Opinion | Republicans undercut one of the best investments the U.S. can make

The upshot is that if the IRS can focus its audits on the right taxpayers, it can expect to make back $12 for every $1 it spends.

“As any tax-dodging billionaire can attest,” Catherine writes, that’s “pretty hard to beat.”

Perhaps the most interesting finding of the research — which graphics reporter Youyou Zhou breaks down in several helpful charts — is that a big chunk of the revenue comes not from the audit itself but in the dozen-plus years afterward. The column translates exactly how.

Go, big cities! Go, Dallas!

Another Republican presidential wannabe has hopped into the race, touting the values of his small-town upbringing. But where’s the big-city love in politics? Enough interviews in diners; we need to canvass the folks at the dollar-slice place after they missed the last subway train.

Columnist Paul Waldman writes that “the glorification of small towns is … repeated so often that most of us don’t bother to question it.” And small towns do have a lot to love! Sure, he writes, “people tell the truth, they work hard and they lend a hand.” But they do that in cities, too.

Cities’ real leg up comes with all the change baked into metropolitan life. City-style governance — managing diverse populations, rolling with near-constant change — is what the country requires.

Columnist Karen Tumulty recently looked to one of those big cities — Dallas — and saw a near-miracle: a mayor with a high-70s approval rating who just cruised unopposed to a second term. Eric Johnson’s secret, she says, has been finding the right way to tackle crime.

Karen interviewed Johnson, who explained how he rode out the nationwide defund-the-police swell of his first term without doing anything drastic. His approach hasn’t been without controversy, Karen writes, but given that Dallas might be the only metropolis “to buck the trend of rising crime,” Johnson seems to be running his big city pretty all right.

Chaser: Zoom out from the cities, and you’ll find a state setting a great example, too: Former U.S. technology official Jennifer Pahlka writes that New Jersey shows how good tech starts with good people.

From columnist Greg Sargent’s interview with the writer on a Missouri school board’s opposition to his graphic novel, which tells the story of the Holocaust with cat and mouse stand-ins for Nazis and Jews.

Greg writes that the challenge to the Pulitzer-winning book belies conservatives’ claim that their book bans “avoid targeting historically or intellectually significant material.”

You might recall that a Tennessee school board made national news early last year by challenging “Maus.” Other boards challenged it in the meantime, but this one got Spiegelman to speak out again — so that “Maus” doesn’t end up just “one more book … on the bonfire.”

Chaser: The Editorial Board says a book challenge from the opposite direction — bowdlerized new editions of classic titles — is worrisome, too.

Viva la Casa Bonita, the kitschy Mexican-ish theme restaurant outside Denver! “The name,” deputy opinion editor David Von Drehle writes, “was like Shangri-La to the children of Colorado and vicinity.”

Even if you haven’t been to the shock-pink warehouse of an entertainment complex (it apparently boasted an old-timey photo studio), David’s remembrance of the place might have you ready to lay down your life for it … or at least show up for a plate of sopaipillas, which any of us will have the opportunity to do once investors — who happen to be the creators of “South Park” — finish Casa Bonita’s multimillion-dollar revival.

The renovation might not provide the sort of return that IRS audits do; the restaurant’s first run churned out nigh-inedible food. But David writes that the sloppy joy Casa Bonita once provided is more than worth investing in.

• Columnist George Will writes that GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy is a “Roman candle of ideas” with the “limitless optimism of the inexperienced.” Oof.
• Stripping the former Fort Bragg of its Confederate name was a bipartisan decision (and the right one), columnist Chuck Lane writes. Trying to restore the old name is rank pandering.
• Unlike Max Boot, contributing columnist Jim Geraghty does have an issue with a Chinese spy base in Cuba — and says President Biden can’t keep blaming his predecessor for the problem.

It’s a goodbye. It’s a haiku. It’s … The Bye-Ku.

Caught! by the night pizza man

Have your own newsy haiku? Email it to me, along with any questions/comments/ambiguities. See you tomorrow!