“Private electricity grids, also known as consumer-regulated electricity (CRE), are a free-market policy idea that allows private entities to meet the demand of new large-load users like data centers entirely off the ratepayer-supported grid. Private electricity grids can benefit average ratepayers, developers, and government institutions like the Missouri Public Service Commission (MPSC) by shifting some of the risk and need for new electricity onto private investors, while also giving those investors the benefit of reduced regulation and quicker speed to operation. This has been an idea I have been beating the drum on for a long time. But recently, private electricity grids have started to be used in practice.” (10/07/26)
Source: Rutherford Institute
by John & Nisha Whitehead
“Donald Trump promised to shrink the federal government. But what if Trump’s pledge to cut the federal work force wasn’t really about eliminating government bureaucracy but outsourcing it to the AI tech sector? What if Trump, with the backing of a self-serving industry eager to automate government, is instead helping to build a government that no longer needs as many human beings to operate it? Hundreds of thousands of federal workers are disappearing from the government payroll at the same time that Washington is racing to automate the work they once performed with artificial intelligence. … What we are watching unfold is the construction of a government that requires fewer human beings to carry out its will, fewer human beings to question its orders, and fewer human beings to stand in the way when efficiency collides with legality, morality or constitutional restraint.” (10/07/26)
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Richard M Ebeling
“Americans celebrate the 250 years since the Declaration of Independence. They hail being a free people. They thank veterans and active military personnel for their service in keeping America free. But are we any more free in terms of the pervasive presence of government oversight, control, regulation, and planning of virtually every corner of everyday life than those Germans thought of themselves as free in the 1930s? Yes, we are not a dictatorship, but if both major political parties advocate and insist upon the same political paternalism, with the only difference being the forms and extent of it, how far is it, in fact, from living in a one-party state?” (10/07/26)
“U.S. President Donald Trump stood in front of the United Nations General Assembly on Sept. 22 and made two explicit threats. He threatened to use military force in Latin America in service of U.S. interests, and he threatened annihilation for both the Iranian government and the Iranian people. The actions he proposed contravene both the international laws prohibiting war and the international humanitarian law that protects civilians in conflict. … the laws of war, themselves part of U.S. law, prohibit indiscriminate threats against a civilian population. Accordingly, Trump’s public deliberations about who to invade and who to annihilate were themselves crimes, committed in full view of thousands of diplomats and heads of state. … Many in the United States and around the world are desperate to see Trump and his top advisors held accountable for all this lawlessness but are at a loss for how to do so.” (10/07/26)
“Democrats are feeling very good about next month’s elections, and the jockeying is already underway about which faction made it happen. Progressives hope to power a Democratic victory in the House that sees them pick up more seats — and influence — in the next Congress. When ‘abundance’ critics went after the movement, they were trying to win the argument then as well as the argument of the future. They saw a coalition of techies and liberals who were trying to prevent what they wanted: A move to the left and away from deep-pocketed donors. They view ‘abundists’ taking credit for Mamdani’s victory as opportunists trying to deny democratic socialists a major governing success. But the non-socialists have made a modicum of impact, even if ‘abundance’ has faded from Democrats’ lexicon.” (10/07/26)
“I guess it’s the principle of the thing. If the feds let even one of their hirelings get away with stealing from the gang itself, even just a measly 14.6 minutes’ worth of the annual loot, more of those hirelings might decide they’d like a taste too, and next thing you know the gang’s leaders migh have to give up the thug life and get real jobs serving caffeinated beverages or pumping out septic tanks. Can’t have that! But it’s also the principle of the thing working from the other direction: If it’s not theft for the feds to steal the money from you, how is it theft for [David J.] Rush to steal the money from them? And Rush’s form of theft was arguably less violent than his bosses’ preferred way of doing things.” (10/07/26)
“French President Emmanuel Macron went full Orwell this week. While long the darling of Western media, Macron has been one of the most anti-free-speech leaders in the world. This week, he declared that ‘The so-called American ‘free speech’ today, which some people have promoted, is the opposite of free speech.’ Having Emmanuel Macron holding forth on free speech is akin to Joey Chestnut proselytizing on veganism. France has been in a headlong plunge into censorship and speech criminalization. These laws criminalize speech under vague standards referring to ‘inciting’ or ‘intimidating’ others based on race or religion. For example, fashion designer John Galliano has been found guilty in a French court on charges of making anti-Semitic comments in a Paris bar. In another case, the father of French conservative presidential candidate Marine Le Pen was fined because he had called people from the Roma minority ‘smelly’.” (10/07/26)
“Faced with one of the biggest and fastest changes in human health, we’re treating the results as a condition that needs lifelong medication. The newest drugs are very effective, and that’s important to recognize. Semaglutide and tirzepatide have led to weight loss that older nonsurgical treatments rarely matched. Semaglutide has also reduced the risk of major heart problems in people with overweight or obesity and heart disease who didn’t have diabetes. Tirzepatide has greatly improved sleep apnea in people with obesity. These results are significant, and these drugs are much more than cosmetic weight-loss aids. That’s why we need to look closely at what’s happening now. The problem isn’t that these drugs don’t work; they clearly do. The real concern is that they might work so well that we stop asking why so many people need them in the first place.” (10/07/26)
“Henry VIII was a nationalist in that he chafed at England’s being made to answer, to the degree it was obliged to do so, to the original European union—the elite, transnational, Continental bureaucracy known as the Catholic Church …. But Henry’s protean nationalism meant the same thing as the ersatz nationalism of today’s nat-pop right in the United States—for the executive, I get to do what I want, and for his apologists, We get paid. … Henry’s court was practically an Olympus compared to Donald Trump’s circle of imbeciles and moral midgets … but the Tudor entourage had its Steve Witkoffs and Jared Kushners, too, a pillaging aristocracy all too happy to profit from policy, using the seizure of church property and church funds to enrich itself.” (10/07/26)
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone
“No one cares. They used to, but then Israel spent three years showing the world why October 7 happened in the first place. After witnessing the cruelty and savagery of the state of Israel, people get it now. Everyone understands. After Hamas launched Operation Al-Aqsa Flood on the morning of October 7, there was an outpouring of love and sympathy for Israel from around the entire world. Every major landmark from the Eiffel Tower to the Sydney Opera House to the Empire State Building were illuminated blue and white in solidarity with the Israeli people. … Anyone who hadn’t been following the Israel-Palestine issue very closely was on Israel’s side that day. And then the bombs started dropping. And dropping. And dropping. And dropping.” (10/07/26)
