Category: Politics

Instead of free public transit, how about congestion rebate public transit?

by philg

Happy Earth Day to those who used to celebrate before they moved on to Queers for Palestine, etc.! And what better way to celebrate Earth Day than to get on a clean soot-spewing diesel-powered bus? “It’s where America’s poor and very poor can meet,” a friend pointed out.

Ayatollah Mamdani wants to bring free bus service to the Manhattan Caliphate, though it seems as if the dream is deferred (“Zohran Mamdani backs down on cornerstone campaign promise of free NYC buses” (NY Post)). A Republican in the NYC woodpile objects because “free busses will inevitably turn into rolling homeless shelters and drug dens, and become miserable and dangerous for the people who actually need to utilize them”:

(Wokipedia on the horrors of this Deplorable harpy: “Paladino has openly expressed Islamophobic and homophobic views. She has also opposed pro-Palestinian protests during the Gaza War, squatter houses, Drag Queen Story Hour, congestion pricing, and COVID-19 vaccine mandates.”)

As someone who loves Zohran and hates sitting in traffic jams, I’m a believer that public transit should be free and, actually, negatively priced during peak traffic congestion. On the other hand, maybe Vickie Paladino is right that “free” in a filthy city such as New York doesn’t attract the best people.

How about if people pay the usual fare when boarding, but via a smartphone app become eligible for a monthly rebate that is paid via Zelle. The unhoused New Yorkers and drug-dealing New Yorkers whom Paladino doesn’t want to encounter aren’t likely to have bank accounts and, therefore, aren’t likely to be able to get rebates via Zelle.

The rebate would vary by the ride and time of day and be linked to congestion on the roads. Someone who rode the bus during rush hour (that’s 8 am to 8 pm in NYC?) would get a rebate larger than whatever the fare is cranked up to. Someone who rode the bus at midnight wouldn’t get a rebate, which aligns pretty well with transit system costs because it is expensive per rider to maintain a schedule at night when ridership is low.

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Explanation of why Eric Swalwell had to be destroyed

by philg

If you’ve been wondering why multiple embarrassing stories about Eric Swalwell have been released in a seemingly coordinated fashion and why Democrats call for the accused-and-presumed-guilty rapist to drop out of the California governor’s race, but not to resign from Congress … “Top Three Candidates in the California Governor’s Race” (Governing, April 9, 2026 (one day before the anti-Swalwell tsunami arrived)):

if the election were held today, two Republicans would likely advance to the runoffs, shutting Democrats out

With nearly half of its voters registered as Democrats and only a quarter registered as Republicans, California is one of the bluest states in the union. The state has gone for Democrats in every presidential election since 1992. But Democrats are facing the prospect of being shut out of the governor’s office next year, even without a single charismatic Republican winning over left-leaning voters.

Recent polls show a large pack of Democratic candidates trailing two Republican candidates in the gubernatorial primary scheduled for June. Under California’s voting system, the top two vote-getters in the primary will proceed to a general election in November, no matter what party they’re from. If the primary were held today, according to the most recent polling, that would mean two Republican candidates, each pulling in just 14 percent of the primary vote, battling it out for the governor’s office in the fall. A lot could change before primary day, but the Democratic Party is increasingly nervous.

A lot did change! Instead of being celebrated for living Cesar Chavez‘s teachings, Swalwell was suddenly hit from all sides, like the noble peaceful Lebanese members of Hezbollah merely trying to defend their paradise of Christian-Muslim cooperation and tolerance from “the Zionist entity” (the Lebanese declared war on the Jews to their south in 1948 and don’t recognize a state of “Israel”).

Before I saw this Governing article, I was confused. Swalwell spent 85 percent of his time in Congress having sex with earnest perky 20-year-old progressives and then just wasted the remaining 15 percent?

For whom was the way cleared? Katie Porter, who pushes her biography “as a single mom of three kids”. It’s a selling point that she was unable to create harmony in a household of five people, including the biological father of her children (she sued him in 2013), because this experience will help her create harmony for 40 million Californians, a random assemblage of humans who, thanks to our asylum-based immigration system, don’t have a language, a religion, or a culture in common.

