The Weekly WTF: Government stupid contest
Plus, taxpayers get a crappy airline and traders figure out how to rig the weather.
THIS STUFF ACTUALLY HAPPENED:
Somebody likes Congress? Congress’s disapproval rating rose to 86% in the latest Gallup survey, matching record-high hate marks from 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2015. The recurring theme is a government shutdown, which was underway during most of those prior spikes. If you’re not aware, there’s currently a shutdown of the Dept. of Homeland Security, except for the worst part of it: Immigration and Customs Enforcement. ICE is up and running because it got a separate funding stream as part of the Republican tax law President Trump signed last summer.
Democrats are blocking DHS funding because they want reforms at ICE, which has plenty of funding. Republicans won’t consider any reforms at ICE, so most of the rest of DHS is idle. Make sense? No, not at all.
There’s only one question: Nine percent of Americans approve of the job Congress is doing. WHO ARE THEY?
Come on people, we can do this. Let’s get those Congressional hate numbers closer to 100. Gallup runs its Congressional survey monthly. Tell everybody you know to vote against Congress if Gallup calls. And ask why they need convincing in the first place.
Redistricting regret. Republicans who kicked off a repugnant wave of off-schedule redistricting in Texas last year now stand to lose from what they unleashed. 😄😄😄 Texas redrew its Congressional districts because Trump pushed the state to add five House GOP seats, by drawing new borders that would lump Democratic voters in the fewest number of districts and let Republicans win the rest. This is an odious but technically legal process that has been going on for decades and is democracy at its worst. Normally, it only happens once every 10 years, after the decennial census. But Trump wanted an edge NOW, and Texas did what he said.
[See why it could take months for the Iran war to end]
What Trump didn’t foresee is that some Democratic states would do the same thing, which they have, and now it looks like Republicans will get no advantage at all from trying to rig the vote. The whole scheme might even hurt them. Virginia tilted the odds back toward Dems by passing a redistricting plan on April 21 that will probably flip four seats from R to D. California redistricting has probably flipped five seats for the Dems. Florida may still net Republicans a seat or two if it joins the fray. But Republicans basically cheated in plain view of voters, with nothing to show for it.
The Cook Political Report says Democrats have a six-point advantage heading into the November midterm elections. That portends a blue-wave election. CNN’s Harry Enten calls the Republican redistricting scheme “one of your all-time backfires.” Republicans deserve it.
Uncle Sam Airlines. President Trump, whose companies declared bankruptcy six times, apparently can’t stand to see a business go bust. So he’s committing taxpayer money to save a small airline most fliers would never miss.
Spirit Airlines, America’s seventh-largest carrier, has been reorganizing under bankruptcy protection and was on track to emerge healthier sometime this summer. But the soaring cost of jet fuel caused by Trump’s war on Iran has wrecked the company’s finances, pushing it toward liquidation. So Trump is preparing a government bailout that would inject $500 million of taxpayer funds into the budget carrier in exchange for an ownership stake that could be as high as 90%.
This is a dangerous anticapitalist idea. The US government has helped out airlines before, but only under extraordinary circumstances that threatened the entire industry, such as the 2001 terrorist attacks and the 2020 Covid pandemic. Numerous individual airlines have gone bankrupt, including Braniff (1982), Eastern (1989), Pan Am (1991), TWA (2001), US Airways (2002 and 2004), United (2002), Northwest (2005), Delta (2005) and American (2011). Bankruptcy is capitalism’s way of compelling efficiency and punishing bad management.
[See why the Trump economy lags Biden’s]
The government didn’t bail out any of those companies, and nearly all of those bankrupt airlines were bigger than Spirit. Some disappeared, while others merged with existing carriers. The problem with government ownership is it inevitably injects political factors into management decisions.
What’s so special about Spirit? Probably that it would be a victim of Trump himself. Trump is the one who started the Iran war oblivious to the inevitability of Iran closing the Strait of Hormuz and causing a global energy crisis. So a bailout is Trump’s way of buying off his own guilt. With our money. We should all demand free flights on our new airline.
How to fix the weather. Traders on betting site Polymarket seem to have figured out how to win thousands of dollars by rigging weather equipment. There have been at least two incidents in which an official temperature gauge at De Gaulle airport in Paris jumped by 4° Celsius, or around 7° Fahrenheit, even though there was no such change in the ambient temperature. In the first instance, a lucky trader just happened to place a bet guessing there would be such a temperature surge, winning $14,000 on a bet of $30. The odds of that payout were 0.2%. The second time, a trader won $21,000 betting just $119 on the micro heat wave. Those odds were 0.5%.
[See the economic toll of the Iran war, so far]
A French climate-monitoring group noticed the oddities, which first occurred on April 6, and then again on April 15. Commenters speculate that somebody with access to the temperature gauges blew on them for a few minutes with a battery-powered hair dryer. French authorities are investigating.
I’ve written before about how scammy betting sites seem to be, and there have been numerous fishy payouts to traders who placed prescient bets, as if they had insider information. On April 23, authorities arrested a US special forces soldier on charges of using secret classified information on the January operation to snatch Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro to net $419,000 on Polymarket. Some people think higher-echelon Trump administration officials are cashing in, too. We’re democratizing everything, including graft.
Dumb … Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. dragged his family name even lower on April 22 when he tried to convince a Senate committee that (600-590) = (-600%). Kennedy was trying to defend Trump’s frequent claim that he’s going to cut drug prices by multiples of 100%, such as 500%, 600%, or 1,000%. Anybody who shops for themselves knows you can only cut the price of anything by a maximum of 100%, at which point the product is free. A 500% discount on, say, a $100 item, would be getting it for free and then getting an extra $400.
Anyway, one senator prodded Kennedy about Trump’s made-up math, and Kennedy took the bait, saying, “if you have a $600 drug, and you reduce it to $10, that’s a 600% reduction.” Is Kennedy that dumb? Or is he just acting dumb because Trump is dumb? Is the whole Trump administration engaged in a stupid contest?
If the price of a $600 drug fell to $10, that would be a 98% decline. You get that by dividing the amount of the change, 590, by the original price, 600. 590 ÷ 600 =98.33 and you round down to 98%.
JUST ASK AI, YOU BRAINDEAD BUMPKINS!
And dumber …. The Centers for Disease Control won’t publish its own research showing that Covid-19 vaccines cut the risk of hospitalization in half. You know why. At some point in Trump’s mad past, he decided: Vaccines, bad. So now, vaccines are the unmentionable word Trump will not speak, or allow anybody else to speak. Trump should rename the CDC the Trump Center for the Spread of Disease.
Better than Putinland. Ukrainian negotiators have proposed renaming a besieged part of eastern Ukraine “Donnyland,” as a tribute to Donny Osmond. Just checking if you’re awake. It’s not Donny Osmond, it’s the other Donny, Donald Trump.
Apparently it started as a joke among the acerbic Ukrainians, who then thought, wait, he might actually fall for it: Name part of our country after Trump and he might provide more aid to fight the invading Russians. “Donnyland” is a mashup of “Donald” and “the Donbas,” the region that would gain this unparalleled honor if Trump went along. Trump obviously doesn’t go by Donny, but he’s an expert at naming things after himself and could offer guidance. “Trumpatorsk.” “Trumporizhia.” Throw in a peace prize. Whatever.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky doesn’t love the idea, but he left the door open when reporters asked him about it on April 1. “The main thing is that it's not 'Putinland,'” he said.
You have to think about it for a while, but yeah, Donnyland seems slightly better.
