URLs du Jour

2020-01-24

  • I've seen this referred to as Liz Warren's "Joe the Plumber" moment. As described at the Free Beacon: Father Confronts Warren on Free College: The People Who Did the Right Thing Get Screwed.

    Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) is running for president promising to cancel student debt, but a father in Iowa argued this week that her policy would be unfair to people who didn't take out loans.

    "My daughter is getting out of school. I saved all my money. She doesn't have any student loans. Am I going to get any money back?" the man asked Warren after an Iowa campaign event Monday.

    "Of course not," Warren responded.

    Warren (apparently) went on to tell the man that "her policy would not disadvantage him", but of course that's (yet another) lie. If the man is a US taxpayer, guess what? He'll wind up paying for all those "forgiven" loans.

    I kinda feel sorry for the guy. As happened with Joe the Plumber, the media is probably even now researching all over his finances to make sure he doesn't have any tax liens against his property, or used a public road in his life. Such effrontery against the government dependence narrative must be dealt with harshly!


  • At Cato, Alex Nowrasteh provides one of those graph-drawing quizzes: Reduce Your Ignorance of Immigration Policy with This Quiz.

    Like most public policy issues, immigration is difficult to understand. The issue has complex effects on American society and the world at large. This difficulty doesn’t prevent most people from forming strong opinions on the topic, but unfortunately ignorance guides many of their opinions. And I don’t mean ignorance regarding the findings of peer‐​reviewed literature or what social scientists say about immigration. I mean ignorance of basic facts about immigration, such as their numbers and percentage of the population, leads to systematic incorrect estimates.

    See if you can draw, at least roughly, the historical trend of the immigration statistics Alex has chosen. Of course, you can argue that he's cherry-picked the statistics that bolster his case, which is generally pro-immigration.

    Confession: I did … poorly.


  • At National Review, Kevin D. Williamson thinks The Denver Post Has a Personnel Problem.

    The Denver Post has fired the wrong person. It should can its incompetent opinion editor, Megan Schrader.

    The story (told by our Madeleine Kearns here) is this: Jon Caldara of the Denver-based Independence Institute had long written a weekly column for the Denver Post, but was fired over taking an objectionable view on a trans issue — an issue of transparency. In a column arguing for greater openness in public affairs, he excoriated the Colorado legislature for avoiding the legally required referendum on a new state tax by repackaging it as a “fee” — and then prohibiting hospitals from listing the fee on patients’ bills. On the same theme, he criticized the state’s educational authorities for imposing a speech code forbidding speech considered “stigmatizing” by the self-appointed tribunes of the various sexual tribes. “In case you hadn’t noticed,” he wrote, “just about everything is stigmatizing to the easily triggered, perpetually offended.” Continuing on his theme of transparency, he also complained that the schools were not doing enough to make parents aware of the contents of their curricula.

    And so Megan Schrader of the Denver Post gave Jon Caldara the shoe.

    No longer will the mellow of Denver Post readers be harshed by contrary opinions!

    Of course, that's not exactly the point. Readers don't have to read Caldara; they're worried that other people might read Caldara. That has to be disallowed.


  • Sam Gurwitt writes for the Connecticut-based New Haven Independent about a local man up coming up here to New Hampshire to tell us how to vote: Dyed-In-Wool Socialist Leads Biden Trek. It's long. But:

    “There’s no seatbelt law in New Hampshire,” Faltus said, glancing at his passenger. But “you can wear it,” he added. His own seatbelt bounced loosely next to his seat. “That’s our motto up here. Live free or die. It’s not just a motto; it’s a way of life.”

    "Faltus" is Keene's Gene Faltus, who's driving the Nutmeggers around. He's got terminal cancer, so I imagine he's not that concerned with risk mitigation.


  • Reason's Liz Wolfe looks at the latest quote from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: ‘No One Ever Makes a Billion Dollars. You Take a Billion Dollars.’.

    What is the correct reward (to borrow Ocasio-Cortez's framing) for the person who creates something that millions of people want badly enough to pay for it? Does that reward scale up based on the number of paying users? Should it be decided democratically (and who should we trust to make such a call)? Would the reward scale for entrepreneurial success be adjustable for inflation? What about the entrepreneur who invests his allotted reward? What about the entrepreneurs who lose money?

    The process of determining by fiat who gets what sounds like it might be more difficult than Ocasio-Cortez implies. Luckily, markets do that for us.

    AOC graduated from BU with a degree in international relations and economics; maybe BU should lose its accreditation?