“If people individually own themselves and have a right to be free of aggressive force, then they have a right to change their location in ways consistent with other people’s rights. Whether you call this moving around relocating, emigrating, or immigrating, doesn’t much matter. The default position is that each individual may rightfully move to somewhere else permanently or temporarily. Inside the United States, nobody questions this. People freely move from state to state, etc., sometimes temporarily, sometimes permanently. They need no one’s permission. Why should things be different when we talk about countries rather than smaller jurisdictions and when the individuals who do the moving are not recognized as citizens of the destination country?” (01/30/26)
“A few weeks ago, Germany, France, the Netherlands, and a host of other European nations sent troops to Greenland to protect the Danish territory against … the United States. Even a year ago, as Donald Trump took office for the second time, it would have been hard to imagine such a turn of events. But the realization that an old political order is breaking apart, and that we are unlikely to return to the relative calm of the postwar years anytime soon, has slowly been dawning on political leaders desperate to keep living in the past. That practically forces the question of whether Europe should break up with the United States. But natural though it may be to ask that question at this moment, it betrays naivety about the sorry state of the continent — and risks pushing it in the wrong direction.” (01/30/26)
“‘How’s the Democratic Party’s ground game in Pennsylvania?’ I asked a friend several weeks before the 2024 presidential election. He replied optimistically that there were far more door knockers this year than in 2022. It turned out these door knockers were just urging a vote for the Democrats without putting forth a compelling agenda attached to candidate commitments on issues that mean something to people where they live, work, and raise their families. There was no Democratic Party ‘Compact for the American People’. Then-President Joe Biden visited Pennsylvania, which went Republican, many times, with his most memorable message being that he grew up in Scranton. Once again, the vacuous, feeble Democratic Party is relying on the Republicans and the cruel, lawless dictator Donald Trump to beat themselves to gain control of the Senate and the House.” (01/31/25)
“I’ve never considered the price of gold an important economic indicator. After all, gold isn’t money — that is, it is neither a medium of exchange, which can be used to make purchases, nor a unit of account, in which prices are quoted. It just sits there in vaults. And I mocked right-wing commentators who hyperventilated about rising gold prices during the Obama years, claiming that those rising prices were a harbinger of soaring inflation and a plunging dollar. They weren’t. Still, gold remains an important asset. At current prices the value of the world’s above-ground gold reserves is around $36 trillion, more than a dozen times the combined value of all cryptocurrencies.” (01/30/26)
“Donald Trump, who once crowned himself the ‘king of debt,’ wants credit card interest rates capped at 10 percent. He has urged the industry to adopt that cap voluntarily — which is not going to happen — but also has suggested to Congress that it should impose such a cap through law. The effect of doing this would not be to save Americans money on interest payments. The effect would be to deprive many Americans of access to ordinary consumer credit, beginning with those who have lower incomes and lower credit scores.” (01/30/26)
Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Tom G Palmer
“Governments around the world have recently begun imposing massive sales taxes on their citizens and claiming that in doing so they are ‘protecting’ them. The additional taxes their citizens must pay are called ‘tariffs.’ At the end of the Second World War, there began a long trend toward removing extra taxes on trade, which helped to create waves of unprecedented prosperity. Lifespans and living standards rose across the globe. How easily we now take for granted what only a few generations ago seemed miraculous; how easily we fail to remember what made those seeming miracles possible: free enterprise, freedom to innovate, and freedom to trade. All of those are under serious attack around the world today.” (01/30/26)
“The load-bearing pillar of the MAGA-era Republican Party is crumbling under the weight of Trump’s poor economic stewardship. Will the Minneapolis homicides be the last straw?” (01/30/26)
“A video leaked this week of Greg Bovino, the former Minneapolis ICE honcho, that did the media rounds in the last 24 hours. He’s giving directions to his troops when he was in Los Angeles. It contained what you might expect: ‘This is our fucking city! … Arrest as many people who touch you as you want. Those are the general orders, all the way to the very top! It’s all about us now. It ain’t about them.’ Then this: ‘Professional, legal, ethical, moral.’ We’re on camera. But other than that, it’s what we do.’ … The iPhone seems to be the only serious threat to ICE’s violence.” (01/30/26)
Source: Foreign Policy
by Naman Karl-Thomas Habtom
“On Jan. 25, Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson confirmed ‘ongoing discussions with France and Britain’ about potentially collaborating on nuclear weapons, going so far as to say that ‘it is important that there are nuclear-armed powers in Europe.’ The United States’ ongoing push for territorial expansion at the expense of Denmark and Russia’s continued resilience to Western sanctions and military aid to Ukraine have brought into question fundamental assumptions about Nordic security. Increasingly, the debate in the region has involved the possibility of developing nuclear weapons. This, however, would be a mistake. A move toward nuclearization would further destabilize security on the continent while being unlikely to yield any actual bombs.” (01/30/26)
