Aug
25
2026

Are You Worried About Government Privacy Intrusions?

Jim Geraghty reminds us: that cat has been out of the bag for a long time:

Continuing:

… children, together with complete financial records of income, investments, and bank accounts, and in some cases expenditures that allow one to claim deductions — charitable donations, mortgage interest, medical expenses, student-loan interest, local or state tax payments, records of adoption, higher-education enrollment, and childcare expenses, among others. Many Americans also list their direct-deposit routing and account numbers for tax refunds or payments.

So, the question is... what personal data do you fear the U.S. government having that the Internal Revenue Service doesn’t already have?

That all is a lead-in to his other stuff we probably should be more worried about: Five Non-Debt Problems That the U.S. Government Is Largely Ignoring.

Listen to the Democratic Socialists of America, and you would think the biggest problems facing the United States are the existence of billionaires, of private companies, of the U.S. Senate, of the presidency, of the Supreme Court, and of the State of Israel.

Listen to the president, and you would think the biggest problems facing the United States include the lack of a White House ballroom, vandals terrorizing the Reflecting Pool at the Lincoln Memorial, the mortgage application of Federal Reserve Board of Governors member Lisa Cook, and the lack of a paid subscription service for early access to presidential announcements.

Listen to non-DSA Democrats, and you would think the biggest problem facing the United States is President Trump.

Listen to focus groups, and you would think the biggest problems facing the United States include the construction of data centers, pollution of drinking water,* and government tracking of personal data.**

But in fact none of these rank among the biggest problems facing the United States. The biggest problems are complicated, and scary, and solving them would require making decisions that place the country’s long-term interest over individuals’ short-term interest. Read on.

A lot (but not all) has to do with birthin' babies. We're not doing that like we used to.

Also of note:

  • Still craaazy after all these years. Well, seven or so years. In the WSJ, Allysia Finley notes that AOC’s Craaazy Economic Theory Lives On. (WSJ gifted link)

    Remember modern monetary theory? This was the craaaazy economic view that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez helped popularize during Woke 1. It held that the U.S. needn’t worry about deficits because the government could print money. Politicians could spend with abandon, and if inflation rose, Congress could subdue it by raising taxes.

    Stephanie Kelton, an economist who provided the intellectual imprimatur for modern monetary theory, thanked Ms. Ocasio-Cortez for bringing this radical idea into the mainstream: “People immediately probably started googling ‘modern monetary theory’ to find out what she was referring to.”

    “The national debt is nothing to fear,” Ms. Kelton told CNN in 2019. “What should scare Americans is allowing misunderstandings and fear-mongering about the national debt to prevent us from taking bold action to deal with the urgent threat of climate change.”

    This theory was central to the left’s pitch for financing the Green New Deal, Medicare for All and other costly ambitions. Modern monetary theory must be “a larger part of our conversation,” Ms. Ocasio-Cortez said. And so it was during the pandemic, until runaway inflation came and the Federal Reserve had to raise interest rates.

    But there are worse ideas out there…

  • Longing for a simpler, stupider time. Jeff Maurer looks at a resurgence of technophobia: Who Knew Americans Secretly Yearn to be Amish? But for the really dumb idea…

    Fear of electricity ignores a few hundred years of human experience, but other people seem determined to ignore a few thousand years. Yesterday, author Paul Vigna argued in The New York Times that America might solve its debt problem by following the lead of Enmetena, a Mesopotamian king from 2400 B.C., who issued an edict that cancelled virtually all debt. Which is a hell of an argument: The Mesopotamians did it, so, logically, it must be good! Vigna is boldly moving the Overton window by floating the idea of rebooting ancient Mesopotamian policies, which, I’ll point out, included human sacrifice, slavery, arranged marriage, witch dunking, child abandonment, and the practice of trying to divine the future by examining the organs of dissected animals. But maybe defaulting on their debt was their one good idea! Though, honestly: I think the practice of looking at your debt and thinking “I’m not paying that shit” is more than 4,400 years old.

    One can only shake one's head.

  • But, you know, the debt. Kevin D. Williamson meanders a bit, but promises to discuss The Restoration of Albert II. But let's skip down to…

    “We inherited this debt bomb from the Biden administration,” J.D. Vance, vice president and knee-walking sycophant, insisted during an appearance on a Newsmax program where someone called Carl Higbie pretends to be a journalist. “American taxpayers are getting fleeced because of the very high debt charges … very high debt charges that started under the Biden administration. This is a crisis that we inherited. … The issue that we’ve had under the Biden administration and what we’re still kind of dealing with is that the debt was growing faster than American GDP.”

