Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Jacob G Hornberger
“To get a government-issued license to practice law, one generally has to pass a state bar examination. The California bar exam is one of the hardest in the country to pass. That ensures that fewer people are able to secure law licenses. The notion is that a state-issued law license protects the public from incompetent and unethical lawyers. How’s that working out? It seems to me that there are lots of incompetent and unethical lawyers in every state of the United States. Why did the state issued licenses to them to practice law? In actuality, difficult bar exams and licensure requirements are nothing more than a protection racket.” (10/15/26)
“Microsoft vice chair and president Brad Smith delivered a broadside Wednesday against President Donald Trump’s push to block the path to permanent residency for highly-skilled immigrants, warning the White House that its plan could cripple the U.S. tech sector for over a generation. In an exclusive interview with Decoded by POLITICO, Microsoft’s informal No. 2 suggested it was ironic that the White House chose to target his company’s foreign workers on the same day it gave a medal to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, a former H-1B skilled visa holder from India. ‘We should consider the fact that when the president honored six Americans with these technology and science medals, five of the six had come to the United States as immigrants,’ Smith told Decoded on the sidelines of the International AI Summit in Dublin, Ireland.” (10/15/26)
“The bad news for Republicans is that the last inflation report before the midterm elections showed that overall prices in September were nearly 4% higher than the same time last year, and gas prices specifically surged 34%. The good news is that Republican candidates, whose operating philosophy seems to be ‘eating is overrated,’ have President Donald Trump on the midterms campaign trail offering voters all kinds of free things. … With just under three weeks to go until the Nov. 3 midterms, and with polling looking horrendous for Republicans, possibly because everything is terrible, I have a suggestion for my fellow opportunistic voters: Hold out! Better bribes are coming. I don’t need a pardon (that I know of), I don’t for a second believe Trump will give me $5,000 after the election (I wasn’t born yesterday), and $90 or $500 bribes are for rubes and desperate ne’er-do-wells.” (10/15/26)
“In the Old South, what had mattered was blood and land. It was a quasi-feudal society where it was difficult to rise above the station you inherited, nearly impossible if you were black. And when the tension created by slavery in a nation founded on freedom became untenable, the Civil War broke out, and the South was crushed. The Union’s victory owed at least as much to economic superiority as military proficiency. Though it took roughly a century, transforming the Southern economy required replacing its agrarian, slave-based order with a more modern, freer, more diversified system. In Houston, the transformation was spurred by the oil industry. In Charlotte, it was banking. And in northwest Arkansas, it was retail, with Walmart founder Sam Walton becoming the richest person in the United States in 1982.” (10/15/26)
‘North Korea and China on Thursday opened the New Yalu River Bridge, the largest border crossing between the two countries, a sign of growing trade despite international sanctions aimed at constraining North Korea’s economy and nuclear weapons program. In the weeks leading up to the opening ceremony, travelers returning from the river border reported that trucks and cars were already crossing the four-lane, nearly two-mile long bridge from China into North Korea. The bridge connects the Chinese city of Dandong to Sinuiju, a North Korean city on the Yalu River that forms much of the border between the two countries. Its opening, which was reported by the Chinese state media, comes just a month after North Korea and Russia inaugurated their first — and much smaller — road bridge across the Tumen River border.” (10/15/26)
Source: Libertarian Institute
by Joseph Solis-Mullen
“When Xi Jinping departed Washington at the end of September, the verdict was already plain. Another carefully choreographed encounter produced a short extension of the trade truce, a modest $30 billion reciprocal tariff arrangement on non-sensitive goods, some coal purchases, an AI dialogue, and the familiar language of ‘constructive strategic stability.’ Ceremonial pomp, pandas, and mutual professions of personal friendship filled the space where real structural progress was absent. The outcome matched what I had advised readers to expect in the runup—namely, that the deeper frictions, technology controls, Taiwan, and Washington’s persistent urge to police Beijing’s commercial relationships, would remain unresolved. Having given things a chance to breathe, now is a good time to look at what has transpired since Xi and Trump’s meeting and to look to the road ahead.” (10/15/26)
“One of the great ironies of American politics is that Donald Trump won the 2024 election basically because a significant number of credulous voters believed his promises to bring prices down beginning on ‘day one.’ What actually happened was that America, along with the rest of the world, experienced a temporary surge in inflation in 2021-22, mainly because of the lingering effects of Covid disruptions. And voters still blamed Joe Biden for that surge. But by 2024 the war against inflation had been largely won, at startlingly low cost — the recession many analysts claimed would be necessary to get inflation down never happened, but inflation came way down anyway. And then Trump snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.” (10/15/26)
