The Adverse Economic Consequences of Big-Government Populism

I favor “freedom conservatism” over “national conservatism” because the former is unambiguously based on liberty and the latter veers toward populism.

Of course, it’s never easy to define populism. My shorthand definition is that a populist is someone who exploits economic ignorance to push policies that sound appealing to voters in the short run (such as protectionism, industrial policy, or class warfare) but do economic damage in the long run.

So I was very interested to see that three German economists (Manuel Funke, Moritz Schularick, and Christoph Trebesch) authored some research about populism and economic policy for the Kiel Institute for the World Economy.

Just in case some readers are pressed for time, the biggest takeaway from their study is that populism leads to less prosperity – as captured by Figure 4.

Their study looks at both left-wing populists and right-wing populists. Both versions produce negative economic consequences.

Though Figure 6 shows that leftist populists seems to do more damage than rightist populists.

Here are some highlights from their findings.

A core empirical challenge is to identify populist leaders. Our database on populists in power is the most ambitious exercise to classify populist leaders to date, spanning more than 100 years and 60 large countries. …According to today’s workhorse definition, populism is defined as a political style centered on the supposed struggle of “people vs. the establishment”…Populists place the narrative of “people vs. elites” at the center of their political agenda… In the empirical analysis, we use a variety of different empirical strategies that all paint a similar picture: populism has large economic costs. Over 15 years, GDP per capita and consumption decline by more than 10% compared to a plausible non-populist counterfactual. Moreover, despite their claim to pursue the interests of the “common people” against the elites, the income distribution does not improve on average. …we also look at other outcomes and present evidence that economic disintegration, unsustainable macro policies, and the erosion of institutions typically go hand-in-hand with populism. Trade and financial integration falls, suggesting that populists often deliver on their promises of fostering economic nationalism and protectionism

If you’re wondering which politicians are populists, here’s their list.

I don’t have any objections to the politicians listed above, but if populists are politicians who gain power by whipping up antagonism against the “establishment” and the “elite,” then why isn’t Franklin Roosevelt on the list?

Or how about Brazil. I can understand Bolsonaro being included, but why not Rousseff or Lulu?

Moreover, why not include every socialist government, most of which usually gain power after campaigning on class-warfare agendas?

I could list other examples, but let’s return to the study and share more of the findings. Unsurprisingly, populist governments are associated with more debt and more inflation.

All of which confirms my shorthand definition that populists do things that seem popular in the short run (spend money and print money) but do damage in the long run.

P.S. I can’t resist asking whether Argentina’s new libertarian president is a populist. Javier Milei definitely campaigned against the establishment and the elite, so he presumably qualifies. However, his agenda is to shrink the burden of government (and he’s doing a good job so far), which is contrary to the statist agenda of the politicians analyzed in the study.

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Politician Humor

Inexplicably, I’ve only shared one column this year mocking politicians. So let’s rectify that oversight with five new examples of satire.

We’ll start with this cartoon. I think Crazy Bernie is the one yelling, but it could be Biden.

Our second item is a headline from the Babylon Bee, though the entire story is worth reading.

Movie buffs will appreciate our next item, which sort of copies the message from my series about the “wretched hive of scum and villainy.”

Speaking of which, here’s a typical denizen of that wretched hive.

As usual, I’ve saved the best for last. In this case, though, it’s a written joke rather than a cartoon or meme.

Only weeks after leaving office on January 20, 2017, former President Barack Obama discovers the AC in one of his mansions is not cooling so he calls Troy the Serviceman to come out and fix it.

Troy drives to President Obama’s new house, which is located in a very exclusive, gated community near Washington where all the residents have a net income of way more than $250,000 per year.

Troy arrives and takes his tools into the house. He is led to the guest house that isn’t cooling. Troy assesses the problem and tells President Obama that it’s an easy repair that will take less than 10 minutes.  President Obama asks Troy how much it will cost.  Troy checks his rate chart and says, “$9,500.

“What?! $9,500?!” Obama asks, stunned, “But you said it’s an easy repair.  Michelle will whip me if I pay an AC mechanic that much!” Troy says, “Yes, but what I do is charge those who make more than $250,000 per year a much higher amount so I can fix the air conditioning of poorer people for free. This has always been my philosophy.

As a matter of fact, I lobbied the Democrat Congress, who passed this philosophy into law. Now all AC techs must do business this way. It’s known as the ‘Affordable Heating and Air Conditioning Act of 2014’. I’m surprised you haven’t heard of it.”  In spite of that, Obama tells Troy there’s no way he’s paying that much for a small repair, so Troy leaves.

Obama spends the next hour flipping through the phone book calling for another AC company but he finds that all other AC service businesses in the area have gone out of business. Not wanting to pay Troy’s price, Obama does nothing and the AC goes un-repaired for several more days. A week later the heat is so bad President Obama has had to put a wet towel on  Michelle and she is not happy as she has Oprah and guests arriving the next morning.

Obama calls Troy and pleads with him to return. Troy goes back to President Obama’s house, looks at the AC unit, checks his new rate chart and says, “Let’s see, this will now cost you $21,000.”

President Obama quickly fires back, “What? A few days ago you told me it would cost $9,500!”

Troy explains, “Well, because of the ‘Affordable Heating and Air Conditioning Act,’ a lot of wealthier people are learning how to maintain and take care of their own units so there are fewer payers in the AC exchanges. As a result, the price I have to charge wealthy people like you keeps rising. Not only that, but for some reason the demand for AC work by those who get it for free has skyrocketed! There’s a long waiting list of those who need repairs, but the amount we get doesn’t cover our costs, especially paperwork and record-keeping. This unfortunately has put a lot of my fellow AC mechanics out of business, they’re not being replaced, and nobody is going into the Air Conditioning business because they know they can’t make any money at it. I’m hurting too, all thanks to greedy rich people like you who won’t pay their ‘fair share’.

On the other hand, why didn’t you buy HVAC insurance last December?  If you had bought HVAC insurance available under the ‘Affordable Heating and Air Conditioning Act,’ all this would have been covered by your policy.”

“You mean I wouldn’t have to pay anything to have you fix my AC problem?” asks Obama.

“Well, not exactly,” replies Troy. “You would have had to buy the insurance before the deadline, which has passed now. And, because you’re rich, you would have had to pay $34,000 in premiums, which would have given you a ‘silver’ plan, and then, since this would have been your first repair, you would have to pay up to the $21,000 deductible, and anything over that would have a $7,500 co-pay, and then there’s the mandatory maintenance program, which is covered up to 17.5%, so there are some costs involved. Nothing is for free.”

“WHAT?!” exclaims Obama. “Why so much for a small AC unit?

With a bland look, Troy replies, “Well, paperwork, mostly, like I said.  And the internal cost of the program itself. You don’t think a program of this complexity and scope can run itself, do you?  Besides, there are millions of folks with lower incomes than you, even many in the ‘middle class’, who qualify for subsidies that people like you must support. That’s why they call it the ‘Affordable Heating and Air Conditioning Act’! Only people who don’t make much money can afford it. If you want affordable Air Conditioning you’ll have to give away most of what you have accumulated and cut your and Michelle’s income by about 90%.  Then you can qualify to GET your ‘Fair Share’ instead of GIVING it.” “But who would pass a crazy act like the ‘Affordable Heating and Air Conditioning Act’?!” exclaims the exasperated Obama.

After a sigh, Troy replies, “Congress… because they didn’t read it.”

Now you understand how the health care system works thanks not only to Obamacare, but also because of lots of other policies (Medicare, Medicaid, the healthcare exclusion, etc) that distort prices and create perverse incentives.

P.S. If you want another Obama-specific joke, click here.

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A Strong Candidate for Politician of the Year

My politician-of-the-year candidates for 2022 were George Santos, Pete Buttigieg, NYC Mayor Eric Adams, and his Schools Chancellor.

All of these government officials displayed remarkable levels of hypocrisy, arrogance, and sleaze, making them strong contestants.

And, given the oleaginous nature of politicians (described here, here, and here), that is not an easy task.

So who is a contestant this year?

Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm is an obvious choice.

Her recent behavior was so despicable that even the left-leaning crowd at National Public Radio gave it some coverage. Here are some excerpts from Camila Domonoske’s report.

When Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm set out on a four-day electric-vehicle road trip this summer, she knew charging might be a challenge. But she probably didn’t expect anyone to call the cops. …between stops, Granholm’s entourage at times had to grapple with the limitations of the present. Like when her caravan of EVs — including a luxury Cadillac Lyriq, a hefty Ford F-150 and an affordable Bolt electric utility vehicle — was planning to fast-charge in Grovetown, a suburb of Augusta, Georgia. …there weren’t going to be enough plugs to go around. One of the station’s four chargers was broken, and others were occupied. So an Energy Department staffer tried parking a nonelectric vehicle by one of those working chargers to reserve a spot for the approaching secretary of energy. …a regular gas-powered car blocking the only free spot for a charger? In fact, a family that was boxed out — on a sweltering day, with a baby in the vehicle — was so upset they decided to get the authorities involved: They called the police. The sheriff’s office couldn’t do anything. It’s not illegal for a non-EV to claim a charging spot in Georgia.

How disgusting. Politicians and senior government officials have an entitlement mentality that is worse than the worst welfare recipients.

If I was the family that was blocked, I not only would have called the police, but also parked in such a way to make sure Ms. Granholm’s car also could not access the charger.

P.S. Needless to say, Granholm’s bureaucracy should not exist.

P.P.S. Most people (including myself) have mocked the so-called Inflation Reduction Act because inflation immediately increased, but that awful legislation also gave us the turbo-charged subsidies for electric vehicles that Granholm is promoting (sort of a pared-down version of the Green New Deal).

P.P.P.S. Thinking about yesterday’s column, Norway’s Prime Minister should be another contestant for Politician of the Year.

