Source: The American Conservative
by George D O’Neill Jr.
“It is abundantly clear that most of the American people are against this latest Middle Eastern war, yet Congress is afraid to fulfill their constitutional duty to stop it. Congress is not even willing to debate our participation in that frenzy of death and destruction. Why? This decades-long pattern suggests there is some force or forces able to maintain an almost continual pro-war agenda. How does this happen in administration after administration without fail? It never seems to go the other way.” (03/12/26)
Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Damian Pudner
“Britain was once the workshop of the world. Later it became one of the most open and dynamic economies in Europe. When the post-war economic model began to falter in the 1970s the country eventually recognised that incremental tweaks would not suffice. Structural reform became unavoidable. What followed was neither cautious nor gradual. The reforms of the 1980s dismantled large parts of the existing economic model and replaced them with something far more competitive. Nowhere was that clearer than in the financial sector. The Big Bang of 1986 swept away restrictive practices, opened London’s markets and helped turn the City into one of the world’s dominant financial centres. Whether one applauds or criticises those reforms, their ambition is undeniable. That sense of ambition is strikingly absent from Britain’s economic debate today.” (03/12/26)
“In a series of sketches for Saturday Night Live, Billy Crystal played a fictionalized version of actor and director Fernando Lamas as host of the talk show ‘Fernando’s Hideaway.’ Crystal’s character would often say that it is better to look good than to feel good. This was on my mind as I reviewed recent evaluations of St. Louis’s guaranteed basic income pilot by Washington University’s Center for Social Development. The review’s claims will sound familiar to anyone who has followed these pilot programs around the country. … But as economists Hilary Hoynes and Jesse Rothstein of the University of California, Berkeley note in a review of the universal basic income literature, the new wave of guaranteed-income pilots is ‘not well suited’ to answer the most important questions about the policy.” (03/12/26)
“It is hard to overstate what a complete shambles American foreign policy has become since Donald Trump launched his war against Iran on February 28. Trump clearly believed that the initial decapitation strike would lead to the collapse of the Islamic regime and its replacement by a new leadership willing to work with the United States. He seems to have had Venezuela on his mind as a model, as he referred to it several times during the war’s first week. He and his associates failed to anticipate Iran’s capacity to strike back, as it launched rounds of missiles and drones at U.S. allies and bases in the region, disrupting Gulf economies and raising gasoline prices in the United States. What is particularly maddening about this is that anyone who has lived through the last quarter century of U.S. Middle East policy should have understood that war would produce multiple unintended and devastating consequences.” (03/12/26)
“Democratic state lawmakers are formally backing a version of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s proposal to tax the rich, setting up a budget showdown in Albany with Gov. Kathy Hochul. Leaders of the state Assembly and Senate inserted much of the Democratic mayor’s agenda Tuesday into their official ‘one-house’ counterproposals to Hochul’s state budget plan. That includes a tax hike on people reporting more than $5 million of income as well as an increase in the state’s corporate tax rates from 7.25% to 9%. The two houses, both controlled by Democrats, also included various changes to New York City’s tax code sought by Mamdani, including versions of his proposals to boost New York City’s corporate, business and ‘mansion’ taxes. … The governor, a moderate Democrat, has steadfastly opposed income-tax increases since taking office in 2021 and has centered her re-election campaign on a message of affordability.” (03/12/26)
“As a gun owner in Rhode Island, you may think that no matter what wacko state laws legislators impose to make it harder to buy weapons, at least you’ll remain secure in your right to the arms you’ve already legally purchased. Not so. Bearing Arms alerts us to the fact that two bills pending in the state legislature jeopardize your right to keep your already owned — lawfully obtained — firearms. One bill does so immediately. The other paves the way for follow-up legislation that does so immediately.” (03/12/26)
