“Trump has always known how to craft a reality show. But behind the curtain, there is still a small, bitter, vengeful, incompetent man, surrounded by third-rate sycophants and hacks with no coherent strategy for economic or political success, no serious experience in government, and a record of making enemies of everyone and losing long-loyal friends. A president who uses ancient laws and police-state tactics shows not only that he is a degenerate and a disgrace, but that he is too weak to do things the right way; he pushes executive orders because he doesn’t have the votes in Congress to achieve anything lasting …” (03/28/25)
“‘Compared to what?’ That should be the first response of any economist worth his or her salt if asked to opine on a specific public policy. For example, should we err on the side of disease prevention and lockdown an entire country despite devastating social and economic consequences? Or should we live with the risk of the disease? That is what economics is supposed to do well: compare alternatives based on tradeoffs. Experts in various policy realms often lack the perspective to consider the consequences of focusing exclusively on their narrow fields. Health experts focus on health, sometimes without consideration of other costs, particularly down the road. Of course, this assumes that the experts themselves have relevant, rigorously tested, and accurate prescriptions to handle public policy challenges.” (03/28/25)
“When we finally learn the full melodrama of the so-called Signal 1-2 day ‘scandal’ of inviting a leftwing, Trump-despising, Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg onto a supposedly secure conference list, involving most of the top Trump security officials, lots of questions need asking and answering. Most importantly, who exactly had Goldberg’s private number, and ostensibly (in error [?]) could have possibly inserted it into the cleared list of participants in the discussions? Why Goldberg, rather than some random person of some 345 million Americans? So why in the world would any top Trump officials or their staffers ever even have Goldberg’s private contact information, given his quite public record of: a) fabricating stories with unnamed sources, and b) suffering from a decade of chronic Trump derangement syndrome? Did Goldberg know the mechanisms that had prompted and continued his stealthy presence on the secure discussions?” (03/29/25)
“One of the tired old truisms of post-Watergate Washington is ‘It’s not the crime, it’s the coverup.’ In fact, usually it’s both — but this coverup reflects the cult-like insistence on unreality as a sign of tribal loyalty that flows down from President Donald Trump. Tone always comes from the top. Lies are the instinctive official defense from this administration. As Andrew Egger noted this week, ‘It’s all there in the three rules Trump learned from his mentor, Roy Cohn: always attack, always deny everything, always declare victory.’ At this point, those tactics have just become ‘a habit of mind’ — they’re second nature for Team Trump. So, when caught red-handed sharing classified information on a public messaging app, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth did what Trump would have done: lie loudly. Hegseth was hardly alone.” (03/30/25)
“Soon before Claudia Sheinbaum became Mexico’s first female president last October, a clergyman pleaded with her to listen to the mothers of thousands of ‘disappeared’ Mexicans. Such a step, said Catholic Bishop Francisco Javier Acero Pérez, would help mend the country’s ‘broken social fabric’. His request came after Dr. Sheinbaum stated she did not share the church’s ‘pessimistic evaluation’ of violence by organized crime in the country. In March, the new administration finally did show a readiness to act – after news broke of an ‘extermination center’ run by a drug cartel at a ranch and reportedly used for mass killings. President Sheinbaum and her attorney general have now announced reforms to deal with the estimated 120,000 missing persons in Mexico.” (03/28/25)
“Leading politicians of the Democratic opposition, and the U.S. corporate media covering the Signal text leak, have not condemned or showed concern about the sudden surprise acts of war that involve civilian murder and that are illegal under international law. Because military action in Yemen has not been declared or authorized by a vote of the Congress, the operations also represent an unconstitutional use of the military. Rather, the opponents and critics of Trump consider it a scandal and a kind of national emergency that the exchange was accidentally leaked to an unauthorized participant, in a clumsy and incompetent fashion.” (03/28/25)
“As President Donald Trump continues to toy (troll?) with the idea of Canada becoming the 51st state, he should consider a better option: Build a common market with our neighbors to the north. That’s a lot more in line with the statehood idea than hitting the country with a barrage of tariffs. A deal to let labor, goods and capital flow freely both ways would be a boon to both economies, similar to the early days of European economic integration, before European Union bureaucrats started regulating industries within an inch of their lives. And it would avoid the drawbacks of the statehood approach — two more senators for the Democrats and the yoke of absorbing a relatively sluggish economy.” (03/29/25)
“Luther Martin warned that the Constitution would create a centralized national government with few real restraints – one that would steadily erode state sovereignty, override local control, and impose its will under the guise of law. In his essay Genuine Information, he outlined the many ways he believed the proposed system would accelerate the consolidation of power. Among these dangers, he singled out three provisions as particularly alarming: an all-powerful federal judiciary, the ability to suspend habeas corpus, and the continuation of slavery. Together, Martin saw these provisions as a dangerous trifecta – key pillars of a broader system of unchecked national power. He feared this system would reduce the states to mere administrative units, make justice unattainable, and embed moral contradiction into the very foundation of the new republic.” (03/29/25)
“In order for a contract to be validly binding, it needs to be clear exactly what the contract contains. Yet even among social contract theorists, there is surprisingly little agreement here. They’ll all agree that a social contract exists, but wildly disagree about what that contract actually entails. People on the left and the right will both object that some law or institution ‘violates the social contract’ but disagree about which laws or institutions do so, and what the violated terms are. Note, this can’t be resolved by something as simple as pointing to the existing set of laws (or the Constitution, perhaps) and declaring that those laws are what represent the social contract.” (03/28/25)
