“The relationship between poverty and crime has been a longtime policy debate. A common narrative — particularly on the left — is that poverty drives people to crime, positing that those who live in tough neighborhoods have little choice but to survive through lawbreaking. This treats crime as a passive outcome of economic hardship — almost like a disease — rather than a choice. But a deeper look at the data, and differences across communities, suggests the opposite: that crime instead causes poverty. Irrespective of the causation order one accepts, there is certainly a relationship between the two.” (05/18/26)
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by James Bovard
“Trump constantly blusters as if he deserves the Nobel Prize for Economic Triumphs, just like he supposedly deserved the Nobel Peace Prize. In a January speech in Iowa, he doubled down on his triumphs by referring to himself in the third person: ‘Just after one year of President Trump, our economy is booming …. Incomes are rising. Investment is soaring. Inflation has been defeated.’ Unfortunately, Trump’s record on the economy is as shaky as his claims that he ended eight wars. The core wholesale inflation rate rose in January at an annual rate of 9 percent. ‘Howl louder’ has been the president’s response. Beginning late last year, the affordability issue made Trump schizophrenic.” (05/18/26)
Source: Responsible Statecraft
by Michael Schaeffer Omer-Man
“Israel is officially entering election season, and with it comes the perennial and inescapable excitement among some progressives in the United States who are eager to see Israeli voters send Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu packing. That excitement, however, is an illusion. It is built on a belief, long clung to by American supporters of Israel, that Israel without Netanyahu would somehow become a liberal democracy that aligns more with their own values. That illusion is based on a false view of Israeli policy in the decades before Netanyahu’s reign.” (05/18/26)
Source: Kent’s “Hooligan Libertarian” Blog
by Kent McManigal
“In a discussion about the effect of self-driving cars on cops and their DWI grift, someone said, ‘Self driving cars are a fantasy. They do not have the ability. They can assist but cannot drive themselves.’ Now, this is objectively not true. Someone else pointed out. ‘I’ve seen them driving around downtown, sans human driver.’ The Luddite’s response. ‘They are not reliable. Several have ran over pedestrians and they have been the cause of accidents.’ I pointed out, ‘Humans are even less reliable, unfortunately.’ So, he responded, ‘If that is true then why is it required for a person to be at the wheel and paying attention while the vehicle is driving itself?’ … That ‘laws’ require something dumb isn’t an argument. It proves nothing.” (05/18/26)
“Russia entered the war at maximum sustainable capacity without general mobilization. After years of attrition, it has burned through most of its Soviet-era equipment stocks. Given Russia’s weakened state, a conventional confrontation with NATO is not only unlikely now, but it has become almost impossible — prohibitively expensive and demographically unsustainable. The real strategic risk is not a confident Russia launching a conventional assault on the Baltics. It is the behavior of a cornered, nuclear-armed state that perceives itself in terminal decline. A leadership facing military failure and domestic crisis may calculate that tactical nuclear signaling or hybrid escalation offers its best chance to reset the board.” (05/18/26)
“With gasoline averaging about $4.50 per gallon — over six bucks if you’re unlucky enough to live in California — President Donald Trump proposes a gas tax holiday to give American consumers a bit of relief. A reprieve from taxes is always welcome, but the real bite isn’t the federal 18.4 cents per gallon of gasoline and 24.4 cents on each gallon of diesel fuel. States charge far more, and that’s especially true if you rent a car, with gas taxes the least of the problem. In some places, more than half the tab for car rentals comes from taxes and government-mandated fees.” (05/18/26)
“The Middle East is once again teetering on the brink as Trump appears poised to reignite war with Iran. Press reports indicate he will convene military advisers on Tuesday, though my understanding is that both the meeting and the decision are likely to come sooner. Over the past several hours, Trump has flooded Truth Social with a barrage of incendiary threats. While some of this may be theatrical brinkmanship designed to force Tehran into submission, sources in the Iranian capital tell me they expect the United States to resume hostilities within the next 48 hours. We should first recognize that restarting the war amounts to an admission that Trump’s previous escalatory gambit — the blockade of the blockade — has failed.” (05/18/26)
“President Trump’s ‘solution’ to the economic problems facing many Americans is lower interest rates. Jerome Powell, who Warsh is succeeding as Fed chair, has refused to lower rates to the level desired by President Trump. This is a big part of why the president has said he chose not to reappoint Powell. Concerns that Warsh would allow President Trump to dictate monetary policy help explain why only one Democratic Senator voted for Warsh’s confirmation. Lowering rates may slightly reduce credit card and other interest rates paid by consumers. However, it will further erode the dollar’s value, thus further reducing Americans’ real incomes and causing them to go further into debt.” (05/18/26)
“I have now spent four decades practicing medicine. … Most physicians did. That is the part many people outside medicine still do not fully understand. Doctors do not sacrifice years of their lives, miss holidays, destroy their sleep schedules, and carry this kind of emotional burden because they dream about maximizing throughput metrics or documentation compliance. We entered medicine because we wanted to help people. It sounds simple saying that now, maybe even naïve, but it is true. Somewhere along the line medicine changed. Hospitals changed. The language changed first because that is always how these transformations begin. Patients slowly became ‘throughput issues.’ Beds became ‘capacity management.’ Discharges became ‘flow optimization.’ … Everything slowly started sounding less human and more operational. And eventually, hospitals stopped feeling like places centered around caring for human beings and started feeling like giant processing centers where movement itself became the priority.” (05/18/26)
Source: Christian Science Monitor
by Linda Feldmann
“As a United States senator from Florida, Marco Rubio was a high-profile ‘neocon’ – a hawk on China and Russia, a strong supporter of Taiwan, Ukraine, and NATO, and an advocate for free trade and human rights. Today, not so much – at least on those issues. As both secretary of State and acting national security adviser, Secretary Rubio is fully on board with President Donald Trump’s approach to foreign policy: more ‘Art of the Deal’ use of American leverage, including tariffs, less hard-line absolutism with other major powers. Mr. Rubio’s evolution shouldn’t come as a shock. After all, he is no longer his own boss; he works for President Trump – in two key capacities, the first to hold both titles since Henry Kissinger in the 1970s.” (05/18/26)
