“Each year the CDC publishes an estimate of the effectiveness of the flu vaccine in the previous flu season. Recently, the NIH director criticized the test-negative design from which the estimates are derived. He was right. The basic premise of the design is a two-edged sword: on the one hand, restricting the sample to people who sought medical care might reduce confounding by healthcare-seeking behavior; on the other hand, that restriction might add another type of bias — colliding bias — which is not as widely appreciated. The net bias remains unknown.” (10/01/26)
“Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall joined the attorneys general of Arkansas and Louisiana in asking the U.S. Supreme Court to block abortion shield laws in three states. Marshall joined the attorneys general of Arkansas and Louisiana in filing a lawsuit Wednesday, arguing that California, Massachusetts and New York are interfering with Alabama’s ability to enforce its abortion ban. The case asks the Supreme Court to invalidate laws that protect abortion providers from investigations, prosecutions and other legal action originating in states where abortion is prohibited. … Federal regulations allow abortion pills to be prescribed through telehealth and dispensed by mail, meaning a provider in a state where abortion remains legal can potentially prescribe medication to a patient in a state with an abortion ban.” (10/01/26)
Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Mark Harmsworth
“This week the Seattle City Council passed Mayor Katie Wilson’s ‘Fair Pricing and Transparency’ ordinance in a 7–2 vote, a first-in-the-nation ban on so-called surveillance pricing. The ordinance takes effect in 2027. The Washington Retail Association warned for months that the bill was rushed, would have significant and negative impact on prices, and that nearly all suggested fixes were ignored. As approved, retailers must decide whether they can keep offering the tailored discounts and loyalty programs that Seattle families actually use or cancel all the programs and charge more for groceries. Government should not be price-fixing consumer products. Banning the use of loyalty cards and programs, fuel rewards, and targeted coupons hurts businesses and consumers alike.” (10/01/26)
“Egyptian police arrested six journalists from a fact-checking and investigative media outlet, accusing them of spreading misinformation on behalf of the banned Muslim Brotherhood, which the publication denied. The arrests comprised the entire newsroom of Matsaddash, a digital platform that has operated since 2018, according to the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR), which is providing the journalists with legal representation. According to the EIPR, plainclothes security personnel had started raiding the journalists’ homes on Monday evening and confiscated electronic devices.” (10/01/26)
Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by William L Anderson
“We know the Franklin Roosevelt regime from its famous (or infamous) New Deal—a mishmash of government intervention wrongly credited with ending the depression when, in fact, it extended it. Roosevelt’s first term was dominated by his attempt to reorganize the entire US economy into a series of government-sponsored cartels (the First New Deal), but, however radical the programs might have been, FDR was being attacked from the right (Father Charles Coughlin, a populist broadcaster) and Long, who came in from the left. Of the two, Long was seen as the greater political threat, but (at least for Roosevelt) he was ‘conveniently’ assassinated in 1935 in the Louisiana capitol where the bullet holes from the guns of the assassin, Carl Weiss, and Long’s bodyguards are still marked on the walls. (Guy Rexford Tugwell, one of FDR’s advisers, called the assassination ‘providential’).” (10/01/26)
“Days after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, President George W. Bush gave the world a now-infamous ultimatum: ‘Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.’ Thus began the forever war on terror and a shift in the American psyche that sought the destruction of any perceived enemy as some sort of divine retribution for the horrific acts witnessed on 9/11. This thirst for justice led to the popularity of ‘To Catch a Predator,’ an early 2000s reality TV series on ‘Dateline NBC’ that used hidden-camera sting operations to catch adults who showed up to meet underage decoys for sex. It was unobjectionable on its surface. The objectively abhorrent people depicted on the show deserve to be held accountable for their perversion. But the show existed in a bevy of contradictions, particularly in how it blurred the line between entertainment and justice, ultimately collapsing in on itself.” (10/01/26)
“Donald Trump’s administration is increasingly defined by its foreign policy adventures. To his critics these are the deadly flailings of a mad king; to his supporters these are strategic masterstrokes reshaping the globe to America’s advantage. What has been missed in the partisan hullabaloo is how Trump’s foreign policy actions are not in fact a result of his unique personality. They are a result of structural forces which can be observed the world over: the return of the cutting-off way.” (10/01/26)
