“‘How could I have been so stupid as to let them proceed?’ President John Kennedy asked his advisers following the CIA’s infamous fiasco at the Bay of Pigs in April 1961. Beyond the fact that the U.S. invasion of Cuba was an egregious act of aggression — violating international law and Cuba’s sovereignty — its failure was a catastrophic embarrassment for JFK, only weeks into his White House tenure. … Kennedy vented his desire to ‘splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it into the winds.’ That concept was more than angry rhetoric; the president actually set in motion a secret set of deliberations on breaking up the intelligence, espionage and covert action functions of the CIA and subordinating its operations to the State Department.” (03/27/25)
“Punishing speech and association is the most dangerous business because it is subjective and value-free and there will be no end to it. The remedy for hateful or threatening speech is more speech – speech that challenges the speaker. Why do folks in government want to silence their opponents? They must fear an undermining of their power. The dissenters might make more appealing arguments than they do.” (03/27/25)
“One week after the killing of UnitedHealthcare executive Brian Thompson, an intelligence report compiled by a regional intelligence center made an admission that’s shocking in its simplicity: Rising health care costs are correlated to threats against executives and civil unrest. The two-page document obtained by the Prospect and compiled by the Connecticut regional intelligence center (one of dozens of fusion centers across the country that communicate intelligence between federal agencies and state law enforcement) is uncharacteristically forthright in its language and assessment that health care costs lead to instability, and that the reaction to suspect Luigi Mangione’s alleged action was largely positive. According to the dossier, ‘Healthcare expenditure in the United States increased from $2.75Trillion (T) in 2004, to $4.09T in 2018, in inflation adjusted dollars. 2019 and 2020, saw expenditures of $4.2T and $4.6T respectfully, which represents a 10.6% increase year over year and was largely influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic.'” (03/27/25)
“The new European commitment to defence and Russia’s unshakeable wish to control Ukraine have revived an awareness that war is something with which comfortable and relatively wealthy states may still have to live.” (03/27/25)
“Donald Trump has a simple word that sums up his foreign policy. The word is ‘cards.’ Trump believes that might makes right. He admires aggressors and dictators. He despises victims like Ukraine, ‘shithole’ countries like Haiti, and peaceful neighbors like Canada. But ‘cards’ captures the larger dynamics of Trump’s worldview. In a card game, you can help or hurt other players by choosing which cards to play. In previous European conflicts, American presidents played our nation’s cards to defeat or contain aggressors. Trump plays America’s cards for the opposite purpose: to exploit the weak.” (03/27/25)
Source: Independent Institute
by Randall G Holcombe
“Those who have political power determine the rules and enforce them on the masses. Without rule of law, rules are subject to change, depending on the preferences of the politically powerful. Without rule of law, the rules constraining the masses do not apply to the powerful. One criticism sometimes leveled against term limits is that it takes time to learn how to do the job and that by term-limiting people out of office, citizens lose the benefit of the institutional knowledge the officeholders have accumulated. This argument has several shortcomings. The most significant problem with that argument is that the institutional knowledge officeholders acquire includes ways to use their power to evade the legal constraints designed to prevent the abuse of that power.” (03/26/25)
“The weaponization of government was probably the hallmark of the administration of Joe Biden. OK, the weaponization of government and senile, incoherent ramblings were the hallmarks. While the senile ramblings are gone, the infrastructure of that weaponization remains fully entrenched in agencies across the federal government. President Donald Trump needs to remove any and everyone involved in the effort to not only use the power of government against him for political purposes, but against any American. Weaponization of government is more than just filing bogus charges or creating new laws under which prosecutions can happen, it involves government creating flaming hoops through which Americans have to jump to open or expand a business, or simply do business with the government itself.” (03/27/25)
“Respect for government secrecy is apparently a virtue — which would make intrepid reporting a vice. Could the Pentagon Papers have been reported today? How about the secret National Security Agency mass surveillance programs leaked by Edward Snowden? Many mainstream journalists made it clear this week that they would avoid exposing such scandals, or only do so in order to push the government to be more careful with its secrets. Independent journalist Ken Klippenstein quipped in his newsletter that those reporters are acting as ‘self-appointed counterintelligence officers’ and shirking their ‘duty to their client, the public.’ They’re also acting against their own self-interest.” (03/26/25)
It is meant to be continuous, which it is. Like the never-ending war in Orwell’s 1984, it is waged by the empire against its own subjects, but not only to keep the structure of society intact, also, in our case, to transform society into a neo-totalitarian global-capitalist dystopia. Are you not familiar with the War on Whatever? Well, OK, you remember the War on Terror. … Of course you do. Who could forget that? Remember when the National Security Agency had no choice but to set up a covert ‘Terrorist Surveillance Program’ to spy on Americans, or else ‘the terrorists would have won?’ Or how about the TSA’s ‘anti-terror’ crotch searches, which are still in effect after over twenty years?” (03/26/25)
