Also remembering David Boaz is John Goodman.
Here’s the obituary of David Boaz that appears in the New York Times.
George Will proposes some questions for the upcoming “debate” between Biden and Trump. A slice:
The Social Security Trust Fund will be exhausted by 2033. Under current law, benefits then will be reduced 21 percent. The Biden-Trump consensus includes vowing not to diminish the entitlements (Social Security, Medicare) that are producing deficits that just added $1 trillion to the national debt in eight months. Would you favor a multitrillion-dollar tweak: infusing Social Security with more borrowing, meaning debt? (Tax revenue is insufficient to cover the other government expenditures.) If not that solution, what?
The Biden-Trump consensus encompasses protectionism (you, President Biden, have intensified Mr. Trump’s), which is industrial policy — government management of the economy, picking economic winners and losers. Because communities and industries become dependent on protection, is it forever?
The Biden-Trump consensus includes impatience with the Constitution. Mr. Trump, when Congress refused to fund your border wall, you “repurposed” money Congress had appropriated for other uses. And you reportedly plan to claim a presidential power to impound appropriated funds when you dislike Congress’s choices. President Biden, you tried to spend, unilaterally, more than $400 billion on student debt forgiveness, and when the Supreme Court said this violated Congress’s constitutional prerogatives under the appropriations clause, you said, “The Supreme Court blocked me from relieving student debt, but they didn’t stop me.” What other constitutional requirements do you two consider flimsy legal cobwebs?
He cited the conviction of 14 prominent pro-democracy politicians for trying to win a majority and pressure the government by rejecting budgets and forcing the chief executive to resign—which Hong Kong’s constitution provides for. He complained about new national-security legislation passed to deal with “the violent riots of 2019” when “the ordinary laws of Hong Kong were perfectly adequate.” And he brought up how Beijing reversed a decision by the Hong Kong courts allowing newspaper owner Jimmy Lai to hire a British lawyer. Mr. Lai has been in Stanley prison for three-and-a-half years.
You can tell Lord Sumption’s bomb landed on target because the Hong Kong Government responded with a 2,800 word press release saying Lord Sumption’s words are “utterly wrong, totally baseless, and must be righteously refuted.” Note the charming adverbial overload.
The U.S. Supreme Court today ruled that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) exceeded its statutory authority when it purported to ban bump stocks by classifying them as machine guns. Although the Court’s decision in Garland v. Cargill does not involve the Second Amendment, it upholds the rule of law and the separation of powers by striking a blow against bureaucratic attempts to impose new gun controls without congressional approval. The bump stock ban is one of several such attempts, two of which faced judicial setbacks shortly before the Supreme Court’s bump stock ruling.
GMU Econ alum Dominic Pino talks with Theo Merkel about how the tax code distorts health care.
