Pun Salad

The fourth in the "Pentecost/Parker Mystery" series. I recommend you read the previous books in the series before you tackle this one; there are some continuing characters and plot threads.

My previous reports on the series: here, here, and here. I guess I'm hooked.

Backstory, if you need it: set in post-WWII New York City, Ms. Lillian Pentecost runs a well-known detective agency. Her assistant, and the books' narrator, is Willowjean Parker, a streetwise, cynical lesbian, handy with a gun, knife, and blackjack. Not all at the same time.

Here, Ms. Pentecost is hired by a lawyer to try to find his firm's ex-secretary, Perseverance Bodine. After Perseverance retired, she became sort of reclusive, sticking to her apartment. And, oh yeah, she has an eidetic memory. And (also) she's become a hoarder, accumulating piles of newspapers and other detritus. And now, for some reason, she's gone missing.

Well, not for long. But that only causes more complications for the detectives.

And, as a side plot, Parker gets hoodwinked out on Coney Island, conked on the head, and robbed of her gun, keys, and wallet. She's too embarrassed to confess this to her Ms. Pentecost, so must find her assailants without assistance.

My usual gripe: Ms. Pentecost figures out, at least partially, whodunit, well before the end of the book. But we readers aren't told!

And, oh yeah: this book ends on a cliffhanger. Which I assume will be continued in book number five, coming out in a few months. As said above, I'm hooked.

The author, Nellie Bowles, is a journalist currently working at the Free Press, an online samizdat site run by her wife, Bari Weiss. Both Ms. Bowles and Ms. Weiss previously worked for the New York Times.

This book is a collection of essays ("dispatches") that recall good old Tom Wolfe writing about "Radical Chic" in the 1970s. It's all very journalistic, but—really—the attitude is clear: she's trying to keep a straight face while reporting on the antics and delusions of … well, for lack of a better word, let's say: the woke. Sometimes her straight face is covering up amusement. Sometimes disgust. Sometimes even despair. Outrage, perhaps? Just guessing, of course. But what's the appropriate emotion when an editor you work with says of your lover: "She's a Nazi. She's a fucking Nazi, Nellie."

Ms. Bowles also reports on how Johns Hopkins University just last year defined "lesbian" as a "non-man attracted to non-men." It's a real stride for feminism, isn't it, that "a woman" must now be defined in terms of what she's not: a man.

I think she's mainly amused here.

Her essays range over Antifa; Black Lives Matter; antiracist and transgender ideology; the "autonomous zones" that were set up in Minneapolis and Seattle for a time; the (literal) enshittification of San Francisco; and more. As an example of her straight-face reporting:

A couple of years ago, one of my friends saw a man staggering down the street, bleeding. She recognized him as someone who regularly slept outside in the neighborhood, and called 911. Paramedics and police arrived and began treating him, but members of a homeless advocacy group noticed and intervened. They told the man that he didn't have to get into the ambulance, that he had the right to refuse treatment. So that's what he did. The paramedics left, the activists left. The man sat on the sidewalk alone, still bleeding. A few months later, he died about a block away.

I'm pretty libertarian on drug use, but Ms. Bowles knocked me a couple notches back toward conservatism here.

Our Amazon Product/Eye Candy du Jour has a remarkably sexist "recommended uses": "Home decoration, Dorm decoration, Office decoration, Gift for women and teen girls". That's too bad, because I think Harry Litman, a 66-year-old male-identifying lawyer and political commentator, could have used one on his desk.

Instead, he's the subject of a Jonathan Turley post: “This is Not the Time for Balance”: LA Times Columnist Resigns in Protest . . . Over Balanced Commentary.

Well, fine. I note that Harry has also stomped off Twitter/X:

Man the Lord-of-the-Flies vibe is getting really acrid over here. I’m going to stop posting regularly, though I will come back now & again to try to scoop up stray followers. If you do follow me here,pls think about following me, and some actual discussion, over at AZURE HEAVENS.

