"The Democratic Party Faces a Voter Registration Crisis/The party is bleeding support beyond the ballot box, a new analysis shows."

That's the headline in the lead article at the NYT this morning. 

Here's a free access link. Excerpt:

There are still more Democrats registered nationwide than Republicans, partly because of big blue states like California allow people to register by party, while red states like Texas do not. But the trajectory is troublesome for Democrats, and there are growing tensions over what to do about it. Democrats went from nearly an 11-percentage-point edge over Republicans on Election Day 2020 in those places with partisan registration, to just over a 6-percentage-point edge in 2024.... 

It must be quite a crisis or I don't think the NYT would openly call it a crisis. They even used my favorite word, "flummox": "... Democrats are divided and flummoxed over what to do."

A big part of the problem is that they can't use nonprofits the way they used to:

"Now that Trump and his lackeys in Congress have passed his crazy idea of no taxes on tips, I'm wondering how you think those of us who would like to see tipping go away should respond?"

"This is particularly pertinent in light of Bowser's dishonest effort (acting on behalf of the restaurant industry lobbyists) to overturn the will of the voters for the second time by repealing I-82. Even though tipping mainly benefits employers by transferring to their customers a large part of the responsibility for paying their staff, it would probably temporarily hurt workers to go cold turkey and just go on a tipping strike (although in the long run getting rid of tipping would help both customers and workers). But what about taking a baby step and reducing the going rate for tips from 20% to 15%? Since tips are now tax free, the net impact on workers should be minimal."

A letter to the Washington Post food critic.

I had to ask Grok about that 1-82/Bowser business. Answer: here. It's the problem of the "tipped minimum wage." The letter-writer is not a selfish bastard but a progressive reformer. I think. But I bet the selfish bastards are out there, ready to scale back tips to capture the tax break intended for others. But most of us participate in the proud American tradition of generous tipping. That's how the norm crept up from 15% to 20%.

When you read "Bowser," did you immediately know it meant the mayor of Washington D.C., Muriel Bowser? I had no idea. It struck me as absurd. The only Bowser I could think of was Bowser, the lead singer of Sha Na Na. 

"The problem with even a 'TINY' tax increase for the RICH, which I and all others would graciously accept..."

"... in order to help the lower and middle income workers, is that the Radical Left Democrat Lunatics would go around screaming, 'Read my lips,' the fabled Quote by George Bush the Elder that is said to have cost him the Election. NO, Ross Perot cost him the Election! In any event, Republicans should probably not do it, but I'm OK if they do!!!"

Writes Trump, on Truth Social.

Does "We are going to be taking away Harvard’s Tax Exempt Status" = "he is stripping Harvard University of its tax-exempt status"?

I'm reading the NY Post:

"President Trump said Friday he is stripping Harvard University of its tax-exempt status.

“We are going to be taking away Harvard’s Tax Exempt Status. It’s what they deserve!” he said in a Truth Social post.

I think the post is losing something in the paraphrase. Trump's post speaks of doing something in the future. The NY Post portrays him as in the process of doing it now.

In any event, this is a big deal. Also a big deal in the news this morning: "Trump orders end to federal funding for NPR and PBS" (NPR). 

President Trump signed an executive order Thursday directing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting's board of directors to "cease federal funding for NPR and PBS," the nation's primary public broadcasters. Trump contends that news coverage by NPR and PBS contains a left-wing bias. The federal funding for NPR and PBS is appropriated by Congress....

"Which viewpoints NPR and PBS promote does not matter," the executive order says. "What does matter is that neither entity presents a fair, accurate or unbiased portrayal of current events to tax-paying citizens."

"If film and if film and TV productions continue to move out of California due to tax incentives in other states what might the future look for Los Angeles? Is there a risk of it becoming the next Detroit."

That's a question from the audience, and Bill Maher snaps, "Well, there's no need to shit on Detroit in the question! Detroit's a fine city. Detroit!"

That was Friday night, but here's a headline that appeared in the London Times earlier the same day: "Why Hollywood could be the new Detroit/It’s a town built on one industry. So what happens when everyone realises it’s cheaper and easier to film in Hertfordshire?"

So you can see the need to "shit" on Detroit. It's a city with one iconic industry, and it lost it and went into severe decline. It pithily expresses the threat to L.A.

In that Bill Maher/"Overtime" clip, Adam Schiff says that because the movie industry is a "prize economic and cultural driver of the United States" — and he loves movies — the U.S. needs to offer tax incentives.

