Small Government is best

@Knesix The agreement was not renewed yesterday and is no longer in effect, according to reporting from both Israeli and Italian media. > It expired on Monday and hasn’t been renewed. timesofisrael.com/italy-suspendi…

Italy’s Giorgia Meloni just waited for her defense deal with Israel to auto-renew, so she could boldly claim she was 'suspending' it. Here’s what nobody teaches you about politicspeak in school: the more precisely a politician chooses their words, the less they actually mean. Meloni didn’t “end” the defense deal. She didn’t “cancel” it. She didn’t even “block” it. Notice the careful words: she “suspended the automatic renewal.” Which is the geopolitical equivalent of letting your car lease auto-renew for another five years, then telling your spouse you’ve decided to “suspend future renewals.” You’re still making the payments. The car is still in your driveway. You’re just hoping she remembers the announcement and not the math. You just want credit for the bold and brave gesture. And the timing is beautiful. The agreement quietly renewed on April 13. She made her announcement on April 14. Meaning she waited for the paperwork to go through, then walked into a wine festival in Verona and told cameras she was taking a brave stand. She said the word “suspend” into a microphone and let everyone hear whatever they wanted to hear. Because here’s what she actually needs: Brussels must see her standing with the European consensus against Israel. Washington must know the defense architecture is still intact. Italian voters must feel like something happened. And Leonardo’s stock price must not wobble. The word “suspend” is doing all the heavy lifting. And it’s doing a magnificent job.

@luvre90 @van00sa @spandrell4 Bhutan has a $3B GDP, or just under $4k per capita. Pocketing an extra 25% of that certainly seems like a big deal for the people who live there

Bhutan (a kingdom of 800,000 people in the Himalayas) secretly mined BTC for years using their surplus hydropower. Their cost basis was effectively zero and by late 2024 it held 13,000 BTC, one of the largest government stacks on earth. Then it started selling quietly, in controlled batches, routed through OKX and Galaxy Digital so it didn’t move the market. No zero press releases or explanation. Druk Holding & Investments hasn’t responded to a single media request. It’s now down to 3,774 BTC, 70% of their holdings gone in 18 months. Mining seems to have stopped entirely with no inflow over $100k in over a year. The country decided selling electricity to India is more profitable than running the hardware. Strategy bought more BTC last week than Bhutan has left, and Bhutan still hasn’t said anything.

@jarrylew Venues should be able to charge whatever they want for concessions as long as they're privately funded. But any stadium paid for by tax dollars should have to charge prices similar to outside vendors

Posts like this exemplify why 99% of the population does not understand supply/demand A beer and tenders are $43 because people like this guy willingly pay that much For that reason, they are appropriately priced. If people collectively decided to not buy concessions, prices would drop. (This would never happen of course) Complaining like this is the same thing as punching yourself in the face while simultaneously wondering why your face hurts.

@JTAlexander Good luck. Even if someone is unlucky enough to get bail set in a large city, there are nonprofit bail funds that will happily cover it. Progressives don't believe in individual accountability

The single biggest correlating fact with a repeat offender getting convicted in the 2020s is that they are being held on a cash bail they cannot afford to pay. This is almost the only way to secure convictions today—they can't get free to disappear or pick up new charges and they no longer have any incentive to let the case drag on for three years. This forces them to either plea or get to trial sooner. The second biggest correlating fact is, for people not in custody, that they are wearing an ankle monitor or are under some other supervision that is making their life miserable. These people don't abscond and typically appear for Court, allowing proceedings to happen the way they should. Mostly. There is still the problem of endless continuances, but these people eventually decide just getting it over with is preferable. No single thing has done more harm to the American justice system's ability to address crime as killing cash bail and promoting Honor System bail conditions. There are plenty of other issues, but this is the five-meter target.