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America’s “Wretched Hive of Scum and Villainy”: Part III

In a two-part series back in 2020 (here and here), I analyzed the unseemly behavior of politicians. For Part III of that series, let’s start with my CNBC discussion earlier this week about insider trading by lawmakers.

The interview focused on legislation proposed by Senators Josh Hawley (R-MO) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) to ban members of Congress and other senior government officials from owning individuals stocks.

The goal is to prevent lawmakers from being able to obtain unearned riches by, for instance, buying a company’s and then enacting legislation to increase its value.

• Perhaps by imposing regulations that hurt its competitors.
• Perhaps by imposing protectionism that hurts its competitors.
• Perhaps by imposing taxes that hurt its competitors.

Or they can do things that directly help the company, like making sure it gets lucrative government contracts.

As you can see from the interview, I’m somewhat sympathetic to the Hawley-Gillibrand legislation, but I’m not confident it will make a big difference. So long as we have a big government, that creates too many opportunities for politicians to use their power for personal profit.

So what’s the answer?

Robert Stein wrote a few years ago in National Review that you can try to solve the problem on the back end.

…between 1998 and 2004, more than 40 percent of departing House members and 50 percent of departing senators became lobbyists. …here’s my suggestion: Once someone is elected to federal office — the House, Senate, or White House — they will get that office’s pay for life, guaranteed, plus inflation, no matter how soon they retire or how long they linger in office. However, all other income (except for withdrawals from previously accumulated retirement funds and Social Security) will be taxed at 100 percent. No speech fees, no lobbying, no consulting, no corporate boards, no book deals, no film deals, no university positions. No other jobs, either. Basically, no nothing. Unless, of course, you just want to work as a labor of love, in which case be my guest. …The proposal would certainly eliminate former federal officeholders’ incentive to earn other income, to be “productive” citizens. But what is it that former politicians produce? To my eye, it looks like what they’re best at is collecting rent on their previous positions by finding ways to tilt the market away from freedom and toward a system rigged in favor of their clients, or collecting bribes through loopholes for having done so while in office.

Stein acknowledges his proposal is not very libertarian, but he concludes by claiming that “confiscating the private-sector pay of former elected officials may be one way to expand the size of the private-sector for the rest of us.”

Glenn Reynolds, a law professor at the University of Tennessee, proposed something similar a few year earlier.

…we see the “revolving door” in almost all industries and sectors of government, and it’s a corrupting influence… It’s easy to see why companies want to hire people like this. First of all, the architects of complicated regulatory schemes are often the only ones who understand them. But more significantly, when you’re the architect of a regulatory scheme, it’s handy for companies if it’s already in your mind that you might get a lucrative job from them later… I propose putting a 50% surtax — or maybe it should be 75%, I’m open to discussion — on the post-government earnings of government officials. So if you work at a cabinet level job and make $196,700 a year, and you leave for a job that pays a million a year, you’ll pay 50% of the difference — just over $400,000 — to the Treasury… I doubt we can put political corruption out of business, but this should make it at least a bit rarer.

If the goal is to reduce corruption and money in politics, Steven Greenhut of Reason shares my view that the best answer is to shrink the size and scope of government.

…campaign-finance reform is the “thing” that never goes away. The problem—at least with political spending—is government… Reality check: Those groups whose existence is most dependent on the government are going to spend oodles on lobbying that government. …Maybe we can all embrace a reform idea that would actually work: reducing the size and power of government. Sadly, that is the one idea that will frighten the kind of politicians and activists who support campaign-finance reform.

Amen.

Let’s conclude by looking at a strange approach that is being tried by Spain.

Here are some excerpts from an article in the New York Times by Nicholas Casey.

Carlos Alburquerque isn’t your typical rehab candidate. He’s a 75-year-old grandfather living in Córdoba, a city in southern Spain. …But his isn’t your typical rehab program: It’s an 11-month boot camp to reform corrupt Spanish officials and “reinsert” them into mainstream society. …Mr. Alburquerque…is serving a four-year prison sentence for stealing around 400,000 euros, nearly a half a million dollars… He will sit in a circle with other convicted officials for group therapy sessions… corruption has captured the public imagination here. Flip open a newspaper or turn on the radio: You will hear of schemes, scandals and skulduggery which almost always lead back to the public purse. …biggest challenge may be convincing Spain’s corrupt officials that there actually might be something wrong with them.

For what it’s worth, I hope it is successful but I don’t expect good results from Spain’s therapeutic approach.

The bottom line is that big government enables big corruption. That’s the problem that needs to be addressed.

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Politician Humor

Since I only shared two column of politician humor last year (here and here), I want to get an early start for 2023.

Our first example comes from the only good president of my lifetime.

For our second item, here’s a visual explanation of “public choice” theory.

For our next item, let’s go across the Atlantic Ocean for a quick look at the scandal-plagued (and big government-oriented) European Parliament, where bribery has a long tradition.

The European Parliament always wanted to go viral… but maybe not like this 😬 pic.twitter.com/wygNdKZ04N

— Jakob Hanke Vela (@HankeVela) December 22, 2022

I’ve long argued that we don’t want “productive” politicians and that’s the message from our fourth item.

As usual, I’ve saved the best for last.

Amusing, but it’s genuinely scandalous that politicians from both parties often become very wealthy during their time in office.

I’m in favor of people becoming rich, but only when they do something valuable in the private sector, not because they are using insider knowledge about bad policy to line their pockets.

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The Public Choice Challenge

Back in 2016, I shared three videos to explain the theory of “public choice,” which is simply the application of economic principles to understand the self-interested behavior of politicians, bureaucracies, and voters.

Wonky readers will enjoy this fourth video.

I’m citing public choice because the Economist, in a recent article, shared a very depressing chart about the decline of economic growth in the developed world.

As you can see, the average increase in per-capita economic output has dropped by more than 50 percent since the turn of the century.

From a policy perspective, there’s a very simple explanation.

As explained in this fascinating video, the western world enjoyed pro-growth policies of the 1980s and 1990s. You can credit Reagan and Thatcher or you can credit the “Washington Consensus.”

Unfortunately, the opposite has happened in the 21st century. The United States has moved toward statism and the same is true for Japan and most of Western Europe.

So it’s no surprise that growth has slowed in industrialized nations.

And it’s also no surprise (given the magazine’s ideological bent) that the Economist doesn’t really understand what’s been happening. Here are some excerpts from the article.

The long-run rate of growth has dwindled alarmingly, contributing to problems including stagnant living standards and fulminating populists. Between 1980 and 2000, gdp per person grew at an annual rate of 2.25% on average. Since then the pace of growth has sunk to about 1.1%. …The problem is that…reviving growth has slid perilously down politicians’ to-do lists. Their election manifestos are less focused on growth than before… Our analysis of political manifestos shows that the anti-growth sentiment they contain has surged by about 60% since the 1980s. Welfare states have become focused on providing the elderly with pensions and health care… Support for growth-enhancing reforms has withered. …unless they embrace growth, rich democracies will see their economic vitality ebb away and will become weaker on the world stage. Once you start thinking about growth, wrote Robert Lucas, a Nobel-prize-winning economist, “it is hard to think about anything else”. If only governments would take that first step. Moreover, even when politicians say they want growth, they act as if they don’t.

At the risk of being presumptuous, it’s not just a matter of thinking about growth. It’s also understanding the policies that produce growth.

And it’s also understanding how to get those pro-growth policies when politicians have big incentives to do the wrong thing. And this brings us back to public choice.

Let’s now look at some excerpts from a column in the Wall Street Journal by Alberto Mingardi.

‘What would you do if you were the state?” So begins the greatest book of political theory you never read. “The State,” by the Hungarian-born economist Anthony de Jasay, was published in 1985… Jasay argued that particular leaders matter far less than might be supposed and that all governments ultimately seek to maximize their discretionary power. …Politicians differ, sometimes sharply, in ideas and character. But governments—like businesses—have basic structural tendencies. The state always seeks to expand. Redistribution, Jasay maintained, is “addictive.” The moment government starts giving out goodies, the mechanisms undergirding society and the economy change. Corporations and interest groups have a new incentive to work to win the state’s favor. So businesses tend to shift resources and attention from engineers to lawyers, from serving customers to capturing decision makers. “The greater the reach of the state, the greater is the scope for profiting from its commands,” Jasay wrote.

Sadly, I don’t have any easy solutions. Once people learn they can vote themselves money, it is very hard to rescue a society.

But I know that protecting and promoting jurisdictional competition is part of the answer if we want to avoid the problem of “goldfish government.”

P.S. For more public choice-related analysis, I recommend these three videos.

P.P.S. For more about politicians, click here and here.

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More “Politician of the Year” Candidates

When I’m sharing examples of politician humor, I’m indirectly wading into a serious debate.

• Are bad people naturally drawn to the corruption of politics?
• Or, do good people get corrupted after getting into politics?

I don’t pretend to know the answer, though I suspect it’s a combination of both.

What I do know is that we always have lots of options when deciding who deserves to be named the “Politician of the Year.”

I already wrote last October about Eric Adams, the Mayor of New York City.

Today, we have two more options.

The New York Times has a fascinating look at how a freshman Republican apparently created a fictional life story during his successful campaign for Congress.

Here are some excerpts from the story, authored by Grace Ashford and Michael Gold.

By his account, he catapulted himself from a New York City public college to become a “seasoned Wall Street financier and investor” with a family-owned real estate portfolio of 13 properties and an animal rescue charity that saved more than 2,500 dogs and cats. But a New York Times review of public documents and court filings from the United States and Brazil, as well as various attempts to verify claims that Mr. Santos, 34, made on the campaign trail, calls into question key parts of the résumé that he sold to voters. Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, the marquee Wall Street firms on Mr. Santos’s campaign biography, told The Times they had no record of his ever working there. Officials at Baruch College, which Mr. Santos has said he graduated from in 2010, could find no record of anyone matching his name and date of birth graduating that year.There was also little evidence that his animal rescue group, Friends of Pets United, was, as Mr. Santos claimed, a tax-exempt organization: The Internal Revenue Service could locate no record of a registered charity with that name.

