Author: Thomas L. Knapp

Source: Common Sense
by Paul Jacob

“The mayor of New York City, commie Mamdani, is trying to raise more money to pay for his socialism.
One scheme is to punish owners of a second home by imposing a so-called ‘pied-à-terre tax,’ a tax on the second residence of wealthy New Yorkers above and beyond regular property taxes. Now, the assumption that anybody with a second home, or an expensive second home in an expensive property market, must be rolling in liquid funds is faulty. The notion that if you have more wealth than somebody else it should be taken from you? Also faulty. The new tax bill is going to many New Yorkers with only one home. And the website set up (speaking loosely) to permit challenges of the designation of one’s home as a pied-à-terre is proving nightmarish to navigate.” (08/05/26)

https://thisiscommonsense.org/2026/08/05/2horrors/

Source: Semafor
by David Weigel

“The Democratic establishment couldn’t get some of its candidates over the line. The party’s rising left wing couldn’t win some key races. Republicans in two red states couldn’t convince voters to change election rules to make their party stronger. Tuesday’s primaries refused to settle into one of the storylines written in the weeks after Colorado’s primaries, where insurgents in both parties wildly overperformed.” (08/05/26)

https://www.semafor.com/article/08/04/2026/an-inconclusive-tuesday-in-michigan-and-beyond

Source: Responsible Statecraft
by Steve Nicandros

“Every government institution should periodically be asked a simple question: is it still performing the mission for which Congress created it? That principle has become a hallmark of the Trump administration. Through the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the closing of USAID, and the restructuring of federal agencies, the administration has encouraged the reexamination of longstanding institutions to ensure they remain faithful to their original purposes. That question should now be asked of one of Washington’s least scrutinized congressional bodies: the U.S. Helsinki Commission.” (08/05/26)

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/helsinki-commission/

Source: Liberal Currents
by Guillaume A W Attia

“‘Now that SCOTUS has opened the floodgates for foreign invaders to flock across our borders and spawn, the only choice we have is to triple down on immigration enforcement.’ Furious at the continued existence of the pernicious doctrine of birthright citizenship, online right-wing commentator Sean Davis joined the Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh in calling for drastic measures: deny entry to all pregnant and/or female foreigners, require sterilization of all foreign visitors prior to entry, and if needed, dissolve the Union. What could explain such an extreme reaction to a judicial decision upholding the status quo? One answer, proffered by Ibram X. Kendi in his recent book Chain of Ideas, is that these amazing events are the latest episode in the grand history of racism in America.” (08/05/26)

https://www.liberalcurrents.com/the-master-key-of-modern-politics/

Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by Connor O’Keeffe

“Fauci’s ‘personal diary’ was really a long digital document where he would write up a summary of his workday every night to help inform his post-retirement memoir and any sympathetic future biographers. The release provided some new details on the nature of the government’s response to the pandemic and, to an even greater extent, exposed the mentality of the bureaucrat who quickly emerged as the public face of it all. These insights are instructive because, perhaps more than any other government official in recent years, the career of Anthony Fauci can teach us a lot about where power actually resides in America and how our system really works.” (08/05/26)

https://mises.org/mises-wire/what-anthony-fauci-teaches-us-about-american-government

Source: CounterPunch
by Eve Ottenberg

“So the geniuses in the white house have begin to suspect that maybe, just maybe, as journalist Mark Ames noted on X, after weeks of CIA-targeted bombings from Ukraine into Russia, maybe those nefarious Russkies are assisting Iran in targeting U.S. bases in the Gulf. I’ve got news for these Beltway Einsteins: China’s helping Iran too. And probably North Korea. In fact, every member of the multipolar alliance is likely doing their part: the mental opacity afflicting Washington does not afflict them. They know very well who is trying to destroy them. So they take countermeasures. That’s called sanity.” (08/05/26)

https://www.counterpunch.org/2026/08/05/no-lessons-learned-trumps-insane-resumption-of-the-iran-war/