“It’s ‘bad-penny’ time in the Maine legislature, as in ‘back like a’: a bill threatening the privacy of political donors. LD951, introduced and foiled in the previous session, would force nonprofit organizations that take a position on policy measures ‘to not only report their donors, but their donors’ donors,’ which Philanthropy Roundtable compares to legislation in Arizona that did become law — a law now being challenged in court. Like Arizona’s law, LD951 would impose cumbersome regulations and steep fines while obstructing free speech and free association. The obviously intended result being for nonprofits to not take such positions.” (03/28/25)
“There are many contrasts between the 35th president, John F. Kennedy, and the 45th and 47th president, Donald J. Trump. One extreme example is regarding U.S. policy toward Israel. Unknown to many people today, JFK supported Palestinian rights and sought a sustainable peace in the region. In 1960, when JFK was campaigning to be president, he spoke at the convention of the Zionists of America. In his speech, Kennedy was complimentary about Israel but frankly said, ‘I cannot believe that Israel has any real desire to remain indefinitely a garrison state surrounded by fear and hate.’ That warning, issued when Israel had only existed for 12 years, was ignored.” (03/28/25)
“Israel has resumed its aerial bombardment of Gaza. The latest cease-fire, which lasted two months and led to the release of 33 Israeli hostages and 1,900 Palestinian prisoners and detainees, never made it out of its first stage. The Israeli government has now adopted a strategy of inflicting overwhelming violence until Hamas capitulates by releasing the remaining hostages. Ukraine and Russia have accepted a limited cease-fire. Both sides have agreed to stop attacking each other’s energy infrastructure, but neither has actually adhered to this condition. U.S. President Donald Trump, who coaxed both sides toward this cease-fire, is reportedly furious. This week, Moscow and Kyiv agreed to extend this partial cease-fire to the Black Sea, though here, too, they don’t seem in a rush to stop their attacks. No serious analysts, including those in Russia, expect this cease-fire to hold.” (03/29/25)
“Yahoo posted a fascinating clickbait article with all kinds of numbers. What would upper-middle-income wages and salaries be like if the FedGov income tax disappeared? Depending on the various income levels in the States, working folks would take home anywhere from $1200 to $1800 every two weeks. That is an average of more than $30,000 per year per taxpayer. Government is expensive. The FedGov is more expensive. And what do we get for it? Well, libertarians and lovers of liberty have long advocated the abolition of this nasty method that the government uses to steal money from the people it supposedly works for. This gives us one more really neat talking point in getting people to at least consider that what we have done for more than a century is a really bad idea — not just expensive but stupid.” (03/28/25)
“Yes, many auto workers had to find new jobs once imported vehicles were allowed to compete with American-built vehicles [under NAFTA]. Yes, that made some of their lives harder and left some of them worse off, at least temporarily and sometimes long-term. Welcome to the real world, where auto workers aren’t unique and special snowflakes who never have to change careers like the rest of us. The average American changes jobs 12 times in his or her lifetime … and the average American, including one who worked on a Ford assembly line at some point, is more prosperous now than he or she was in 1993. Trump’s cockamamie tariff schemes might well have been intentionally tailored to undo all that.” (03/27/25)
Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Jennie Jones
“In our interest-led learning environment, we foster collaboration by holding monthly brainstorming sessions to decide how to use our monthly budget. The kids have access to a set amount each month, and when they have things they want to do that exceed that amount, they plan fundraisers. Twice this year, that has meant lemonade stands. The first lemonade stand was somewhat on a whim. One of the oldest students had the idea, and basically ran it with two friends. They made the lemonade and the signs, set it up, and after the stand had been operating for fifteen minutes, the rest of the students got wind of the event and showed up to help. This group of ‘helpers’ had been playing Minecraft while the three girls had done all the work of creating the stand. I thought we were about to have a real-life Little Red Hen lesson.” (03/27/25)
“I wonder how Christians who favor the current US government’s war on immigrants can reconcile their stance with Leviticus 19:34, which reads (King James version): ‘But the stranger who dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself, for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.’ Would they reply that the Bible is merely epic poetry? Or are they CINOs — Christians In Name Only? One endearing characteristic of the Catholic Church, which was the only Christian church for 15 centuries, was its universalism — globalism as we would say today. This feature, as well as its spiritual message, provided multitudes of poor and exploited people, the bulk of the population on earth, with the ability to feel that they were elsewhere, just as culture in its learned sense is a way to be elsewhere.” (03/27/25)
“When the Signalgate story broke, we thought to ourselves: Okay, that’s the most politically self-destructive thing the White House will do for a while. But we were wrong. Somehow, the White House’s political response to the story has been even dumber. Yesterday, JVL took stock of the administration’s clown car of flailing responses: the inexplicable attempt to paint the release of authentic internal screenshots as a ‘hoax,’ the bizarre assertions that the information in the chat wouldn’t have been classified, the attempts to turn the whole thing into a ‘Jeffrey Goldberg sucks and can’t be trusted’ media story. Since then, things have gotten sillier still.” (03/27/25)
“In cities across Gaza on Tuesday and Wednesday, hundreds of Palestinian civilians marched against Hamas. It was the largest protest against the militant group since it sparked a war with Israel more than 17 months ago. Clearly, the fear of harsh retribution by Hamas for speaking out is falling among the territory’s 2 million residents as they face further war devastation. Yet more telling was what drove protesters to set aside their fears: a claim of innocence. In one video on the platform X, a man in the northern city of Beit Lahia yells to a crowd, ‘We are a peaceful people. … We just want to live.’ One construction worker told the German Press Agency, ‘We shouldn’t have to keep paying the price for leaders who only care about their own power.’ A slogan on one sign read, ‘We refuse to be the ones who die.'” (03/26/25)
