“To argue in good faith—the literal translation of the Latin—means assuming that the person on the other side is saying what he actually believes and that disagreement is not itself evidence of corruption, cowardice, or deceit. And vice versa. The assumption and practice of good faith makes intellectual debate possible. And yet it feels increasingly rare. Tell someone you favor free trade and you will quickly learn you are really serving the interests of multinational corporations. Defend immigration and you are importing voters. Oppose a war and you are carrying water for the enemy. Politics, in particular, seems to bring out this line of reasoning.” (10/01/26)
“Like many Florida municipalities, officials in St. Lucie County recently decided to get rid of all their automated license-plate readers made by Flock, the company whose cameras have drawn scrutiny over police misuse and data privacy concerns. County officials thought they had 52 of the cameras — which law enforcement agencies use to record passing vehicles’ license plates as well as the time and location of each sighting — scattered across the county’s main roads on Florida’s east coast. But as they prepared to remove them, they discovered 14 more that they hadn’t known about and that the county hadn’t permitted.” [editor’s note: It’s unclear whether these cameras are on government or private property; if the latter, why would the government need to “permit” them? – TLK] (10/01/26)
“Mill City, Oregon, sits amid a patchwork of green. Across millions of acres at the base of the Cascades, deep-moss old-growth forests mingle with the bright lime of young trees recovering after timber harvests and fires. And roads thread through it all. Most of these forest roads were built in the last century to move ancient fir trees to the mills that gave the town its name. Today, only two mills remain, and the aging roads are a maintenance nightmare for the U.S. Forest Service. The massive Beachie Creek Fire of 2020 compounded the problem, damaging roads as well as Mill City and other nearby towns. Would more roads help or hurt places such as Mill City?” (10/01/26)
“For much of my life funerals were, well, funereal, as black as attendees’ attire. Yet in recent decades, I’ve found that I often leave memorial services less mournful than upbeat. They’re inspiring, these so-called celebrations of life, with eulogies not from impersonal priests but from people who knew the dead person best. Tributes are seasoned with humor and paeans to personal character more than professional accomplishments. I walk out thinking not about death but life — especially my own, and resolving to be a better person. This week I left such a service with a broader resolve: that our nation was once, and can be again, a better country. The celebration was for the full and varied life of Alan Greenspan, the legendary longtime chair of the Federal Reserve who died in June at 100.” (10/01/26)
“Missouri lawmakers frequently talk about the importance of rooting out waste, fraud, and abuse in state government. But identifying problems is only useful if state agencies actually fix them. A new report from the Missouri State Auditor shows there is still plenty of work to do. I’ve written before about recurring problems in Medicaid, including state computer systems that can’t communicate, eligibility redeterminations that should be happening but aren’t, and an automated check for recipients who have died that’s not functional. The latest audit found these issues remain largely unfixed, and a new issue involving nearly 10,000 recipients simultaneously enrolled in two eligibility systems.” (10/01/26)
“French security forces detained more than 600 people while dozens of police and gendarmes were wounded as protests that have seen blockades of high schools and violent clashes escalated, the interior minister said on Wednesday. The movement in the lycées, attended by students aged 15 to 18 for their final three years of secondary education in France, has angered the government. Since last week, students have staged protests outside schools over grievances ranging from timetables, class sizes and a shortage of teachers to overheated classrooms during this year’s heatwaves. The protests started in the Île-de-France region around Paris but have now spread to other cities nationwide.” (10/01/26)
“Keeping a resolution to restore fiscal order requires confronting the incentives that make promises attractive today and their financing easy to postpone. A new American fiscal constitution should make lawmakers reckon with those costs when they authorize those commitments.” (10/01/26)
