URLs du Jour

2021-05-02

  • Always Bet Against Investment Fads. Remy offers up a catchy rap about Dog Money!.

    I don't like rap (I'm old) and would no sooner buy more than a token amount of cryptocurrency than I would buy tulip futures on margin. Still, it's funny and I wouldn't bet a lot against an upcoming currency crisis.

    Oh, wait, I am betting a lot against an upcoming currency crisis. Shoot.


  • Something You Won't Hear From The NYT Or WaPo. Or… practically any news outlet not named the Wall Street Journal or Fox. James R. Harrigan and Antony Davies translate into normal English: When Politicians Say Fair Tax, They Only Mean More Tax.

    Politicians never seem to have much trouble telling us they want to raise taxes. It seems to come as naturally to them as breathing does to the rest of us. They do their level best to keep the spotlight on “the rich,” of course, who they say must “pay their fair share.” But what do politicians hardly ever say? They hardly ever say who “the rich” are. And when they do, they usually point to multibillionaires while meaning people with considerably less. What do they also never say? They never say what a “fair share” is. It really just means “more.” Who would’ve thought.

    This leaves a problem for the class warfare class, because it is these same rich people who fund their political campaigns. And as if that weren’t bad enough, most Congressmen and Senators are rich themselves. The two who yell the loudest about taxing the rich, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, are worth $2.5 million and $12 million respectively. What are the odds that these two, and all their cronies in Congress, would bite the hands that feed them? What are the odds they would bite their own hands?

    Well, we'll see. Harrigan and Davies provide a version of this graph (I got this from Cato, click to go there):

    [Federal Tax Changes Since 1979]

    As always: show me where those lines would have to go to make everything "fair".


  • That's Their Job. Andrew C. McCarthy (NRPLUS) makes a point that seems pretty obviously true: Race Demagogues Are Poisoning Our Politics.

    Senator Tim Scott is entirely right: “America is not a racist country.” But America has a serious racial problem. Not a racism problem, a racial problem.

    We have a party in power whose strategy for remaining in power is to divide the country along racial lines. Democrats calculate that urban-centered racialist tribalism, amplified by media and pop-culture allies and underwritten by cowed corporations, can cast mainstream America as a deplorable bastion of white supremacism.

    The Republicans, the party out of power, generally lack Senator Scott’s confidence and tact in making the counter-case.

    The Department of Justice is a key to the Democrats’ strategy. The Obama-Biden administration politicized the law-enforcement and intelligence apparatus of our government, peddling with relish the progressive portrayal of an indelibly racist America. They’re ba-ack.

    `

    It's pretty toxic when politicians (and "educators") depend on fanning the flames of racial and ethnic resentment to keep their phony-baloney jobs.


  • And They Keep Making Things Worse. Coincidence? I Think Not! Matt Welch writes on the latest Newspeak "adjustment" to our language: The Equity Mess.

    Two days before the 2020 election, Kamala Harris could have picked from any number of campaign themes. The number of COVID-19 cases had doubled over the previous month. At home, violent crime was up; abroad, negotiations with the Taliban over U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan had bogged down. And ominously, Harris' opponent, Vice President Mike Pence, was refusing to state clearly whether Donald Trump would accept the results of the election.

    Instead of any of those closing arguments, Harris and her campaign team chose to emphasize, in a tweet, speech, and animated video, a single portentous word that in a remarkably short time has escaped the laboratory of academe, spread through newsrooms and human resources departments, and now lodged itself firmly inside the White House: equity.

    "There's a big difference between equality and equity," a slightly bemused, slightly exasperated-sounding Harris explained over the image of an animated young white man vaulting his way confidently through a rock-climbing course after having started out in a more advanced position than his discouraged black counterpart. "Equitable treatment means"—the two hikers, now joined in success after the disadvantaged one was given a boost up, gaze confidently at the horizon from atop the summit—"we all end up at the same place."

    But it's not just the progressive violence against the language. Matt goes on to point out:

    • The biggest hit on "equity" during the pandemic is to mothers of small kids;
    • And the biggest obstacle to their economic recover is the closure of government schools;
    • And the Biden/Harris Administration could have but didn't encourage government school reopenings.

    Similarly to Animal Farm: when it comes to teacher unions, some interest groups are more "equitable" than others.


  • This Is Supposed To Be The LFOD State, But… Drew Cline describes How N.H. hurts craft brewers.

    Allegedly, state alcohol regulations are justified by the need to protect the public. Yet many of the laws that prevent the growth and expansion of craft breweries in New Hampshire are not remotely related to public health or safety. Their one and only purpose is to protect other industries from competition.

    A bill to remove some wholly unnecessary craft brewery regulations shows how legislators intentionally handicap small businesses on behalf of more established industries.

    Senate Bill 125 would make four changes to the state laws that regulate craft breweries. In each instance, the law that would be changed exists not to protect the public, but to protect restaurants, retailers, beer distributors or large breweries.

    Drew does a great job of describing the arbitrary distinctions NH law currently makes between various types of brewers, distributors, and retailers, and how the current legal regime protects the powerful against frothy competition.

    Amusing bit from a hearing on SB125: "In Tuesday’s meeting of the House Commerce and Consumer Affairs Committee, Rep. John Hunt, R-Ringe, assured the [New Hampshire Lodging and Restaurant Association and the New Hampshire Grocers Association] that the bill would be amended to limit brewers to a single retail outlet."

    Please, Ringe Republicans: replace Hunt with someone less willing to do the bidding of the New Hampshire Lodging and Restaurant Association and the New Hampshire Grocers Association.


  • And the NYPost reports on my favorite game show: 'Jeopardy!' in absurd territory with dumbest controversy ever.

    It’s come to this. A white man who innocently played the iconic TV quiz show has found himself on the wrong side of the torches and pitchforks wielded by a joyless mob.

    An online tempest was unleashed against three-time “Jeopardy!” winner Kelly Donohue, a 35-year-old state bank examiner from Massachusetts. In addition to loopy messages of disgust, more than 500 people, and counting, identifying themselves as former “Jeopardy!” eggheads demanded an apology from Donohue and show producers for the alleged “white power” symbol the contestant supposedly flashed on TV — a claim that even Snopes, tracker of digital hoaxes and all manner of malfeasance, deemed “False.”

    People are … funny, I guess. Yeah, that's the right word.


Last Modified 2024-02-02 4:49 AM EDT