Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Stephen Weese
“You probably haven’t heard of too many examples of successful data center developments, and that’s partly because ‘something worked; everything is just fine’ is not a common news story. However, CNN recently reported on exactly that: Quincy, Washington, is home to over 30 data centers and has experienced an incredible boom as a result. The data centers now cover an estimated 57% of Quincy’s property tax revenue, funding a wave of public infrastructure projects: a $15 million aquatic center, a 143,000-square-foot indoor sports complex, a $120 million high school, a new hospital, library, police and fire stations, paved sidewalks, sewage systems, and a wastewater treatment plant. Residential electricity rates in the county rose 3.5% last year, while large industrial users, such as the data centers themselves, absorbed a 9.1% increase. The data centers there are paying for their own added infrastructure and generation costs rather than spreading those costs to households.” (08/26/26)
“Now the four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, blood pressure, blood sugar, cholesterol, and BMI, threatening to strike you down in your healthy middle age unless you submit to the testing, treating (ie: medications and lifestyle changes), and a retesting paradigm which can lead many to become obsessed by the numbers. By the way, these four measures have one thing in common: They are typically treated with a prescribing pen that has been carefully guided in your doctor’s expert hands by the helpful people in the pharmaceutical industry. Just saying …” (08/26/26)
“The midterm election is a little more than two months away, and voters who spent the summer tuning out politics are beginning to pay attention. Campaign advertising is picking up, candidates are settling into their general-election messages, and the small number of voters who haven’t already chosen a side are starting to take a closer look at the people asking for their votes. They don’t particularly like what they see. Nearly two-thirds of voters believe the country is headed in the wrong direction. Trump’s approval rating remains underwater, Democrats hold a roughly 6-point advantage on the generic congressional ballot, and Republicans are now defending Senate seats in states that shouldn’t be competitive.” (08/26/26)
“A series of crises have roiled Libya over the last month, undermining a U.S.-led initiative to resolve the country’s profound political predicament and open its markets to American investment. Violent protests over deteriorating living conditions have surged in western cities under the control of Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibah, just as a series of drone strikes have hit energy and oil facilities in the city of Zawia, west of Tripoli. In the east near Benghazi, which is under the authority of strongman Khalifa Haftar, unknown assailants assassinated Major General Fawzi al-Mansouri, Haftar’s head of military intelligence. This chaotic stretch of events prompted the U.S. to belatedly recognize that the deteriorating security situation could undermine its peace initiative.” (08/26/26)
“In Breaking Bad, the character Walter White explains to a major drug dealer why cheaper knockoffs of his signature Blue Sky methamphetamine are just not enough: ‘So… it’s grade-school tee-ball vs. the New York Yankees. Yours is just some tepid… off-brand, generic cola. What I’m making is classic Coke.’ This week, James Carville released his own uncut, undiluted classic product to a nation of rage addicts. Blue Sky rage. What set off Carville was telling. He and others were outraged that House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries met with Trump’s son-in-law and close adviser Jared Kushner to discuss areas of common ground. Such dialogue ‘with the enemy’ is unthinkable in an ‘age of rage’, particularly for someone like Carville who previously threatened that, once Democrats are back in power, Trump supporters would be treated the same way as Nazi collaborators after World War II.” (08/26/26)
“It is wholly true that there is no such thing as a ‘free market’. All interactions between humans are intermediated by culture, the law, geography, language and so on and so on. Which is why we neoliberal types normally don’t mean that version of free. Rather, we mean a market that someone is free to enter. You’ve got a new idea, can you set up and try it out? Yes, obviously, there will be constraints, can you gain finance, planning permission, find the staff and on and on. But all of these things run along a spectrum, we can talk of markets that are freer to enter than others. And, our – most neoliberal, we confess – contention is that the freer to enter the more such markets will serve consumers.” (08/26/26)
“It now appears that instead of continuing bombing campaigns, the United States is relying on economic warfare and a naval blockade to secure Tehran’s capitulation. For Washington, this would minimize the risk to its forces and the pressure on its munitions stockpiles. For Tehran, in turn, this disparity of costs represents a challenge. As a result, Iranian political and military figures have called for Iran to respond with a more offensive military doctrine. They argue that Iran should now take steps to change the situation and make the United States pay much more for keeping the blockade in place.” (08/26/26)
Source: Karl Dickey’s Freedom Vanguard
by Karl Dickey
“This year, 136 communities have rejected or banned the technology, and citizens are outraged, as evidenced by over two dozen states taking direct action against 193 camera installations. Mass surveillance fails the practical test because it treats every law-abiding neighbor as a perpetual suspect while government expands the network with automated police drones. Genuine public safety depends on focused, accountable law enforcement rather than dragnet data collection.” (08/26/26)
“Some political pitches are more challenging than others. And some, like the pitch the Republican Party will try to make to midterm voters in two weeks, are damn near impossible. The Republican National Committee is hosting a ‘midterm convention’ on Sept. 9 and 10 in Dallas ‘to celebrate the accomplishments of President Donald J. Trump, showcase the strength of the Republican Party and its slate of candidates, and unite Americans around a bold vision for the future.’ If that sounds disconnected from reality, then you are probably in close touch with reality. Trump is so deeply unpopular that the convention platform and attention that he clearly covets could backfire for his party. … This is the state of the Republican Party, distorted by Trump into his own MAGA image, always boasting with blustering bunk, always eager to deny the truth that everyone can see and hear.” (08/26/26)
“At the height of World War II, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower didn’t want the military’s independent newspaper to become a propaganda tool. He expected his subordinates to keep their ‘hands off’ Stars and Stripes. More than 80 years later, the Pentagon has fired the newspaper’s leaders after they publicly defended that very principle. Last week, the Pentagon fired Erik Slavin, editor-in-chief of Stars and Stripes, for ‘insubordination.’ Slavin says he was fired for telling CBS in a recent interview that it would be a ‘red line’ if the government told him, ‘Don’t run a perfectly accurate story. Run this instead. Here it is, written by the Pentagon.'” (08/26/26)