Seems like Santos has a good head start on other newcomers to Congress. Does he deserve to be “Politician of the Year”?

Perhaps, but there’s another contestant to consider.

As reported by Thomas Catenacci of Fox News, the Secretary of Transportation is a big believer that global warming is a major problem.

But that does not stop him from using taxpayer-funded private jets to advance his political ambitions.

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, an advocate of increased government action to curb carbon emissions, has taken at least 18 flights using taxpayer-funded private jets since taking office, Fox News Digital has learned. Buttigieg has traveled across the country — visiting Florida, Ohio and New Hampshire, among other states — and out of the country using a private jet fleet managed by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), according to flight tracking data… APT executive director Caitlin Sutherland told Fox News Digital… “for someone so holier-than-thou on reducing emissions, Buttigieg sure doesn’t seem to mind the pollution caused by his literal jet-setting,” she continued. “This is hypocrisy at its finest, and these troubling expenses to taxpayers must come under immediate scrutiny.” …The states Buttigieg visited have largely been considered swing states in recent federal elections. 

I have an entire page dedicated to “Honest Leftists,” but maybe I also need a page for “Hypocritical Leftists.” Buttigieg definitely qualifies.

Though the real scandal isn’t his use of private jets rather than commercial flights. It’s the fact that he’s the head of a department that shouldn’t even exist.

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Politician Humor

Even though mocking politicians is one of my favorite activities, I just noticed that I’ve only shared one column of anti-politician satire this year. And that’s after sharing four versions (here, here, here, and here) in 2021.

So let’s try to catch up with some new jabs at our lords and masters.

We’ll start with some eternal wisdom from Steve Harvey.

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A post shared by Life🧬🧬 (@theinner_life)

The next three items will stay with the theme of greedy and grasping politicians.

Starting with this cartoon.

Followed by this cartoon strip.

And here’s one more, though I actually suspect the opportunities for graft as a governor are greater.

Let’s conclude with a reminder that elections sometimes don’t matter.

Though, given my background, it would show “big-spending politician” rather than “corrupt politician” if I created this meme.

To be fair, however, a Venn diagram of big spending politicians and corrupt politicians would have a very high degree of overlap.

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Politician of the Year

Because of their despicable tendency to buy votes with our money, I view politicians with considerable disdain. But when a politician goes above and beyond the call of duty by doing something laughably awful, I give them special recognition.

Here are some past winners of my “Politician of the Year” award.

• Gavin Newsom, Eric Garcetti, and Stacey Abrams
• Elizabeth Warren
• Richard Blumenthal
• Nancy Pelosi and Mayor Jim Kenney
• D.C. Councilman Jack Evans
• Malaysia’s Prime Minister
• France’s President
• President of the Philippines

Today’s column adds someone to this rogue’s gallery. Congratulations to the Mayor of New York City, Eric Adams.

In a story for the New York Post, Susan Edelman reveals a cozy and corrupt arrangement between the Mayor and one of his top appointees.

Schools Chancellor David Banks quietly promoted Mayor Adams’ girlfriend to a top job at the Department of Education, just months after Adams hired Banks’ girlfriend as a deputy mayor, The Post has learned. Banks named Tracey Collins — Adams’ longtime partner and NYC’s unofficial First Lady — the DOE’s “senior advisor to the deputy chancellor of school leadership,” Desmond Blackburn. She started the new job in July, and got a giant, 23% raise to $221,597 a year, records show. Hizzoner named Banks’ girlfriend, Sheena Wright, and four other women deputy mayors last Dec. 21. Deputy mayors made $251,982 in FY 21. …David Bloomfield, a Brooklyn College and CUNY Grad Center education professor, said, “It’s not only a bad look, smacking of favoritism and cronyism. It displays a degree of insularity and groupthink that’s adverse to organizational effectiveness.”

Needless to say, everyone involved claims that the appointments were based on merit.

DOE spokesman Nathaniel Styer said Collins, “a veteran educator with 30 years of experience,” replaced another senior advisor, Mariano Guzman, who retired. Styer said Collins “went through a rigorous process that did not include City Hall’s oversight. …City Hall spokesman Fabien Levy said, “Mayor Adams was not involved in the hiring for this position and has a strict firewall when it comes to any matters involving her employment.”

Needless to say, these claims don’t pass the laugh test. Anyone with an IQ above room temperature understands that Mayor Adams and Chancellor Banks are helping to enrich themselves at the expense of taxpayers.

But I want to make a different point.

If you paid close attention to the above excerpts, you noticed that the girlfriend of Mayor Adams is making more than $221K to serve as “senior advisor to the deputy chancellor of school leadership.”

I realize this is just a stab in the dark, but that job should not even exist, just like the job of “deputy chancellor of school leadership” should not exist (and the same is true if there’s a “chancellor of school leadership”).

In other words, all of these slots are sad examples of the self-serving bureaucuratization of government schools.

And let’s not forget about the girlfriend of Chancellor Banks, who is getting nearly $252K to be one of a plethora of deputy mayors.

Once again, I’m going to take a wild guess and assert that none of the deputy mayors serve any necessary function. These slots almost surely are patronage appointments that allow insiders to get fatter and richer at the expense of taxpayers.

That’s the real scandal, financed by you and me.

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Politician Humor

Last year, we targeted politicians with some much-deserved satire on four occasions (here, here, here, and here).

I don’t want to fall behind that pace for 2022, so here’s our first collection for this year.

We’ll start with this cartoon strip about the criminal behavior of the folks in Washington.

Ever wonder how we get awful policies such as ethanol subsidies?

Our second item answers that question.

Our third item actually isn’t funny. It’s sad that we let politicians bribe us with our own money.

Now let’s look at the what happens when Republicans and Democrats cooperate.

Here’s the same point from a different perspective.

Per tradition, I’ve saved the best item for last.

More parents need to have this type of discussion about the birds-and-the-bees.

And when there are lots of clowns and lots of serial killers, then you wind up with entire hives of politicians.

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Hypocritical Politician(s) of the Year

Admirable politicians are extremely uncommon. You’re more likely to spot a leprechaun or see the Loch Ness Monster.

In general, the people who want to rule over us are a distasteful mix of narcissism and demagoguery.

But some elected officials are worse than others, which is why I created the Politician of the Year Award.

At the end of 2021, for instance, I bestowed this honor on the Pathetic Politician of the Year and the Reprehensible Politician of the Year.

We’re still very early in 2022, but there already are some politicians who deserve recognition for going above and beyond the call of duty.

Especially with regards to hypocrisy. Consider, for instance, the Governor of California and the Mayor of Los Angeles, both of whom ignore the mask mandates they want regular people to follow.

What’s especially laughable is when politicians concoct absurd excuses.

Liz Wolfe highlights a grotesque example in a column for Reason.

L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti is the latest California politician to hammer home the point that the state’s pandemic rules are just for the little people. What Gov. Gavin Newsom started, and San Francisco Mayor London Breed continued, Garcetti has perfected. He even developed the ideal face-saving line: When a photo surfaced Wednesday of Garcetti, maskless, with Lakers legend Magic Johnson at a Rams game, the mayor reassured concerned citizens that he held his breath to take the photo. …Garcetti’s comically absurd response betrays either a misunderstanding of how COVID is spread or the extent to which the rules he’s imposed, but doesn’t feel the need to follow, are largely hygiene theater.

Since we’re on the issue of mask hypocrisy, let’s include Stacey Abrams, Georgia’s Democratic nominee for governor in 2018.

She’s already famous for being a sore loser. Like Trump, she refused to accept the fact that she lost her most recent election battle.

Now she’s also famous for being a mask hypocrite, thanks to a photo of her getting special treatment in a room full of masked children.

Here are some details on the controversy, as reported by Jim Geraghty for National Review.

On February 4, Stacy Abrams visited Glennwood Elementary School in Decatur, Ga.,.. She retweeted a tweet…which featured three photos of Abrams with students and faculty. Why are all the children masked, and she is not? Why is everyone masked, and Abrams is not? On what planet does that make sense? …After those on Twitter called out this insane double-standard, Abrams deleted the tweet… But deleting the tweets doesn’t eliminate the photos from the archives, and attempting to hide what happened does not change what happened. …The school welcomed a celebrity guest and chose to suspend its masking policy for her while keeping that rule in place for everyone else. If that is so self-evidently indefensible that Abrams and the school won’t even try to defend it, then why are those policies still in place? …Abrams and the school are just playing ostrich and waiting for the controversy to go away. We keep seeing this over and over and over again — Gavin Newsom, Ralph Northam, Muriel Bowser, Joe Biden, London Breed, Jamaal Bowman — officials who enact masking rules, then ditch the masks as soon as they think no one is looking and always insist that their not wearing masks is different somehow.

There are many other pandemic hypocrites. I mocked two of them in a column in September of 2020. And then skewered several more of them in a column in November of 2020.

Now that everyone has had a chance to get vaccinated, I’m trying to figure out if the double standards are absurd or elitist? Arrogant or pathetic?

But maybe we should ask politicians. After all, they’re the experts on hypocrisy.

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More Politician Humor

I didn’t like many of the things Trump did (his wasteful spending and his protectionist tax increases) and I don’t like many of the things Biden is doing (his pork-filled stimulus and his infrastructure boondoggle).

So hopefully you’ll understand why I’m not fond of politicians.

And this is why I shared some mockery of politicians yesterday and why I’m going to augment that collection with some more satire targeting our ruling class today.

We’ll start with an idea that might finally end the pandemic.

Next, there are discussions about UFOs and why aliens haven’t made their presence known.

I think we now have a good explanation.

Our third item illustrates the difference between political rhetoric and political reality.

Last but not least, if Godzilla and his friends decide to pillage Washington, they better make sure they don’t have allergies.

