Category: Politics

Could Graham Platner get $1 billion from MacKenzie Scott Bezos and friends in exchange for dropping out of the Maine Senate race?

by philg

100 percent of Maine’s progressive females have apparently had sex with 100 percent-disabled (according to our government experts) Graham Platner. At least one of these females now says that Platner raped her, but the rape wasn’t as bad as continued representation in the U.S. Senate by Susan Collins, nominally Republican (Politico):

“One of the reasons I didn’t come forward sooner was, the huge moral conflict that I had between supporting his politics, but not supporting him as a person,” she said. “I just want the truth out there. I just want people to have a whole scope of who he is as a person.”

After some discouraging poll results regarding the November general election, it seems that the only way to protect democracy is for the person who won 72% of the primary vote (NBC) to be replaced by someone selected by a handful of elite Democrats (how will they find any who haven’t had sex with Mr. Platner?).

Platner could make $millions simply by betting on himself to stay in the race and then… staying in the race. Here’s Polymarket, for example:

Rules for one of the above options:

This market will resolve to “Yes” if Graham Platner withdraws from or officially announces his withdrawal from the 2026 Maine Senate election, or announces the suspension of his 2026 Senate campaign, by July 31, 2026, 11:59 PM ET. Otherwise, this market will resolve to “No”.

What if Platner wants to be a billionaire rather than a multimillionaire? He could agree to withdraw from the race in exchange for $1 billion from progressive Democrat multi-billionaires, such as divorce plaintiff MacKenzie Scott Bezos.

(Maybe a deal with be done in secret and we won’t find out about until after the election when Platner hangs swastika flags from his new beach houses in Bar Harbor, Palm Beach, and other strongholds for Democrat elites?)

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How’s Katie Wilson doing running Seattle?

by philg

New York City (the “Mamdani Caliphate”) is not the only American city with a Socialist mayor. Katie Wilson has been running Seattle ($9 billion/year budget) for six months now. How’s socialist governance working out? It will be ironic if she does a better job than her liberal Democrat predecessors! During our recent visit (links below), we learned that property crime, e.g., car break-ins, is rampant even in upper-middle-class neighborhoods, and that the places where drug addicts get into fights are just a few blocks from the tourist hotspots (which, of course, we were not allowed to stray from under a directive from Senior Management).

(Note that American-style socialism is the opposite of classic Lenin-Marx society, in which every able-bodied adult had to work. In what Americans call “socialism” nobody is required to work because money can be transferred from the working to the nonworking via taxation. Instead of seizing the NVIDIA’s means of production (over in Taiwan?), the NVIDIA receptionist is taxed to pay a family to relax in its 4th generation on welfare. The U.S. system is properly characterized as transferism, not socialism.)

She should have been given a lift by the Millionaires’ Tax, signed a few months ago, which funds all of these great things:

But apparently not, because it seems that the pre-“socialist” tax rate structure isn’t sufficient to fund the socialist dream. “New taxes on the table as Mayor Wilson looks to balance budget deficit” (Fox 13, 6/22/2026):

Seattle’s projected budget deficit has grown to approximately $488 million over the next three years due to inflation and lower-than-expected property and sales tax revenues. To balance the budget, Mayor Wilson is exploring both spending cuts and new revenue options—such as a local capital gains tax or an expansion of the “JumpStart” payroll tax—noting that “nothing is off the table” ahead of her September budget proposal. The budget deficit has grown about $100 million more than initial projections, now standing around $488 million over the next three years. She could ask for spending cuts, but Wilson indicated that cuts alone will not be her strategy. Taxes are also on the table, including a capital gains tax. Right now, there is a statewide capital gains tax, but not a local one.

(Consistent with American innumeracy, the professional journalists don’t tell us what the city’s total budget is and, therefore, the readers has no way of understanding whether a $488 million deficit is a lot or a little. The city proper has a population of about 800,000 and about 380,000 households. So the deficit could be closed if each household contributed $1,300. There are an estimated 21,000 undocumented migrants in Seattle. Yale says that, in fact, we cannot estimate this population accurately and the real number is likely around 2X whatever we’re told by the media. Anyway, those noble enrichers presumably aren’t going to pay (nor should they, since they built Seattle in the first place). ChatGPT estimates roughly 55,000 households on what used to be called “welfare” so they’re not going to pay. Maybe 200,000 households (“the chumps”) would bear the burden? Each one needs to cough up closer to $2,500 if we assume the tax base doesn’t further deteriorate.)

