“Five years ago, LVT was mostly a hypothetical idea people debated on blogs. Today, it has the most legislative momentum it’s seen in decades. Many states introduced bills this year, and Virginia and Kentucky passed land value tax enablement laws in April. These laws allow municipalities to opt into split-rate property taxes, which lower tax rates on buildings and raise them on land. My organization, the Center for Land Economics, maintains a public legislation tracker with an interactive map that makes it easy to keep tabs on these trends.” (09/23/26)
Source: Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression
by John Coleman
“One morning in the spring of 1966, David O’Brien burned his Selective Service registration card on the steps of a South Boston courthouse. … On the facts, the government’s case was airtight. It was a federal crime to knowingly destroy a draft card. When the case reached the Supreme Court, the justices agreed that some actions can contain both expressive and non-expressive elements. But just because an action might send a message, they reasoned, doesn’t mean it’s protected by the First Amendment. Otherwise, someone robbing a bank to protest capitalism could argue their unlawful conduct is actually constitutionally protected speech. … Nearly sixty years later, the O’Brien framework can help us think about the First Amendment’s intersection with artificial intelligence — a technology that is capable of talking and acting at the same time.” (09/23/26)
“In order to restore our lost American principles, the first step is to understand what’s meant by a ‘corrupted republic.’ Today, the politicians and ‘experts’ across the political spectrum love to treat their power like they’ve been given a ‘living, breathing constitution’ that changes with the times. Of course, they don’t ever mean amending it as spelled out in the text of the document. They mean letting politicians, bureaucrats and judges re-write the rules as they go. Montesquieu warned us: that is the very definition of a corrupted system.” (09/23/26)
“President Trump attacked Iran without approval from Congress, as was the Framers’ intent regarding offensive warfare, made plain in the debates at the Constitutional Convention. Trump also violated the War Powers Resolution of 1973 by not withdrawing U.S. forces within 60 to 90 days when Congress hadn’t declared war, given its legal approval or extended the statutory deadline—none of which happened. This is just one more recent example of a hyper-imperial executive thumbing his nose at a quiescent Congress. Yet the Constitution’s Framers intended for Congress, not the executive, to be the dominant branch of government; an independent executive and judiciary were meant to counteract and contain some of this predicted legislative preeminence.” (09/23/26)
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone
“Doordash has reached a historic $131.5 million settlement to repay workers in New York City for wages the food delivery app stole from them over the last four years, which sounds like a big win for the little guy if you don’t think about it too hard. … A hundred and fifteen million dollars. What do you think would happen to you if you stole $115 million from your employer? Can you imagine that not being treated as a crime? Can you imagine going ‘Haha, ya got me! I’ll return the cash. Can’t blame a guy for trying!’ and then paying a small fine and just going back to your life like it was no big deal? Of course you can’t. You know you’d be arrested, handcuffed, prosecuted for grand larceny, and then spend many years behind bars.” (09/24/26)
“Why are we forced to pretend not to know the solutions? To pretend solutions are mysterious or too hard? Because government doesn’t benefit from solved problems. It loses power when problems are solved and people no longer beg to be rescued. Often, getting government out of the way is the solution. Crime is a solved problem. To pretend that no one knows how to reduce crime is a lie that only serves the criminals — both freelance and governmental. The solution is to stop criminalizing things everyone has a natural human right to do, including both what they choose to put into their bodies, and defense of person and property with the most effective tools ever invented for the purpose.” (09/23/26)
“The cost of healthcare just keeps going up — and millions of Americans are set to lose coverage. Under the GOP’s so-called ’Big Beautiful Bill’, around 17 million people in this country will lose health care thanks to the law’s Medicaid cuts, failure to renew Affordable Care Act subsidies and other changes. Those cuts accelerate after this year’s midterms. Instead, that money is going toward tax cuts for the rich plus record budgets for Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Pentagon. Immigrants — including well over 1 million residents who are lawfully present — will be especially hard hit. ” (09/23/26)
Source: Independent Institute
by Edward J López & Jon Murphy
“A country’s overall BOP must sum to zero. That is by accounting definition. When domestic buyers send money out to bring imports in (the current account), foreign exporters return money domestically as investment (the capital & financial account). The BOP is a form of double-entry bookkeeping applied to international trade. But it also means that the current account—composed mostly of trade in goods and services—can be in deficit, while the capital & financial account is in surplus.” (09/23/26)
“Politicians, government officials, and foreign policy analysts (especially of the ‘realist’ sort) regularly speak of the ‘national interest.’ The meaning of this expression may seem obvious: It is the public interest when the public considered is composed of the individuals within a ‘nation’ (as opposed to the ‘global public interest’ or a ‘sub-national public interest’). I take ‘nation’ to mean a society of individuals, not simply their state. But in reality, just as with the ‘public interest’ in general, the ‘national interest’ has little scientific or rationally ascertainable meaning.” (Fall 2026)