P.S. If you like mocking the political class, I have lots of other material for you to enjoy. You can read about how the men and women in DC spend their time screwing us and wasting our money. We also have some examples of what people in Montana, Louisiana, Nevada, and Wyoming think about big-spending politicians. This little girl has a succinct message for our political masters, here are a couple of good images capturing the relationship between politicians and taxpayers, and here is a somewhat off-color Little Johnny joke. Speaking of risqué humor, here’s a portrayal of a politician and lobbyist interacting. Returning to G-rated material, you can read about the blind rabbit who finds a politician. And everyone enjoys political satire, as can be found in these excerpts from the always popular Dave Barry. Let’s not forgot to include this joke by doctors about the crowd in Washington. And last but not least, here’s the motivational motto of the average politician.

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Politician Humor

Politicians are not necessarily or automatically evil. Instead, they screw up in large part because of perverse incentives.

That being said, they should be mocked rather than admired (with St. Ronald being the obvious exception).

With that in mind, let’s enjoy another edition of politician humor.

We’ll start with a potential fringe benefit of facial recognition software.

Next we have some evidence that cattle may be smarter than people.

Our third item is a joke from George Carlin.

Last but not least, I thought about using this meme for one of my columns about “statism in images,” but the second frame leads me to think it mostly about mocking elected officials.

P.S. Last October, I wrote a two-part series about America’s venal political class (see here and here).

P.P.S. If you want more political humor, click here, here, here, and here. I also have satirical columns about selected politicians (Biden, Trump, Sanders, Bill and Hillary Clinton, and Obama).

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What Happens When Politicians Get too Greedy?

I’ve been asked why I periodically mock politicians. The simple answer is that they often deserve our scorn.

It’s not that they’re evil or bad people, but their incentive structure generally leads them to make shallow, short-run, and self-serving decisions.

Such as setting tax rates so high that they even backfire on politicians (i.e., by discouraging economic activity and thus producing less revenue).

It looks like we may have a new example of this phenomenon.

In an article for the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Richard Velotta reports on Chicago’s bungled attempt to attract a big-name casino.

If everything had gone according to plan, we would all be buzzing this week about which company would have the best opportunity to build a casino resort in Chicago. But it hasn’t gone according to plan. …companies have stated that they won’t be bidding. Four of the largest Strip operators — MGM Resorts International, Las Vegas Sands Corp., Wynn Resorts Ltd. and Caesars Entertainment Inc. — have indicated they have no plans to bid on Chicago. …The biggest issue for Las Vegas operators looking at Chicago is the tax rate Illinois would impose on gross gaming revenue from the Chicago resort — 40 percent. By comparison, the maximum rate in Nevada is 6.75 percent.

I guess we shouldn’t be surprised that Illinois politicians would over-tax something.

But I’m amazed they thought they could impose a tax six times higher than the one in Nevada without any negative consequences.

No wonder the big-name casinos aren’t submitting bids. After all, their job is to generate revenue for shareholders, not loot for politicians.

Though there is a silver lining to this dark cloud.

As mentioned in the story, Illinois politicians apparently did realize it wouldn’t work to have a tax rate more than ten times higher than the one in Nevada.

At one time, Illinois floated a tax rate of around 70 percent, but gaming companies persuaded the Illinois Legislature to modify that.

How generous of Illinois politicians to forgo a 70 percent tax rate!

Reminds me of the former French president who “mercifully” chose to limit personal taxes to 80 percent of household income.

P.S. There is a compelling case that Chicago is America’s most poorly governed city. But that’s hard to decide because there’s strong competition from places such as New York, Seattle, Minneapolis, Detroit, and San Francisco.

P.P.S. In this case, though, it’s a state law that is causing the problem. So we should ask whether Illinois is America’s most poorly governed state. There’s certainly evidence for that claim, but New York, California, and New Jersey also would be in the running.

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Politician Humor

It’s been since January that I shared some politician humor, so let’s augment our collection.

We’ll start with this bit of mockery, which also happens to be a very accurate depiction of how politicians actually think.

Next is a meme that show how to differentiate ordinary street criminals from the really crafty crooks.

Since we’re on the topic of criminality, the following image asks a very interesting question: Why is it against the law for a campaign to directly give you money in exchange for your vote, but the candidate can promise to give you someone else’s money once the politician is in office?

Something for the “public choice” scholars to investigate.

Our fourth item deals with some political correctness in the National Football League. As you may know the team that used to be known as the “Redskins” is now the “Washington Football Club” while contemplating a new mascot.

Here is a very apt option.

As usual, I’ve saved the best for last.

I’m not sure if this discovery was from a graveyard in the D.C. area, or from some other nation, but enjoy.

I vote for Washington, which truly is a “wretched hive” of “scum and villainy.”

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Politician Humor

Last October, I wrote a two-part series about America’s venal political class (see here and here).

Today’s collection of political satire makes the same point.

We’ll start with some wisdom from Charlie Brown.

Next, we have a two-frame cartoon. The top frame shows where we were three months ago and the bottom from shows where we are today.

Now let’s share some humor about Nancy Pelosi, which a special cameo appearance by Hillary Clinton.

Last Saturday afternoon in Washington, D.C., an aide to Nancy Pelosi visited the Bishop of the Catholic Cathedral. He told the Cardinal that Nancy Pelosi would be attending Sunday’s Mass and asked if the Cardinal would kindly point out Pelosi to the congregation and say a few words that would include calling her a saint.

The Cardinal replied, “No. I don’t really like the woman, and there are issues of conflict with the Catholic Church over most of Pelosi’s views.”

Pelosi’s aide said, “Look, I’ll write a check here and now for a donation of $100,000 if you’ll just tell the congregation you see Pelosi as a saint.”

The Cardinal thought about it and said, “Well, the Church can use the money, so I’ll work your request into tomorrow’s sermon.”

As Pelosi’s aide promised, Nancy appeared for the Sunday worship and seated herself prominently at the forward left side of the center aisle. As promised, at the start of his sermon, the Cardinal pointed out that Ms. Pelosi was present.

The Cardinal went on to explain to the congregation, “While Ms. Pelosi’s presence is probably an honor to some, the woman is not numbered among my personal favorite personages. Some of her most egregious views are contrary to tenets of the Church, and she tends to flip-flop on many other issues. Nancy Pelosi is a petty, self-absorbed hypocrite, a drunken thumb-sucker, and a nit-wit. Nancy Pelosi is also a serial liar, a cheat, and a thief. I must say, Nancy Pelosi is the worst example of a Catholic I have ever personally witnessed. She married for money and is using her wealth to lie to the American people. She also has a reputation for evading her Representative obligations both in Washington and in California. Just look at the streets in her district! Feces everywhere. The woman is simply not to be trusted.”

The Cardinal concluded. “But, when compared with Hillary Clinton, Ms. Pelosi is a saint.”

The following cartoon should appeal to everyone, right, left, or center.

Amen. Perhaps every Senator and Representative should get honorary membership in the Moocher Hall of Fame.

Here’s a cartoon strip that succinctly explains the difference between a politician and a statesman.

Here’s something that’s not directly humorous, but it’s funny to think what would happen if Congress worked like Survivor and one of them was “voted off the island” every so often.

In ancient Athens, the world’s first democracy, they had a process called ostracism, where once a year the people could vote on the politician they thought was most destructive to the democratic process. The “winner” was banished from Athens for 10 years.#MythAndFact pic.twitter.com/yeBDRxfb7W

— THE G•O•A•T  (@OfficialUdiBoy) October 23, 2020

This next cartoon strip is for afficianados of “public choice,” which is he school of thought that studies how politicians care primarily about advancing their own interests rather than what’s best for the nation.

The strip seems like it goes too far. Surely politicians aren’t this bad, right?

But then contemplate the utter sleaze and corruption involved with giveaways such as export subsidies, agriculture programs, bailouts, and protectionism.

In other words, politicians may be even worse than we think.

As usual, I’ve saved the best for last. This meme is especially apt since I just wrote a column about how Republicans will now revert to being (or pretending to be) in favor of small government now that a Democrat is in the White House.

P.S. If you want more political humor, click here, here, here, and here. I also have satirical columns about selected politicians (Biden, Trump, Sanders, Bill and Hillary Clinton, and Obama).

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Who Should Pay When Government Fails?

Early last decade, a former Prime Minister of Iceland was brought before a special tribunal to determine whether he was legally responsible for his nation’s 2008 economic downturn.

As you might imagine, I had mixed emotions about that story.

On one hand, I don’t like politicians and I viscerally like the idea of holding them accountable for bad outcomes.

On the other hand, I believe in the rule of law and it’s absurd to bring charges against someone when no law has actually been broken. Moreover, tossing politicians in jail because we don’t like their policies is the kind of thing you might find is some backwater banana republic.

And, to add some humor to this analysis, it would contribute to prison overcrowding if we did things such as jailing Bush for TARP, Obama for the failed stimulus, and Trump for his bungled protectionism.

But it’s time to look at this issue from a serious perspective because a former governor in Michigan, as reported by the Detroit Free Press, is going to be dragged into court because of contaminated water in the state’s 7th-largest city.

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel filed two charges of willful neglect of duty against former Gov. Rick Snyder on Wednesday, a day before her office is set to announce new details in the Flint water crisis investigation. …Each charge Snyder faces is a misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in prison or a fine of $1,000 or less. …a misdemeanor conviction could allow a judge to issue a significant restitution order against Snyder, a multi-millionaire who made a fortune in computers and venture capital before he was elected Michigan governor in 2010.

You may be wondering why the Attorney General is targeting a former governor for the flawed operation of a city water system. Shouldn’t local officials be held accountable?

But there is a connection. Local politicians had spent the city into a fiscal crisis and the state appointed managers to clean up the mess.

