James Freeman offers us A New York Times Column Every Politician Should Read. (WSJ gifted link) It seems more voters are playing that old Who song, "Won't Get Fooled Again".
And then there are the bitter enders who remain angry at voters for not appreciating activist government. Thomas Edsall writes in the New York Times:
Few communities in America prospered as much as Texarkana during President Joe Biden’s four years in the White House, and few communities were more ungrateful than the voters of that region, which is anchored around twin cities spread across the Texas-Arkansas border.
Mr. Edsall seems to be incensed that even after the Biden administration crop-dusted the region with all manner of ill-considered green subsidies, local voters couldn’t be bought. He notes the sad results for Democrats:
In 2020, Texarkana, which is made up of Miller County, Arkansas and Bowie County, Texas, voted overwhelmingly for Donald Trump, 72.3 percent to 27.7 for Joe Biden, a 44.6-point spread. In 2024, despite the growth of green industry and economic improvement during the Biden years, Trump beat Kamala Harris in the Texarkana counties by an even larger margin, 75.4 percent to 24.6 percent, an immense 50.8-point spread.
When media folk don’t like a policy offered by a politician to attract voters, the politician is sometimes described as transactional—a sort of grubby cutter of deals. But in this case, after Mr. Biden enacted a slew of Times-approved environmental policies, the ire is directed at voters for freely choosing not to participate in the green deal. The nerve of these people not willing to be transactional!
There's more dissection of Edsall's ire, and it's pretty amusing. I'd bet that Edsall has, in the past, contemptuously deemed some Republican proposals as "trickle-down". What he fails to recognize is that dumping Federal dollars on a town like Texarkana goes first to the politically-connected. Does it proceed to "trickle down" upon the general citizenry? Doesn't sound as if it does.
[Eye Candy du Jour note: I confess I did not know that "boondoggle" had an original meaning thanks to the Boy Scouts!]
Also of note:
-
Speaking of boondoggles… You know, in addition to going after Washington DC criminals, Trump should also crack down on this robbery that is (apparently) still legal: DC’s $4.4B RFK Stadium Boondoggle: A Gift to Interest Groups, a Burden on Taxpayers.
Washington, DC’s subsidization of the renovation of RFK Stadium — the once and future home of the Washington Commanders — “is a BFD,” Mayor Muriel Bowser said, verging on an expletive to convey her enthusiasm for the proposal, to which the DC Council assented on August 1 by a vote of 9 to 3. Another, final vote to approve the stadium will occur in September.
“Big” is, indeed, an apt adjective for the affaire d’RFK. The public funds to be spent — $1.7 billion in direct subsidies and $2.7 billion in indirect subsidies — are prodigious. The scope of the development plan transcends the mere renovation of an old sports venue. The stadium campus is set to include (besides the stadium) multiple parking structures, bars and restaurants, retail stores, an $89 million indoor sportsplex, a planned grocery store, a pharmacy, daycare facilities, a hotel, 6,000 or more housing units, and a “30-acre stretch of riverfront community commons.” An extension of Washington’s metro system also may be undertaken. In Bowser’s phrase: “180 acres of vacant land, activated.” In short, the deal amounts to a wholesale bid to transform a languishing portion of eastern Washington DC into a vital and bustling hub. An ambitious central-planning gambit, if not a hubristic one.
But will all this cash "trickle down" to, y'know, normal people? By the time we discover the answer ("nope"), the boons will have been doggled.
-
And we're still speaking of boondoggles… Beth Brelje follows the money at the Federalist, and I give her two thumbs up for using the adjective "cushy" in her headline: PBS Parent Company Sent Tax Dollars To Cushy Lobbying Firm. The recently-defunded Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) was sending cash to the "nonprofit" Association of Public Television Stations (APTS). And…
APTS is a $4.5 million nonprofit membership organization that promotes public television. Its finances are closely connected to APTS Action Inc., the lobbying arm of APTS, which is also funded by membership fees and shares the same leadership team. APTS Action had nearly $2 million in gross receipts in 2023. APTS Action advocates for policy issues related to education, health care, and telecommunications, and it “brings public television’s message to Capitol Hill.” It lobbies for “federal funding for America’s public television stations” and “expanding” public TV “outreach in education, public safety and civic leadership,” according to its tax-exempt papers.
APTS received $25,000 from CPB in 2022, and it charges public television stations a membership service fee. For an added fee, members can buy access to a grant-seeking database.
In 2023 APTS earned $3.8 million in “program service revenue,” which includes fees from public TV stations, and spent most of it on employee compensation ($3.3 million).
The path of money — from taxpayers to the federal government to CPB to public television stations to APTS, (or direct from CPB to APTS) — shows that ultimately taxpayers fund APTS, which appears to be primarily a fat salary and lobbying machine.
And how much of that cash "trickled down" to something you might want to watch on TV?
-
Exercise for the reader. Count the different terms Jeff Maurer uses for "breasts" in his announcement: “I Might Be Wrong” Will Exclusively Cover Sydney Sweeney’s Breasts Until This National Crisis Passes. To help you, I've bolded two in his second paragraph:
On July 23, our nation was rocked by a once-in-a-century event: A jeans company put a pretty lady in their commercial. Much like 9/11 or the JFK assassination, no one who lived through this calamity will forget where they were when they heard the news. In the future, “Anno Domini” may be replaced by “Post-Sydney Sweeney American Eagle Commercial”, as the latter will surely be a more salient divider between “before” and “after”.
I Might Be Wrong has, regrettably, been derelict in our coverage of this event. It is to our great shame that not a single word on this blog/podcast has been devoted to the cataclysm. But as the national dialogue around Sydney Sweeney’s possibly-fascist breasts approaches its fourth week, I Might Be Wrong is determined to correct the error. From this point forward, we will not only exclusively cover Ms. Sweeney’s heaving boobage: We will cover it with a rigor and zeal unprecedented in the history of news. Kiss our asses, Woodward and Bernstein; go eat a dick, Ghost of Walter Cronkite — nothing in the annals of journalism will hold a candle to our immersive, round-the-clock coverage of Ms. Sweeney’s thought-provoking, arguably eugenicist sweater cannons.
I'm sure there's a web page somewhere that helped him out with this.
-
And an article I stopped reading. On the front page of today's WSJ: Meet the Parents Raising ‘Carnivore Babies,’ Swapping Puréed Fruit for Rib-Eye. (WSJ gifted link) It begins:
When Dariya Quenneville’s infant daughter was ready for solid food, she skipped the mushed up avocado and banana. On the menu instead? Raw egg yolk and puréed chicken liver.
The child, named Schizandra, […]
I stopped reading there, although I think my eye may have seen "sardines" without meaning to.
I wish young Schizandra a happy and healthy life. And perhaps a new name.
![[The Blogger]](/ps/images/barred.jpg)
