Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Ryan Devine
“Azalea Fresh Market opened last September to address a growing demand for a grocery store in downtown Atlanta. Its opening was the result of a partnership between the City of Atlanta, the Independent Grocers Alliance, and a successful local mini-grocery store chain, Savi Provisions. With no major grocery company inclined to open a location in the downtown area, the City of Atlanta managed to contribute roughly $8 million in cash, loans, and grants to provide the infrastructure needed to help open the business …. Given the intent behind the establishment of this store, it’s difficult to imagine why it’s gaining so much praise from advocates for Zohran Mamdani’s proposed government-owned markets. Mamdani’s goal isn’t to target food deserts; he aims to outprice private grocers in areas where supply is abundant because he’s convinced that businesses are price-gouging consumers.” (08/20/26)
“Over the course of Scott’s relatively short career in the US Senate — he took office in 2019 and is now in his second term — he’s voted for trillions of dollars in deficit spending, especially military spending. Since Scott took office, the US government’s debt has gone from $16 trillion to $40 trillion. His party has controlled the US Senate throughout his tenure, and the House of Representatives for about half of that tenure. Not one thin dime gets borrowed or spent unless the both the House and Senate pass a bill, and the margins are often close enough that one or two votes — including Scott’s — decide the outcome. Scott’s perennial ‘someone should do something!’ tweets on the debt might be good politics, but even a cursory look at his actions demonstrates that he’s someone NOT doing something.” (08/20/26)
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Jacob G Hornberger
“One of the fundamental differences between libertarians and conservatives pertains to the concepts of morality, responsibility, and freedom. Conservatives are wrong and libertarians are right on this issue. Conservatives hold that before people can be permitted to be free, they have to be moral and responsible. … Libertarianism holds that people have the right to be free regardless of whether they are sufficiently moral or responsible. Freedom is a natural, God-given right. … It is only through freedom that people can become moral or responsible. The conscience is like a muscle—it must be constantly exercised to be strengthened.” (08/20/26)
“There’s an old saying: Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach. A similar idea underscores the debate over wealth taxes in California and elsewhere: Those who can, build companies. Those who can’t, devise ways for the government to take shares in what others have built. This new version might sound unfair until you listen to Rep. Ro Khanna’s (D–Calif.) pitch for an allegedly onetime, 5 percent wealth tax on California billionaires, tied to November’s vote on Proposition 40. Space constraints prevent us from surveying all that’s wrong with wealth taxes here. But as a reminder, they raise very little income for the government, are an administrative nightmare, could be unconstitutional, and create enormous disincentives to build the kind of wealth that creates jobs and funds government services through other taxes in the first place.” (08/20/26)
“AI firms, whether OpenAI, Anthropic, or competitors that do not yet exist, should remain free from Washington’s ownership. Washington cannot credibly act as regulator and shareholder at the same time. Nor does Washington possess special knowledge about which AI company, model, or technical architecture will prevail. If the US government selects an AI champion, that company could become insulated from market forces in an industry that will help define the future. The lesson of BlackBerry and Apple is not that OpenAI will lose or that Anthropic will win. The lesson is that nobody knows which company will succeed, and Washington should not decide.” (08/20/26)
“Military appointments in authoritarian states, particularly during wartime, reveal priorities, threat perceptions, institutional loyalties and leadership fears. The new military and security hierarchy under Iran’s Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei should therefore be read as more than the reconstruction of a command structure damaged by war. It is an order of battle with two purposes: confronting the United States and Israel abroad and preserving the Islamic Republic against instability at home. Those elevated are not a postwar generation seeking accommodation with Iran’s adversaries, but veterans of the revolutionary-security establishment, formed through war, intelligence operations, ideological conflict, asymmetric warfare and domestic coercion. Claims that leadership decapitation has produced meaningful regime change in Tehran should be treated with caution.” (08/20/26)
“The migrant detention center known as Alligator Alcatraz is closed, but much about it remains unresolved. There are lawsuits over detainees’ treatment, environmental claims over damage to protected wetlands and uncertainty about the future of the airstrip it was built on. One aspect of the facility has drawn far less attention, though ― the name itself, and the long history of associating alligators with racist ideas about people of color. … As early as the 18th century, French explorers and naturalists began claiming that alligators and crocodiles showed a preference for attacking and consuming people of African descent. Plantation owners in the South eagerly repeated these stories because they discouraged enslaved people from escaping into marshes and swamps, where pursuing them proved difficult. The idea gained much wider traction after the Civil War.” (08/20/26)
Source: The Hill
by Phillip W Magness and Sara Albrecht
“When the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative unveiled its now-infamous ‘Liberation Day’ tariff formula in April 2025, economists quickly noticed that something was not right. At first glance, the formula looked impressive. It had Greek symbols, academic citations, and all the trappings of serious economic analysis. But once economists began examining it, the sophistication quickly fell away. Key terms, they noticed, effectively cancel one another out, leaving little more than a calculation driven by bilateral trade deficits. For one of us, an economist, that raised a simple question: How did this formula come to be? So he filed a Freedom of Information Act request seeking the records behind it. … When the agency finally responded, it said it had found 31 pages of responsive records. It would release none of them — not one email, calculation or even redacted paragraph.” (08/20/26)
“In recent years, Africa’s economies have felt a powerful impact from drought, debt, and violent discord. Yet, amid the turbulence, the southern nation of Zambia has charted a determined, if halting, course toward potential growth. Its latest election, on Aug. 13, set another example in its ability to achieve economic gains while (mostly) protecting its democratic system. The election ‘has far greater international significance than the country’s landlocked status and modest economic size might imply’, in the view of a senior researcher at Chatham House, a respected London-based think tank. President Hakainde Hichilema, who was elected to a second five-year term with 60% of the vote, will govern ‘a country at the centre of Africa’s critical minerals competition, debt diplomacy and shifting regional alliances’, wrote Christopher Vandome this month. And, he added, ‘Zambia’s prized democratic reputation will also be tested.'” (08/19/26)
“UK nonprofit the Good Law Project is pushing an open letter, currently with over 122,000 signatures, calling for Prime Minister Andy Burnham ‘to commission an immediate public inquiry into how to ensure a responsible press given its contribution to Dr Arday’s tragic death.’ Several members of Parliament signed on. ‘Self-regulation of the press has comprehensively failed,’ the letter adds. So the government must then regulate it. Another petition calls for Arday’s Law, ‘legislative action to impose limitations on the number of news articles published about a single individual within a defined time frame’ to ‘work towards creating a framework that balances the public’s right to information with an individual’s right to privacy and mental well-being.'” (08/20/26)