Snyder…was governor when state-appointed managers in Flint switched the city’s water to the Flint River in 2014 as a cost-saving step while a pipeline was being built to Lake Huron. The water, however, was not treated to reduce corrosion — a disastrous decision affirmed by state regulators that caused lead to leach from old pipes and poison the distribution system used by nearly 100,000 residents.

So does this mean the former governor committed some sort of crime?

I guess we’ll find out if there’s a trial, but it certainly seems like partisan politics may be the real reason for the charges.

David Griem, a Detroit criminal defense attorney and former federal and state prosecutor, said he believes politics are a significant factor in the case. …“I can’t think of a good reason for this other than vendetta and politics. I challenge anyone to come up with a reason that makes sense other than closed-door politics…”

The bottom line, as I explained back in 2016 when writing about mess in Flint, is that you blur responsibility and accountability when multiple layers of government are involved in anything.

Which is why we need genuine federalism.

Decentralization is good for many reasons, including the fact that it’s much harder to deflect blame when something bad happens at the local level.

More specifically, nobody should be responsible for Flint’s water system other than the people from that city. If they screw up (as they did) by voting for venal politicians who funneled too much of the city’s money to a cossetted group of bureaucrats (a common problem), that’s their fault and they then need to deal with the consequences.

Sadly, we’re moving in the wrong direction in the United States, with Washington playing an ever-greater role in things that should be handled by state and local governments.

Let’s conclude by returning to the topic of whether politicians should face legal consequences for bad policy.

I’m very tempted to support anything that makes life harder for that oleaginous group of people. But the tort system (going to court and suing for damages) is actually a preferable way of addressing accidental damage to people.

That’s a big part of how we encourage safe and sound behavior in the private sector. Though I’ll be the first to admit it won’t work as well when dealing with government mistakes because taxpayers (rather than bureaucrats and politicians) bear the burden when there are successful lawsuits.

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Happy Thanksgiving from America’s Hypocritical Politicians

I’m going to break tradition.

Normally, I use Thanksgiving as an opportunity to explain how the Pilgrims almost starved to death because they initially used a socialist system for farming, but then began to prosper once the colony shifted to a property rights-based approach (the same thing happened at the Jamestown settlement in Virginia as well).

If you want to learn about the failure of socialism in the early 1600s, watch this video from Reason, or these videos from John Stossel and Prager University.

Today’s topic, though, is about Thanksgiving hypocrisy by the political elite.

In his column for the Wall Street Journal, Jason Riley excoriates do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do politicians.

…politicians have always believed that they deserve special treatment, that the ordinary rules don’t apply to them. They have pushed for limits on school choice for the poor while sending their own children to private schools. They have advocated for gun control and defunding the police while being protected by armed security guards. …there could be as many as 50 million Thanksgiving travelers this year, only 10% less than in 2019. This is a form of mass civil disobedience like nothing the country has seen since the 1960s. Some of it is born of Covid fatigue, to be sure. But the endless parade of politicians flouting their own rules surely has also played a role. It began shortly after the spring lockdowns and if anything has become more commonplace, even farcical. …There’s a widespread assumption among liberal elites that the rest of us are incapable of calculating risks and taking necessary precautions to ride out the pandemic, and it’s insulting. …The decision of so many millions of Americans to buck public-health warnings, trust their common sense, and spend Thanksgiving with loved ones is a welcome indication that people may be tiring of all this condescension.

Meanwhile, NBC News reports on the two-faced actions of Mayor Michael Hancock of Denver.

Denver’s mayor is explaining himself and offering an apology after he traveled to Mississippi for Thanksgiving, though he had urged others to stay home if possible because of the coronavirus pandemic. …The mayor’s trip comes as officials in Colorado have warned about a steep increase in Covid-19 cases that threatens to stress the hospital system, and after warnings from the governor and others to keep Thanksgiving gatherings small and safe. …The station reported he traveled to Houston for the Mississippi trip, and that his account tweeted the guidance to stay home about 30 minutes before his flight.

Last but not least, Bill McGurn of the Wall Street Journal is not impressed with the hypocritical behavior of politicians, but he focuses on the big-picture lesson to be learned.

Californians live under some of the tightest Covid-19 restrictions in the nation. So when Gov. Gavin Newsom was recently caught without a mask at a crowded table for 12 at a posh Napa Valley eatery, he instantly became the poster boy for the “Do as I Say, Not as I Do” crowd. …No doubt Thanksgiving will bring fresh examples. While many citizens dutifully inform grandma there’s no room for her at the table because of new Covid-19 restrictions, someone inevitably will be caught enjoying the holiday with dozens of friends and second cousins… And it’s easy to mock these pols for their blatant hypocrisy when they are caught. But maybe the more important lesson to be learned here is that hypocrisy is guaranteed when we impose one-size-fits-all mandates that are rigid and unworkable.

Amen.

I wrote back in May about the two-faced behavior of politicians in the coronavirus era, and nothing has changed in the past six months.

They genuinely think that they should be exempt from all the nonsensical policies that they impose on everyone else.

They’re hypocrites on coronavirus. They’re hypocrites on education. They’re hypocrites on taxes. And they’re hypocrites on global warming.

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America’s “Wretched Hive of Scum and Villainy”: Part II

Earlier this month, I reviewed some evidence and analysis about the corruption in Washington.

Today, let’s look at some tangible examples of how the political elite routinely exploit their positions to enrich themselves by pillaging taxpayers.

We could start with the obvious example of Hunter Biden, but he’s just the tip of the iceberg. I noted way back in January that several members of Joe Biden’s family have cashed in on their connection to the former Vice President.

It goes without saying that lobbyists and other special interests are funneling money to the Biden family because they expect that they’ll be rewarded with lucrative contracts and other goodies from the government. Heck, the Biden family is basically cutting out the middleman in this picture.

But this isn’t a partisan issue. Plenty of Republicans also play the same game.

A column by Larry Getlen in the New York Post describes how this racket works.

Rather than risk their careers taking bribes for potentially minuscule rewards, …today’s politicians are savvier, engaging in what he calls “corruption by proxy.” While politicians and their spouses are often subject to rigid regulations on what gifts they can accept and what sort of business they can conduct, others around them — like their friends or children have no such obstacles. So while a politician could theoretically wind up in prison for accepting $10,000 for doling out favors, establishing overseas connections that could land your children multi-million-dollar deals is harder to detect, and often legal. …This ethical looseness is endemic throughout the federal government. …it has spread like a virus through Congress, where the lines between members, their families, and lobbying groups have become indistinguishable.

Senator Mitch McConnell gets some unfavorable attention in the column, along with many other lawmakers from both parties.

And if you want even more examples, you can easily search the Internet if you want to learn about the unsavory actions of other senior officials – including Nancy Pelosi and Diane Feinstein.

The inescapable takeaway is that we have an unholy trinity of politicians, big government, and corruption.

And it’s totally bipartisan.

For instance, the Atlantic put together a very harsh assessment of the Trump Cabinet back in 2018.

Shulkin and Carson face the same problem: dubious use of taxpayer dollars in their duties as secretaries. They can console themselves knowing that they’re in good company. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin have been caught in extravagant expenditures, too. Less heartening is the sixth example, Tom Price, who was unceremoniously forced out as secretary of health and human services in September 2017. There are so many cases of huge spending of taxpayer dollars by Cabinet secretaries that it’s easy to lose track of them all—or simply to become desensitized.

The list is damning (and is costing taxpayers a lot of money).

…a trip to Europe during summer of 2017. The government paid not only for Shulkin, but also for his wife, a security detail, and other staffers. Almost half of the trip was devoted to tourism, visiting castles and then the Wimbledon tennis tournament, to which the Shulkins improperly accepted tickets. …Carson’s big problem is a $31,000 dining-table set purchased for his office, which far exceeded regulations on spending for decoration. …Price was forced to resign after spending more than $1 million on travel on private and military jets. That’s the largest single figure to emerge, but only by a hair, while the type of behavior has occurred repeatedly. Documents obtained by the left-leaning watchdog group CREW suggest Mnuchin racked up nearly $1 million in his own travel, including a notorious trip to watch the eclipse at Fort Knox in Kentucky, publicized by his wife Louise Linton’s Instagram feud about it. …Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, who took a security detail along when he went on a non-work-related two-week vacation in Greece and Turkey last year. …For still-opaque reasons, the Interior Department paid $139,000 for a door for Zinke’s office… Scott Pruitt, the EPA chief, who has spent more than $100,000 on first-class tickets, an expenditure he attributed to the need for security.

But even more damning is this sentence.

Because fiscal conservatism isn’t an organizing principle for the Trump presidency, it’s easier for Cabinet secretaries to justify big spending.

In other words, taxpayers are getting screwed because Trump has been profligate (even more of a big spender than Obama!).

And let’s not forget that the corruption is so bad that some Trump insiders have wound up in legal trouble.

But remember, this is a problem with both political parties, and it’s a near-inevitable consequence of having a bloated federal government that is collecting and redistributing trillions of dollars (and also wielding enormous regulatory power, which also can be improperly used to reward friends and punish enemies).

Let’s close by adding to our collection of politician humor. After all, if they keep ripping us off, we at least deserve a few laughs.

P.S. The silver lining to all the bad news discussed above is that the American people are aware there is a problem. According to Chapman University’s Survey of American Fears, “For the fifth year in a row the top fear of Americans is corrupt government officials. And as in the previous five years, the fear that our government is corrupt far exceeds all others we asked about. More than 3/4 of Americans said they are afraid or very afraid of corrupt governmental officials in 2019.”

P.P.S. If there was a gold medal for insider corruption, the Clintons would own it (Obama and his people were sleazy, but amateurs by comparison).

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America’s “Wretched Hive of Scum and Villainy”: Part I

Earlier this year, I asked “Why are there so many bad and corrupt people in government?” and suggested two possible explanations.

1. Shallow, insecure, and power-hungry people are drawn to politics because they want to control the lives of others.
2. Good people run for political office, but then slowly but surely get corrupted because of “public choice” incentives.

