Utopia, you are standing in it!

The Return of the Pink Panther (1975) Director: Blake Edwards

“Now he’s off to Gstaad. Today… a paradise in the Swiss Alps; tomorrow… a wasteland! Compared to Clouseau, Attila the Hun was a Red Cross volunteer!”

★★★★★

After a failed Pink Panther film which was absent Peter Sellers (Inspector Clouseau), Blake Edwards and Peter Sellers were persuaded to put their differences aside and try to make another Pink Panther movie in order to reboot the series. Both had incentives to do so as their careers had gone somewhat downhill, and Peter Sellers was struggling with heart problems. What followed was the best Pink Panther film in the series and one of the funniest movies of all-time (apparently it was the highest grossing Hollywood comedy up to that time, as well). After its release and subsequent success Blake Edwards attempted to turn the concept into a television show but…

If you asked me that question 30 years ago, I would have said Jeff MacNelly without hesitation.

Not that I was exposed to many options in the pre-Internet dark ages, so my choice may have been driven by lack of knowledge. Nonetheless, MacNelly was a genius with the details, as you can see from these cartoons about IRS complexity and government shutdowns.

But what about today’s cartoonists?

Based on the number of cartoons I’ve shared, the easy answer would be either Michael Ramirez or Chuck Asay, but there are cartoons from other artists that are absolutely superb.

So I’m going to turn this question around.

Here are my favorite cartoons from various artists and you can answer the poll about which one you would rank highest.

In no particular order, the options are:

Michael Ramirez – This gem about Obamanomics is the most-viewed professional cartoon in the history of…

When I first looked at the issue of “basic income,” back in 2013, my gut reaction was deep skepticism.

That’s because I feared many people would drop out of the labor force if they could live off government handouts (as illustrated by this Wizard-of-Id parody).

It’s true that the current amalgamation of welfare programs also discourages work and creates dependency, but a government-provided basic income could make a bad situation worse.

Especially if politicians didn’t get rid of other redistribution programs (a very realistic concern).

That being said, what’s the evidence, either pro or con?

There was an experiment in Finland, which poured cold water on the concept.

And now we have some U.S.-focused research. Four economists from the University of Chicago (Mikhail Golosov, Michael Graber, Magne Mogstad, and David Novgorodsky) investigated this topic in a new study from the National Bureau of Economic…

That’s a direct quote from a speech given a few days ago by a Republican Senator doing the usual reply to the President’s Congressional address (which was decidedly not a State Of The Union address).

It’s something that tens of millions of American voters, Democrat and Republican alike, agree on about their nation in 2021.

Here’s the context around the statement.

“Today, kids again are being taught that the color of their skin defines them — and if they look a certain way, they’re an oppressor. From colleges to corporations to our culture, people are making money and gaining power by pretending we haven’t made any progress.

By doubling down on the divisions we’ve worked so hard to heal. You know this stuff is wrong. Hear me clearly: America is not a racist country. It’s backwards to fight discrimination with different discrimination. And it’s wrong to try to use our…

Commune Barricade

I don’t know if the news has penetrated all the way down to New Zealand but it seems that the Antifa and BLM groups in Seattle have finally decided to go beyond starting riots and instead try to build something.

Specifically – and very much in the spirit of the 1871 Paris Commune – they’ve decided to create an Anarcho-Communist “state” in the middle of Seattle.

They even took over a Police Station in the area, violently attacking the cops there for several days before the Mayor ordered the Police to abandon the station and effectively yield a six block area to Antifa.

This capitulation didn’t go down too well with the Seattle Police Chief, Carmen Best, who made the following address to her people to make it clear that it was not her decision. She also talks about the incredible physical assault Antifa and other groups made…

In discussions about Universal Basic Income, lots of people are attracted by the idea of making things as simple as possible. Sadly, that doesn’t work well once you take a closer look.

The simplest UBI would pay every Australian an amount equal to the single age pension, which is just above the poverty line. That’s $20000/yr per person or $500 billion for a population of 25 million, about equal to total Federal government expenditure. That would replace about $180 billion in existing social welfare spending. That leaves $320 billion, approximately equal to total revenue from personal and income taxes.

