Pun Salad

I really dislike… no, I hate Halloween.

Have I mentioned that before? Probably.

I can still remember when it was a relatively innocent single evening for kids to go out and ring doorbells for candy, hoping for Reese's, often settling for Butterfingers. These days, it's a Christmas-rivaling month-long celebration of evil supernatural forces and death. Eventually some kids show up at the door of Pun Salad Manor. Some cute, many surly, some way too old to be doing this kind of thing.

Nevertheless, I have a sorta-Halloween-related link from the Federalist: Democrats’ Pro-Crime Policies Turned This Federal Building Into A ‘Haunted House’ Of Horrors. See if you can stifle a scream when you get to the bit I've boldfaced:

Also note the misuse of "ironically" in that last sentence. I'm pretty sure I don't find that ironic at all. I would reword: "As many expected, the Nancy Pelosi Federal Building is a symbol of the way government doesn’t work.”

Also of note:

• As was prophesied in the Old Testament. Andy McCarthy writes on the latest Rule of Law, Arbitrary Division: Two-Tiered Justice: Biden DOJ Protects Dem Congressman Jamaal Bowman over Fire Drill.

  Why isn’t Representative Jamaal Bowman being charged with felony obstruction of Congress?

  On September 30, as congressional Democrats were scrambling to delay a budget vote, the progressive New York Democrat pulled a fire alarm in the Cannon House Office Building. Though he has claimed it was a mistake, there is convincing evidence that he did this willfully — he well knew it was a fire alarm, he ran to abandon the building, and he never tried to inform Capitol Police of the incident as one would naturally do if it had been an accident. (For more, see Jeff Blehar’s excellent column).

  With great fanfare, it was announced on Wednesday that Bowman was being held “accountable” because he has been charged with the misdemeanor offense of pulling a fire alarm. This sort of “accountability” will come as a surprise to hundreds of people — including former president Donald Trump — whom the Biden Justice Department (and, in Trump’s case, Biden-DOJ-appointed special counsel Jack Smith) have aggressively charged with obstructing Congress in connection with the Capitol riot — the uprising that interrupted the joint January 6, 2020, session held to ratify now-president Biden’s victory in the presidential election.

  It is a travesty of justice that nobody thought of nominating Jamaal for Speaker of the House. To be followed, someday, by the Jamaal Bowman Federal Building in Scarsdale. Which will be empty, because the employees keep pulling the fire alarms.

• It's beginning to look like Dump on Democrats Day at Pun Salad. Veronique de Rugy sounds puzzled, but she shouldn't be: Democrats Say They're Fighting Inequality. But Many of Their Policies Favor the Rich..

  In the grand ballroom of American politics, Democrats have long waltzed to the melody of progressivism while ridiculing Republicans' preference for outdated tax cut tunes. Ironically, they don't want to pay for their style of big government with higher taxes on ordinary Americans, which their expansionary ambitions would require. Instead, they loudly proclaim that they want to tax the rich. It remains to be seen how true this is.

  Indeed, while Democrats profess their devotion to social justice and fight against income inequality, they often push for policies that favor the rich. Take their nonstop battle over the last five years to ease the tax burden of their high-income constituents.

  The State and Local Tax (SALT) deduction cap, part of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), placed a $10,000 limit on the amount of state and local taxes that can be deducted from federal taxable income. This move predominantly affected high earners in high-tax states like New York, California, and many others that are Democratic strongholds.

  Vero provides additional examples: subsidies for the well-off to buy electric vehicles and install solar panels, refusal to reform entitlements, …

• Diana Ross could have turned this into a number one hit. On the other hand, Jeff Jacoby's talents are not musical, but maybe he could hum it: Say it again, Supremes: Forced union dues in government are illegal. It's about the blatant refusal/evasion of the Supreme Court ruling in Janus v. AFSCME, which held that workers could not be forced to pay for their union's political activities. But…

  So the court held in 2018. Yet in numerous workplaces to this day, Janus is blatantly disregarded. In a number of states, public sector unions and state governments collude to deny employees their rights. In California, for example, the governor and Legislature enacted a law prohibiting public agencies from communicating with employees about union membership or dues. Under the new law, only union officials could broach that subject with workers. Other states passed similar laws.

  Far from making sure that employees "clearly and affirmatively consent" before union fees are deducted from their pay, these states — under pressure from mobilized unions — deny them any independent workplace source of information about their right to refuse. Often new hires are simply given a dues-withdrawal form to sign along with all the other first-day paperwork. When disgruntled dues-payers later learn of their rights and seek to withdraw their agreement, they are routinely confronted with confusing rules intended to make it almost impossible to stop paying. The Freedom Foundation, a workers' rights education and litigation institute, documents dozens of such cases in a recent Supreme Court filing.

  Sounds as if it should be a 9-0 slam dunk, if it gets that far. Should be.

• Department of the Completely Obvious. Reason's "News Roundup" from a couple days back was full of interesting stuff, but this little bit halfway down was a gem:

  Scenes from New York

  Regulating skyline views would "guarantee a collective experience, a sense of shared identity and civic meaning, which can bind New Yorkers across generations and centuries," Jorge Otero-Pailos, the director of Columbia's historic preservation program, tells The New York Times.

  The best part is that this is mentioned immediately after a few paragraphs on how unaffordable the city has become. If only we could grasp the connection between the two!

  I have no idea what Jorge's political leanings are, other than he is a New York resident working at Columbia U, favoring increased regulation, so what are the odds?