She says “California is in the grips of a decades-long housing crisis” and “I’ll push the federal government to invest in California’s housing challenges”. Despite California being richer than the average state and despite Californians preaching on the evils of inequality, in other words, comparatively poor taxpayers in Maine, Michigan, and New Mexico should be tapped to subsidize Californians’ desires to live in newer and more spacious accommodation.

Related… on the same weekend that he was exposed as a rapist, Swalwell was highlighted in the media for employing an undocumented migrant (normally a sign a virtue for Democrats):

Loosely related, from a Deplorable open-source software nerd:

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Will the Iran situation persuade a few more Americans of the virtues of the 2nd Amendment?

by philg

The standard expression “You can vote your way into socialism, but you have to shoot your way out” could be adjusted for recent events in Iran, where a popular uprising doesn’t seem practical: “You can vote your way into Islamic Theocracy, but you have to shoot your way out”.

It seems that very few Iranians could shoot their way out even if motivated to do so. The Islamic Republic has a near-monopoly on gun ownership that is enforced by a Chicago or New York Democrat’s dream common sense gun control system:

The Islamic Republic purportedly has only about 20 percent support (poll), but could probably have stayed in power forever if not for its nuclear weapons, ballistic missiles, Hezbollah, Houthi, and Hamas programs.

Could the divergence between what the Iranian people supposedly want (to the extent that can be measured accurately) and what the Iranian government does lead some Americans to reconsider their goals of eliminating private gun ownership in the U.S.?

(Note that I personally believe that Americans’ right to own guns will disappear within the next few decades, a casualty of our immigration system and the consequent creation of a society that is a random assemblage of humans without any common values. When shooting jihads such as Ndiaga Diagne‘s become weekly events, Americans will gladly surrender their rights in exchange for a perceived safety advantage, just as Americans meekly surrendered their First Amendment right to assemble during coronapanic.)

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Perfect photo for Bernie Sanders and Ro Khanna’s “tax the rich” effort

by philg

The perfect photo for stoking envy among the peasants:

(It’s an Aston Martin V12 Vantage (10 mpg?) in front of a Pilatus PC-24 (not as spacious as a typical billionaire’s Gulfstream, but useful for getting into smaller airports) in front of an FBO called “Million Air”. Austin, Texas.)

Separately, it would be a lot simpler to tax billionaires if the federal government eliminated or capped charitable deductions and imposed a foreign remittance tax on nonprofit orgs. Currently Bill Gates’s and Warren Buffett’s fortunes, for example, can be entirely sheltered from income tax via the money going into the Gates Foundation. Then the Gates Foundation can export the money away from the U.S. economy for $20 (wire transfer fee) by sending it all to Africa. With a cap on charitable deductions, Bill Gates and his subordinate-turned-wife-turned-plaintiff would have had to pay 20 percent federal capital gains tax plus 3.8 percent Obamacare tax. Let’s assume an additional 25 percent tax on sending money to Africa. and the U.S. Treasury could have become fat and happy as a result of Bill Gates’s success with Microsoft. Billionaires, despite trying, haven’t figured out how become immortal. Thus, they’d all pay 40 percent at death via estate tax on any money that wasn’t given to a nonprofit. Eliminating charitable deductions or capping the deductibility at $1 million per lifetime could be called the Elvis Presley Spirit of Charity Act of 2026. That’s because Elvis didn’t write off his charitable contributions, saying “that would take away from the spirit of the gift.” The Bernie and Khanna “steal 5 percent every year” plan seems doomed to fail because if you accept their reasoning (billionaires are too rich and didn’t truly earn their wealth) then the rate should be much higher than 5 percent. By contrast, there is no obvious reason for unlimited charitable deductions, especially given how lavishly nonprofit orgs spend.

What does Million Air look like inside, you might ask?

(It would look better if a slob hadn’t left his jacket on the chair at right…. said slob being yours truly (it was down near freezing in the morning).)

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LBJ Library: remembering America’s most consequential president

by philg

It’s the 61st anniversary of Lyndon Johnson going all-in on the Vietnam War. Wikipedia:

On March 8, 1965, 3,500 troops went ashore near Da Nang, the first time U.S. combat forces had been sent to mainland Asia since the Korean War.