The other guest, Bret Stephens asks: "But why should it just be for Hollywood? It should be for normal people. It should be for any kind of entrepreneur, not just celebrities... whose pictures and whose faces you know.... It shouldn't just simply be a favorite industry — Oh, we can't lose our our movie stars!"

"Perhaps Harvard should lose its Tax Exempt Status and be Taxed as a Political Entity if it keeps pushing political, ideological, and terrorist inspired/supporting 'Sickness?'"

"Remember, Tax Exempt Status is totally contingent on acting in the PUBLIC INTEREST!"

Said Donald Trump (on Truth Social).

That message follows the news: "The Trump administration says it will freeze $2 billion in funding after Harvard refuses its demands" (NYT).

The demands — in the words of the NYT — are "that the university reduce the power of students and faculty members over the university’s affairs; report foreign students who commit conduct violations immediately to federal authorities; and bring in an outside party to ensure that each academic department is 'viewpoint diverse,' among other steps."

Mom & Pop Accounting.

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A post shared by Roz Chast (@rozchast)

"Donald Trump announced the External Revenue Service and his goal is very simple: To ABOLISH the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and let all the outsiders pay."

BREAKING: Commerce Secretary Lutnick just confirmed that the Trump Administration is looking to ABOLISH the IRS!

This is not a drill!

Let's get it done! pic.twitter.com/9XdMIkYu2q

— Gunther Eagleman™ (@GuntherEagleman) February 20, 2025

"My guess is that regardless of what happens in Tom’s criminal case, SCOTUSblog will endure."

"Tom scaled down his involvement with the site years ago—if the indictment is to be believed, he had a lot of other things on his plate—and today SCOTUSblog is really run by Amy Howe, its main courtroom reporter, and Ellena Erskine, its editor. I see no reason why Amy, Ellena, and SCOTUSblog’s nine regular contributors can’t continue their excellent and invaluable work. I don’t know—and can’t imagine—what’s going on in Tom and Amy’s marriage right now... If Tom and Amy go their separate ways (or even if they don’t), they should squarely place all ownership and control of SCOTUSblog in Amy’s hands.... And as a loyal reader of SCOTUSblog pretty much since its inception, I hereby volunteer to do anything in my power to keep it up and running...."

Writes David Lat, in "SCOTUSblog Founder Tom Goldstein Hit With 22-Count Federal Indictment/A lengthy indictment accuses the once high-flying Supreme Court lawyer of massive tax evasion—tied to multimillion-dollar poker losses and multiple affairs" (Substack).

Lat thinks Goldstein's future is not all used up: "He’s only 54, and he still has the intelligence, hard work, and hustle that allowed him to launch a leading Supreme Court website and become one of the nation’s top SCOTUS advocates, even though he never clerked for the Court or graduated from an elite law school. And if the allegations are true, Tom has an unimaginable amount of energy: he was somehow able to argue before the Supreme Court, run a law firm, win and lose tens of millions in high-stakes poker, juggle a dozen women, oversee SCOTUSblog, and raise two kids... He also helped develop a pitch for a television show based on his life and career, which got picked up for development by NBC in 2009. The program, tentatively called Tommy Supreme, never made it to the screen...."

But now the story is far more exciting — especially if he's guilty. Lat sketches out possible futures for Goldstein — including "a pardon from Trump." And, interestingly, Goldstein published "End the Criminal Cases Against Trump" in the NYT (last November, just after the election). But if the idea is to produce a great redemption story —  worthy of that TV show — it can't end with a presidential pardon.

"During the Cold War, we classified entire areas of physics and took them out of the research community—entire branches of physics went dark..."

"... and didn’t proceed. If we decide we need to, we’re going to do the same thing to the math underneath AI."

Said Marc Andreessen, on the podcast "Honestly with Bari Weiss."

Marc Andreessen (@pmarca) says he attended “absolutely horrifying” meetings where Biden’s government vowed to take “complete control” over AI technology:

“They basically said AI is going to be a game of 2 or 3 big companies working closely with the government… We’re going to… pic.twitter.com/REjkfgJkyV

— Honestly with Bari Weiss (@thehonestlypod) December 10, 2024

Here's a transcript of the entire podcast. Excerpt, giving context to the quote above:

Joe Rogan talks to Donald Trump for 3 hours.

I'm one hour into it, and the 2 men have great rapport.

