major candidate, my CongressCritter Chris Pappas, is clamming (heh) up when asked to comment about Platner. Or using a different, more alliterative metaphor: Pappas Plays Possum on Platner Problems.

    Frankly, I'd like to know the Pappas position on SCOTUS-packing proposals. Slightly more important.

  • Oh, right: they're supposed to be working for us. Romina Boccia cracks the employer whip: If Congress Wants a Raise, It Should Do Its Job.

    Congress may finally receive the inflation adjustments lawmakers have spent years blocking. But before legislators get a raise, Congress should first do its most important job: budgeting responsibly.

    A federal judge recently ruled that Congress likely violated the Constitution’s Twenty-Seventh Amendment by repeatedly canceling automatic cost-of-living adjustments for lawmakers’ pay. Since 2009, congressional salaries have remained frozen at $174,000, even as inflation steadily eroded their value by about 31 percent.

    Members fear the political backlash of voting for higher pay. But the broader issue is not whether congressional compensation should keep pace with inflation. The real problem is that Congress routinely fails to fulfill its most basic fiscal responsibilities while operating one of the largest and most indebted governments in the world — an increasingly dysfunctional enterprise.

    What would it take to get them to pay attention? I suggest heading to the Donkey Sanctuary's article on Understanding donkey behaviour

    When looking at problem behaviour, it is important to consider what benefit the behaviour provides for the donkey. Essentially, by establishing the motivation for the behaviour, the cause can be established, and by removing this cause, there will be a change in the donkey’s behaviour. When attempting to establish the causes of behaviour it is important to look at each of the areas contained in this fact-sheet and consider the possible influences of each one, on the donkey’s behaviour.

    I did not google for the equivalent elephant methods.

  • Ah, well, I wasn't planning on going anyway. Jeffrey Blehar on what should have been an obvious outcome: ‘Freedom 250’ Collapses into Another Trump Campaign Rally.

    You’ve probably heard some of the sad story already: When Donald Trump took office, he pushed aside the (admittedly moribund) bipartisan “America 250” commission formed in 2016 for his own Trump-branded “Freedom 250” commission — chaired by JD Vance and programmed from top to bottom by the administration. The big focus? A concert series throughout the summer on the Mall in D.C., climaxing in a three-day July 4 weekend spectacular.

    The problem, of course, is that Trump has been persona non grata among the artistic world for years now and is glowingly radioactive after slapping his own name onto the Kennedy Center in a mad fit of vanity.

    It’s important to realize the extent to which that one symbolic act, done in intemperate folly, permanently severed any possible link between American artists and the Trump administration. And don’t blame the artists, who know a naked attempt at PR maneuvering when they see one: By naming Washington’s primary civic performance venue after himself, Trump essentially commanded all who played there to pay tribute to him — an otherwise wildly unpopular president who would never command such respect in any other circumstance. To play at the “Trump/Kennedy Center” was to collaborate in one man’s desire to always make everything about himself at all times.

    I actually went down to the National Mall for the fireworks back in 1976. They were awe-inspiring.

  • A worse idea than court-packing? Robert F. Graboyes seems to have found one: Extraordinary Popular Vote Delusions and the Madness of NPVIC.

    The NPVIC is a shaky scheme for circumventing the Electoral College and determining presidential elections by an ill-defined, highly-manipulable, easily-contested, fatally imprecise metric called “the national popular vote” (NPV). Short-sighted people, unaware of the concept of secondary effects, believe the NPVIC would have elected Al Gore over George Bush and Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump and that it will reliably favor Democrats over Republicans in future elections. A modest number of ill-informed Republicans also naively support the NPVIC on goo-goo (good government) grounds.

    The NPVIC would, in theory, force a majority of the Electoral College to support the presidential candidate who won the NPV. It would do so by means of a jerry-built line-up of states who promise on a state-by-state basis to award their states’ electors to the NPV-winner. This plywood-and-tar-paper construct is necessary for NPV fans because there is zero chance that the Electoral College can be abolished via constitutional amendment.

    As discussed below, the NPVIC has the potential to turn every presidential election into a coast-to-coast replay of the Florida 2000 catastrophe—or worse. And Democrats who think the NPVIC would have prevented the elections of George W. Bush (2000) and Donald Trump (2016) need to study up on unintended consequences.

    You might want to bookmark Robert's article if your state's legislators start making goo-goo eyes at NPVIC.