I’m sure both answers apply to some extent. But let’s consider whether one answer is more accurate in more cases?

In an article for Quillette, Professor Crispin Sartwell of Dickinson College looks at this chicken-or-egg issue of whether people are corrupted by government or corrupt people gravitate to government.

“Power corrupts,” as the saying goes, and a corollary is that, other things being equal, the more power, the more corruption. …But perhaps the explanation runs the other way: It’s not only or not even primarily that power corrupts, but that corrupt people seek power, and the most effectively corrupt are likeliest to succeed in their quest. …That is, it is likely that a political career would attract moral corner-cutters. …There may be a certain percentage of people who seek power because they want to do good, or it may be that in the back of their minds, every political leader believes that he intends to do good. But to use power to do good, you’ll have to do whatever’s necessary to get that power. You’ll likely have to compromise whatever basic moral principles (“tell the truth,” for example) you came in with. …political power is a constant temptation to hypocrisy, or just flatly demands it. And when the public persona and the private reality come apart, a human being becomes a moral disaster, a mere deception. That is a fate common among politicians.

Professor Sartwell may not have a firm answer, but one obvious conclusion is that good people will be scarce in Washington.

And it’s not just the politicians we should worry about. The whole town seems to attract dodgy people.

In a 2018 study, Professor Ryan Murphy of Southern Methodist University found that Washington has far more psychopaths than any other part of the country.

Psychopathy, one of the “dark triad” of personality characteristics predicting antisocial behavior, is an important finding in psychology relevant for all social sciences. …While a very small percentage of individuals in any given state may actually be true psychopaths, the level of psychopathy present, on average, within an aggregate population (i.e., not simply the low percentages of psychopaths) is a distinct research question. …The most extreme data point is the District of Columbia, which received a standardized score of 3.48. …The presence of psychopaths in District of Columbia is consistent with the conjecture found in Murphy (2016) that psychopaths are likely to be effective in the political sphere. …The District of Columbia is measured to be far more psychopathic than any individual state in the country, a fact that can be readily explained…by the type of person who may be drawn a literal seat of power.

Moreover, we know that the crowd in D.C. figuratively screws taxpayers, but it appears they’re also busy screwing in other ways.

Residents in Washington, D.C. have the highest rates of sexually transmitted disease, compared to 50 states, according to a recent Center for Disease Control and Prevention report. Out of the four kinds of STDs that the CDC report identified – chlamydia, gonorrhea, primary and secondary syphilis and congenital syphilis – the district scored No.1 in the first three by a large margin… For every 100,000 D.C. residents, 1,083 cases of chlamydia were reported. Alaska came in second with only 772 cases. Similarly, the district had 480 cases of gonorrhea per 100,000 population, double the rate of Mississippi, which ranked second.

Since this report was based on data in 2016, it’s possible another state has overtaken D.C.

But given Washington’s big lead, that would take a lot of risky extracurricular activity.

This tweet caught my eye because it nicely captures how the “experienced” people in Washington often may be the worst of the worst.

Amateur politicians do unethical things that are against the rules.

Professional politicians do unethical things that they've written the rules to allow.

— Dan McLaughlin (@baseballcrank) March 6, 2019

And we’ll close with this quote, which comes down on the side of bad people naturally gravitating to government.

P.S. If you like mocking the political class, you can read about how the buffoons in DC spend their time screwing us and wasting our money. We also have some examples of what people in Montana, Louisiana, Nevada, and Wyoming think about big-spending politicians. This little girl has a succinct message for our political masters, here are a couple of good images capturing the relationship between politicians and taxpayers, and here is a somewhat off-color Little Johnny joke. Speaking of risqué humor, here’s a portrayal of a politician and lobbyist interacting. Returning to G-rated material, you can read about the blind rabbit who finds a politician. And everyone enjoys political satire, as can be found in these excerpts from the always popular Dave Barry. Let’s not forgot to include this joke by doctors about the crowd in Washington. And last but not least, here’s the motivational motto of the average politician.

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Two Rivals for the Politician of the Year Award

Back in July, I asked “Why are there so many bad and corrupt people in government?” and suggested two possible explanations.

1. Shallow, insecure, and power-hungry people are drawn to politics because they want to control the lives of others.
2. Good people run for political office, but then slowly but surely get corrupted because of “public choice” incentives.

Both answers are correct, of course. The real debate is whether one type dominates (based on decades of up-close interaction, I’m guessing there are more from category #1).

In any event, there are plenty of things to dislike about politicians. What’s especially galling is when they decide they don’t have to abide by the laws and regulations they impose on the rest of us.

Consider, for example, the oleaginous example of Nancy Pelosi. The Speaker of the House apparently feels she doesn’t have to obey the rules imposed on everyone else.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited a San Francisco hair salon on Monday afternoon for a wash and blow-out, despite local ordinances keeping salons closed amid the coronavirus pandemic… In security footage…, the California powerhouse is seen walking through eSalon in San Francisco with wet hair, and without a mask over her mouth or nose. …Salons in San Francisco had been closed since March and were only notified they could reopen on Sept. 1 for outdoor hairstyling services only. Salon owner Erica Kious…cast Pelosi’s visit as a double standard. “It was a slap in the face that she went in, you know, that she feels that she can just go and get her stuff done while no one else can go in, and I can’t work,”…Kious told Fox News that she had expected to be able to reopen her salon in July, and prepared her space in accordance with local guidelines. “There were rules and regulations to go by to safely reopen, which I did, but I was still not allowed to open my business,” she said.

By the way, I can’t resist sharing this additional passage from the story.

“No one can last anymore,” she said. “I have also lost 60 percent of my clientele because everyone is fleeing the city.”

I’ll simply add that there are good reasons to escape San Francisco. And those reasons existed before the coronavirus.

But that’s just a start. There are also good reasons to leave California.

But I’m digressing. Let’s get back to the topic of repugnant politicians so we can see that that Pelosi isn’t the only hypocrite.

Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney also deserves attention for his two-faced behavior.

Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney publicly apologized on Monday after he was busted for sneaking across the border to enjoy a meal at a Maryland restaurant over the weekend. …in Philadelphia, indoor dining is still fully forbidden under restrictions imposed by the city government—the one that Kenney runs. …his do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do approach to COVID-19 undermines the legitimacy of the harsh restrictions Philadelphia has imposed on its own restaurant industry and demonstrates a callous disregard for how those policies have impacted the city’s residents and businesses. Kenney can drive across the border to Maryland easily, but a Philly bar can’t pick up and move to Delaware to escape the city’s lockdowns.

This online comment about Kenney’s hypocrisy is priceless.

By the way, Kenney is infamous for imposing a soda tax that hurt Philly merchants since consumers simply stocked up at stores outside the city. So at least he’s consistent in hurting all types of businesses.

In any event, both Pelosi and Kenney deserve consideration if there’s a 2020 Politician of the Year contest (previous contestants for that honor include D.C. Councilman Jack Evans, Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, and French President Francois Hollande).

Or maybe we need a Hypocrite of the Year contest. Though normally that’s a honor reserved for rich politicians who advocate for higher taxes on ordinary people, yet figure out clever ways of protecting their own money (such as Joe Biden, Senator Elizabeth Warren, Senator John Kerry, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Congressman Alan Grayson, Governor J.B. Pritzker, and Tom Steyer).

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The Make-Believe Postal Service Panic and the Tenth Theorem of Government

Politicians and interest groups periodically fan the flames of temporary panic to push for misguided policy. We’ve already seen three big examples this century.

• The so-called PATRIOT Act was enacted in the feverish aftermath of 9-11, but many of its provisions simply added bureaucracy and gave government new/expanded powers unrelated to fighting terrorism.
• The TARP bailout allegedly was needed to save us for financial collapse, but in reality was a substitute for a policy (FDIC resolution) that would have recapitalized the banking system without bailing out Wall Street.
• Obama’s stimulus scheme had to be enacted to supposedly save the nation from another depression, but unemployment soared beyond administration projections and cronies got rich from boondoggles.

The same thing is now happening with the Postal Service, which ostensibly is on the verge of catastrophic collapse because of an expected increase in mail-in voting and sabotage by the Trump Administration.

The real story, though, is that bureaucracy has been losing money at a rapid pace for years and the only sensible solution is privatization. But that would upset the various postal unions and related interest groups, so they’ve created a make-believe crisis in hopes of getting more cash from taxpayers.

And this has nothing to do with Trump vs. Biden.

Let’s look at some rational voices on this topic, starting with this column by Charles Lane of the anti-Trump Washington Post.

Harder to account for is the progressive left’s idealization of the USPS, which began well before the uproar over new Postmaster General Louis DeJoy’s cost-cutting and its alleged impact on election mail. …when you look at what the agency actually does, a lot of it turns out to be a federally underwritten service for — profit-seeking businesses.Of the 142.6 billion pieces of mail of all kinds that the USPS handled in 2019, 53 percent was advertising material, a.k.a. junk mail, up from 48 percent in 2010. Junk mail makes up an even bigger share — 58 percent — of what individual households receive. …Companies pay a special rate, 19 cents apiece, to send these items (in bulk), as opposed to the 55 cents for a first-class stamp. …Some progressives are stuck in the pre-Internet age. Last week, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said, apropos alleged mail delays: “I am not exaggerating when I say this is a life-and-death situation. The Post Office…delivers Social Security checks to seniors who rely on those benefits to survive.” He is exaggerating — a lot. Over 99 percent of all Social Security payments are sent by the more secure route of direct deposit; a 2013 law mandates it. …Crying “privatization” is the perennial scare tactic of progressives who oppose postal reform. That’s an odd one, too: Several European countries and Japan…have either fully or partially privatized their postal services. Actually, privatization is highly unlikely in the United States, given resistance from the two key lobbies — junk mailers and postal unions — that most influence Congress on this issue. …Something must be done to stem the Postal Service’s losses, which have totaled $83.1 billion since 2006, and to reduce its unfunded pension and health-care liabilities, which exceed $120 billion.

