The Alleged News®

Paraphrasing a recent lede in the New York Times, Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen said on Monday that come the first of June, the last loose quarter underneath the cushions of the federal couch will likely have been found and spent. That metaphor is idiotic, but it’s only a slight twist on the absurd “kitchen table/household budget” trope with which the public is constantly bludgeoned. Shorthand such as this can be quite useful if your goal not to inform, but to switch off your target audience’s gray matter. Being contrarians, we thought we’d try something completely different: describing the present moment as clearly as we …

Read moreThe Deadbeat Caucus

by Brett Wilkins As the deadline for Americans to file federal income tax returns approached, on April 14th Oxfam America renewed calls for taxing the ultrarich while publishing an analysis showing America’s growing number of billionaires saw their wealth increase by nearly one-third since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic and by nearly 90 percent over the past decade. “Wealth inequality in the U.S. is more extreme and dangerous than income inequality; and we need to change our approach, so we effectively tax wealth as well as income,” the charity said in an introduction to the report, Tax Wealth, Tackle Inequality. Based on Forbes data, …

Read moreBillionaires Much Richer Since Covid Hit

Readers are probably wondering by now, “where are all our Mike Dater cartoons?” We regret to report that Mike has been on temporary medical leave. We expect him to return before long. In the meantime, we offer the item above. Originally published 17 years ago today, it seems, unfortunately, more on-point than ever. –=≈=– We used to love mocking what we called the Award-Winnning Local Daily. What shall we call it, now that it’s no longer printed here in Our Fair City? These days, poking fun at the AWLD would just be cruel. Let’s just call it the Portsmouth Herald—while we still can. Economists love …

Read moreAll Quiet at 111 New Hampshire Avenue

The U.S. and the U.K., said George Bernard Shaw, are two nations separated by a common language. Further distinguishing us from our former colonial master is our form of government—though GOP opposition to monarchy seems increasingly squishy. Our editorial position on monarchy was most recently published on February 10th, with a selection from Thomas Paine’s, Common Sense; herewith, a more succinct version: Britain’s first king was “nothing better than the principal ruffian of some restless gang, whose savage manners of pre-eminence in subtilty obtained him the title of chief among plunderers.” Unimpressed by William the Conqueror, Paine wrote he was a “French bastard landing with …

Read moreA Brief Dispatch Regarding the Impending Coronation

A Little Harbor homeowner plotted last September’s bombing of the Nord Stream gas pipeline, according to investigative reporter Seymour Hersh.* Jake Sullivan, 46, has been President Biden’s National Security Advisor since January, 2021. The 28th person to hold that position, his predecessors include John Bolton, a Vietnam War chickenhawk; Michael Flynn, a QAnon follower and admitted perjurer, later pardoned by a seditionist; and Henry Kissinger, a nonagenarian war criminal. Hersh—who won the Pulitzer Prize in 1970 for his work exposing the My Lai massacre—wrote, in a piece published online February 8th, “In December of 2021, two months before the first Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine, …

Read morePortsmouth Resident Plotted Nord Stream Sabotage, says Hersh