Huge thanks to supporters SZ and TP, and subscribing donor JS, whose combined $55 in donations yesterday helped get our year-end fundraiser off to a great start!
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Until we get there, you’ll be seeing this URL a lot:
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Yours in liberty,
Tom Knapp
Publisher
Rational Review News Digest / Freedom News Daily
Source: Antiwar.com
“Congress Passes Funding Bill Without Ukraine Aid, Slovakia Elects Anti-Ukraine Aid Party, and More.” (10/02/23)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_udLVRs4qnU
Source: Consent Factory, Inc.
by CJ Hopkins
“Here’s a story destined for urgent dispatch down the Memory Hole. In fact, if you listen closely, you can already hear it being sucked down through the ducts of the GloboCap Ministry of Truth toward the enormous mnemonic incinerator where all official “unstories” go to die. Yesterday, it was an embarrassment. Tomorrow, it will no longer be of interest. By next week, it will have never happened. So, let’s review it before that happens … and perhaps try to understand why it happened. What happened was, on the eve of Yom Kippur, members of the Canadian House of Commons and assorted invited dignitaries and diplomats stood up in the Canadian parliament and paid extensive homage to a Nazi. Not a figurative Nazi. A literal Nazi. A member of the Waffen SS. They did this shamelessly, exuberantly, on camera, in front of the entire world.” (10/01/23)
https://consentfactory.org/2023/10/01/the-globocap-nazi-follies/
Source: David Friedman’s Substack
by David Friedman
“It is a common argument in many different contexts. In its strongest form, the claim is that the choice being argued for is unambiguously right, eliminates the possibility of a bad outcome at no cost. More plausibly, the claim is that one can trade the risk of something very bad for a certainty of something only a little bad. By agreeing to pay the insurance company a hundred dollars a year now you can make sure that if your house burns down you will have the money to replace it. Doing that is sometimes is possible but, in an uncertain world, often not; you do not, cannot, know all the consequences of what you are doing. You may be exchanging the known risk of one bad outcome for the unknown risk of another.” (10/01/23)
https://daviddfriedman.substack.com/p/playing-safe
Source: The Hill
“California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Sunday selected Laphonza Butler, a Democratic strategist and adviser to Kamala Harris’[s] 2020 presidential campaign, to fill the vacant U.S. Senate seat held by the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein. In choosing Butler, Newsom fulfilled his pledge to appoint a [b]lack woman if Feinstein’s seat became open. However, he had been facing pressure from some [b]lack politicians and advocacy groups to select Rep. Barbara Lee, a prominent [b]lack congresswoman who is already running for the seat. … Her appointment sets up a potentially tricky political calculus in the crowded 2024 contest to succeed Feinstein, which has been underway since the beginning of the year. Newsom spokesman Anthony York said the governor did not ask Butler to commit to staying out of the race. The deadline for candidates to submit paperwork to seek the office is Dec. 8.” (10/02/23)
https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/ap-california-governor-to-name-laphonza-butler-former-kamala-harris-adviser-to-feinstein-senate-seat/
Source: The Scott Horton Show
“Matt Taibbi on the Origins of Russiagate and Government Censorship’s Legal Challenge.” (10/01/23)
https://scotthorton.org/interviews/9-28-23-matt-taibbi-on-the-origins-of-russiagate-and-government-censorships-legal-challenge/
Source: American Institute for Economic Research
by Robertas Bakula & Jason Sorens
“The municipal financial crisis, with the failure and decline of cities that follow, is here. But it’s a crisis of mission, not just solvency. That’s the thesis of Mark Moses, a longtime senior management professional and finance director in California local government. Informed by his decades of experience and a solid grasp of economic principles, Moses contends most cities overextend themselves because they lack a clear, realistic mission, or even worse, see their mission as something like ‘maximizing services.’ … Moses says local governments get in trouble because even severe problems have little urgency. Dealing with problems is painful, and postponing hard choices means that someone else will have to make them. Why bother now, if you can’t go out of business? Perversely, governments’ permanence promotes a short-termist mentality.” (10/01/23)
https://www.aier.org/article/an-insider-untangles-the-causes-of-the-financial-crisis-in-american-cities/
Source: Bloomberg
“Bitcoin climbed to a six-week high as inflows picked up at the start of October, a month that has typically seen gains in the token. Smaller peers including Ether, Litecoin and Solana also rallied. … Bitcoin rose as much as 3.9% to $28,173, the highest level since Aug. 17. The token climbed 4.1% in September, but still dropped 11% last quarter. Bitcoin has gained in October in each of the past four years. The rally was also been helped by speculation the US Securities and Exchange Commission will eventually approve BlackRock Inc.’s Bitcoin ETF proposals, even though the regulator deferred the decision last week, said Hayden Hughes, co-founder of social-trading platform Alpha Impact.” (10/02/23)
https://archive.ph/w0We6
Source: EconLog
by Pierre Lemieux
“The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) issued an order against a request by KalshiEX LLC to establish a betting market on who will control Congress. You would think, wouldn’t you, that betting on politics as politicians bet on your future (just consider the federal debt, which increases by trillions of dollars every year) would just be a matter of economic freedom and free speech. You would think, at the very least, that information produced by betting markets, often more reliable than simple opinion polls with no skin in the game, would be welcome. But the CFTC determined that ‘the contracts involve gaming and activity that is unlawful under state law and are contrary to the public interest, and therefore … the contracts are prohibited’ …. The question is, What is the public interest the CFTC invokes?” (10/01/23)
https://www.econlib.org/the-arbitrariness-of-the-public-interest/
Source: We Are Libertarians
“Should the Libertarian Party Run Robert Kennedy Jr.?” (09/30/23)
https://www.chrisspangle.com/p/should-the-libertarian-party-run