Here’s a twitter thread debunking some of the political hysteria about missing mailboxes.

Turns out the Washington Post uncovered the Great Mailbox Conspiracy ELEVEN YEARS AGO!

2009: "…half of the blue boxes in the Washington area have disappeared in the last nine years, and 200,000 nationwide have been plucked up in the last 20 years, leaving 175,000 total." pic.twitter.com/oLYV8rbEYn

— Jeryl Bier (@JerylBier) August 16, 2020

And how about this column by Nick Gillespie of the anti-Trump Reason magazine.

By now you’ve probably heard that President Donald Trump and Postmaster General Louis DeJoy “are sabotaging democracy in plain sight” through a mix of nefarious ploys, ranging from removing “blue Post Office drop boxes” to scrapping mail-sorting machines to allegedly mandating a slowdown in delivering the mail. …The truth is far less incendiary… Here’s a little bit of math that should give voters succor. In 2016, about 140 million total votes were cast in the presidential election…with “nearly 24 percent…cast using by-mail absentee voting.” …Assume, for the sake of argument, that the same number of votes will be cast this year as in 2016. Even if all voters used the mail and posted their ballots on exactly the same day, that would comprise only 30 percent of the amount of mail the USPS says it processes every single day. So if the USPS screws up delivering votes in a timely and efficient manner this fall, it won’t be because of any sinister actions by the White House. It will be because of longstanding, well-documented managerial and cultural problems… For those who are interested in the post office’s chronically bad performance and “unsustainable” situation, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) has produced a long list of studies on where the problems come from and how they might be addressed. The short version is that Congress has blocked all sorts of serious reforms to an operation that has seen a 33 percent decline in mail volume since 2006.

And here’s another twitter thread that’s worth a look.

https://twitter.com/garyhe/status/1295360446795583491

 

Or what about this article by Jack Shafer from (probably anti-Trump) Politico.

The USPS really is hurting finanically, and really is worried about delivering ballots on time. It’s legitimate to worry about postal delays botching the vote, if a mass of votes are cast by mail just before Election Day. But don’t extrapolate from news accounts, USPS union protestations and candidate carping… the USPS has sent letters to 46 states expressing its doubts about delivering all the ballots in time to be counted. But, as the Washingtonn Post also mentioned in its story, those letters were in the works before Trump’s new postmaster general took office. …What about those vanishing USPS mail collection boxes? As it turns out, the USPS has been culling the boxes since 2000, when their numbers peaked and 365,000 of them stood sentinel on U.S. streets. Today, their numbers have dwindled to 142,000. Why has the USPS deleted them? Because the volume of first-class has nose-dived.

So what’s actually going on?

As I noted at the beginning of this column, we’re getting scammed. The folks who benefit from the current system want to create a sense of panic so they can get a big bailout for the Postal Service.

The Wall Street Journal (which isn’t anti-Trump, but understands how Washington works) opined accurately on what’s really happening.

Mrs. Pelosi is trying to put on a political show, starring Democrats as the saviors of the post office. She says she wants to pass a bill that “prohibits the Postal Service from implementing any changes to operations or level of service it had in place on January 1.” Also in the mix may be a $25 billion cash infusion. Then Chuck Schumer will demand that the Senate come back to town for the same vote. By the way the letter-carriers union endorsed Joe Biden on the weekend.

My modest contribution to this discussion is to unveil aTenth Theorem of Government.

I’ll close with a prediction that politicians at some point in the future will manufacture a crisis (probably about deficits and debt) in order to impose a value-added tax.

P.S. Here are the nine previous Theorems of Government.

• The “First Theorem” explains how Washington really operates.
• The “Second Theorem” explains why it is so important to block the creation of new programs.
• The “Third Theorem” explains why centralized programs inevitably waste money.
• The “Fourth Theorem” explains that good policy can be good politics.
• The “Fifth Theorem” explains how good ideas on paper become bad ideas in reality.
• The “Sixth Theorem” explains an under-appreciated benefit of a flat tax.
• The “Seventh Theorem” explains how bigger governments are less competent.
• The “Eighth Theorem” explains the motives of those who focus on inequality.
• The “Ninth Theorem of Government” explains how politics often trump principles.

 

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The State With the Greediest Politicians, Part III

Two days ago, I looked at top income tax rates for the various states.

Yesterday, I shared the data for the states on sales tax rates.

The big takeaway from those two sources of data is that California politicians are very greedy.

But are they the greediest politicians in the country? What if we also measure other sources of tax revenue (property taxes, excise taxes, severance taxes, etc)?

And what about the various fees and charges that also are imposed by state and local governments?

To account for all these factors, we obviously need a comprehensive measure. And since the real cost of government is how much it is spending (regardless of whether the outlays are financed by taxes or borrowing), the most accurate approach is to calculate the relative spending burdens imposed by state and local governments.

The Census Bureau actually collects that data (albeit with a lag, so the most-recent data is for 2017).

But you don’t simply want to look at total spending by state and local governments. You also want to adjust for population (specifically, the population data for 2017) so we can calculate the per-capita burden of state spending.

Moreover, it’s also important to understand that some states have varying levels of income (for historic reasons, policy reasons, and difference in the cost of living). So if you want to calculate the economic burden of state and local spending, you also need data on state personal income for 2017.

So I put all these numbers into an excel file and crunched the numbers to see how the 50 states (plus Washington, DC) compare based on these two ways of showing fiscal burdens.

The following table shows the good states, at least relatively speaking. I’m amazed to see Connecticut and New Jersey in the top 10 for spending as a share of personal income. This merits further investigation, but one obvious takeaway is that it’s good to be a high-income state.

The goal, of course, should be to appear on both lists. On that basis, Idaho, Florida, and Nevada deserve praise.

But this three-part series isn’t designed to highlight the good states.

We want to know which states have the greediest politicians. And greed is being measured by their propensity to buy votes by spending other people’s money.

Once again, we’ll show the spending data both as a share of personal income and as a per-capita calculation. On this basis, Alaska is terrible (the politicians spend oil money with reckless abandon), as is the District of Columbia.

Wyoming also is a state with profligate politicians. It has no income tax and a modest sales tax, but lawmakers (just like in Alaska) can’t resist buying votes with all the money generated by energy taxes (which is why I penalized the state when writing about good state tax systems back in 2015).

This explains why North Dakota is on both lists as well.

If we focus on states that don’t get lots of money from energy taxes, than New York and Oregon deserve special scorn for appearing in both columns.

P.S. One area that requires further exploration (partially explained by the Third Theorem of Government) is the impact of 1,386 federal transfer programs that subsidize/encourage more spending by state and local governments.

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In One Picture, Everything You Need to Know about Government

Having written more than 5000 columns over the past ten-plus years, I’ve learned that policy analysis doesn’t “go viral.”

But I got a small taste of what that would be like when I shared an image in 2016 showing that the right kind of class warfare pits productive people (earners, entrepreneurs, and protectors) against looters (predators, cronies, and rent-seekers).

In other words, rich vs poor is the wrong way to divide society.

Today, I have another image that also has a very powerful message. I don’t know if it will go viral, but it has a very appropriate and accurate message.

For instance, America is now dealing with a lot of controversy regarding occasional police misbehavior and sometimes-violent protests, but it’s hopefully accurate to say that most cops and most protestors are good people

And the same is true for clergy and doctors, even though both groups have a few bad apples.

But notice the group at the bottom.

In part, this image is designed for humorous purposes (and it’s always fun to mock politicians).

But there’s also a serious point. Why are there so many bad and corrupt people in government? There are two possible explanations.

1. Shallow, insecure, and power-hungry people are drawn to politics because they want to control the lives of others.
2. Good people run for political office, but then slowly but surely get corrupted because of “public choice” incentives.

Needless to say, it’s possible for both answers to be partially accurate.

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Politician Humor

To the best of my recollection, it’s been several years since I shared a collection of anti-politicians jokes.

Given the odious behavior of people in government, that’s an oversight I’m going to rectify today.

Though I’m not sure if this first example is about politicians or about bureaucrats.

This next bit of humor reminds us that stereotyping is wrong…unless you’re looking at the crowd in the lower frame.

Next we have a politician who promises to be a quick learner.

Here’s an example of some Robin Hood-style redistribution we can all support.

Our next-to-last item helps to explain why Washington is now the richest region of America, even though its main output is waste, red tape, and corruption.

I’ve saved the best for last.

I’ll close with a serious point. Do bad people naturally gravitate to politics, or do the perverse incentives of politics turn good people into bad people?

Or does it even matter since the net result is the same?

P.S. I also have jokes about specific politicians, ranging from Bernie Sanders to Donald Trump (with appearances by Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Elizabeth Warren, and Bill Clinton).

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Paul Ryan’s Legacy

Most politicians are contemptible. They are shallow, grasping, insecure clowns who want to expand the size and scope of government so they have more power to dictate how the rest of us live our lives.

To make matters worse, many of them know they are doing the wrong thing, but they don’t have the moral courage to resist the corrupt, go-along-to-get-along culture of Washington.

But that doesn’t mean they’re bad people. When people ask me what motivates politicians, I sometime explain the theory of “public choice.” In other cases, I tell the simple story of the guy who is endlessly conflicted between an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other shoulder.

And I tell them that a good politician is one who – more often than not – sides with the angel.

And that’s why, when asked to comment on the outgoing Speaker of the House, I applauded Paul Ryan. You can watch the entire interview here, but I’ve excerpted a segment that hits the two main points.

Simply stated, Ryan was instrumental in moving the ball forward on tax reform. I very much doubt we would have achieved a lower corporate tax rate or scaled back the state and local tax deduction without all the work he did during his time at the Budget Committee and Ways & Means Committee.

And while entitlement reform never happened, first because of Obama and now because of Trump, it’s nonetheless a remarkable achievement that Ryan was able to:

• Put together budgets with genuine Medicaid and Medicare reform.
• Get those budgets approved by the House and Senate.

