it’s weird how the mishandling of COVID is so many people’s excuse for supporting the guy who mishandled COVID.

@Phil You, my friend, grew up in the freest, strongest, society in all of history and are supporting a rampage to tear it all apart because CDC was poorly run under the guy you support and you’re annoyed by taxes and free people could shame and exclude you when they didn’t like stuff you say. I wish no curse on you, only just a little bit of sense.

@Phil Our society has had many sources of authority, even when associated with government with a great deal of independence, like the independent agencies the Supreme Court and the Executive are collaborating to destroy. People went to CDCs website to learned about illnesses, and physicians took their advice, not because of any boot. Universities provided a scaffolding upon which tentatively authoritative consensus was widely adopted with no boot. All that is being destroyed.

no source of authority beyond a boot or a rifle, is what they are after. because they can persuade no one, but they know how to stomp.

is there a more banality-of-evil phrase than "ICE quota"?

you can just do things. stupid things.

policy uncertainty is a non-tariff barrier.

#economics

when norm violations become the norm, then whatever they are they are not norm violations.

The Trump Administration “is using this case to establish a truly chilling proposition: that no one can stop the Trump administration from imprisoning any people it wants anywhere else in the world.” #EriwnChemerinsky #LawrenceTribe https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/09/opinion/trump-deportations-gulag-prison.html ht @ct_bergstrom

i hope your day was tariffic and not tarible.

was the tariff rate shift intraday, or if you paid the steeper duty this morning do you get a partial refund?

i remember when people used to say China’s stock market wasn’t really investable, because its movements were dominated by unpredictable choices by government.

does this mean we are no longer liberated?

@admitsWrongIfProven maybe all we ever needed was Xanax.

it’s really funny people actually persuaded themselves Musk would be the voice of sanity.

i mean, he tweets. he has for a long time.

“it turns out that a statistical aggregate economic gain does not produce an increase in real world human well being if all of that statistical gain is captured by a single, tiny powerful interest group.” #HamiltonNolan https://www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/an-international-minimum-wage

how long before this all shows up in prices at Walmart?

“He has to blame immigrants and the disabled, because to blame anything or anyone else would be to question capitalism. Which cannot be done.” #ChrisDillow https://stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com/stumbling_and_mumbling/2025/04/governments-vs-capitalists.html

@dpp @curtosis what does Harlan Crow think of all this?

the hubristic "best and brightest" are responsible for many, many, failures and catastrophes.

it does not follow, however, we are learning, that we should therefore vest power in the worst and the stupidest.