“I’ll admit it: I’ve held President Donald Trump to a different standard than former President Joe Biden when it comes to financial entanglements. Why? For all their ‘Middle Class Joe’ values, Biden and his family — notably, grabby son Hunter — apparently set out to cash in on Biden’s time in public office and after he served as vice president. Hence Hunter Biden’s $2 million pay during 2013 and 2014 as he worked for Ukraine energy concern Burisma. Trump’s money situation was different during his first term. Trump entered the White House a billionaire. The newly elected commander-in-chief lost loads of money during his first four years in the White House …. Trump seems unconcerned about the appearance of conflicts of interest the second time around. Could crypto, then, become his ‘cryptonite?'” (11/20/25)
Source: Libertarian institute
by Joseph Solis-Mullen
“For more than two decades, the United States has waged a quiet, little-noticed air and special operations war across the Horn of Africa. If most Americans are unaware of this fact, that is no accident. The campaign in Somalia has been conducted so far from public view, and with so little meaningful debate in Washington, that its continuation today is treated almost as a bureaucratic inevitability—a policy in search of a justification, defended out of habit rather than necessity. For there is no rational reason for the United States to be bombing Somalia at all. The entire enterprise stands as a textbook example of how inertia, institutional self-interest, and the perverse incentives of the national security bureaucracy combine to produce destructive policies that accomplish nothing for the American people.” (11/20/25)
“U.S. Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick of Florida has been indicted on charges accusing her of stealing $5 million in federal disaster funds and using some of the money to aid her 2021 campaign, the Justice Department said Wednesday. The Democrat is accused of stealing Federal Emergency Management Agency overpayments that her family health care company had received through a federally funded COVID-19 vaccination staffing contract, federal prosecutors said. A portion of the money was then funneled to support her campaign through candidate contributions, prosecutors allege.” (11/19/25)
“The quantitative perspective used the mathematical precision expected in the natural sciences like physics and chemistry to model and predict the economy. The qualitative perspective viewed economics as no less rigorous, but restrained economic thought to a study of human behavior and markets. The quantitative shift has continued well into the 20th century with Keynesianism, neoclassical economics, and monetarism, and has spurred the development of a host of new economic statistics. One such statistic is the Consumer Price Index (CPI) and is an example of this methodological error that abandoned the qualitative methodology in favor of a quantitative approach.” (11/20/25)
“When it comes to the reported draft framework agreement between the US and Russia, and its place in the Ukraine peace process, a quote by Winston Churchill (on the British victory at El Alamein) may be appropriate: ‘Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.’ This is because at long last, this document engages with the concrete, detailed issues that will have to be resolved if peace is to be achieved.” (11/20/25)
“William Lonergan Hill, co-founder and chief technology officer of Samourai Wallet, was sentenced Wednesday to four years in federal prison for operating an unlicensed money transmitting business tied to the privacy-focused bitcoin service. … Prosecutors argued Hill and co-founder Keonne Rodriguez positioned Samourai Wallet’s privacy tools — particularly Whirlpool and Ricochet — as attractive to criminal users, contributing to as much as $237 million in illicit-linked transactions moving through the platform.” (11/19/25)
Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Mark Nayler
“Today is the fiftieth anniversary of the death of the Spanish dictator Francisco Franco. Spain has been celebrating all year, with a calendar of educational and cultural events intended ‘to highlight the great transformation achieved in this half-century of democracy.’ Inaugurating the ‘Spain in Liberty’ program in January, Socialist prime minister Pedro Sánchez said: ‘You don’t need to have a particular ideology, to be on the left, in the center, or on the right, to regard with enormous sadness and terror the dark years of Francoism.’ You don’t, but it certainly helps. ‘Liberty in Spain’ deserves praise for innovatively addressing a complicated issue; but it has also highlighted deep-set disagreement over how Spain should confront its past—and even whether doing so is necessary.” (11/20/25)
