Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by Connor O’Keeffe
“The eye-catching dollar amounts reported as the net worths of the richest people in the world, like Elon Musk, are not large piles of cash sitting around in bank accounts gathering dust. They are mostly the present value of the companies they own. It is not even possible to tax or confiscate these assets without destroying most or all of the initial value. Figures like Warren and Newsom know this. But the implication that the rich are simply ‘hoarding’ trillions of dollars of wealth is useful to them. It feeds the impression that all of our economic problems are, in essence, problems with the distribution of final consumable wealth.” (06/17/26)
Source: Independent Institute
by Stephen P Halbrook
“United States v. DeBorba, decided on June 3, is the latest Ninth Circuit decision that seeks to exclude firearm parts from protection in the reference to the ‘arms’ that the people have a right to keep and bear. The court held that ‘‘optional accessories’ to firearms — such as gun slings, scopes, and, importantly, silencers — fall outside of the Second Amendment’s plain text because they are ‘accoutrements’ and not arms.’ The test for whether an object is included in ‘arms’ is supposedly based on whether it ‘is necessary to the ordinary operation of the weapon.’ ‘Ordinary’ means anything you want it to mean.” (06/17/26)
“Iran was consistently and demonstrably in compliance with all their commitments under the agreement. It was Trump who broke faith, betrayed Iran and unilaterally and illegally pulled the United States out of the agreement. When, despite this history of nuclear negotiations with Trump, Iran returned to the negotiating table, the U.S. three times bombed Iran while negotiating. … Other negotiations with the U.S. have also taught Iran distrust.” (06/17/26)
Source: The American Prospect
by Whitney Curry Wimbish
“To the casual observer, the two candidates vying for the Democratic nomination in New York’s Seventh Congressional District to replace retiring 16-term stalwart Nydia Velázquez may look indistinguishable. New York Assemblymember Claire Valdez and Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso are both Democrats, and both intend to abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), fund affordable housing, institute health care for all, and end Israel’s war on Palestine, which they agree is a genocide. Both candidates have substantial endorsements from powerful figures and organizations. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani backs Valdez, a fellow Democratic Socialists of America member, as do DSA-NYC and Justice Democrats; Rep. Velázquez, the New York Working Families Party, and state Attorney General Letitia James back Reynoso.” (06/17/26)
“The JAWBONE act would prohibit federal agencies from coercing or threatening online and other services into changing content and would give victims the right to seek damages. Now, you might be thinking, doesn’t the Constitution already prohibit the federal government from censoring us? Well, yes. It provides no exemption for government censorship implemented via plausibly (or implausibly) deniable delegation of the task. But we have had many legitimate debates about constitutional meaning. Further, we have also always had many illegitimate ones, in which people — including Supreme Court justices — seek to circumvent even the plainest and most unmistakable import of constitutional provisions.” (06/17/26)
“Last week’s SpaceX IPO made Elon Musk the world’s first trillionaire, despite the fact that the company has lost tens of billions of dollars since it was founded almost 25 years ago. Shares of the company climbed steadily after markets closed on Friday, pushing its market cap to $2.2 trillion. The public conversation about Musk’s vast wealth often obscures the fact that he is actually a very fancy welfare recipient, having taken billions of dollars from the public coffers by even the most conservative measures.” (06/17/26)
“Self-evidently, the reason for the attack is not that Iran was days, weeks or months away from a nuke: Even the Donald’s own former DNI, Tulsi Gabbard, had recently affirmed in Congressional testimony that the long-standing assessment of the US intelligence agencies that Iran had ceased all research and activities designed to weaponize HEUs was still the case, and with a high degree of confidence. Likewise, the January 2026 street uprisings throughout Iran, which had been the catalyst for war that Netanyahu had peddled to the SUCKER he finally found in the Oval Office, has long since become a moot point. … what the hell was the reason for going to war on February 28th when there was no bomb and, self-evidently, no prospect of a regime change uprising, as MOU item #3 makes clear as a bell?” (06/17/26)
“Of all the reasons that the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran has ceased, leading to a tentative deal, at least one had a common thread: Each nation seemed to worry more about internal political ruptures than about winning the war. In each country, then, a desire to keep hold of national cohesion might have helped silence the guns – and could influence the difficult negotiations still to come. In Israel, for example, a newly released poll showed some 55% of the public sees internal political polarization as the most dangerous threat to the country’s existence – far more than threats of violence from Iran. That widespread concern over domestic friction also carries some hope for national unity. ‘It is possible to cultivate space of agreement in Israeli society, but it requires a practical action plan aimed at that, and not at defeating the identity-based rival,’ Yedidia Stern, president of the Jewish People Policy Institute that conducted the survey, told The Jerusalem Post.” (06/16/26)
“Forty years ago, I attended the annual meetings of the American Psychiatric Association in Washington and my sanity never recovered. Or at least that is what therapists presume based on my writings about their endless fabrication of bogus mental illnesses.” (06/16/26)
