Source: Independent Institute
by John C Goodman & Pete Sessions
“Health economics tells us there are two ways to insure for anything: self-insurance (with individuals taking the risks and saving to pay for them) and third-party insurance (in which an insurance company, an employer or the government bears the risk). Self-insurance makes sense for risks over which we have more personal control. For example, just about every time you have needed a Band-Aid, it was probably for an event you could have easily avoided. The problem is that most people are not accustomed to self-insuring for medical expenses. The median household has only $8,000 in a bank account, and millions of families are living paycheck to paycheck. The solution to that problem is a Health Savings Account.” (04/20/26)
“FBI Director Kash Patel on Monday morning filed a lawsuit seeking $250 million in damages from The Atlantic magazine for what he claims is a defamatory article that alleges he abuses alcohol. Patel over the weekend had vowed to sue The Atlantic for the article published on Friday, which was carried the headline ‘Kash Patel’s Erratic Behavior Could Cost Him His Job.’ ‘The FBI director has alarmed colleagues with episodes of excessive drinking and unexplained absences,’ the article’s subhed says. Patel’s suit was filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. … The Atlantic, in a statement to CNBC, said, ‘We stand by our reporting on Kash Patel, and we will vigorously defend The Atlantic and our journalists against this meritless lawsuit.'” (04/20/26)
“Four anti-narcotics agents, including two American embassy workers, were killed in a car accident while returning from a major drug raid in northern Mexico, prosecutors said Sunday. On Friday and Saturday, six clandestine synthetic drug labs were raided in Morelos, in the northern state of Chihuahua, following a three-month investigation, state prosecutor Cesar Jauregui told reporters. The victims’ vehicle, which was leading an official convoy of five cars, skidded off the road and plunged into a ravine, he said. The Americans killed were ‘instructor officers’ who ‘were carrying out training tasks’ as part of anti-drug cooperation between the U.S. and Mexico, Jauregui said.” (04/20/26)
“Larry Iannaccone and his co-author Rodney Stark once wrote that the belief that society is getting less religious says ‘less about empirical fact than it does about secularization faith — a faith that, despite a mountain of evidence to the contrary, sustains the conviction of many social scientists that religious institutions must soon decay …’ In short, belief in secularization is just a religion. Larry’s critics were, unsurprisingly, not pleased. To tell people that their non-religious beliefs are just a religion is an insult. Why is it an insult? There isn’t any nice way to answer, so I’ll be blunt. It is an insult because the way that people form religious beliefs is so intellectually irresponsible that their conclusions are almost guaranteed to be false.”? (04/20/26)
“Harvard University is once again facing intense scrutiny over its long and controversial association with Jeffrey Epstein, after newly released US Justice Department documents reportedly revealed that several faculty members continued to maintain contact with him even after he served jail time and was registered as a sex offender. … the newly released files show that Epstein’s connections with Harvard extended far beyond donations and social access. The documents reportedly suggest that professors continued to visit him, endorse him and even acknowledge him in academic work after his 2008 conviction and subsequent release from jail.” (04/20/26)
“Even before 1776, American liberty and equality were expressed in church and civil covenants and compacts, like the 1620 Mayflower Compact. Alexis de Tocqueville makes much of such covenants and compacts in Democracy in America, arguing that religion lies at the core of American character and sustains the American experiment in democracy. Christianity, in his view, is especially well-suited to supporting liberty, equality, and self-government, as it naturally rules over hearts and minds without relying on state support. Uncontested in the intellectual and moral realm, Christianity lifts the democratic soul upward, beyond the petty material concerns that tend to consume men’s minds in democratic ages. At the same time, Tocqueville argues that Christianity must accommodate itself to democratic equality, especially the love of material wellbeing and distaste for forms it engenders.” (04/20/26)
“Slovenia’s outgoing prime minister, Robert Golob, on Monday said that his liberal Freedom Movement (GS), which narrowly won a parliamentary vote in March, would go into opposition after failing to secure a majority coalition, indicating that centre-right parties would form a government. GS won 29 of the 90 seats in parliament, followed by the right-leaning Slovenian Democratic Party (SDS) of populist, pro-Trump ex-prime minister Janez Jansa on 28. Along with smaller parties that have typically supported them, GS would have 40 MPs while SDS would have 43 seats, leaving both in need of support from elsewhere.” (04/20/26)