The NYT headline is designed to make people think that nothing worthwhile happened and it's all a stupid distraction for young guys: "6 Takeaways From Donald Trump’s 3-Hour Podcast With Joe Rogan/The former president repeated his debunked claims of election fraud and speculated that there could be life on Mars in an interview aimed at young male voters."

He courted the show’s young male audience by floating the idea of eliminating the income tax, talking about mixed martial arts fighters, praising the military skills of Gen. Robert E. Lee and speculating that there was “no reason not to think” there could be life on Mars and other planets....

Why not say he "courted" the old women (like me) by talking about the length of the bed in the Lincoln bedroom and how badly depressed Mary Todd Lincoln was after her son Tad died?

Mr. Rogan seemed to back Mr. Trump’s questioning of election processes, at one point likening those who raised concerns over elections to those who questioned coronavirus vaccines.

“You get labeled an election denier,” Mr. Rogan said. “It’s like being labeled an anti-vaxxer if you question some of the health consequences that people have from the Covid-19 shots.”...

What I thought was so interesting was the first topic: how Trump felt when he found himself suddenly President. If that's not a topic for women, I don't know what is, especially when Trump centered the description on his interest in seeing the Lincoln bedroom and imagining the feelings of Abe and Mary. I loved Trump's (seeming) openness, as he repeatedly described his subjective experience as "surreal."

Why I read something this blurry.

I'd just watched "What a Way to Go" — the Criterion Channel is featuring Shirley MacLaine movies — and checking Rotten Tomatoes, I saw that Joan Didion wrote a review in the May 1964 issue of Vogue. I could subscribe to Vogue just to read that paragraph, but I found that by calming down and believing in myself, I could read it. It's not much different from reading without one's reading glasses. It's an apt and pithy review. "What a Way to Go" was a big movie in its day, so it deserves the bad reviews it got, but 60 years later, it's fun to look at the stars and the costumes and the sets. The Hollywood that produced it no longer exists. Nothing to get mad at now. Here's a sentence from the contemporaneous NYT review by Bosley Crowther:

Inspired by a Gwen Davis story, which has not swum into my ken, so I cannot tell you how fairly or fouly it has been used, the team of musical-comedy writers is making kookie jokes about a girl whose sad fate it is to marry a succession of burgeoning millionaires.

The "girl" hates money, loves Henry David Thoreau, and only wants to live the simple life, but the movie seems to have been made on the theory that the way to make good art is by spending as much money as possible.

Should a politician hold a campaign rally in a church?

Here's "Charities, Churches and Politics" at the IRS website.

I'm not going to give a tax law lecture. I just want to say politicians using churches usually attempt to be somewhat subtle. Is this some kind of joke:

Here's the article, "Biden Tries to Rally Disaffected Black Voters in Fiery Condemnation of Trump."

President Biden sought to rally disaffected Black supporters on Monday with a fiery condemnation of former President Donald J. Trump, linking his predecessor’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election to the nation’s history of white supremacy in what he called “the old ghost in new garments.”

Ghost?! If Trump used the idea of a ghost to scare black people, he'd be accused of trading on the old racist trope. 

R.I.P. Joe the Plumber.

"The document’s first paragraph, addressing Mr. Ramaswamy’s past support for inheritance taxes, draws a link between that policy position and his Hindu upbringing..."

"... as the son of Indian immigrants. 'Ramaswamy — a Hindu who grew up visiting relatives in India and was very much ingrained in India’s caste system — supports this as a mechanism to preserve a meritocracy in America and ensure everyone starts on a level playing field,' the document states...."

From "Ramaswamy’s Faith Singled Out in DeSantis Super PAC Memo/An opposition research memo suggests that Vivek Ramaswamy, who has been gaining on Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida in some polls, 'was very much ingrained in India’s caste system'" (NYT).

Asked to comment on the reason for highlighting Mr. Ramaswamy’s religion and background, the super PAC’S chief executive, Chris Jankowski, said in a statement: “We are highlighting that his philosophy of government is a direct reflection of his life experience. When his parents moved here from India, they had an 85 percent inheritance tax. In fact, his support of the inheritance tax is connected to the argument he makes in his book against meritocracy.”

"No violence is legitimate, whether verbal or against people. We have to work in depth to counter this process of decivilisation."

Said President Macron, quoted in "Radical left threatens civilisation in France, says Macron/President speaks out after pension reform protests and attacks on elected officials" (London Times).

Presidential advisers said the term was a reference to Norbert Elias, the 20th century German sociologist who described how self-restraint and social inhibitions had civilised Europe, first in royal courts and then among the rest of the population, in his book The Civilizing Process.

