“Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JP Morgan, recently said that he was refusing to make a contribution to Trump’s ballroom monstrosity because he was concerned how a post-Trump Justice Department might view it. This comment should be taken very seriously. JP Morgan is by far the largest bank in the country, which Dimon has run for two decades. Also, Mr. Dimon is an astute businessman who clearly puts business above politics. Early in 2024 he gave Trump a pseudo-endorsement when he famously said that he thought the economy would do fine regardless of whether Trump or Biden won. That he is now thinking of a world with a normal Justice Department is huge. It’s not just Dimon who is thinking about a world beyond Trump. A near record number of Republican members of Congress have announced their retirement.” (12/11/25)
“On December 21, 1989, Romania’s communist dictator, Nicolae Ceaușescu, strode onto the balcony of the presidential palace to address an enormous crowd. Many in the square below had been bused in to show their support, and surrounding buildings had been draped with propaganda posters hailing his brilliant leadership. As soon as he began to speak, however, some of the crowd started to boo and hiss, and the murmurs of dissent swelled into a crescendo that drowned him out. His advisers urged him inside, and the regime cut off the national broadcast. It was too late. In that instant, the entire nation saw that multitudes of their compatriots hated him, just as they did themselves, though until then only in private. Within days, Romanians were in open revolt, and Ceaușescu was executed on Christmas Day. The demonstration created public knowledge of what had previously been widely held private knowledge.” (12/11/25)
“One would think that running a profitable legal marijuana industry would be just about the easiest thing in the world, but don’t tell that to the Democrat leadership of Minnesota, which allowed wokeness and apparent corruption to grind their legalization rollout into dust. Wherever one lands on the benefits or increasingly evident harms of marijuana legalization, once a state decides to do it, it has a responsibility to do it in a way that most benefits all the citizens. Of course, Gov. Tim Walz and the Minnesota Democrats made it all about social equity.” (12/11/25)
“With support from Microsoft, Stripe, and Shopify, Running Tide billed itself as on the cutting edge of carbon removal. In the end, it resorted to dumping thousands of tons of wood chips in the sea.” (12/11/25)
“Let’s say the unlikely happens and Democrats take both houses in 2026. Surely that means nothing for removing people from office, right? You’ll never get two-thirds of the Senate no matter how big your majority. And if we get a majority at all, it is likely to be a slim one. No, that’s quitter talk. We can do this.” (12/11/25)
“‘A monarchy, or a corrupt tyrannical aristocracy.’ That, George Mason warned, is what the Constitution would produce. His objections to ratification became the foundation for some of the most influential Anti-Federalist arguments. Born 300 years ago today, December 11, 1725, Mason was one of the most influential political thinkers and leaders of the American Revolution. It would be hard to exaggerate the impact of his Virginia Declaration of Rights, which served as the foundation for the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights – and other constitutional documents around the world. But today, on the 300th anniversary of his birth, we are exploring his forgotten warnings about the Constitution during the ratification debates. They focus almost completely on his core fear that the new system would centralize power in a national government and destroy liberty.” (12/11/25)
“Any book that intends to provide a complete account of a chapter covering almost 70 years in the history of ideas is an ambitious achievement by itself, especially when it is centered around a fuzzy concept like neoliberalism. If such a book also attempts to cover decades of economic history, discussing the evolution of policymaking and the intellectual and political debates that shaped it, one would probably worry that the author is trying to accomplish too much. Now, add that the author will try to do so while navigating murky waters, surrounded by the history of a violent dictatorship and the overall context of Latin American politics of the Cold War era. It seems like a recipe for failure. Yet, to the great benefit of his readers, Sebástian Edwards accomplishes all this brilliantly. The Chile Project: The Story of the Chicago Boys and the Downfall of Neoliberalism is nothing short of a monumental achievement.” (12/11/25)
“On December 5, 1886, on a windswept homestead near De Smet in Dakota Territory, Rose Wilder Lane entered a world of adversity. She was the only surviving child of Laura Ingalls and Almanzo Wilder. Within a few short years her family’s cabin burned, her parents were stricken with diphtheria, her father suffered a crippling stroke, and severe winters forced them to leave the prairie. Those early calamities impressed on Lane two lessons that would define her life: that individual fortitude matters more than fate, and that no external authority can substitute for self‑discipline. … By age sixteen she was supporting herself as a Western Union operator, moving from town to town and reading voraciously after her night shifts. The hardships of her youth fostered a fierce independence that would blossom into a philosophy.” (12/11/25)
“The strange new alliance between democratic socialists and nationalist populists isn’t a sign of political healing. It’s a sign that people have lost their grip on basic economics.” (12/11/25)
“Again and again, Trump administration goons have insisted that they are deporting only the ‘worst of the worst … rapists, savages, monsters.’ They have even — and this is one of the most vile aspects of this government — encouraged their base to revel in the misery of their victims by releasing videos lovingly dwelling on images of people being bound and frog-marched toward the planes. The videos are titled ‘ASMR: Illegal Alien Deportation Flight.’ If their intended audience experienced a tingle of pleasure, they might want to fact check the administration’s claims. A Cato Institute report based on leaked ICE information showed that 73 percent of deportees had no criminal convictions and only 5 percent had a conviction for a violent crime.” (12/11/25)
