■ We start a new Proverbial chapter today with
Proverbs 18:1
18 An unfriendly person pursues selfish ends
and against all sound judgment starts quarrels.
Yeah. It's not as if you weren't warned about Trump.
■ @kevinNR wonders
whether We
Were Young is really much of an excuse for progressives who
just now realized that Bill Clinton is a pig.
Our progressive friends have discovered their consciences on the
Clinton matter at the precise moment the Clintons ceased to be
useful instruments of political power. The Clinton camp has been
moribund for a while now, stale leftovers from the go-go 1990s, the
political equivalents of one of those AOL discs that ironic tech
bros save and use for coasters. Political necessity forced the
faction that brought Barack Obama to power — call it the New New
Left — to make common cause with the Clinton gang, but they’ve been
eager to see them off since well before the emergence of the
tangerine nightmare currently commanding their dreadful attention.
Bernie Sanders wasn’t quite enough to get the job done, but the fact
that a rotten old red with a surprising amount of rape porn on his
CV — and no formal affiliation with the Democratic party — even laid
a glove on Herself is an indicator of just how long the Clintons
overstayed their welcome. You think Elizabeth Warren is happy in
Mrs. Clinton’s shadow? She’s got problems of her own.
My best guess: people who feel a need to grasp at
ever-increasing amounts of political power just might have
psychological/sexual issues several sigma outside the mean?
It's not an infallible predictor, but I think it's time to assume
guilty until proven innocent.
■ A good article from the latest dead-trees Reason, an
interview with Emily Yoffe, has made it
out to the web: Dear
Prudence Meets Due Process. [Ms. Yoffe previously wrote an
advice column, "Dear Prudence", for Slate.] Intro:
"There is no doubt that until recently, many women's claims of sexual assault were reflexively and widely disregarded," journalist Emily Yoffe wrote in a three-part series published in September at The Atlantic. "But many of the remedies that have been pushed on campus in recent years are unjust to men, infantilize women, and ultimately undermine the legitimacy of the fight against sexual violence."
These problems, Yoffe explains, are rooted in a set of directives
from the Obama-era Department of Education, which nudged college
administrators to adopt new procedures for adjudicating sexual
assault disputes under Title IX, the federal law that prohibits sex
discrimination in higher education. While the goal of such changes
may have been to protect victims and bring perpetrators to justice,
the rules have in practice made it vastly more difficult for the
mistakenly or maliciously accused to clear their names, obtain legal
assistance, confront their accusers, or even make sense of the
specific charges against them. What's more, Yoffe shows, many of
these efforts were predicated on junk statistics and misconceptions
about how human beings cope with unpleasant experiences.
Yoffe's no knuckle-dragging troglodyte. [Unlike me.] She takes
sexual assault seriously, though, unlike "feminists" who use it as a
political weapon.
■ My state's senior senator, Democrat Jeanne Shaheen, is a reliably
partisan Democrat, but lets give her credit for taking on some
crony capitalism:
Senators
Aim to Axe Program Giving Farmers Guaranteed Profits While Sticking
Taxpayers With the Tab.
A popular federal crop insurance program—the Harvest Price Option,
or HPO—will cost taxpayers an estimated $21 billion over the next
decade in order to guarantee profits for farmers who experience crop
failures.
Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) and Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) are aiming to slash agricultural subsidies by eliminating the Option. The bill would keep traditional insurance crop programs in place.
So: yay, Jeanne. She's also good on
sugar
reform. Now if she'd only stop her silliness on
biodiesel…
■ At Cato, Vanessa Brown Calder, shakes her head in wonder at
the lack of swamp-draining in one of the most useless Cabinet
departments:
This is What “Effective” Looks Like at HUD?
Yesterday HUD Secretary Ben Carson tweeted that “The Low-Income Housing Tax Credit
[LIHTC] is one of the most effective tools we have to create
affordable housing.” And Secretary Carson’s presidential advisor
published an op-ed yesterday which lauded LIHTC as a prime
example of “the most effective and efficient use of the government’s
resources.”
That is high praise for a program known for expense, complexity, lack of oversight, and abuse. LIHTC is arguably one of the most inefficient housing subsidy programs that the federal government administers.
Why, Ben, why?
■ At the American Spectator, Jon Cassidy is a fan of neither
Richard Cordray, nor apparently Ohio voters: Cordray
Is the Sort of Nanny Ohio Loves.
An official who’s been in charge of a Democrat-created federal
office for blame, scapegoating, and extortion announced Wednesday
that he’d be stepping down at the end of the month from the Consumer
Finance Protection Bureau.
This was followed almost immediately by the news that the official, Richard Cordray, was expected to run for governor of the Ohioans, a people united by a belief that, whatever it is, it’s not their fault. The lassitude of the Ohio economy in one stat: no state spends a higher percentage of its GDP on unemployment insurance, workers compensation and government pensions than Ohio.
I'm inclined to give the benefit of the doubt to a
five-time
Jeopardy! winner, but … no, he's pretty bad.