Pun Salad

If you want a vision of the future, imagine a commie folk music ukulele Hootenanny Night at the Patrice Lumumba Portlandia Assisted Living Collective crushing a human face, forever

— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) October 7, 2025

(Orwell reference noted and appreciated.)

Also of note:

• "If you think health care is expensive now, just wait until it's free." Prophetic words, indeed, from the late P.J. O'Rourke. My twitter feed (which includes some Democrats) are full of dire warnings that the Obamacare system they designed and passed without a single GOP vote demands more taxpayer cash, fast.

  They also point to a recent poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation, whose news release is headlined "Despite Budget Concerns, Three-Quarters of Public Say Congress Should Extend the Enhanced ACA Tax Credits Set to Expire Next Year, Including Most Republicans and MAGA Supporters".

  The preface about "despite budget concerns" would seem to imply that the pollsters made the taxpayer cost explicit in their polling question.

  Psych! They didn't. Here's the question that got 78% of respondents to agree:

  As you may know, in 2021 Congress increased the financial help provided through tax credits available to some people who purchase health insurance through the Affordable Care Act marketplace to help them afford their premiums. These enhanced tax credits are set to expire at the end of 2025.

  Do you think Congress should extend these enhanced tax credits, or should they let these enhanced tax credits expire?

  Wrapped in gauzy assurances about "help" (twice in a single question), with nothing mentioned about cost, it's a query designed to engender agreement. ("What's wrong with you?! Don't you want to help people?!")

  Ah, well. Over at Cato, Ebenezer Scrooge Adam N. Michel provides no less than Six Reasons to Not Extend the Enhanced Obamacare Subsidies. And here's number one:

  Costs almost half a trillion dollars. The Congressional Budget Office recently estimated that permanently extending the COVID-19 subsidies would increase the deficit by $350 billion over ten years, plus another roughly $60 billion in additional interest costs to finance the spending. Total spending, a better measure of the size of government, would increase by more than $488 billion. Sarah Wagoner at the Economic Policy Innovation Center notes that this extra cost is more than Congress spends on many federal agencies, such as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) or the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

  And if that's not enough, there are, as promised, five more reasons offered at the link.

• Instead of charades, I'd suggest Twister. But otherwise, Dominic Pino has a good idea: Congress Should Eliminate the ‘Shutdown’ Charade.

  The federal government has been out of money since 1835. That was the last year in which the U.S. had no national debt. So it might seem a little silly to say that the government has to shut down because it ran out of money on October 1. And, well, it is silly.

  Government shutdowns are not a requirement of the Constitution or of common sense. They are the product of the interaction of statutes that Congress can and should change. Government shutdowns don’t improve the quality of governance or the country’s fiscal health, and Congress should end them forever.

  Dominic mentions one proposal that appeals to me:

  Senator Rand Paul (R., Ky.) introduced a bill that would automatically pass funding at 94 percent of the previous year’s level if the appropriations deadline passes. Then, every 90 days, funding would automatically be cut by 1 percent unless Congress passed a new appropriations package.

  To munge a Samuel Johnson quote, that would concentrate their minds wonderfully.

• If you had to pick one… Tyler Cowen reveals Donald Trump’s Worst Idea. After reviewing Trump's fiddling with Intel, MP Materials, Nvdia, Pfizer, …

  The word socialism is overused in political debate, but during his 10 months in office, Trump has certainly put us on the path toward it. And in case you’re wondering, this is a bad thing: American business has been world-beating for a long time now, in large part because we avoid these sorts of public-private arrangements, which are common in faltering European economies. A dose of government ownership and the associated politicization are not what American industry and innovation need.

  There’s a reason we have a private sector to begin with, which is that market realities force companies to efficiently deliver good products at a reasonable price, or else go out of business due to competition.

  Now think of everything you know about the federal government and how it operates. Do you observe our own government being successful in cutting costs? Keeping its debt and finances in line? Enforcing standards of accountability? It is laughable to even pose such questions. So given those realities, why should government ownership of private corporations be such a good idea?

  Unfortunately, this is the road we're on. And it's not as if Democrats are going to save us. But it does give me an excuse to post, once again, the cartoon I had ChatGPT draw me back in August:

  

• Just a reminder. If you're ever tempted to believe the rosy initial cost estimates made by advocates of new choo-choo projects, you might want to bookmark the Antiplanner's latest: Brightline West Cost Overrun Reaches 121%

  Brightline West, which originally estimated that building a high-speed rail line from Los Angeles to Las Vegas would cost $8 billion, is now admitting the cost will be at least $21.5 billion. After adjusting for inflation, that’s a 121 percent cost increase.

  Back in 2020, Brightline tried to sell $3.2 billion in bonds to pay for the project but got no takers. Apparently, investors weren’t interested in funding a project whose projected costs were unrealistically low and whose revenues weren’t likely to ever cover those costs.

  Instead, Brightline managed to convince the Biden administration to give it a $3 billion grant. It also sold $3.5 billion worth of private activity bonds, which are government bonds used to fund private programs. Supposedly the government doesn’t guarantee the bonds but buyers don’t have to pay taxes on the interest they earn from them. That’s not likely to be an issue in Brightline’s case as the company probably won’t ever earn enough revenue to pay back the bonds.

  About the only good thing here is that the western terminus of the proposed line is in Rancho Cucamonga, quite frankly the best city name in the USA.

• You say that as if that's a bad thing, Karl. Techdirt contributor Karl Bode seems upset: Paramount Formally Hires Bari Weiss To Turn What’s Left Of CBS News Into A Soggy Right Wing Propaganda And Troll Farm.

  It’s super curious how the folks most vocal about being cancelled or having their “Conservative viewpoints silenced” now own or control most major U.S. media companies. Almost as if their claims of being silenced have always been a bullshit ploy to dominate the discourse on the back of something other than the quality of their ideas!

  As long predicted, Paramount/CBS owners, the Ellison family, formally announced that they’re hiring “contrarian” engagement troll Bari Weiss to run whatever’s left of CBS News after its disastrous and utterly feckless capitulation to the Trump administration. The $150 million purchase of Weiss’ shoddy blog comes as part of a massive Ellison family acquisition spree aimed at dominating what’s left of U.S. media.

  "Tech" content of this Techdirt article is zero. But it's long on juvenile insults and evidence-free allegations.

  Sample quote Karl found insightful from the Independent:

  “The imminent arrival of anti-woke and stridently pro-Israel “heterodox” pundit Bari Weiss as the editor-in-chief of CBS News has left the newsroom’s staff “literally freaking out,” with sources telling The Independent that the Tiffany Network is “not a good place right now.”

  I hope there's eventual video of the CBS newsroom staff literally freaking out.