By the way, I’m not being a naive cheerleader.

Ryan had plenty of bad votes, including the horribly corrupt TARP bailout. And he routinely supported many other elements of George W. Bush’s big-government agenda.

And his tax record wasn’t perfect, either. His Roadmap budget plan had some great reforms, but also included a value-added tax. More recently, he supported the border-adjustment tax (sort of a pre-VAT).

But even Saint Ronald wasn’t perfect.

P.S. My biggest sin of omission in the interview is that I didn’t mention the de facto five-year spending freeze between 2009-2014, an achievement that largely overlapped with Ryan’s tenure as Chairman of the Budget Committee.

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The World’s Most Depressing Tweet

I periodically will make use of “most depressing” in the title of a column when sharing bad news.

And new data from the Census Bureau definitely qualifies as bad news. It confirms what I’ve written about how the Washington region has become the richest part of America.

But the D.C. area didn’t become wealthy by producing value. Instead, it’s rolling in money because of overpaid bureaucrats, fat-cat lobbyists, sleazy politicians, beltway-bandit contractors, and other grifters who have figured out how to hitch a ride on the federal gravy train.

Anyhow, here’s a tweet with the bad news (at least if you’re a serf elsewhere in America who is paying taxes to keep Washington fat and happy).

Highest counties by median household income (2013-2017):
-Loudoun County, Va.
-Fairfax County, Va.
-Howard County, Md.
-Falls Church City, Va.
-Arlington County, Va. https://t.co/1AA3U00xBA #ACSdata

— U.S. Census Bureau (@uscensusbureau) December 6, 2018

Most of my friends who work for the federal government privately will admit that they are very fortunate.

But when I run into someone who denies that bureaucrats get above-market compensation, I simply share this data from the Labor Department. That usually shuts them up.

By the way, there’s strong evidence from the European Central Bank that overpaid bureaucrats have a negative impact on macroeconomic performance.

And the World Bank has produced a study showing how bureaucrats manipulate the political process.

…public sector workers are not just simply implementers of policies designed by the politicians in charge of supervising them — so called agents and principals, respectively. Public sector workers can have the power to influence whether politicians are elected, thereby influencing whether policies to improve service delivery are adopted and how they are implemented, if at all. This has implications for the quality of public services: if the main purpose of the relationship between politicians and public servants is not to deliver quality public services, but rather to share rents accruing from public office, then service delivery outcomes are likely to be poor.

Here’s my video explaining how bureaucrats are overpaid. It was filmed in 2010, so many of the numbers are now out-dated, but the arguments are just as strong today as they were back then.

But keep in mind that the bureaucracy is only one piece of the puzzle.

The D.C. metropolitan region is unjustly rich because of everyone else who has figured out how to divert taxpayer money into their pockets. That includes disgusting examples of Democrat sleaze and Republican sleaze.

Simply stated, Washington is riddled with rampant corruption as insiders get rich at our expense. No wonder many of them object to my license plate!

P.S. Here’s some data comparing the size and cost of bureaucracy in various nations.

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Everything You Need to Know about Tax Competition in One Story

I’m a big fan of tax competition because politicians (i.e., stationary bandits) are far more likely to control their greed (i.e., keep tax burdens reasonable) if they know taxpayers have the ability to shift economic activity to lower-tax jurisdictions.

For all intents and purposes, tax competition helps offset the natural tendency (caused by “public choice“) of politicians to create “goldfish government” by over-taxing and over-spending.

In other words, tax competition forces politicians to adopt better policy even though would prefer to adopt worse policy.

I’ve shared many real-world examples of tax competition. Today, let’s augment that collection with a story from Indonesia.

Indonesian presidential candidate Prabowo Subianto will slash corporate and personal income taxes if he comes to power, part of a plan to compete with low-tax neighbors like Singapore in luring more investment to Southeast Asia’s biggest economy. …While he didn’t disclose possible tax rates, he said the aim is to lower them “on par with Singapore.” Indonesia currently has a top personal income tax rate of 30 percent and a corporate tax rate of 25 percent. Singapore has a corporate tax rate of 17 percent and a top individual rate of 22 percent for residents. “Our nominal tax rate is too high,” Wibowo said in an interview in Jakarta on Wednesday. Tax reform is needed to attract more foreign business as well as to encourage compliance, he said.

I have no idea if this candidate is sincere. I have no idea if he has a chance to win.

But I like how he embraces lower tax rates to compete with low-tax competitors in the region, such as Singapore.

The story, from Bloomberg, does include a chart that cries out for some corrective analysis.

There are two things to understand.

First, there are vast differences between Singapore and Indonesia. Singapore is ranked #2 by Economic Freedom of the World while Indonesia is only #65. And the reasons for the vast gap is that Indonesia gets very low scores for rule of law, regulation, and trade.

Moreover, while their scores for fiscal policy are similar, Singapore’s good score is a conscious choice whereas Indonesia has a small public sector because the government is too corrupt and incompetent to collect much money.

But this brings us to the second point. Tax collections are low in part because people don’t comply.

Indonesia has one of the region’s lowest tax-to-GDP ratios of about 11 percent and a poor record of tax compliance.

But that’s a reason to lower tax rates.

The bottom line is that I hope Indonesia adopts pro-growth tax reform but there are much bigger problems to solve.

P.S. Since I’ve been comparing Indonesia to Singapore, look at how the OECD and Oxfam made fools of themselves when comparing Singapore to other nations.

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A Preview of the Trump-Warren 2020 Election

Time for some political humor.

Though some may consider this tragedy rather than comedy since the theme will be the potential contest between Donald Trump and Elizabeth Warren in 2020.

But some people are happy about the possible match-up. For instance, both likely candidates are a gold mine for satirists.

We’ll start with Elizabeth “Soul Woman” Warren, She claimed Indian ancestry to give herself an advantage when seeking university jobs, but this produced enough mockery that she felt compelled to get a DNA test.

Which led to some brutal mockery (h/t: Powerline blog). Here’s the one that got the most laughs from me.

Maybe Nike can replace Colin Kaepernick?

Here’s another amusing image.

Let’s look at three additional choices.

If a tiny share of DNA is enough to claim Indian status, then the AFLAC duck gets to be a bald eagle.

And if Warren picks Crazy Bernie as her running mate, they already have a campaign poster.

But before we get to 2020, we have this year’s midterm elections. Trump is dragging down GOP candidates, but Democrats also have some liabilities.

Now let’s turn our attention to Trump.

A friend sent me a great site for Putin/Trump memes. Here’s the one that earned the biggest chuckle from me.

And this one also is amusingly brutal.

And I can’t resist sharing this option as well.

For those of you who like Trump because of his “recreational choices,” you may want to jump ship to someone with better qualifications.

Last but not least, here’s a look back at our dismal choice from 2016.

 

Reminds me of the meme about libertarians.

Given the choice between Trump and Hillary, it is kind of amazing that Gary Johnson did so poorly. Though the Onion has a theory about why that happened.

Makes you wonder how they will bungle (what presumably will be) an equally good opportunity in 2020.

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Politician of the Year?

Back in 2016, I had an informal “politician of the year” contest. The three candidates were:

• The Prime Minister of Malaysia, who took normal cronyist corruption and added several zeroes to the total.
• The president of the Philippines, because he announced to voters that none of his mistresses would be on the public payroll.
• The follicly-challenged President of France, Francois Hollande, who squandered more than $100,000 per year on a hair stylist.

As a proud American, I was chagrined that no Americans made the list.

So I’m delighted to report that our first contestant in the 2018 race is from the United States.

Courtesy of the Washingtonian, let’s look at a very strong candidate for this year’s award.

Parking laws in the District can seem like a mess, but as any DC driver can note, confusion is not an excuse for breaking the law—unless you’re DC Councilmember Jack Evans. Evans, whose free-form approach to parking regulations has been well-documented, was spotted in his car Saturday morning, idling in a no-parking zone in Georgetown… Evans is hardly the first member of the DC Council to be criticized or spotlighted for flouting the District’s traffic and parking rules. …But of all of these, Evans is the council’s best-known parking-law skeptic. As it turns out, he has a point: In 2002, the DC Council granted itself the same legal immunity that members of Congress enjoy in the District, allowing them to park in bus zones, crosswalks, and residential permit zones when on official city business.

But the mere fact that there are special rules for insiders isn’t what qualifies Mr. Evans for an award.

If that was the case, the folks on Capitol Hill would deserve an award for wanting exemptions from the Obamacare law that they imposed on the country. Or we could give a giant prize to the bureaucrats at the OECD, who get tax-exempt salaries while pushing higher taxes on the rest of us.

What makes Mr. Evans worthy is the remarkable logic that he used when confronted by a lowly voter.

Kmetz says he first noticed Evans’ car parked at the corner of 32nd and Q streets, Northwest, while on his way to the post office. …Kmetz approaching Evans and asking the councilmember if he knows he is parking illegally. “Can I ask you something? Why do you care?” Evans responds. “Because if I parked illegally, I would get a ticket,” Kmetz says. “If I park illegally, that opens up a spot for you,” Evans says.

That’s some impressive sophistry.

But I’m wondering if Mr. Evans missed a golden opportunity. Instead of being snarky, he should have expressed fake empathy and told Mr. Kmetz that he would “solve” the problem the by submitting a bill to provide chauffeur-driven limousines to all members of the DC Council.

And he could even demonstrate his “frugality” by buying second-hand limos from the federal government’s massive fleet.

P.S. Since I’m mocking politicians, here’s an amusing joke that a reader shared with me.

Though I would amend the joke by removing “bipartisan.” As we saw with TARP, or the budget deal earlier this year, it’s almost always bad news for taxpayers when the Evil Party and Stupid Party agree on something.

P.P.S. Here’s a good link if you enjoy anti-politician jokes.

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