@ApoStructura Right on. Every wannabe urban planner on Reddit saw the same tweets about induced demand and now they all think they've checkmated anyone who supports adding more lanes/roads anywhere

The “sure one more lane will fix it” people are fundamentally wrong/dishonest and it’s incredibly easy to see why: Is there traffic in a small town that has a lot of road capacity per capita? No There IS a level of road capacity at which all latent demand is met, and it’s not a theoretical level, it is met in virtually every low density small town. If induced demand were real then every small town would be drowning in traffic, which they obviously aren’t. The problem is that the road capacity in cities is so far below latent demand that every additional capacity gets immediately used, but that is a good thing that means there are trips that could not be made before that are being made now. Now the question of whether the benefits of one additional lane outweigh its costs in an urban environment is a valid one, but saying it does not do anything to satisfy demand is just wrong.

🦔A researcher invented a fake eye condition called bixonimania, uploaded two obviously fraudulent papers about it to an academic server, and watched major AI systems present it as real medicine within weeks. The fake papers thanked Starfleet Academy, cited funding from the Professor Sideshow Bob Foundation and the University of Fellowship of the Ring, and stated mid-paper that the entire thing was made up. Google's Gemini told users it was caused by blue light. Perplexity cited its prevalence at one in 90,000 people. ChatGPT advised users whether their symptoms matched. The fake research was then cited in a peer-reviewed journal that only retracted it after Nature contacted the publisher. My Take The researcher made the papers as obviously fake as possible on purpose. The AI systems didn't catch it. Neither did the human researchers who cited it in real journals, which means people are feeding AI-generated references into their work without reading what they're actually citing. I've covered the FDA using AI for drug review, the NYC hospital CEO ready to replace radiologists, and ChatGPT Health launching this year. All of that is happening in the same environment where a condition funded by a Simpsons character and endorsed by the crew of the Enterprise was being presented as emerging medical consensus. The people making these deployment decisions seem to believe the pipeline from research to AI to patient is more supervised than it actually is. This experiment suggests it isn't supervised much at all. Hedgie🤗 nature.com/articles/d4158…

@OrinKerr Seems reasonable. He said he wouldn't sign the form without his lawyer and he didn't. He never said anything about refusing questioning without his lawyer. This is not the "lawyer dog" case by any stretch

From 2016: Defendant who is asked to sign consent form to allow search but replies, "I ain't signing shit without my attorney," has not invoked the 5th Amendment right to counsel, per Missouri SCT. scholar.google.com/scholar_case?c…

@chriswithans A lot of them have just decided they'll never pay. If you have no sense of obligation to pay your debts, why bother? A leftist administration will forgive the debt eventually

As the article shows, it’s trivially easy to get a payment plan that’s under $100/month for most loans. The federal government is no loan shark. Quite the opposite. Yet 7.7 million people can’t even be bothered to go through the motions and get some sort of negotiated rate. They choose to be in default. All this after a 5 year payment pause with no interest.

@soncharm @Ecclesiasticu12 Letting players run through and climb over the crowd would raise serious safety concerns for both the players and the fans. I can't ever see them allowing it

1. There'd be very few situations where it'd be physically possible, but I'd allow that, yes. 2. I don't like that kind of yellow-line thing, no. If playable should still be in play (like with the Green Monster). If you don't like that, don't have walls that are like mini Green Monsters

I’m torn because logically I think if you don’t keep the ball in the field of play then you haven’t prevented a home run, but I also think the fielder should be rewarded for an incredible play

@soncharm @Ecclesiasticu12 We don't allow the fielder to jump the fence, run 3 rows into the crowd, and catch the ball for an out. Should we? In some stadiums, a ball can be over the yellow line for a home run but bounce right back into play. Should those not count?

My reasoning: The accomplishment of ‘home run’ we’re rewarding isn’t to have hit it ‘over the fence’ or some specific distance, like it’s basketball’s 3-pointer. Notice there’s no regularized fence-distance (or height), it’s different for every ballpark. Instead, ideally, it’s just to hit it some place where it is de facto irretrievable, at least, not by the time you can round the bases. ‘Over the fence’ is mostly just a proxy for ‘irretrievable’. But evidently, this one was retrievable.

