“How does Congress pass budget spending levels these days? It doesn’t. It’s really that simple. The federal government’s $6.95 trillion budget will spend more than $52,000 per household in America in 2025 and it is spending more than $38,000 of that without a single vote, and passing the remaining $13,000 with a single up-or-down, ‘should-the-government-shut-down-entirely?’ vote, just like it does every year. Gen Xers grew up watching Saturday morning cartoons, with ABC-TV’s School House Rock shorts during the commercials explaining to us then-youngsters how the process of passing a law worked under the U.S. Constitution. And now that I’ve got that catchy “I’m Just a Bill” tune locked impossibly in your head, here’s the bad news: that 1976 cartoon short marked the beginning of the end of that method of legislative budgeting.” (04/21/25)
“What’s the actual problem Donald Trump is trying to solve with tariffs? It isn’t that the United States is being victimized by an imbalanced global tariff regime, because that isn’t happening; it isn’t that the post-Cold War liberal trading order has seen other countries romp while the United States stagnates, because that hasn’t happened, either; it isn’t ‘deindustrialization,’ which hasn’t happened in the United States, or even a radical collapse in the availability of factory work, which hasn’t happened, either. Let’s look at these supposed problems one by one.” (04/21/25)
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone
“Pope Francis has died after using his Easter Sunday address to call for peace in Gaza. I don’t know who the cardinals will pick to replace him, but I do know with absolute certainty that there are transnational intelligence operations in the works to make sure they select a more reliable supporter of Israel. They’ve probably been working on it since his health started failing. … as far as popes go this one was decent. Francis had been an influential critic of Israel’s mass atrocities in Gaza, calling for investigation of genocide allegations and denouncing the bombing of hospitals and the murder of humanitarian workers and civilians. He’d been personally calling the only Catholic parish in Gaza by phone every night during the Israeli onslaught, even as his health deteriorated.” (04/21/25)
Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by George Ford Smith
“‘Wall Street got drunk,’ President Bush said in 2008, to which Peter Schiff replied, ‘They did. And the Fed provided the liquor!’ Schiff — who credits his understanding of markets and Austrian economics to his father’s teachings growing up — is renowned for his prediction of the Financial Crisis of 2008, years before the housing market nosedived. His position earned him the scorn and ridicule of almost every other commentator, as seen in this collection of videos, but he never blinked. The market was in trouble, not because of a lack of regulations, but because the government and the Fed were on a fiat money high.” (04/21/25)
“In 2003, the Macedonian police arrested Khaled el-Masri, a German citizen vacationing in their country. They handed the unfortunate man over to the CIA, who shipped him off to one of their ‘black sites.’ For those too young to remember (or who have quite understandably chosen to forget), ‘black sites’ was the name given to clandestine CIA detention centers around the world, where that agency held incommunicado and tortured men captured in what was then known as the Global War on Terror. The black site in this case was the notorious Salt Pit in Afghanistan. There el-Masri was, among other things, beaten, anally raped, and threatened with a gun held to his head. After four months he was dumped on a rural road in Albania. It seems that the CIA had finally realized that they had arrested the wrong man.” (04/20/25)
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Jacob G Hornberger
“While left-wingers are lamenting President Trump’s threats against Harvard University to terminate or reduce its federal dole, I myself have no sympathies whatsoever for the school. In fact, I think Trump is providing a tremendous service in educating Harvard and the rest of the country of the price that is paid when one goes onto the dole. … As far as I’m concerned, Harvard’s hiring practices and its protest policies are its own business. Except for one thing, which Harvard is learning from Trump: The dole comes with control. Or to put it another way, he who pays the piper calls the tune.” (04/21/25)
“The contemporary French political philosopher Pierre Manent is widely acknowledged as a thinker of the first rank, one whose approach to the study of human affairs renews political philosophy’s original ambition to provide a truly ‘architectonic’ or comprehensive grasp of the human world. Manent’s concerns are the age-old ones of the city and the soul. He approaches them through the study of the great texts of political philosophy and political history and through a patient ‘phenomenological’ description of human motives (the useful, the pleasant, and the noble), as well as the virtues and vices of men.” (04/21/25)
“What is the mission of the Washington, D.C.-based Tax Foundation? Even a quick review of the Tax Foundation’s output makes it perfectly plain: to help make average Americans see the richest among us as terribly overtaxed. … last fall, the Tax Foundation produced a study that had billionaire Warren Buffett paying taxes at a rate of over 1,000 percent. A few years back, early in the Biden years, I deconstructed another Tax Foundation claim, that the passage of tax changes the Biden White House was then pushing would leave the estate of a hypothetical taxpayer worth $100 million facing a tax rate of 61.1 percent. My response detailed the absurdity of that claim. But what if that 61.1 percent had turned out to be an appropriate calculation? Would that 61.1 percent rate have really amounted to an oppressive tax levy? The Tax Foundation sure wants people to think so.” (04/21/25)
“Remember when your family doctor was actually your doctor? That quaint historical period when physicians made independent medical judgments instead of reading from pharmaceutical scripts? When they looked at you as a unique human being rather than a collection of compliance metrics needing correction? Those days are fucking gone. Today’s primary care physician is something entirely different — a pharmaceutical compliance officer with a prescription pad, a corporate protocol to follow, and overlords tracking their every move. They’ve transitioned from healers to hustlers, from medical professionals to medication pushers, from trusted advisors to glorified drug dealers with better parking.” (04/21/25)
“Harvard has refused to accept the orders of a Trump administration commission concerning its chronic problems with anti-Semitism, campus violence, and racial tribalism, bias, and segregation. Yet, unlike some conservative campuses that distrust an overbearing Washington, Harvard and most elite schools like it want it both ways. They do as they please on their own turf and yet still demand that the taxpayers send them multibillion-dollar checks in addition to their multibillion-dollar private incomes. Aside from the issues of autonomy and free expression, there are lots of campus practices that higher education would prefer were not widely known to the public. But soon they will be, and thus will become sources of public anger. Perhaps envision elite private colleges as mossy rocks, which seem outwardly picturesque — until you turn them over and see what crawls beneath.” (04/21/25)