Last month, I visited the LBJ Presidential Library in Austin. One of the challenges was coordinating a meeting there with an Austin-based friend and not referring to it as the “LGBTQ Library”. LBJ is the author of the modern U.S.:

  • He opened the borders for the first time since 1924 by signing The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, ultimately driving the percentage of immigrants in the U.S. to an all-time high and with an explicit rejection of the idea that immigrants should share language, culture, or religion with existing Americans or with each other
  • Johnson created the first federal programs, Medicare and Medicaid, for which there is no Congressional control of spending. (I.e., spending expands according to how many medical procedures doctors and hospitals can dream up and bill for) These have grown into the largest federal spending programs, a “hold my beer” situation for those who asked “What could possibly cost more than running the U.S. military?” (nearly 90 million Americans are on Medicaid, originally characterized as a “safety net” program)
  • He signed the Gun Control Act of 1968, which dialed back Americans’ Second Amendment rights
  • Johnson set up food stamps (later “SNAP/EBT”)
  • He signed the Housing and Urban Development Act of 1965, which created a bizarre patchwork of taxpayer-funded housing for some, but not all, Americans who met income criteria (apparently contrary to the 14th Amendment’s promise of Equal Protection; Person A gets a free apartment while Person B, identically situated, gets a place on a waiting list or is told that the waiting list is full (contrast to Medicaid and food stamps, in which every eligible person is treated equally).
  • Johnson signed the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, thus giving us NPR and PBS to sing the praises of all of the above

Most of the above Great Society legislation was opposed by Republicans, but didn’t seem crazy because it was done during a period when the U.S. was enjoying rapid economic growth. Had that rate of growth continued forever, the new programs might have been affordable.

(Note that Lyndon Johnson was the anti-Milton Friedman. Friedman said that one couldn’t have open borders and a welfare state. Johnson opened the borders and simultaneously dramatically expanded the welfare state.)

Approaching the library, one sees the effects of Johnson’s immigration policy. There is a sign encouraging people who don’t know enough English to understand the word “here” (a translation to “aqui” is required) to decide who will run roughly 40 percent of GDP (local, state, and federal governments):

If you love concrete you’ll love the architecture:

Johnson was an early adopter of technology, apparently. While he was serving in Congress, his wife purchased a radio station, which became fantastically more valuable due to favorable FCC rulings on what hours and power it could use and also due to advertisements placed on the radio station by businesses who wanted Representative Johnson to vote in particular ways. (“Johnson, Virtually Penniless in 1937, Left a Fortune Valued at $20‐Million” (NYT, 1973; that’s about $150 million in today’s mini-dollars)) This foray into government-regulated entrepreneurship and subsequent personal wealth isn’t highlighted at the library! Johnson campaigned by helicopter in 1948, a type of machine that wasn’t mass-produced until 1943:

The history wall gives equal weight to the Beatles playing on TV and to a U.S. President being shot and killed:

Who will agree with me that Johnson was the most consequential U.S. president? Even if he had done nothing other than open our borders, I think it is fair to say that Lyndon Johnson changed the U.S. more than any previous president. Some might cite Abraham Lincoln, but we could easily have ended up in an EU-type situation with our brothers, sisters, and binary-resisters in the Confederate States of America (which would have certainly abandoned slavery within a few years after 1865 since slavery was abolished nearly everywhere outside of the Arab/African world by 1888 (timeline)).

Still relevant, John Q. Public pays for whatever Lyndon Johnson dreamed up…

Related:

  • “‘War on Poverty’ May Have Created a Permanent Underclass, Economists Say” (March 2026): “A January report by the Congressional Budget Office found that, for the poorest 20% of Americans, government payments increased from 26% of total income in 1979 to 42% in 2022. And as welfare programs expanded, market income for America’s poorest declined as a share of total income. Whereas in 1979, welfare payments were only about half the amount of private income sources for the lowest quintile, the two income sources were roughly equal by 2022.”
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Why aren’t we seeing a resurgence of voluntary communism within the U.S.?

by philg

Merry Christmas to those who celebrate!