@AdamRackis Why wouldn't every student declare bankruptcy the day after graduation? Keep the degree, lose the debt

I've been saying this for years: let markets fix the absurd cost of college. Another option: let student loans be discharged in bankruptcy. Someone loans you $60K for a master's degree in historical preservation and you wind up not being able to pay? You declare bankruptcy and the loan goes away, like normal. Then those loans stop existing. Then universities can't charge absurd rates anymore.

@pollodustino @jasonjosephlee The trip charge can be a scam too. I had a place come for a same day water heater replacement, with dispatch promising they'd bring the new one. They showed up with no heater and quoted $10k with a 2 day delay for a $4k job. They still tried to charge me the trip charge

@jasonjosephlee I recently switched plumbers and the guys are up front. Flat rate quoting. "$95 to come out, we roll it into the total cost if you go with us." As a former flat rate mechanic I think their prices are more than fair.

Don't fall for the bait-and-switch service provider. If you smell BS, don't let them rake you over the coals. Electrician: “Ok your quote will be $600” Me: “Huh? Your rep on the phone told me its $150” Electrician: “That quote was to fix the sub panel, not the main panel.” Me: “We only have one panel at our house and the word sub panel was never a part of our call” Electrician: “You have to talk to my boss, I’m only the technician. Maybe we can do it for $500.” Me: “$150 or you drove here for $0. Let me know.” **Call his boss** Electrician: "Okay, you got lucky, he said we can do it for $150. We don't do this for anyone" Me: "Uh uh, yeah, ok buddy."

@mparkdalton @avidseries If the top 6% or 5% guarantees entry, why does the SAT matter for those individuals?

@avidseries False. UT Austin requires SAT once again for applicants. Top 6% (which is moving down to top 5%), is a state law.

Antiracism in action: University of Texas makes SATs optional for applicants, and then automatically accepts those students in the top 6% of their HS class — even if it doesn't know their SAT score and even if the high school from which they're graduating has almost no students proficient in math or reading. So what's the college GPA difference between those students accepted by Texas who opt out of submitting their SAT score, and those who submit their SAT score when they apply: A whopping 0.86 grade points. The difference in their SAT scores: 260 points.

@KIROCharlie We have ballot drop boxes everywhere in WA. Drop it in a box any time and you're good to go. If you live in a super rural area or are disabled or something, better mail it early

Former state Attorney General Rob McKenna joined us on the show this week, and he thinks the US Supreme Court is going to make adjustments to voting rules soon. It would mean federal races need to have ballots received by election day. Right now in Washington, it just needs to be postmarked by election day. Story👇

@CardioNP @justindubinmd The word you're looking for is "sentry mode"

@justindubinmd How unfortunate that you don’t have a Tesla that has century mode to record the gal who’s leaving these stupid notes in your car

@SallyTiger Instead of complaining, report the store: dss.sc.gov/assistance-pro…

@jerusalemofiron @MarkChangizi The libertarians call themselves the classical liberals but they are pro-open borders and foreign policy isolationists

@MarkChangizi "Classical liberal."

Need a name for those who are - not Woke Left - not Woke Right - anti-Islamist - aggressive to bullies - not anti-Semitic - not “I’m not anti-Jew I’m anti-[BS here]” - for free speech - for civil liberties - against “balancing” civil liberties - for free markets - for cost benefit analyses - for tight immigration - against isolationism - contemptuous of international law - against foreign dictatorships - “America First,” not “Israel Last” - love Iranians - “Free Iran” but not “Free Palestine” - appreciative that strength brings peace - want Cuba free Suggestions?

@stevenfiorillo @GavinNewsom Counting the property tax that passes through to rent is misleading. Many govt policies impact housing prices, not just tax rates. If you're in TX paying $1k for rent, do you care that $200 of that is property tax? Would you rather pay $2k rent in CA, if less of it is tax?

