This week, I got a flyer in the mail explaining why I should vote “no” on California’s proposed wealth tax. It boiled down to 2 points:
- There are no taxpayer safeguards! Perhaps ... but then again the only taxpayers targeted are the billionaires, and I’m not sure they really need any “safeguards”.
- Billionaires will flee the state, costing billions to the budget! So, first of all, millionaire/billionaire flight is a myth: a fantastical fable concocted by Ayn Rand for the purpose of selling Atlas Shrugged and its sequels. But, secondly: the problem that the wealth tax is trying to solve is that billionaires aren’t paying any taxes. So, if they did flee ... would we even notice?
For a better response to this bullshit narrative than I can come up with off the cuff, watch this video from economist Gabriel Zucman (who you may recall from his similar video with Robert Reich three weeks ago). A thorough debunking.
Other things you need to know this week:
- The Daily Show covered the state dinner with China’s Prime Minister Xi on Monday, meaning that Jon Stewart was handling the hosting duties. Funny and informative, as always.
- Jimmy Kimmel’s monologue from Thursday was a real banger, including Trump’s weird new racial stereotype of Hispanics and Pete Hegseth’s even weirder “high-T” rant.
- Not to be outdone, Seth Meyers’ “A Closer Look” on Thursday was pretty good too: the sliminess of reusing a campaign ad and making you and I pay for the airtime, plus Ken Paxton caught admitting that Trump isn’t really helping his numbers.
- A whopping three excellent “Kinzinger Report"s this week:
- On Monday, Adam covers the growing dissatisfaction in Trump’s base, JD Vance’s “fraud” numbers might be fraudulent, and more.
- On Wednesday, Adam notes that the migrant caravan is conveniently back (just in time for the election!), the predictable result of “america.gov” (i.e. that people asked it who won the 2020 election, it told the truth, and then it got lobotomized), and more.
- And, finally, on Friday, Adam explains why the DoJ is trying to reform Nixon’s image, Trump’s whining about his Supreme Court picks, and, inevitably, more.
- An excellent ProPublica video this week on the Susan Collins bribery allegations.
- For a more ... ranty ... take on Trump’s assault on the free press, try Christopher Titus’ “Armageddon Update” this week.
- Nice, short video from Robert Reich exploring why it seems like nothing is safe to eat any more, amusingly enough entitled “Trump’s Food Policy is a Literal Sh*tshow”.
- Two good LegalEagle videos from chaos lawyer Liz Dye this week:
- In the “longer videos this week” category, this week’s Weekly Show has Jon Stewart interviewing Josh Turek, Democratic candidate for Iowa’s Senate race. You may recall last year when current Iowa Senator Joni Ernst gained some fame (or infamy) by responding to constituents’ criticism of her support for cutting their health care by pointing out that “we all are going to die”. That was last May; by last September, she had decided not to run for re-election (surprise, surprise). So now Paralympian and Iowa state Rep Turek has a very good chance to flip her seat. Let’s hope he succeeds.
- And, finally, in Even More News’s Tuesday episode, Cody, Katy, and Jonathan discuss YouTube possibly fucking with the algorithm to downplay the new Elon Musk documentary, plus their takes on the new migrant caravan and the supposedly existential threat from AI.
The best thing to come out of this week was the humiliation of Missouri Senator Eric Schmitt. Today’s GOP (or at least the rightwing nutjobs therein) seems obsessed with Congressional hearings as theate
And, this week, Eric Schmitt engineered such a moment, in the hearing of Jack Smith. You remember “deranged” Jack Smith, right? He was the special prosecutor in two of Trump’s court cases: the insurrection case, and the classified documents case. So, obviously Trump hates him, so therefore all the rightwing nutjobs have to hate him too. Thus the hearing, and thus the viral moment. Except ... Schmitt’s virality has been for putting his foot in his mouth.
I can’t even properly explain how moronic this was. Watch the coverage yourself: start with Seth Meyers on Wednesday’s “Closer Look”, then check out Jordan Klepper on Wednesday’s Daily Show. If you can stop laughing long enough, you could then move on to Alex Wagner talking to Leah Litman on Runaway Country, Brian Tyler Cohen’s Tuesday coverage, and the Friday episode of Even More News. (This latter one, with guest Alex Pearlman, also covers the very disturbing story of the Cornell 7.) Both BTC and the SMN crew also cover the fact that Schmitt later appears on several rightwing nutjob podcasts where they apparently had gotten the heads-up about Schmitt’s “gotcha” moment but not heard about the actual end result. And does Schmitt correct them? No, of course not.
Amy Klobuchar says to Schmitt:
I think that people should have their facts straight before they accuse someone of being a dirtbag and not get the teams wrong.To which I can only respond: oh, I dunno ... it’s much more entertaining when they don’t.