The Roman World into which Jesus was born was a pure market economy. Property was private, taxes were ridiculously low by modern standards (perhaps 1-5% of income), and government-provided welfare was negligible. The New Testament describes a Christian community that voluntarily opted out of the Roman economic and political system:

Now the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common.

There was not a needy person among them, for as many as owned lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold.

Acts 4:32, 34

We’re told that socialism and communism are enjoying renewed popularity in the U.S. Young progressives love Bernie Sanders and the Ayatollah Mamdani.

It’s perfectly possible to set up a voluntary communist or at least communalist society in the U.S. See, for example, Amana, Iowa: 75 years of communal living, in which people lived without private property embedded within a capitalist society.

Why aren’t at least some young progressives living their dream via voluntary contract?

Loosely related… Jupiter Mayor Jim Kuretski’s house, Christmas 2021:

Related:

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Replacementocracy

by philg

American-born New Yorkers said that they would vote for Andrew Cuomo (October 18 poll). Foreign-born New Yorkers said that that they would vote for Mayor Mamdani (charts below). What do we call the system of government that brought Mayor Mamdani to power? It doesn’t seem like “democracy” since many of the voters, like the new mayor himself, are only recently arrived. How about “replacementocracy” for when an election result is determined by the votes of immigrants? The neologism is literally “rule by replacements”.

The actual election results seem to be consistent with the above poll. Screen shot from last night:

Separately, it was interesting to watch Florida Realtor of the Year 2020 and 2021 compete against Florida Realtor of the Year 2026.

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Why won’t rich states fund SNAP and other welfare programs during the federal shutdown?

by philg

Gavin Newsom loves to brag about how rich California is. Here’s a typical post in which he says that “California is the fourth largest economy in the world” and is getting richer every day (“#1 in new business startups”).

Here’s a recent post from Gavin Newsom in which he says that “40 million people [will] lose access to food.” (Note that there are actually more than 40 million people on SNAP, which in no way should be considered “welfare”, but let’s accept 40 million as an approximation.) He doesn’t say that “Except for the 5.5 million Californians on SNAP/EBT (“CalFresh”), who will be fully funded with state tax dollars because California is so rich, SNAP/EBT beneficiaries nationwide will lose access to food.”

So…

  1. the state is rich
  2. the political party that runs the state says that inequality is bad
  3. the political party that runs the state says that taxpayer-funded food is a human right
  4. there is no political opposition to the ruling party
  5. the state won’t provide food for its residents unless it can feed at the federal trough

How is it possible for all of the above to be true?

Loosely related because Kentucky isn’t a rich state…

Governor Beshear has a huge charitable heart so long as other people are working longer hours to pay for his charity (kind of like if I borrow my neighbor’s car, donate it to a non-profit org, and then call myself virtuous/charitable). But why won’t he fund free food for all needy Kentuckians with Kentucky state tax dollars?

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The New York Times called for an “uprising” six months ago

by philg

Six months ago, the New York Times told the righteous to grab their rifles and run to the frontlines of “a comprehensive national civic uprising” (see “What’s Happening Is Not Normal. America Needs an Uprising That Is Not Normal.” (April 17, 2025): “It’s time for a comprehensive national civic uprising”)

How’s the uprising going? Have the revolutionaries managed to kill enough fascists to make a difference? Or are Bernie and AOC still our only hope?

So far, the only real hint of something larger — a mass countermovement — has been the rallies led by Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. But this, too, is an ineffective way to respond to Trump; those partisan rallies make this fight seem like a normal contest between Democrats and Republicans.

What is happening now is not normal politics. We’re seeing an assault on the fundamental institutions of our civic life, things we should all swear loyalty to — Democrat, independent or Republican.

Trump is about power. The only way he’s going to be stopped is if he’s confronted by some movement that possesses rival power.

The NYT said, in the above article, “We live in a country with catastrophically low levels of institutional trust.” What could account for low levels of trust? The political science nerds in the 2020 paper, below, say “We find a statistically significant negative relationship between ethnic diversity and social trust across all studies.” (i.e., a random assemblage of humans via asylum-based immigration will result in a low-trust society).

Could AI perhaps update this classic “To the barricades” image to show young American progressives wearing Antifa T-shirts and carrying avocado toast?

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