Katie Wilson herself seems to be working on creating larger concentrations of those who are completely dependent on taxpayers:

The mayor’s package of legislation will take Seattle several big steps closer to opening 1,000 new units of shelter and emergency housing this year by treating this emergency like an actual emergency. … Even the most successful shelters that do the best work and have the best relationships in their communities are currently limited to serve only 100 people. … The mayor’s proposal would increase this limit to 150 people per site on an interim basis, provide support to address any potential public safety impacts, and additionally allow one location in each district to serve up to 250 people in cases where it makes sense.

Among her official news items, I couldn’t find anything about initiatives to attract productive business. The closest thing that I found was a proposed one-year moratorium on data centers, which later passed.

Starbucks decided to spend more than $100 million to move a lot of corporate functions to Nashville, where 2,000 people will work (US News). Right now, about 3,000 people work at Starbucks HQ in Seattle, but perhaps the number will be roughly equal to the Nashville cohort eventually because some employees are moving. (The best-known former employee already moved out: Starbucks billionaire advocates for higher tax rates and moves to Florida)

Amazon has been moving east, away from any taxes Katie Porter might try to collect, such as the city payroll tax that started in 2021 (passed during coronapanic when it might have been illegal for anyone to come into the city and work!), and toward Microsoft’s traditional stomping ground. (March 2026 article: “Amazon is abandoning offices near its headquarters in downtown Seattle.”)

Related:

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With birthright citizenship upheld, will Democrats now say that Supreme Court orders should be followed?

by philg

A lot of Democrat officials have said that the U.S. Supreme Court’s rulings are illegitimate and should not be followed, e.g., the recent ruling that allows temporarily protected Haitians to be sent home after 16 years in the U.S. Example from a Democrat thought leader: “it’s not something we will ever accept”.

The representative for the High-IQ (TM) crowd in Maskachusetts said, a few weeks ago, that the Court is “corrupt” (Ayanna Pressley has been characterizing the Court with this epithet for some years, according to an X search):

We know a guy in Boston who married a Honduran lady. His wife’s pregnant relatives would come to visit a few months before any baby was due. They’d show up alone at a high-end Boston hospital, e.g., Beth Israel, give birth, tell the staff “I’m undocumented”, and go home with a U.S. citizen and without ever seeing a bill from the hospital (costs covered by taxpayers). Except for three haters, the Supreme Court today agreed (Trump v. Barbara; what did Barbara do that was so bad?) that this should continue. Does that mean the Democrats who previously complained that the Court was illegitimate will now say that it is legitimate?

(Maybe there are four haters on the Court, actually. Brett Kavanaugh, the convicted rapist/murderer of Prof. Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, Ph.D., said that Congress could limit birthright citizenship by statute, but that El Presidente couldn’t do it via executive order. I guess that means Amy Coney Barrett was the deciding vote in favor of virtue, love, kindness, etc. Finally, given that 100% of the females on the Court voted one way and 80% of the males voted another, maybe this suggests a question for Alan Turing’s original male-female Turing Test (“imitation game”). Ask the person of unknown sex (there were just two back then) “A migrant walks across the U.S. border and pushes out a baby. Do you give the baby four generations of taxpayer-funded welfare or take the position that it is the parents’ responsibility to take care of their children and descedants?”)

