How the GOP Learned To Stop Worrying And Love Junk Fees

These guys keep being dumber than I expect.

I still haven’t gotten over my trauma from renting a car in Los Angeles last October from I-forget-which rental company. (Does it matter?) The price ended up being twice what I thought it was going to be, for reasons I never really understood. Apparently only an idiot ever rents a car at the airport. Car rental companies are the new used-car salesmen.

My latest is about why Biden’s State of the Union riff on similar “junk fees” was better politics than I realized while watching it. Junk fees turn out to be much less of a petit bourgeois concern than I thought, and Republicans turn out to be more idiotic than I expected, defending junk fees against Biden administration attempts to regulate or eliminate them. It’s yet another instance of Republicans being more loyal to business than to the free-market capitalism they profess to espouse. You can read it here.

Also, if you happen to subscribe to The New Republic, you can read my latest print piece, about the End of (GOP) Ideology, here. If you don’t subscribe it will eventually be made available to civilians online.