— Harry Litman (@harrylitman) December 8, 2024

"AZURE HEAVENS", get it? Don't worry if you don't. The "actual discussion" Harry seeks to have there will be balance-free. Seldom will be heard a discouraging word, and the skies won't be cloudy all day.

Also of note:

• Put on your green eyeshade for… the Dispatch, where Alex Demas is Assessing Claims About Social Security Contributions for High Earners.

  Do lower-income Americans pay a larger proportion of their income toward Social Security than wealthy Americans? According to a viral social media post, they do.

  “A worker making $50,000 a year contributes to Social Security with 100% of their income,” the Threads post reads. “A CEO making $20 million a year contributes to Social Security with less than 1% of their income. It’s time to scrap the cap.”

  Well, yes. If you weren't aware. Demas uses small (but many) words to describe the "cap" on "contributions": you and your employer each kick in 7.65% of your wages to Social Security and Medicare, but only on the first $168,600 of salary (this year).

  The "scrap the cap" language is punchy, fits on a button or placard, and reeks of populist demagoguery. It seems to have origins with a group calling itself SocialSecurityWorks.

  But here's the thing:

  This cap, however, also applies to Social Security benefits, meaning the lower-salaried worker also receives a much higher proportion of benefits relative to their earnings than the wealthy CEO. According to the Social Security Administration, a CEO who made $20 million per year for his or her entire career and retired in 2024 at the full retirement age of 67 would receive a maximum benefit of $45,864, the same amount someone making an average of $200,000 per year would receive, and only 0.23 percent of their pre-retirement income. A worker making only $29,813 per year on average would, by contrast, receive $15,477 in benefits, or 52 percent of their pre-retirement income.

  According to Andrew Biggs, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and expert on Social Security reform, this is one of the reasons that the tax cap persists. “If the payroll tax ceiling were abolished, benefits would increase as well—since taxes and benefits are calculated based on the same wage base. If the payroll tax ceiling were abolished, a CEO earning $20 million per year would end up receiving an annual Social Security benefit of over $1.5 million,” Biggs told The Dispatch Fact Check. “This isn’t simply an absurd amount, it also would offset much of the improvement to Social Security’s solvency that eliminating the payroll tax ceiling seemingly would achieve.”

  I don't know if the "SocialSecurityWorks" folks deal with that. I admittedly didn't look very hard.

• "Talks collapse" almost as often as "Republicans pounce". In case you haven't heard, Ron Bailey will tell you: U.N. Global Plastics Treaty talks collapse.

  The nations of the world were supposed to complete negotiations on a Global Plastics Treaty on December 1. They didn't. The main sticking point was some countries' demand for a global cap on the future production of plastics.

  That "global cap" is supported by a lot of countries, some you've probably heard of. It sounds remarkably totalitarian, and probably unworkable, given the remarkable ubiquity and low cost of existing plastic use.

  Bailey does a fine job of detailing the issues and describing possible future developments.

• Unafraid of going after the sacred cows. Eric Boehm wants to axe a federal "service" that probably most Americans feel warm and fuzzy about: Abolish the National Park Service.

  Atop one of the highest peaks in the eastern United States sits a picturesque example of what America's national parks could be—if only the government hadn't effectively outlawed commerce within their boundaries.

  This is LeConte Lodge, built in 1926 and accessible only by a series of hiking trails that wind up the side of 6,500-foot Mt. LeConte. The Tennessee lodge exists only because it was grandfathered in when the boundaries of Great Smoky Mountains National Park were drawn in 1934. Farmers, logging companies, and other property owners in the area were given the boot. Thankfully, the lodge was allowed to stay.

  Nearly a century later, it's time for the federal government to recognize private investment need not be at odds with the goal of protecting nature for future generations. Ending the National Park Service (NPS) will mean more facilities like LeConte Lodge can thrive—and entice more Americans to experience the most beautiful parts of the country in new ways.

  Well, check out his sensible argument. And prepare for the demagogic responses. I imagine people have accused him of wanting to put waterslides in the Grand Canyon.