There’s been a lot of back and forth about @GavinNewsom claims regarding taxes between Texas and California. People keep asking how that's even possible when Texas has no state income tax. The answer is likely that he's talking about the effective tax rate not just the state income tax line. Governor Newsom claimed that Texas taxes its lowest-earning residents more than California taxes its richest residents, and that the middle class in Texas pays more taxes than the middle class in California. I went through the actual data. He's half-right and half-wrong, and the half he's wrong about is the part that affects the majority of people. I will break it down without being political, and strictly by the numbers. I'm using the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) "Who Pays?" 7th edition published in 2024. To my knowledge this is the only comprehensive analysis of state and local tax systems across all 50 states. It breaks down what families at every income level actually pay as a share of their income across all tax types including income, sales, excise, and property taxes. I can't prove this is where Mr. Newsom is pulling his data from, but it's my assumption, and I wanted to be transparent about my source from the start. One core concept to understand before diving in is the effective tax rate. This is not the rate printed in the tax code. It is the actual percentage of your total income that goes to taxes after every deduction, credit, exemption, and offset is applied across every type of tax you pay. It includes your state income tax, the sales tax on everything you buy, the property tax on your home or the portion passed through to you in higher rent, excise taxes on gas, tobacco, and alcohol, and even the share of business taxes that ultimately get absorbed by consumers, workers, and shareholders. Claim 1: "Texas taxes poor folks more than we tax our richest." My verdict: Governor Newsom is technically correct based on effective tax data in this case but technically isn't the whole story. According to ITEP's data, the bottom 20% of Texas earners pay a total effective state and local tax rate of 12.8% of their income. The top 1% of California earners pay 12.0%. So how can a state with no income tax end up taxing its poorest residents at a higher rate than a state with a 13.3% top income tax bracket charges its richest? The answer lies in what types of taxes each group pays. Texas has no income tax, but revenue has to come from somewhere. The two main revenue generators are sales and property taxes. The ITEP breakdown for the bottom 20% of Texas earners looks like this: sales and excise taxes take 8.1% of income, property taxes including pass-through to renters take 4.5%, and other taxes take 0.2%, for a total of 12.8%. The bottom 20% of Texans earn less than approximately $21,700. At that income level, nearly every dollar goes to rent, food, gas, and basic necessities. Almost everything they spend is subject to sales tax. Their rent includes their landlord's property tax passed through as higher rent. There is no offset, no credit, and no refund to ease the burden. On the other side, California's top 1% of households have an average income of roughly $2.14 million. The ITEP breakdown looks like this: personal and corporate income taxes take 9.2%, sales and excise taxes take 1.0%, property taxes take 1.7%, and other taxes take 0.1%, for a total of 12.0%. The distortion in the effective rate is that their sales and property tax rates as a share of income are very low because they typically save and invest most of their income rather than spending it on taxable goods. So 12.8% is higher than 12.0%. Newsom is technically accurate but there are aspects this claim doesn't tell you. The comparison pairs the absolute bottom of Texas's income distribution against the absolute top of California's income distribution. It is the single most dramatic comparison you can construct from the data, and it was likely designed to provoke outrage rather than inform. It tells you absolutely nothing about how the two systems compare for roughly 80% of residents who are neither the poorest Texans nor the richest Californians. The moment you move one step up the income ladder, the comparison reverses. The second 20% of Texans earning $21,700 to $40,800 pay 11.2%. The middle 20% pay 9.9%. The fourth 20% pay 8.8%. By the time you reach a household earning a median income, Texas's rate has already dropped below California's. The comparison only works at the extremes, and only in one specific direction. Claim 2: "Your middle class pays more taxes in Texas than our middle class in California." My verdict: Governor Newsom is incorrect. This claim falls apart when you look at the actual ITEP data. The middle 20% of Texans with household earnings of roughly $41,000 to $74,000, pay a 9.9% total effective rate. The equivalent group in California pays 10.4%. California is half a percentage point higher. When you look at the fourth quintile, households earning roughly $74,000 to $146,000, which is where the median household income falls in both states, the gap widens significantly. Texas charges 8.8% and