“In business, an edge is earned. In U.S. diplomacy, it is handed out – nepotism with a human cost. Corporate America calls it a ‘sustainable competitive advantage,’ the factor that separates market leaders from the rest, reflecting a company’s key competencies. In American foreign policy, however, winning can be guaranteed – and the price is measured not in profit, but in lives. Nowhere is this more apparent than in America’s obligation to maintain Israel’s Qualitative Military Edge (QME), a mandate ensuring Israel remains militarily superior to its neighbors. What began as a Cold War-era security assurance has become a guarantee of supremacy. Under Israel’s current government, which openly disregards human rights and international law, the QME policy now threatens U.S. diplomacy across the Middle East.” (10/31/25)
“The administration’s crackdown on criticism of Charlie Kirk was its big trial balloon to see how far it could get in characterizing opposing views as incitement to political violence. While its attempt to keep Kimmel off the air — not even for criticizing Kirk directly, but for accusing the ‘MAGA gang’ of trying to ‘score political points’ off his death, which was undoubtedly true — was unsuccessful, other targets proved more vulnerable. … Trump rather quickly forgot about Charlie Kirk as his pretext for this clampdown. Within days, he moved on to the idea that criticism of him — Trump — is inherently illegal. … All of this is now being codified in a presidential directive known in the White House by the somewhat pretentious acronym NSPM-7, because it is Trump’s seventh ‘National Security Presidential Memorandum.'” (10/30/25)
“If New York Times guest essayist Finn Brunton is to be believed, the Federal Reserve Board Building is haunted by the ghosts of crackpots past. Trump’s cozying up to corporate cryptocurrency coiners during his second term, reinforcing ‘his thirst for money and power, has … embraced the corruption at the heart of digital currencies — a corruption inherited from the libertarian ideals that created them’ (‘Cryptocurrency Promised Us Freedom — and Brought Tyranny,’ October 26). Brunton’s gloomy portrait of a new-Gilded-Age Grand Old Party recasts it in the image of the Libertarian Party that might have ‘languished for decades as a clown show’ but whose resemblance to the Gathering of the Juggalos conceals something less like the Insane Clown Posse fanbase’s dedication to social self-support and freewheeling fun than a real-life manifestation of their Dark Carnival mythology.” (10/30/25)
“One of the best villains in recent pop culture is Gustavo Fring from Breaking Bad and its spinoff Better Call Saul. If you haven’t seen these shows, Fring is the seemingly respectable owner of a chain of fast-food chicken restaurants across the American Southwest. He comes across as professional, fastidious, courteous, fair-minded, community-oriented, and quietly charming. All that, however, is a front for a stone-cold gangster, one of the most powerful and feared drug distributors in the country. The main thing about Fring is that he rarely gets his hands dirty. He seldom threatens or yells. But behind the scenes, he steadily builds influence through institutions, bureaucracies, and relationships. … If I had to pick a single character to symbolize how conservatives think of liberalism — and more specifically, the liberal state — it would be Fring.” (10/30/25)
“In 1980, America’s publicly held debt reached more than $712 billion (about $2.8 trillion in 2025 dollars), or roughly 25 percent of annual U.S. gross domestic product (GDP). Today, that figure is a little over $30 trillion, or around 100 percent of GDP. And as the federal debt grew 42 times larger over that span, the economy grew only tenfold. You can’t expand the numerator four times faster than the denominator for 45 years without courting economic danger. That’s where we find ourselves. The U.S. is at peace, and despite President Donald Trump’s claims, there’s no national emergency. And yet we’ve only seen debt as a higher share of GDP during the years of 1945, 1946, 2020, and 2021.” (10/30/25)
“In the aftermath of the murder of Charlie Kirk, many folks who dared to express views of him and his work outside the mainstream lost their jobs, professional standing and State Department visas as they were fired or otherwise disciplined by employers or bureaucrats who concluded that anti-Kirk views could harm the employers’ businesses or were inconsistent with institutional values. … private entities that are not subject to the Bill of Rights may punish speech harmful to their product or values. … But none of this punishment-for-speech mania can rise to a criminal level. Until now. Now, in a jail in Perry County, Tennessee sits a retired 24-year veteran police and corrections officer whose sole offensive behavior was to quote President Donald Trump and have the quote appear to reflect Trump’s sentiment about the public aftermath of the Kirk murder.” (10/30/25)
“More than a century ago, from a Berlin prison cell where she was confined for her uncompromising opposition to the slaughter of the First World War, Rosa Luxemburg warned, ‘Bourgeois society stands at the crossroads, either transition to socialism or regression into barbarism’. Her diagnosis remains no less salient today. In the United States, we long ago chose the path of barbarism. Trump and his enablers have proven major catalysts in hastening our descent, but they are symptoms as well as causes. The compounding crises of our time, from ecological collapse to immense inequality to endless war, were hardly unforeseeable aberrations. They are the logical outgrowths of a capitalist system built on violent exploitation and rooted in the relentless pursuit of profits over people.” (10/30/25)
“Wednesday afternoon, the Federal Reserve cut interest rates by another 25 basis points in a move The Wall Street Journal described as aimed at preventing ‘a recent slowdown in hiring from turning into something more serious.’ To their credit, they can at least see what’s going on in terms of hiring slowdowns and, more recently, layoffs. The day before this decision was announced, Amazon announced 14,000 white collar layoffs – the opening salvo that would ultimately scrap as many as 30,000 corporate positions. What the Fed is getting badly wrong is that the historic link between corporate expansion and hiring has been severed – permanently. For generations, an expanding economy generally meant rising living standards, wages, and so on. That transformation wasn’t always smooth, but generally speaking, a rising tide lifted all boats. That relationship no longer exists.” (10/30/25)
Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Agustina Sosa
“Long before the concept of ‘personal brand’ became mainstream in the age of social media — and before it turned into a buzzword among LinkedIn recruiters (and a commandment for anyone wanting to stand out in their field) — there was someone who had already mastered it naturally, instinctively, and with absolute control: Taylor Swift.” (10/30/25)
“By now we’ve moved beyond a post-literature culture into what some are calling a post-literate age, taking us back several thousand years to communication by images and symbols. Over the past two decades, the number of Americans who read for pleasure on a daily basis has dropped from 28 percent to 16 percent, and the trend among children and teenagers is even worse. In 2023 almost half of Americans didn’t finish a single book. Surveys show that a big loser is fiction. Perhaps this plague of illiteracy has played a role in the disappearance of truth and, with it, liberal democracy.” (10/30/25)
