Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Cody Cook
“‘Everyone wants a revolution. No one wants to do the dishes.’ This saying is often attributed to the activist Dorothy Day, and even though it’s unclear if she really said it, it would be fitting if she had. Day co-founded the Catholic Worker movement, opened her home to the forgotten and unwanted, and practiced civil disobedience in her advocacy against war and for the poor. But in these tireless efforts, she found that the high ideals of her compatriots didn’t always translate into the hard work that was needed to make a serious difference in the lives of those forgotten people who flocked to her doors.” (04/01/25)
“There is a reason why I prefer truth over narrative. Unfortunately, most people don’t. It is slowly destroying the country. It’s time for it to stop.” (04/01/25)
“The late Justice Antonin Scalia famously said that Congress does not ‘hide elephants in mouseholes.’ His point was that courts are skeptical of using minor provisions in a statute to achieve sweeping new legal changes. The challenge of stuffing an elephant into a mousehole came to mind this week after President Donald Trump said that he is ‘not joking’ about considering a third term and that experts told him it is possible under the Constitution. … given the president’s statement, it is important to be clear about the basis for this theory, which has long been something of a parlor game for law professors on how a president might be able to circumvent the two-term limitation imposed by the 22nd Amendment.” (04/01/25)
“Though the real crime in the conversation will go unquestioned and unpunished, the leaked top-level discussion of the principals group could lead to a number of less serious issues that could cause trouble for the Trump administration.” (04/01/25)
“The intelligence community is the eyes and ears of the White House. Presidents only know what it tells them. The most up-to-date intelligence tells President Donald Trump that Iran is not pursuing a nuclear weapon. Yet Trump continues to threaten war unless Iran agrees to give up the nuclear weapons program that Washington knows Tehran does not have.” (04/01/25)
“Recent polls show the center right Christian Democrats (CDU-CSU) headed by prospective chancellor Friedrich Merz losing ground against the populist right Alternative for Germany (AfD), even before the new government has been formed. The obvious explanation is widespread popular dissatisfaction with last month’s vote pressed through the outgoing parliament by the CDU-CSU and presumptive coalition partner the SPD (with the Greens) to allow unlimited increases in defense spending. This entailed disabling the constitutional ‘debt brake’ introduced in 2009 to curb deficits and public debt. The new parliament, with the AfD as the main opposition party, took its seats last week. The AfD opposes financing rearmament by a massive upsurge in public debt, and supports negotiations to end the war in Ukraine.” (04/01/25)
“I was content to sit out the Abundance[TM] deliberations. Two years ago, I wrote a long piece about the ways in which adherents to the new paradigm of ‘a liberalism that builds’ neglected any analysis of power, or the need to build coalitions to counteract that power. Ezra Klein engaged with my argument in his New York Times column and I responded. As a journal on the left, we were, I believe, contractually obligated to review Klein and Derek Thompson’s Abundance book, and we did so. But I personally felt like I said what I wanted to say. … However, I got a call last week from an NPR program called Open to Debate. They were having Derek Thompson on to talk about his book and wanted me to join.” (04/01/25)
“‘To this day I cannot tell you what Trump truly believes about tariffs,’ Daily Wire’s Michael Knowles recently confessed. ‘Does he want tariffs instrumentally, to increase trade? Does he believe in tariffs as a revenue-raising mechanism? And is he hard-core on tariffs? I couldn’t tell you; the man is inscrutable.’ In ‘Tariffs Are Awful, But The Income Tax May Be Worse,’ economist Walter Block seems less confused. ‘Donald Trump supports them on the ground that the McKinley administration was prosperous, and relied upon tariffs,’ Walter’s Eurasia Review op-ed posits. Our free-market economist notes that this rests on a fallacy: ‘since A precedes B, A must be the cause of B.’ Professor Block offers a better ‘historical episode to shed light on this matter, the Smoot-Hawley Tariff of 1930.’ You know, the tariff hike that worsened the Great Depression.” (04/01/25)
