“Around 200 economists work for the Federal Reserve Board in Washington, and roughly 200 more work for the 12 district banks around the country. The new Fed chair, Kevin Warsh, could assign some of the Fed economists to assess whether the current valuation of the stock market is consistent with the Fed’s projections for the future growth of GDP and profits. Unless their arithmetic is very different than the stuff the rest of us use, they will have to conclude that stock valuations are not consistent, unless today’s crop of stockholders expect very low future returns. That seems unlikely, but that is the alternative to saying that the market is in a bubble.” (05/27/26)
“Unlike concerns about censorship on college campuses, which have received a lot of media attention, when guest speakers are disinvited or shouted down, few people care much about the extent to which school authorities may suppress student speech in a public junior high or high school. The assumption is that due to their age and relative immaturity, most of what they contribute to the marketplace of ideas at their school will have little, if any, value. Furthermore, the primary mission of a school is to educate its students, and student speech can be disruptive or distracting. As such, it may appear to be obvious that teenagers should not be able to exercise the same free speech rights that college students may exercise. However, position strikes me as harder to defend than most people acknowledge.” (05/26/26)
“In the heart of the Santa Cruz Mountains, just off Highway 9, there is a restaurant that has become a community icon. It has a redwood-paneled dining room with exposed roof timbers that was built in 1912 and a historic bar with a wood-burning fireplace. For over a century, the people in this isolated town have treasured this gathering place. Near downtown Los Angeles, along a busy commercial boulevard, a family-owned Mexican restaurant has thrived since 1925 …. Countless independent businesses in California remain prosperous despite a regulatory environment that throws at them rules that are often unreasonable, even in conflict with each other, from agencies at the local, county, regional, and state levels. These agencies are staffed with bureaucrats who are not merely indifferent to the challenges small businesses face while attempting to comply with their edicts; many of them are actively hostile.” (05/27/26)
“I’m not saying AI is superintelligent or can decide better than you can. I’m saying that if you — like me — spend an hour or so doing research before voting on local seats, AI can aid that research very effectively. And if you don’t do that research — because you weren’t willing to waste an hour on it before — AI makes it so much faster that you might want to start.” (05/26/26)
“Yesterday, we commemorated those men and women of the United States who lost their lives prematurely in the various wars fought by and in the United States of America. But it is important to remember, and commemorate (mourn) those other than the soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines – and their civilian support forces – who died. There is no war, whether declared or not, whether internal or external, that does not have many more casualties. And almost always, in external wars, it is the enemy who suffers the greater number of dead. And the civilians, not the support forces, but the ordinary civilians. Let us also pause to remember those, of whatever nation, with whatever stake in the outcome of the war or whatever the conflict is called.” (05/26/26)
“Robert F. Kennedy Jr. came into office with three ambitious goals: radical transparency, improved national health, and rebuilding trust in America’s public health agencies. More than a year in, it seems he has only one tool for the job — firing people. Lots of them.” (05/26/26)
“The Justice Department’s $1.776 billion ‘anti-weaponization’ fund, which would pay out public money in compensation for alleged overreach in federal prosecutions, including for the insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021, has been accurately described as one of the most nakedly corrupt actions in American history. It would give a tacit endorsement from every American taxpayer to the notion that the Capitol Riot’s only transgression, for example, came from those who tried to punish its perpetrators for attempting to halt the outcome of an election. News of the fund has triggered massive political backlash and at least temporarily derailed a party-line reconciliation bill funding immigration enforcement operations for the next three years. Senate Republicans didn’t want to go on the record siding with Donald Trump’s crony slush fund, and left Washington rather than being confronted with such a question in a reconciliation ‘vote-a-rama.'” (05/27/26)
Source: Chris’s Substack
by Chris Matthew Sciabarra
“Libertarians are not unique in their diversity or their internal squabbles. Indeed, as a friend of mine once quipped, wherever there’s an ‘ism,’ there’s a schism — whether in religion, philosophy, or political thought. For example, socialism has long been an umbrella term for a diverse and often bitterly opposed group of thinkers and traditions …. And there’s even socialist overlap with libertarianism since figures associated with the latter, such as Benjamin Tucker, have identified with the former. Indeed, many anarchists and libertarian-socialists — from Proudhon to Emma Goldman — have inspired contemporary American libertarians. Zwolinski reminds us that the very term ‘libertarian’ was introduced by the French anarcho-communist Joseph Déjacque in the 1850s. … Internal squabbles have also been found among the followers of Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism.” (05/26/26)
“So, here we are: Instead of taking his lumps, letting the war end, and hoping for an economic upturn before the midterm elections mangle his party’s present projects and future prospects, Trump is doubling down. There are three, and only three, plausible explanations: Explanation One is that he’s evil, hates America, and is doing his damnedest to destroy the US economy. … Explanation Two is that he’s stupid — whether by nature or due to his obvious cognitive decline — and just doesn’t know what he’s doing or understand its moral, political, or economic implications. … Explanation Three is that Trump — again, possibly due to the obvious cognitive decline he’s publicly and frequently displayed since before his second inauguration — isn’t in charge; the presidency is effectively controlled by other people who happen to be evildoers.” (05/26/26)
