Newmark's Door

I haven't tried any of these yet, but I may. And junk snail mail is a smaller annoyance to me then all the junk phone calls we get.

By Brian Riedl, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute: calm, reasonable, but scary.

If this keeps up, some day--maybe soon--our time will run out.

The US federal budget is haemorrhaging money. The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office calculates that in the first seven months of the 2023 fiscal year, underlying government revenues are down 10 per cent with spending up 12 per cent. This leaves the federal budget deficit more than three times larger than in the same months of the 2022 fiscal year.

"As the business world widely recognizes, incumbent/startup acquisitions efficiently combine a startup’s innovation excellence with an incumbent’s scale, scope and access to capital. This potent synthesis can accelerate the process of converting an innovation into a viable product for market release. Unfounded regulatory interventions based on hypothetical models of market failure harm consumers and startups by obstructing the path to commercialization."

Seems quite reasonable to me: lots of voters are--quite reasonably--uninformed about political issues. That argues for more decentralization of government power as well as less powerful governmental power generally.

Just awful:

Bernhardt describes various factors that contribute to the bureaucratic morass within administrative agencies: badly-written statutes that provide little guidance to regulators; labyrinthine organizational structures within agencies, padded with layers of career civil servants; weak agency heads unwilling (or unable) to manage the sprawling operations they oversee—serving as mere “figureheads” and allowing their agencies to run on “autopilot”; and even chaotic White House staffing arrangements that impede vital communication between agency heads and the president to whom they report. Fixing some of these problems requires action by Congress or (in the case of Chevron deference) the Supreme Court, but—in Bernhardt’s telling—a strong executive can make progress with forceful, decisive management. However, it is not easy: systemic problems elude simple solutions.

In case you missed it: from Red State.

First, there is no widespread support for Fix the Court. In 2021, it received just over $290,000. Of that amount, $286,000 came from two grants . . .

. . . of the $486,000 Fix the Court has raised in the last two years, $242,000 went to its executive director as salary. . . . As a result, Fix the Court looks much more like a jobs program for one guy with a website than a non-profit.

Well, I don't think it will help.

One business owner recently told me that the millionaires’ tax was a significant reason he made Florida his primary residence last year. He, like Calvo-Bacci and many others, was already antsy about the state’s high estate and business taxes as well as the rising cost of living, driving him toward friendlier pastures. Meanwhile, wealth advisers and business consultants throughout the state say that many of their clients are looking seriously into moving beyond Massachusetts’ borders. Some, they say, will definitely move, while others have commissioned studies in preparation to flee in a few years when current leases or other obligations run out. 

If the rise in meat prices was the result of awful collusion--I don't concede for a moment that it was--the collusion sure didn't seem to last long. (Wall Street Journal; may be gated if you're not a subscriber and visit a lot.)

"Governments keep trying to force us to drive electric vehicles, and it keeps not happening."

Related: "If Electric Cars Are So Swell How Come Government Has To Pay People To Drive Them?"