Pun Salad

Pun Salad has previously mentioned probable future CongressCritter Darializa Avila Chevalier twice in the past two days. It's not as if I'm obsessed or anything!

But yes, I'm going for the hat trick. Noah Smith is a self-confessed Democrat, who is unhappy because The Democrats have their own MAGA now. After noting some of her more deranged stances:

So we'll see how that works out for them. Meanwhile, here in the Granite State, we have our own candidate, as reported by NHJournal: From Mamdani to Manchester? Howard Bets on DSA Momentum in NH-01.

Heath Howard's campaign site is here. His issues page is a "progressive" wishlist. Example under the "PROTECT OUR DEMOCRACY" item:

Sorry, Heath. You're demanding, essentially, a partial repeal of the First Amendment. Sounds like a bad idea.

Also, calling AIPAC an "illegal foreign influence" group is, well, unhinged.

Also of note:

• Another bad idea Heath Howard is for. Veronique de Rugy points out a small problem: Eliminating the Payroll Tax Cap Undermines Social Security's Earned-Benefit Principle.

  Bernie Moreno and Elizabeth Warren have a New York Times op-ed proposing to eliminate the cap on Social Security payroll taxes, not the benefit it funds. Jack Salmon has made the case for why this proposal is not the solution they make it sounds to be: even full cap elimination with no added benefit credit closes only about 58 percent of the 75-year shortfall today. Over at National Review, Ramesh Ponnuru also explains that if we stack a 12.4% uncapped payroll tax on top of the 37% top income tax bracket, it will push the marginal rate on a top earner’s wages to 49.4% — the fastest run-up in the top rate since the 1930s, on a tax design that’s already more aggressive toward high earners than most of the advanced-country pension systems we’d be comparing ourselves to.

  There is another big problem for Warren and Moreno. A few sentences after proposing to uncap the tax, Moreno and Warren say it’s essential to “safeguard Social Security’s earned-benefit structure.” The earned benefit part is an argument we always hear when anyone ever evokes making reforms to the insolvent program. It goes something like this: “Oh but I have paid into the system, and I have earned my benefits so you can’t touch them.” And in fact, Warren and Moreno use that rhetorical tool to at the beginning of their piece:

  “Social Security is a core component of our nation’s promise — a covenant between the federal government and Americans who pay into it throughout their working years so they can retire with dignity.”

  But here is the thing. They obviously don’t realize that earned benefit argument is precisely why the cap exists in the first place. As Ponnuru explain in the Washington the cap is here to keep benefits related to contributions. In other words, lifting the cap would partially sever the earned benefit intent of Social Security and turn it more into a general welfare program rather than an earned benefit. Indeed, their plan, by design, doesn’t credit the newly taxed earnings with any new benefit, which is precisely how it raises money. This fence that Democrats have erected for forty years around any conversation about the spending side of Social Security, such as raising the retirement age, means-testing benefits for high earners, slowing the COLA formula, adjusting the bend points, would go away if your lift the cap.

  Yeah, it's bogus. But asking progressives to abide by "principles" is a non-starter when there's plundering to be done!

• Do you know the way to way to the Fay in San Jose? Randal O'Toole looks at the latest disaster site: Planning Fantasies Crash and Burn.

  “Parking minimums are a waste of money and land,” planners argue, so they immediately turn around and impose parking maxima, saying that people will be happy to live without cars if they aren’t required to pay for parking. Many developers have learned to their sorrow that this isn’t true, the latest being Scape, a British developer that was persuaded to build a 23-story apartment tower on the edge of downtown San Jose. Calls the Fay, the building offers only one parking space for every three units and the developer was unable to fill units that didn’t come with parking spaces.

  As a result, the developer defaulted on its $182 million construction loan and the lender foreclosed on the property just ten months after it opened. The city of San Jose took the building off the lender’s hands with the promise that it would provide “affordable housing” to city employees. The city said it would allow those employees to park their cars at city hall, thus undermining the whole “live without a car” philosophy. But since that was seven blocks away, few employees have taken advantage of it, and the building remains 60 percent vacant.

  Well, they took their chances. Sorry it didn't work out.

• "If we take the widest and wisest view of a Cause, there is no such thing as a Lost Cause because there is no such thing as a Gained Cause." T.S. Eliot said that, and I'd like to believe him. Because, at Reason, Steven Greenhut notes that one of my causes isn't doing so well: From Buckley to Trump, conservatism has endured an ugly slide.

  Politically active people my age fondly remember conservative intellectual William F. Buckley hosting the wildly popular TV show, "Firing Line," where he for years interviewed luminaries from across the political spectrum. He sparred with leftist Noam Chomsky about American imperialism, chatted with British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher about the future of free markets, and talked to poet Allen Ginsberg about drugs and spirituality. Heady stuff.

  These lofty civil debates went beyond politics and delved into psychology, art and literature. The show reflected an emerging conservative movement that was clever and optimistic, and which preferred to out-argue opponents rather than "own" them. That era's leading right-leaning commentators often criticized intellectuals, but not intelligence and expertise.

  Which brings us to our current moment. We have an undreamed-of abundance of information—podcasts, social media, cable TV, talk radio, streaming and endless publications of every type. We can hear first-person utterances from our country's leaders. We have extensive access to governmental budgets, legal decisions, public meetings, federal rule-makings and legislation. We have everything we need to be the informed citizens our founders envisioned.

  Yet these are the stupidest times. They also are illogical, bigoted, conspiratorial and tribal times. I enjoy reading posts from one thoughtful anti-MAGA conservative and a large percentage of rebuttal comments are of this variety: "You're a Jew." There's no appetite for intellectual honesty or treating opponents with decency. It emanates from the highest levels, as the president unleashes daily tirades that show the reasoning skills of a buffoon. Official federal government accounts dish out invective adorned with cartoonish AI graphics that appeal to vulgar 14-year-olds.

  I'm not sure whether Steven's nostalgia is too rosy, or his view of our current state too dim, but (as always) see what you think.

• Don't give Wikipedia a dime. I notice that Wikipedia is doing one of its periodic begathons. Let Larry Sanger tell you about it: I Co-Founded Wikipedia. Now I’m Banned for Life.

  Twenty-five years ago, I co-founded Wikipedia, arguably the most important encyclopedia in human history. On Monday, I was indefinitely banned from the site. The story of what happened to me is, in many ways, the story of our censorious times, in which independent thinking is seen as a threat rather than a virtue, and punished as such.

  It's a long story, one well worth your reading time.