Pun Salad

You may have already heard that you won't see that Ramirez cartoon at the Washington Post; it was up for a while, then taken down after readers objected. Jerry Coyne has more on that. He quotes Nellie Bowles take (in a paywalled article):

Ditto. Power Line also comments and links.

Also of note:

• Speaking of cowardice… Veronique de Rugy observes The U.S. Needs a Fiscal Commission Because Congress Won't Do Its Job.

  There's much talk today about the need for a fiscal commission. The House Budget Committee held a hearing about it a few weeks ago. Pundits are Substacking about whether using the approach to put federal finances on a sustainable path is a good or a bad idea. And according to a recent polling, voters support the idea of a commission.

  Great. But that shouldn't obscure the fact that a commission would be the result of our legislators constantly acting like children by refusing to be good stewards of taxpayers' dollars, which is their No. 1 job. There are also a few important things needed to make such a commission successful.

  In the last 50 years, when the budget process has been in place, Congress has managed only four times to pass a budget on time and through the regular process. Seventeen times, members of Congress haven't bothered to pass a budget at all. That hasn't stopped them from spending money they didn't have, or from making promises to voters they wouldn't be able to fulfill. I doubt I need to remind you that it's gotten worse. In the last half-decade, Congress added $5 trillion to the already elevated and growing federal debt with no plan for repayment.

  My own CongressCritter, Chris Pappas talks a good game. Check out his brave letter to House leadership: Pappas Presses Leadership to Tackle National Debt in FY 2022 Funding Package.

  Oh yeah. That was dated February 25, 2022. 624 days ago. And (to put it mildly) no tackling was actually done, Although Chris Pappas was re-elected that November, which I suspect was the actual purpose of his tough talking.

• The lights may have gone out in Georgia but they have a better chance of staying on in Maine. Pierre Lemieux looks at last week's vote about that: The Enduring Lure of (Democratic) Socialism.

  The Maine referendum initiative that would have nationalized “by right of eminent domain” the private electric transmission and distribution companies in Maine lost by 70% to 30% on Tuesday. According to the “indirect initiated state statute” that provided the full text of the ballot measure, the new state-created, non-profit, consumer-owned corporation, called Pine Tree Power Company,

  shall purchase or acquire by the exercise of the right of eminent domain all utility facilities in the State owned or operated or held for future use by any investor-owned transmission and distribution utility, in accordance with this subsection.

  Incidentally, the Pine Tree Power Company, would not have been truly “consumer-owned,” because no consumer could have sold his share without moving out of Maine, and then getting nothing for “his” share. Bernie Sanders, the Vermont congressman who remains at the forefront of the proletariat’s liberation, had declared:

  Mainers have a rare chance to take control of an important part of their daily lives. Instead of a private power system that last year sent $187 million in profits out of the country, Mainers can have cheaper, more reliable power—and help fight climate change at the same time. I’m proud to support the Pine Tree Power campaign, and I urge Mainers to support it as well.

  So most Mainers had more sense than to listen to Bernie.

  But I liked Lemieux's aside: you don't own something unless you can sell it. (Something I recall arguing about long ago on USENET with someone waxing rhapsodic about employee-owned companies.)

• Grifters gotta grift. Matt Taibbi looks at The Tragic Victimhood of "Disinformation Experts".

  On June 8th, the Washington Post ran, “These academics studied falsehoods spread by Trump. Now the GOP wants answers,” a story about how “records requests, subpoenas and lawsuits” were wielded as “tools of harassment” against “scholars” in the “field of disinformation.” In photo portraits, Kate Starbird of the University of Washington stared plaintively in the distance, a caption under one: “The political part is intimidating — to have people with a lot of power in this world making… false accusations about our work.” Starbird sits on an advisory committee for the 245,000-person, $185 billion Department of Homeland Security, but perhaps she meant “a lot of power” in a different sense?

  It's another entry in a continuing series how Your Federal Government works closely with the media to decide what information you're allowed to consume.

• Ah. Well, I'll go with "unethical" then, thanks. The College Fix reports Northwestern lab envisions ‘ethical internet’ without capitalism.

  A Northwestern University project is described as envisioning an “ethical internet” where capitalism is gone and “communes” work to create “sustainable and non-exploitative” infrastructures.

  Led by communication studies Professor Moya Bailey, a self-described black queer disabled woman, the “Ethical Internet?” project is part of the Illinois university’s Digital Apothecary lab.

  […]

  “We move at the speed of trust, and the speed of our circadian rhythm, remaining conscious of the pace at which we want our lives to proceed,” Bailey wrote. “… Kids learn to code as they learn to plant. We learn how to solder our servers, creating the technology we need at a sustainable pace. We eat well and have digital dance parties.”

  Just when I think things are bad at the University Near Here, I look at the College Fix and realize: they could be worse.