“I spend my days reading growth curves. A pension fund’s unfunded liability, a private equity fund’s internal rate of return, a hedge fund’s drawdown. You learn to read a line on a chart the way a doctor reads one on a different kind of monitor. Most political organizations produce a flat line for decades, a small bump around an election, then flat again. The Democratic Socialists of America just produced a line that would get flagged in any diligence memo I’ve written in 30 years. An organization with 6,000 members in 2015 crossed 100,000 in February 2026, and by this July had passed the old high-water mark for American socialism: the roughly 113,000 members the Socialist Party of America claimed at its 1912 peak under Eugene Debs. DSA now calls itself, correctly, the largest socialist organization in American history.” (07/13/26)
“There is a small alcove at the back of most chemist shops these days, usually curtained off, where a pharmacist jabs your arm with a flu vaccine or a Covid booster while you sit with your sleeve rolled up. It is, in its modest way, one of the great quiet successes of British healthcare over the last decade. Nobody voted for it, nobody legislated it into being with a grand ten-year plan, and yet it works. It exists because Boots and Superdrug and the local independents worked out that people would pay a small sum for convenience, speed, and the absence of a three-week wait. I propose that we should extend this principle, and put a doctor in there as well.” (07/13/26)
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone
“Everyone’s talking about how progressive Democrat Graham Platner has been forced to drop out of his Senate race following allegations of sexual assault. Personally I never paid attention to Platner’s campaign, because I long ago stopped taking Democrats seriously. The first clue that Platner was a shitty person wasn’t his military service or his Blackwater stint or his tattoo or the sexual assault stuff, it was that he ran for high office in the US government under one of America’s two mainstream parties. That’s damning in and of itself. I said this on Twitter today and some DSA guy told me the best way to make changes in US politics is to work within the Democratic Party to elect left-wing candidates and advance progressive agendas.” (07/10/26)
“President Trump told his followers he would ‘drain the swamp.’ Instead, he became the biggest swamp monster ever. He has obliterated the line between public service and personal enrichment. Trump’s recent financial disclosures revealed that he made $2.2 billion in the year since he returned to office. That is a breathtaking figure. It is more than 20 times the annual budget of the city of Ithaca, N.Y., where I served as mayor for 10 years. In other words, Trump raked in, on average, more than $6 million a day, seven days a week.” (07/13/26)
“What’s the best thing about wokeness? Simple: Holding people in the past to universal moral standards. History is packed with mass murder, slavery, and other atrocities, often committed by famous beloved figures like Columbus and the American Founding Fathers. When confronted with these harsh realities, most thinkers try to weasel out with a variation on, ‘It was a very different time.’ The woke, on the other hand, want to not only teach kids about mass murder and slavery, but tear down the statues of mass murderers and slavers. Which is the rational position. … Sadly, wokeness aggressively refuses to universalize its own universalism. If we should hold people in the past to universal moral standards, we should also hold people in the present to universal moral standards, not credulously accept lame, lawyerly excuses like, ‘In their culture, this is normal’ or ‘Given their life story, we mustn’t blame them.'” (07/13/26)
Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by George Ford Smith
“One way a person can become a billionaire is by providing people with a product or service they want. As various economists have pointed out, the money people use to acquire the product or service is like a vote cast. The votes can change overnight if the entrepreneur fails to deliver what people want at a price they can afford, or if a competitor offers something people perceive as better or cheaper. This process of voluntary production and exchange is the free market in action. But security agencies are needed to keep this process free of coercion. … If government stayed in the role of rights-protector the market might function smoothly. But it has never remained confined to that purpose. The idea of ‘protection’ has expanded over time to become a lucrative racket.” (07/13/26)
“The Business Council of New York State is seeking to repeal ‘Prohibition-era’ alcohol laws. The New York Post reported that the organization launched its ‘New Yorkers Cheers for Change’ campaign on Sunday, pushing a proposal that would counter the state’s restrictions on alcohol sales. ‘New York has some of the most restrictive Alcohol Beverage Control (ABC) laws the entire nation because they were created during the Prohibition-era. Current ABC laws impede economic growth, job opportunities, consumer choice, and New York’s own wine and distilled spirits industry,’ the organization’s website read. The ‘Cheers for Change’ campaign followed the 2023 Commission to Study Reform of the Alcohol Beverage Control Law, launched under New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, to recommend ways to update state laws, such as relaxing its 200 Foot Law and 500 Foot Law.” (07/13/26)
Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Cláudia Ascensão Nunes
“In the end, the digital euro does not liberate Europe, modernize it, or make payments more convenient. It merely changes who holds control, shifting it from American private companies to European public authorities, and strengthens that control in the process. At its core, this project reveals a profound civilizational choice: money ceases to belong primarily to individuals, as the state assumes the power to define the limits of financial freedom.” (07/13/26)
“The cure for a regime of establishment-approved ideology does not come from government censorship of conversations. That should be clear to anybody who believes in freedom, and it’s a point strongly made by a federal appeals court in overruling Florida’s Stop WOKE Act. Saying the First Amendment is incompatible with ‘an official government line—in a college classroom of all places,’ the court overruled the state’s effort to battle ideological orthodoxy by imposing its own orthodoxy.” (07/13/26)
“With sweltering temperatures once again gripping much of the world, it is worth appreciating air conditioning — the quiet invention that transforms dangerous heat into manageable discomfort, shields millions from heat-related suffering and death, boosts productivity, and makes once-hostile climates livable. It is a powerful reminder that wealth, innovation, and human ingenuity enable societies to adapt to nature’s extremes and protect human life. To understand why the US heat death rate is 59 times lower than that of Europe, it helps to begin with a young engineer named Willis Carrier.” (07/13/26)
