Pun Salad

The Google News Alert Chimed for the artist Kang Haoxian’s "In Motion" Solo Exhibition. Which includes this interesting work:

What makes this even more interesting: the exhibition is at the WOAW Gallery in Hong Kong! As in China.

For your travel plans, it opens tomorrow, and is scheduled to run until October 14. Or until the authorities decide to shut it down and send Kang Haoxian to one of their Xinjiang internment camps. Good luck to him.

Fun fact: New Hampshire license plates are stamped out at the men's state prison in Concord, a tradition going back to 1932.

Also of note:

• There's nothing wrong with the Fed that Donald Trump wouldn't make worse. Jeff Maurer tells us Why Federal Reserve Independence Matters, With Jokes.

  One thing we know for sure is that the upcoming election will be decided by factors that are unspeakably dumb. That’s because our system is basically garbage data run through the world’s most broken supercomputer, interpreted by a glue-huffing simpleton and recorded by an otter with an abacus that he doesn’t know how to use. We’ll spend the coming months thinking and debating and writing capital-”i” Important columns about The Future Of Our Republic, but then one candidate will make a gaffe — perhaps audibly farting at a Waffle House, or something similar — and the course of history will be charted.

  That’s a shame, because our choice will have a major impact on people’s lives. I’ve written about how I think an important difference between the candidates is that Trump threatens the indepence of the Federal Reserve, while Harris doesn’t. I’m not hearing this talked about much outside of cobweb-strewn corners of Twitter that even I — a fake economist1 — find about as interesting as the Wikipedia page for silt. So, let’s talk about this because it should be talked about, and then we can go back to living our best lives, i.e. watching funny cat videos and masturbating to our coworkers’ Facebook photos.

  Well, I only do one of those things. (I'm retired, so: no coworkers.)

• The Surgeon General threatens my mental health. James Freeman remarks on the unremarkable: Surgeon General Prescribes Much Bigger Government…. After noting the damage done to today's youth by Uncle Stupid's disastrous Covid policies, you'd think a "new sense of humility and restraint" would set in. But:

  After the Covid political panic and resulting shutdowns that were as destructive to children as to the country’s finances, how can anyone not be suspicious of pronouncements from public health officials? Now along comes U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy with a warning about the mental health hazards of parenting—as if misguided government policies and the tax burdens to pay for them aren’t major stressors of parents with young children.

  Yet he seems to think that amping up the dosage with bigger and more numerous government programs offers the best course of treatment. Here’s a partial list of his prescriptions to be paid for by taxpayers:

  … policymakers should bolster support for child care financial assistance programs such as child care subsidies and child income tax credits; universal preschool; early childhood education programs such as Early Head Start and Head Start; programs that help nurture healthy family dynamics such as early childhood home visiting programs funded by the Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting (MIECHV) Program; and services and support for family caregivers like Healthy Start Programs and the Lifespan Respite Care Program.

  And there's much more that Murthy recommends, all very expensive. And reflective of an insane algorithm: if the vast amount we're spending on "programs" aren't "solving the problem" then the only possible solution is… spend more money on programs!

• And who could blame them? Tomas J. Philipson eyes an issue that will probably fly under the radar until we're safely past the election: Democrats Cover Up the Costly Failures of the Inflation Reduction Act.

  Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have clearly learned something from the 2020 election: They need to get rid of October surprises. Scandalous news that could make voters think twice about pulling the lever for Democrats — like Hunter Biden’s laptop — must be buried until after the election.

  The Democratic scandal of this cycle isn’t quite as salacious as the younger Biden’s hijinks. But it’s immensely damaging to ordinary Americans, which is why the White House is so keen on hiding it from the public.

  In a quiet move, the administration just launched a plan to transfer tens of billions of taxpayer dollars to the nation’s largest health insurers to cover up a massive Medicare policy failure.

  It's pretty sleazy, and obviously designed with the election in mind.

• A welcome re-evaluation. Robert Graboyes povides a public service for those who don't think bigger is necessarily better: The Super-Definitive Ranking of Presidents. He drops them into five buckets (plus a "died too soon" bin for William Henry Harrison, Taylor, and Garfield). Let's look at one of the stinkers:

  WILSON: worst racist in presidential history; reversed racial progress rather than tolerating status quo; Treaty of Versailles stoked rise of Nazis and WWII; imprisoned political opponents (e.g., Eugene V. Debs); despised constitutional limitations; scorned civil liberties (e.g., Red Scare raids); incapable of accommodation with Senate Republicans in foreign policy; saw his own election as divinely decreed; debilitating stroke was hidden for over a year, with Wilson’s wife effectively running the country; only Ph.D. president, which helps explains why he was such an asshole.

  Indeed.