    Mockery has followed, though neither Vance nor Higbie has been mocked quite as much as he deserves.

    Vance, who apparently has a taste for inversion, gets it exactly upside down. The economy in fact grew more quickly than the debt did during Biden’s term in office: When Joe Biden entered office (Q1 2021), debt was 124 percent of GDP; when Biden left office (Q1 2025), debt was down to 121 percent of GDP. Joe Biden had more cause than Donald Trump has to make Vance’s kind of complaint about his successor: When Donald Trump first entered office (Q1 2017), debt was only 103 percent of GDP; by Q2 2020, debt was 133 percent of GDP, and while debt pressure eased somewhat in the COVID recovery, it was 124 percent of GDP when Trump left office. But even before the dramatic COVID spike, debt-to-GDP was headed the wrong way during the first Trump administration. And it is headed the wrong way now: Debt was 121 percent of GDP when Trump took office the second time around and is about 126 percent today according to the latest estimates. Some of those numbers can be blamed on COVID, but much of it is just the usual stupid spending and cowardly tax policy.

    Vance’s argument is, of course, dishonest: This is J.D. Vance we are talking about—of course it is dishonest. Vance is a man without integrity who serves men who hold honesty and honor in contempt, and he is nothing if not servile when it comes to his masters. But Vance’s argument is also a stupid one, which maybe also should go without saying. American pundits’ and partisans’ favorite party game is pin-the-debt-on-the-president, but the power to collect taxes, appropriate spending, and borrow money belongs to Congress, not to the president. Republican members of Congress voted for a great deal of spending while Biden was president. They had voted for a great deal of spending, and for tax cuts, during the first Trump administration, too. And then Republicans put together a gigantic—and gigantically irresponsible—spending package in the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill, for which not one single solitary Democrat in Congress cast a vote. The Trump bill added as much as $4.7 trillion to the debt through spending, through tax cuts, and, according to analysts at the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, by contributing to higher interest rates on U.S. government debt—i.e., it is one cause of those “very high debt changes” that Vance is caterwauling about.

    A long excerpt from a long, but also wonderful article. I regret to say that I've hit my gifting-link quota for the month, so let me just encourage you to subscribe. You'll want to read his transcript of a discussion had with Mojo, his 4-year-old son, which starts with Mojo asking "Do you know any Normans?"

  • She was against it before she was for it. NHJournal invites us to Meet Stefany Shaheen 2.0: 'Etch-A-Sketch' Barbie. (Ms. Shaheen is Senator Jeanne Shaheen's daughter, and she's running for the NH-01 CongressCritter seat currently occupied by Chris Pappas.)

    One month ago, Stefany Shaheen’s position on banning aid to Israel — the “Massie Amendment” — was “no comment.” While progressives like Carleigh Beriont and Christian Urrutia were declaring their support for the ban, Shaheen was pulling a Pappas. (He voted “present” on the legislation.) The standard establishment Democrat position.

    One month ago, Stefany Shaheen’s website had no mention of Medicare for All. The only mention of U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders was her support for “legislation introduced by Senator Bernie Sanders to expand Medicare to cover dental, vision, and hearing – essential care that two-thirds of seniors need.” Avoid the extremism, embrace the middle ground.

    Oh, and one month ago, Stefany Shaheen was the presumed front-runner in the Democratic primary.

    Not anymore.

    Which may explain why Shaheen is an unapologetic supporter of socialized medicine today. “I’m with Bernie Sanders and support Medicare for All,” her website now reads.

    And on Sunday’s edition of “Close Up,” she told Adam Sexton that not only does she support a ban on all military aid to Israel, but she’s always supported it.

    “I’ve been very clear from the beginning. I do not support the Massie amendment or a blank check to Netanyahu for these endless wars,” Shaheen said.

    Wait a minute. She said she was against the Massie amendment?

    Yes, she did. I checked the video. But at some point on Sunday, she realized…

    "I want to be clear about…" is Stefanese for "I totally flubbed talking about…"

  • It says a lot about the WNBA, when… what's going on in the stands is more interesting than the game. Power Line describes the latest example: Enes Gets Tossed.

    Last [Sunday] night, Enes Kanter Freedom attended a WNBA game between the Indiana Fever and the Chicago Sky. (The WNBA doesn’t use the traditional fierce animal names.) A Sky player named Natasha Cloud confronted Kanter, who was sitting near courtside:

    Kanter, who didn’t seem to do anything other than stand up, was then ejected from the game by security. It wasn’t clear whether his ejection was demanded by someone, or if so, who.

    The final score was Fever 113, Sky 90. You have to go pretty far down on the Google search results to see that, though.