URLs du Jour

2022-07-16

  • But I was assured that price controls on drugs would fix everything. The WSJ editorialists note a dog that's not barking, and A Price That Isn’t Soaring: Prescription Drugs.

    For our sins, we spent some of Wednesday looking through the price tables in the Bureau of Labor Statistics inflation report for June. Fun, right? Ok, not a hoot, but call it a labor of love. And, what do you know, we discovered a remarkable fact you won’t see reported anywhere else: Prescription drug prices are rising more slowly than almost all other items.

    Yes, the same drug prices that are the target of so much Washington denunciation rose a mere 0.1% last month. This is not a one-time event. Drug prices are up a mere 2.5% over the past year. This is notably less than the increase in non-prescription drug prices, which grew 1.2% in June and 4.7% in the last year. Other medical care prices also rose far more. Health insurance climbed 2.1% last month and is up 17.3% over the last year.

    I have sat through Senator Maggie Hassan's TV ad that has her earnest line “Lowering costs for families starts with getting prescription drug prices under control" for what seems to be hundreds of times. Well, mission accomplished, right? Now what are you gonna do about… everything else, Maggie?


  • On the Harpootling watch. The Washington Free Beacon reports on the latest bigotry: If You Marry a White Guy, You Ain’t Latina.

    Rep. Ruben Gallego (D., Ariz.) accused Tanya Contreras Wheeless, a Hispanic woman running for Congress in Arizona’s fourth district as a Republican, of not being authentically Latina because she took her husband’s last name.

    Gallego suggested that Wheeless deliberately "hid" her Hispanic identity before running for office to avoid discrimination. "If you were Latino in Arizona around 2010 people were telling us to go back to Mexico," he said, "you would hear I am not voting for a ‘spic.’"

    Back in 2011, I invented the verb "Harpootle", defined as "to attack someone in a way that reveals the attacker as foolish, petty, vile, and/or stupid." Inspired by then-Chair of the South Carolina Democratic Party, "Dick" Harpootlian, who couldn't seem to talk about South Carolina's then-Governor Nikki Haley without obsessing about her non-white heritage. A tactic he continued a couple years later.

    It's unsurprising to see that Ruben Gallego is carrying on in the Harpootling tradition, getting all atwitter about a Hispanic he thinks is trying to "pass".


  • Stuart Reges is a brave guy. And (if there's any justice) his latest act of bravery will cause some major legal headaches for his employer: Professor Sues University of Washington Over 'Land Acknowledgment'.

    When Stuart Reges, a University of Washington computer science professor, was directed to place a land acknowledgment in his syllabus, he wrote one of his own. That land acknowledgment may very well get him fired.

    For the fall 2021 semester, the university's computer science department recommended that professors place a land acknowledgment in their syllabi. On a list of syllabus "best practices," administrators gave the following language as a template: "The University of Washington acknowledges the Coast Salish peoples of this land, the land which touches the shared waters of all tribes and bands within the Suquamish, Tulalip and Muckleshoot nations."

    Reges has been an outspoken advocate—and occasional provocateur—for free speech during his long career in academia. "I've said things you're not supposed to say. I was openly gay in 1979 when it was not popular to be openly gay. I talked about the war on drugs in the early 90s and got fired from Stanford for that," Reges told the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. "And for the past four or five years, I've been dealing with what I call the equity agenda and fighting back against that. So I took the opportunity to make a political statement I know they wouldn't be happy with."

    Seeing an opportunity, Reges wrote his own land acknowledgment. He wrote, "I acknowledge that by the labor theory of property the Coast Salish people can claim historical ownership of almost none of the land currently occupied by the University of Washington."

    (Pun Salad mentioned Reges' previous head-butting with UW here and here. On the land-use acknowledgment, more recently, here and here.)

    I am not a lawyer of any kind, but I can't help but think UW will lose big here. And will deserve to.

    Does the University Near Here do the land acknowledgment thing? Oh my yes.


  • [Amazon Link]
    (paid link)
    Ah, I remember those motivational posters. Kyle Smith cheers on our own national kitten: Hang in There, Joe Biden!.

    They doubted you when you had a stutter, as a little boy. They doubted you again when you finished 76th out of 85 in your Syracuse Law School class. They continued to mock and scorn you as a notorious blowhard for nearly 40 years in the Senate. Barack Obama said you could be counted upon to f*** things up, and repeatedly tried to talk you out of running for president.

    And you proved them all wrong, Mr. President! You not only won in 2020, you got more votes than any president in the history of the country. After all you’ve been through, you’re not really going to let those pipsqueaks at the New York Times push you around, are you? Somebody put out a hit on you over on Eighth Avenue, resulting in this classic reporter-generated, columnist-seconded pile-on. News flash, Mr. President: You’re the leader of the free world, they’re a bunch of people who write stuff. Stay right where you are. Don’t give an inch. Announce your intent to run for reelection as often as possible. Is another Democrat going to knock out an incumbent president? Unlikely.

    Kyle's very funny. He's apparently moving over to the Wall Street Journal from National Review, and I'll no doubt be posting his stuff from time to time.


  • Betteridge's Law of Headlines applies. Kat Rosenfield wonders Does Jill Biden think you are a taco? I'm pretty sure the answer is "no", but let's check out what she has to say:

    First Lady of the United States Jill Biden is the outrage cycle’s main character this week, after she compared a coalition of Hispanic voters to breakfast tacos. The offence occurred during an event called, and I am not making this up, the LatinX IncluXion Luncheon.

    If you spent 10 years trying to write a satire that encapsulates our present moment in American Democratic politics, you could do no better than this story. It is practically art. It is divinely ridiculous. But it’s also an incident from which certain conclusions can be drawn — about where the Left stands politically, and what the future holds, here at the almost-halfway point to our next presidential election.

    If you spent 10 years trying to write a satire that encapsulates our present moment in American Democratic politics, you could do no better than this story. It is practically art. It is divinely ridiculous. But it’s also an incident from which certain conclusions can be drawn — about where the Left stands politically, and what the future holds, here at the almost-halfway point to our next presidential election.

    Okay, let's skip down a bit:

    Jill Biden is being squeezed. Not because she actually did anything wrong, but because she cares about being seen to do right, and that makes her vulnerable. Let’s be clear about this: nobody actually believes that the First Lady of the United States, a 71-year-old professional with a doctoral degree, needs to be instructed as to the difference between people and tacos. Even the group of people who just issued a public statement declaring themselves not to be tacos do not believe it. Biden’s speech was many things — cringy, pandering, clearly unrehearsed — but it was not racist, not by any stretch of the imagination.

    Whew!

    Ms. Rosenfield has an Edgar-nominated mystery in my get-at-library list, and if it's ever returned, I shall be sure to check it out.


Last Modified 2024-01-22 9:10 AM EDT