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Why we can’t simply limit oil and gas exports to 2025 levels

by philg

For the past couple of months I’ve been wondering here why U.S. consumers are paying more for gasoline than in 2025 (albeit still less than in 2022) if the Trump administration could simply limit exports of oil and gas to 2025 levels with a simple “it’s a war” explanation. This question is answered, to some extent, in “The World Can’t Get Enough U.S. Energy, Keeping Prices High for Americans” (WSJ, yesterday):

The Trump administration is trying to tamp down rising prices, including by waiving restrictions on trade between U.S. ports and releasing oil from strategic stockpiles. Trump said last week he supports suspending the federal gasoline tax. Gasoline prices nationally averaged $4.51 a gallon on Sunday and could keep climbing into Memorial Day weekend, the starting gun to the busy summer driving season.

The administration has said it wouldn’t impose a ban on energy exports. Energy Secretary Chris Wright said on CNBC last week that the U.S.’s economic future depends on selling its energy abroad and that this was a top item on the Trump agenda.

“We can’t be a major energy exporter to the world if we decide sometimes to stop exporting our energy,” he said.

In other words, the Trump administration is allowing Democrats, previously climate change alarmists who wanted fossil fuel prices to be higher, to harp on lower-than-2022-but-higher-than-2025 gasoline prices, possibly resulting in dramatic losses of Congressional seats in November 2026, in order to preserve the U.S.’s long-term market position.

What’s the scale?

The ports of New York, Philadelphia and Albany, N.Y., exported 174,000 barrels a day of gasoline, diesel and other petroleum products last month, according to Kpler. That is 10 times the volumes they shipped over the same period last year. Halfway through May, the pace of exports is even higher, well over 200,000 barrels a day—the highest monthly pace on Kpler’s records since 2017.

These barrels so far this month are predominantly heading to Europe, including France, Belgium, the Netherlands and the U.K., Kpler’s Smith said. Analysts say that is a sign that a shortage of refined products has spread from Asia to Europe.

The U.S. exported 2.7 million barrels of U.S. diesel, gasoline and other refined products to Australia in March, according to Kpler. Before the war broke out, exports there had been sporadic. An additional 1.8 million barrels headed to Australia in April.

I wonder if the Trump administration’s policy makes sense even for those who have a long-term perspective. If Democrats can take control of Congress maybe they will obstruct the U.S. fossil fuel industry in some other ways, e.g., with a long-dreamt-of carbon tax.

Separately, why isn’t there a lot more production in response to the higher price? The current price of oil is about 15% lower than it was in 2022 (chart below), but still much higher than it was in 2025:

Maybe it is because the market is predicting a sag down to $89/barrel by October 2026 and a further sag to $75/barrel by October 2027?

The lower chart is curious. Investors have changed their opinion of the likely cost of oil in October 2027, up from about $60 to $75. Are they expecting that we’ll still be at war? That inflation will go back to the raging 2022 levels?

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How were race-based congressional districts supposed to work in our open-borders age?

by philg

The Supreme Court recently ruled against a race-based congressional district in Louisiana. It was developed under the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA) in order to give Black voters a chance to elect a candidate of their choice. 1965 was the same year that we opened our borders via Hart-Celler. I’m curious to know how the laws were ever supposed to work together. It seems that the VRA envisioned a majority-minority split between just two groups: white and Black. After Hart-Celler, though, a state could easily have the following:

  • a white minority (under 50%)
  • an Asian-American minority (we’re informed that all varieties of Asians, including Indians and Samoans, can be lumped together under AANHPI, Asian American and Native Hawaiians/Pacific Islander) that wants to elect a fellow Asian-American, such as the noble Ted Lieu (proof that not everyone from Taiwan believes in a government that spends only 18% of GDP, including state/local)
  • a Black minority that wants to elect someone like Kamala Harris
  • a Hispanic minority that wants to elect someone Hispanic
  • an Arab minority that wants to elect a fellow Muslim Arab (BBC: “This month, the Midwestern city of 28,000 has reached a milestone. Hamtramck has elected an all-Muslim City Council and a Muslim mayor, becoming the first in the US to have a Muslim-American government. Once faced with discrimination, Muslim residents have become integral to this multicultural city, and now make up more than half its population.”)

If the VRA isn’t specifically limited to one racial group, which it doesn’t seem to be, who decides which of the above minorities will get its own district and which will see its votes diluted and its dreams denied?

Loosely related, in the Department of Diversity is Our Strength:

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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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