This resonates with me because I once used the word "civilized" in the presence of sociologists and experienced the iciest silence of my entire life. Used it jocosely... I'd thought. 

Macron is said to believe the process has gone into reverse in what one adviser called a “Trumpisation of minds and a denial of reality”. 

Trump gets blame for what the left is doing... in France.  

"Courts have long recognized that reporters are entitled to engage in legal and ordinary news-gathering activities without fear of tort liability — as these actions are at the very core of protected first amendment activity,."

Wrote the trial judge, Justice Robert R. Reed (State Supreme Court in Manhattan), quoted in "Judge Dismisses Trump’s Lawsuit Against The New York Times/Former President Donald J. Trump, who had sued The Times, three of its reporters and his niece over an investigation into his tax returns, was ordered to pay The Times’s legal expenses" (NYT).

Times spokesman Charlie Stadtlander said: "It is an important precedent reaffirming that the press is protected when it engages in routine news gathering to obtain information of vital importance to the public." 

Trump’s lawyer, Alina Habba, said they'd "weigh" his "options," but not specifically whether he'd appeal, and they continue to assert that the Times "went well beyond the conventional news-gathering techniques permitted by the First Amendment."

Whoa! My bad law talk alarm went off! Don't say "permitted by the First Amendment."

The Times was free to do what it did unless there's some valid law that forbids it. Trump made a claim that what the Times did was not permitted because it violated tort law. If he was wrong about that and no tort law or other law was violated, then what the Times did would be permitted, regardless of constitutional law. Fortunately, the First Amendment protects against encroachments on freedom of speech and freedom of the press that might occur if tort law limits what is permitted. If. If tort law or other law doesn't limit, then you don't need permission from the First Amendment. The First Amendment is the defense against encroachment, not the source of permission!

I like the quote from Justice Reed because it's precise about the role of the First Amendment: It relieves us of the fear of aggressive interpretations tort law.

"The IRS Makes a Strange House Call on Matt Taibbi/An agent shows up at the home of the Twitter files journalist who testified before Congress."

That's the headline for a piece labelled "Opinion" and signed by The Editorial Board of The Wall Street Journal. 

[Taibbi told the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government] that an IRS agent showed up at his personal residence in New Jersey on March 9. That happens to be the same day Mr. Taibbi testified before the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government about what he learned about Twitter. The taxman left a note instructing Mr. Taibbi to call the IRS four days later. 

It seems to have just been about an identity theft issue, in which case Taibbi is the victim, not someone accused of anything. It's annoying, but not threatening to the taxpayer. The question is just why come to his house about that and why on the same day that he testified in Congress. The WSJ editors say it "raises questions about potential intimidation" and endorse the Committee's request for "documents and communications relating to the Taibbi visit." 

The IRS needs to prove the timing was just a coincidence.

The fear of many Americans is that, flush with its new $80 billion in funding from Congress, the IRS will unleash its fearsome power against political opponents. 

"House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has backed his fellow Republicans into a corner with one of the promises he made to his far-right flank to land his job..."

"... opening the door to considering fringe legislation that would replace the income tax with a federal sales tax and abolish the IRS. Most GOP members appear determined to distance themselves as much as possible from the idea and McCarthy himself said this week he doesn’t support the legislation. But Democrats aren’t going to let the issue die quietly. They’ve been more than happy to use it as a cudgel to portray Republicans as dangerous radicals. 'You gotta be kidding me. What in God’s name is this all about?' President Joe Biden said Thursday about the plan, saying it would slap a 30 percent national sales tax on 'every item from groceries, gasoline, clothing, supplies, [and] medicine.'"

Writes Politico.

Upstairs to downstairs texting at Meadhouse.

 

I need to contextualize that last remark. It all goes back to something I reminisced about and blogged in 2014:

The phrase "jacking up" normally goes with opposition to taxes, so it's a humorous flip to use it when you're actually in favor of more taxes. I'll never forget the time, back in 2010, when we watched the Obama rally from the TV set up on the Union Terrace, in a big enthusiastic crowd of mostly students. I wished I'd caught this one guy on video. Upon some mention of taxes, he stood up facing the crowd and yelled "Taxes?! I say jack 'em up!!!" He did this with a big, clownish, full-body gesture that ended with arms aloft and thumbs up. Meade and I have been imitating that guy for years. For the drunk-on-beer/drunk-on-Obama Terrace crowd, maybe it all seemed like a dream or a joke. Need money? Get money! Jack 'em up!