“After retiring from active service, [General Smedley Butler] was frank about what his role had been. Professing to being a ‘racketeer’ and ‘gangster for capitalism,’ he went on to explain how: ‘I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Boys to collect revenues in. I helped the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street.’ That was just a selection. With President Donald Trump in power, we do not need a Butler to give the game away or expose any frightful cabal. The empire is out of the closet, bolshie, bright and more thieving than ever.” (01/13/26)
“No government should pressure a bank to cut off customers innocent of any wrongdoing. Yet that is what happened with Operation Choke Point under the Obama administration and that is what happened again with ‘Operation Choke Point 2.0’ under the Biden administration. Even today, countless customers are debanked because the laws and regulations in place have made banks too cautious. It’s time to bring governmental debanking to an end.” (01/13/26)
“On Saturday, Larry Krasner, the elected Democratic district attorney of Philadelphia, posted a photo of himself on social media. It was a black-and-white picture of a stern-looking Krasner in a dark suit, one hand to his sunglasses. At the bottom of the photo, in all caps, was ‘FAFO’, which of course stands for ‘f*** around and find out.’ The accompanying message said, ‘To [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] and the National Guard: if you commit crimes in Philadelphia, we will charge you and hold you accountable to the fullest extent of the law.’ Made in the context of the Minneapolis shooting, the post was part of a new wave of tough-guy progressivism in which state and local Democratic officials around the country apparently hope to intimidate the federal government over the enforcement of federal immigration law.” (01/13/25)
“Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth censured Sen. Mark Kelly, a retired Navy captain, last week for truthfully instructing service members in November that they ‘can refuse illegal orders.’ If anything, Kelly — who on Monday sued Hegseth for violating his First and Fifth Amendment rights –put the matter too mildly: Troops must disobey — and also report — illegal orders. … Last week, in the wake of the U.S. military’s capture of Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro, President Donald Trump spoke generally of his desire to obtain Greenland, while deputy White House chief of staff Stephen Miller and press secretary Karoline Leavitt explicitly raised the possibility of the United States seizing territory belonging to our ally Denmark by force. Such orders are precisely the kind that our military must refuse to obey.” (01/13/26)
“The recent removal of Nicolás Maduro from Venezuela’s presidency is a dramatic development after more than two decades of socialist experimentation under Hugo Chávez and Maduro, characterized by expropriation, macroeconomic mismanagement, and political repression. Although there is much uncertainty about the economic and political future of Venezuela, economics can offer some guidance — and warnings. One such lesson has to do with the dangerous temptation to base economic recovery solely on the oil sector. Venezuela’s prospects depend critically on the quality of its institutional and policy choices from now on.” (01/13/26)
“None of us should have to watch videos of our fellow citizens and neighbors being killed to get factual information about what happened. Yet the way President Donald Trump and Kristi Noem, the secretary of Homeland Security, described the moment an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent shot and killed a 37-year-old mom and American citizen in broad daylight was so blatantly far off from what happened that I fear we will need to keep seeing for ourselves. I never watch videos of people being killed on purpose. Yet, I clicked on a video of a woman in Minnesota in her SUV who seemed to be in a heated verbal exchange with an ICE agent. I saw her try to pull away from an agent who was reaching into her car, only to be shot at close range as she was trying to leave.” (01/13/25)
“Plenty of people think U.S. President Donald Trump’s verbal shots at the central bank, complete with name-calling aimed at Powell, amount to pressure on the Fed’s independence. According to a Fox Business report, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., the top Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee, said Trump’s plan was to ‘install another sock puppet to complete his corrupt takeover of America’s central bank.’ Still, some voices are cutting through the noise, arguing that the idea of an independent U.S. Federal Reserve is merely fiction.” (01/13/26)
“The Grateful Dead was supremely American. No other nation on earth could have produced music like this, a synthesis of blues, R&B, country, folk, rock, even a little jazz. Nowhere else would a band origin story be the following: The 16-year-old Weir and friends were bumming around Palo Alto on New Year’s Eve 1963, heard the sound of a banjo, and followed it to a music store where they happened upon Jerry Garcia waiting for his banjo students to show up. They never did, so Bobby and his friends picked up some instruments and played jug music with Jerry into the night. It was so much fun, Jerry and Bobby decided to form a band called Mother McCree’s Uptown Jug Champions, which became the Warlocks, and then the Grateful Dead. Find that in Japan — find it in England.” (01/13/26)
Source: The Daily Economy
by Christopher Lingle & Emile Phaneuf III
“The term ‘money laundering’ was coined after the Watergate scandal of the 1970s, yet it was not formalized into law with any federal offense until the Money Laundering Control Act of 1986. These days, law enforcement and regulatory agencies such as the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) and Financial Action Task Force (FATF) typically use the term alongside other terms that imply an obvious victim needing protection: ‘terrorist financing,’ ‘human trafficking.’ This is meant to provoke a strong reaction against money laundering as a practice. One problem with the association of money laundering with these other terms that obviously justify a strong response to prevent them is that money laundering does not, in itself, always have a clear victim.” (01/13/26)