California charges 11.0%, a 2.2% difference favoring Texas. There is no income group that can reasonably be classified as middle class where Texas comes out higher than California. The only groups where California is cheaper are the bottom two quintiles, households earning under approximately $48,000, which most people would characterize as working class or lower income, not middle class. California's median household income is approximately $92,000 and Texas's is approximately $80,000. At both of those income levels, you are firmly in the fourth quintile, where the difference favors Texas by roughly 2%. How California achieves a lower rate at the bottom If California has a higher sales tax and higher property taxes for the poorest renters, how does it end up with a lower total rate for its lowest earners? The answer is one line item: tax credits. ITEP's data shows that the bottom 20% of California earners have a personal income tax rate of negative 1.8%. California's refundable Earned Income Tax Credit (CalEITC) and refundable Young Child Tax Credit (YCTC) send more money back to these families than they collect in income tax. The state is making a net payment to its lowest-income residents through the tax code. Texas doesn't have a state income tax, so there is no mechanism to replicate this. When you strip out the income tax line and look only at sales, property, excise, and other taxes, the bottom 20% in California pays approximately 13.3% of their income. In Texas the same group pays 12.8%. Without the refundable credits, California's poorest would actually pay more than their Texas counterparts, not less. The entire advantage at the bottom rests on two specific tax credits that phase out by $32,900. The population math is important to discuss The question that matters is not which system is better in theory, it's how many actual people fall on each side of that crossover line. California's population is approximately 39 million. Quintiles divide the population into equal fifths, giving us roughly 7.8 million people per group. The bottom 40%, roughly 15.6 million Californians earning under $48,000, would pay less under California's tax system. The top 60%, roughly 23.4 million Californians earning above $48,000, would pay less under Texas's tax structure. The savings are not symmetric. A family in the bottom 20% saves roughly $150 per year under California's system. A family earning $110,000 saves roughly $2,400 per year in Texas. A household earning $200,000 saves roughly $7,000 in Texas. At $500,000 the savings in Texas reach roughly $20,000. The residents who benefit from California's system save minimal amounts compared to the majority of residents who pay more under the California tax code. My bottom line Governor Newsom's first claim that Texas taxes its poor more than California taxes its richest is technically correct, but it's a deliberately narrow comparison that pairs the extremes of two different populations and tells you nothing about the experience of most people. His second claim that the middle class pays more in Texas than in California is incorrect. By every measure in ITEP's data, middle-class Texans pay less. At the median household income the difference favors Texas by roughly 2%. The uncomfortable truth is this: California's progressive tax system does benefit its poorest residents, primarily through two narrowly targeted refundable tax credits. But the majority of working Californians, at least 55 to 60% of the population including the entire middle class, pay more under California's system than they would under Texas's. The advantage California provides at the bottom is modest in dollar terms. The additional burden it imposes on everyone else is substantial. I didn't even go down the rabbit hole of the cost of living, and if I did the gap would widen further. None of this is a political argument. It's policy and math. Progressive tax systems make a policy choice to concentrate the burden on upper earners and return money to lower earners. That is a legitimate design. But presenting that design as if it benefits everyone, or as if the only people who gain from Texas's system are the richest of the rich, is not supported by the numbers. The data shows the opposite. The majority pays more in California.

So much of today's media framing of the Iran war relies on a mythology of what came before. The gist is Iran was contained by Barack Obama until Donald Trump mucked it up. Now, we're told, the regime will really pursue nuclear weapons. Naive is too kind a word. WSJ editorial

@bkheywood Don't play their game. No initiative to "ban the millionaire tax". That's fighting on their turf. The initiative should ban ALL income taxes. Ideally, we should strengthen the language in the constitution to make it clear that income is property and can't be taxed this way

Translation: “We bundled diaper tax breaks and free lunches inside an unconstitutional income tax — then blocked your right to referendum — so when you try to repeal it, the ballot will say you're taking food from children. I am doing this so i can feel good about myself and look down on you for objecting…”