To fill the gap, we would need either to double income tax revenue, scrap all other public spending, or some mixture of the two. Assuming that’s not feasible, we need to start complicating things. The most obvious step is to treat children differently, for example by giving them half the benefits…

The insidious nature of prominent media myths is evident in how casually they are invoked, as if their veracity is beyond question.

These blithe, passing references in news articles and commentary seldom are accompanied by much context or explanation. And their appearance signals how deeply embedded some media myths have become.

Two recent cases serve to illustrate this tendency.

Musings in the New York Times

One example appeared last week in an entertaining if overlong New York Timesarticle that mused about the identity of an elusive and anonymous Instagram user whose handle is rg_bunny1. Over the recent months, user rg_bunny1 has unleashed what the Times called “a daily torrent of quirky, particular images that, taken together, speak to an aesthetic that delights, confounds, fixates and infuriates in equal measures.”

What most interests Media Myth Alertwas the article’s passing reference to Carl Bernstein, one of the Washington…

The new Israeli governing coalition had a major stress test in the early morning hours of 6 July. It came through looking really strong! it failed utterly!

On the one hand, the bill in question went down to defeat, 59-59. The bill was to extend and modify an existing law that expires at midnight. So that’s pretty embarrassing, especially when a critical lost vote was a member of the prime minister’s party, Amichai Chikli of Yamina. Chikli had also voted against the government itself in the investiture vote a few weeks ago, when the government was approved, 60-59. In the vote on this bill, instead of one Ra’am MK abstaining, as in the investiture, two did.

Before I go any further, an important disclaimer: I am NOT interested in debate on the substance of the law in question, other than as it pertains to the specific compromises the governing…

Since Winston emerged a few weeks ago giving the government, media and anyone else he could think of a serve for the rapid descent the country is taking into Te Reo and a change of name to Aotearoa I have been considering the likely rise and rise again of Winston and New Zealand First. Then along came the latest Roy Morgan Poll and that served to confirm my thoughts even though the party did not feature in the poll headlines.

The first thing I did was take a look at Curia and KiwiBlog which displays polling averages and these indicate that historically NZFirst has a `core constituency’ of about 3% – possibly more like 2% at present but it fluctuates and Winston would tell anyone who would listen it is as much as 10% on a good day.

What this does tell me is that all NZFirst has to do…

Texans and Californians now have a choice between no power and getting their own diesel generators. Mass blackouts and power rationing are now the norm, thanks to an obsession with chaotically intermittent wind and solar, in both cases.

Back in February, it was a big freeze that froze turbines and plastered solar panels with blankets of snow and ice; some 4 million Texans were left powerless during that debacle.

Now as the weather heats up, it’s a case of déjà vu, all over again.

The California and Texas Greenouts
Wall Street Journal
Editorial
16 June 2021

Electric grid operators in Texas and California are again urging residents to conserve power amid a sweltering heat wave to avoid blackouts. Keeping your thermostat at 78 degrees during the summer may be the green new normal.

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (Ercot) warned this week that a large number of unexpected power…

Last night we were subjected to an extraordinary interview where the Human Rights Commissioner defended his decision to give taxpayer money to the Mongrel Mob in form of a koha, He said it would be ‘churlish’ of him not to do so. Then followed a long dissertation about koha being a form of respect with some obscure Maori academic weighing in that the idea of gift giving between parties shows mana to both parties … ‘if you do not give a gift then you are depleting their mana’.

What tosh. The Mongrel Mob are a criminal gang. They are major players in the manufacture, supply and distribution of illegal drugs along with a range of other criminal activity … just where does the Human Rights Commissioner think all those Harley-Davidsons replete with all the bells and whistles come from.

More evidence that Labour is a prisoner to woke thinking. Soft…

Programs such as Medicare and Medicaid, along with the tax code’s healthcare exclusion, have created a system where consumers directly pay for only about 10 percent of the care they receive.

We think it’s normal and appropriate for either the government or an insurance company to foot the bill.

Yet this system of “third-party payer” explains why the health care system in the United States is inefficient and expensive.

Is it possible, though, to put the toothpaste back in the tube? Can we unwind the bad government policies that have undermined market forces?

There are certainly big-picture reforms that would be helpful. Genuine entitlement reform could address the problems with Medicare and Medicaid, and fundamental tax reform could get rid of the healthcare exclusion.

But progress is possible even without major policy change.

Reason interviewed a doctor, Lee Gross, who decided to set up a…