“A year ago, only three U.S. colleges and universities were officially committed to institutional neutrality …. Since then, the number of such schools has multiplied by more than a factor of 7. … Some of these schools, most notably Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences, have recently eliminated mandatory Diversity Statements, too. (Though this is still up on the Harvard website). Yet as far as I know, no school has, after vowing Institutional Neutrality, said, ‘Pursuant to our vow, we no longer require Diversity Statements.’ And as a matter of consistency, they all should.” (10/24/24)
“Daniel Chapo was declared the winner of Mozambique’s presidential election on Thursday after a process marred by violence and widespread accusations that his party, Frelimo, which has run the country for nearly five decades, committed fraud. The country’s electoral commission announced that Mr. Chapo won with nearly 71 percent of the vote in the election, which was held on Oct. 9. He will replace Filipe Nyusi, who has served his limit of two five-year terms. … The election results must be confirmed by the Constitutional Council, the nation’s highest court, and they will almost certainly be challenged by Venancio Mondlane, the upstart opposition candidate who finished second and who has said that the election was stolen from him. Several independent election observation missions have said that they saw irregularities in the voting process that tilted the race in Mr. Chapo’s favor.” (10/24/24)
“Voting has already begun, and politics nerds are poring over voter registration and early vote numbers, especially in states that track party affiliation, to discern which candidate has the upper hand. But extrapolating such data is treacherous business. Critical data about the nature of the Republican, Democratic, and Independent votes are unknown because we lack consistent historical patterns and discernable trends in current polling. Here are the three data points that will remain hidden until the votes are counted: 1. Rate of partisan crossover …. 2. Skew of the independent vote …. 3. Rate and partisan makeup of early and Election Day voting …” (10/24/24)
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Jacob G Hornberger
“According to an article in the New York Times, former Homeland Security secretary John Kelly, who also served as Donald Trump’s longest-serving chief of staff, ‘confirmed previous reports that Mr. Trump had made admiring statements about Hitler.’ … Needless to say, American statists, including those in the U.S. mainstream press, are up in arms over Trump’s “admiring statements about Hitler.” But the discomforting fact is that American statists, whether they realize it or not, also admire and agree with much of what Hitler stood for.” (10/24/24)
Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Peter Jacobsen
“[M]icroeconomics tends to focus on the logic of individual decision-making, and macroeconomics focuses on how things operate on a societal level. The forest vs. trees is a good analogy for macroeconomics and microeconomics respectively. … Macroeconomics is, by definition, about the whole economy. So any time the government tries to improve the economy, it is engaging in macroeconomic policy. However, this answer is, at best, incomplete. To see why, we need to talk more about the different forms of analysis we see between microeconomic analyses and macroeconomic analyses.” (10/24/24)
“CNBC, which is owned and controlled by people who will pay lower taxes with Donald Trump back in the White House, ran a PR piece for Donald Trump’s tax agenda. The piece is headlined ‘Trump Tax Plans Could Exempt 93 Million Americans From Income Tax.’ The piece highlights several proposals that Trump has thrown out with virtually no specifics, such as exempting firefighters, police, and veterans from taxes as well as overtime wages. It concludes that this could exempt 93 million people from income taxes. Trump has proposed to offset this lost revenue with taxes on imports. Since most of the people who CNBC now says would be exempt from income tax already pay little or no income tax, they would almost certainly be paying far more money in taxes on imports than they pay now in income tax.” (10/24/24)
“Venezuelan opposition leaders Maria Corina Machado and Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia have won the European Union’s top human rights honor, the Sakharov Prize, European Parliament President Roberta Metsola announced Thursday. Machado ran as the democratic opposition candidate in Venezuela’s contested 2024 presidential election, but she was disqualified by the government, so Gonzalez took her place. He had never run for office before the presidential election. The lead-up to the poll saw widespread repression, including disqualifications, arrests, and human rights violations. Machado went into hiding, fearing for her life. A Venezuelan court issued an arrest warrant for Gonzalez, who moved to Spain and was granted asylum.” (10/24/24)
