Major corporations bankroll “America First” propaganda
Source: Popular Information
by Judd Legum
“Mastercard, Deloitte, and ExxonMobil are spending millions to promote events supporting Trump and his divisive political agenda.” (02/11/26)
Category: Opinion
What Makes a Good Federal Reserve Chair? It Depends on Independence
Source: The Daily Economy
by Nicolas Cachanosky
“The nomination of Kevin Warsh to replace Jerome Powell as Federal Reserve Chair has many people wondering: What makes a good Fed chair? The answer, it turns out, depends on the environment in which the chair will operate. The characteristics that matter most for running an independent central bank differ from those for a central bank under pressure from political actors. Understanding this distinction is important for evaluating the president’s nominee.” (02/11/26)
The Banality of MAGA Evil
Source: Paul Krugman
by Paul Krugman
“There’s a longstanding tradition in American politics of what Richard Hofstadter famously called the paranoid style – a way of thinking that sees conspiracies lurking everywhere. MAGA-world is particularly riddled with conspiracy thinking – from George Soros and Jewish space lasers, QAnon and the Great Replacement Theory, to Italian satellites hacking into voting machines to deliver the 2020 election to Joe Biden. But these are far-fetched fantasies. The truth is far more banal and shocking. There are people in positions of great power in the U.S. government engaged in evil conspiracies against everything that is good and decent. Their conspiracies are far more extensive and damaging than almost anyone imagined. But there are no evil masterminds behind this. Only amoral, stupid grifters like Howard Lutnick.” (02/11/26)
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/the-banality-of-maga-evil
“Carte Blanche for Ruthlessness”
Source: In These Times
by Kathryn Joyce
“On February 4, former FOX News host Tucker Carlson delivered what, in other times, would be a shocking assessment: that the future of the Republican Party is a 31-year-old, long-shot candidate in Florida’s gubernatorial race with a string of financial and sexual misconduct allegations but a marked talent for attention-getting provocations. Over the course of James Fishback’s still-young candidacy, he has ostentatiously courted the followers of extreme far-right commentator Nick Fuentes and referred to his Black primary opponent, frontrunner Rep. Byron Donalds, as a ’slave’ (to his donors) who would make Florida ‘a Section 8 ghetto.’ He called for raising tuition for foreign university students to $1 million per year, pledged to expel ‘“every illegal immigrant child’ from the state’s K-12 schools and told a white supremacist social media influencer that ’the great replacement and white genocide’ were the most important political issues other Republicans ignore.” (02/10/25)
https://inthesetimes.com/article/laura-field-interview-right-wing-fascism-trump-maga
Blame Overregulation for High Child Care Costs
Source: Reason
by JD Tuccille
“Child care is expensive in New York City, and like the political snake-oil salesman that he is, Mayor Zohran Mamdani says he has a fix: The government will provide! We have yet to see a good explanation as to why child care should be the one service that government can offer cheaper and better than the marketplace, but Mamdani is a true-believing socialist who claims that everything is better when it’s run and portioned out by politicians. Inconveniently for him, researchers say the big barrier in New York to affordable care for kids is costly overregulation.” (02/11/26)
https://reason.com/2026/02/11/blame-overregulation-for-high-child-care-costs/
Americans are tough graders on Trump’s economy
Source: Washington Post
by Ramesh Ponnuru
“The economy is growing. Unemployment is low. Wages, for most people, are rising faster than prices. Stocks are rising. Yet the public keeps giving the economy a thumbs-way-down. Gallup finds that only 21 percent of Americans give it an ‘excellent’ or ‘good’ rating. That’s roughly the same as the percentage that felt positively about the economy in April 2013, during the painfully slow recovery from the Great Recession, when the unemployment rate was 7.5 percent instead of the current 4.4. At first glance, the dissatisfaction looks disproportionate to the statistics.” (02/11/26)
Why Politicians Hate Productivity (and Robots)
Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by Alejandro A Tagliavini
“The advance of automation has accelerated the development of machines capable of performing repetitive and physically-demanding tasks, transforming processes that once took hours into actions that are now completed in minutes. For example, the robotic arm developed by Pickle Robot Company was specifically designed to handle packages in logistics environments. Its main function is to load and unload boxes from trucks with precision, a task that demands significant physical effort and poses risks to workers. In other words, technology increases productivity and quality of life by eliminating physical exertion, and workers can invest that saved time in other tasks, expanding and developing human knowledge. It goes without saying that politicians don’t like robots since they don’t pay personal taxes or contribute to state ‘social security’ funds that enrich bureaucrats and their cronies. But they don’t just hate robotics; they hate productivity in general.” (02/11/26)
https://mises.org/power-market/why-politicians-hate-productivity-and-robots
Demystifying Islam’s Golden Age
Source: Law & Liberty
by Jonathan Leaf
“Many in the Islamic world continue to believe that the answer to their struggles is the restoration of the old caliphate system. Hamas, for instance, called for this in its founding charter. This was also the impassioned dream of Osama bin Laden. Spurring these beliefs are a series of widely-held notions about the past. Given the powerful present-day interest, attraction, and obsession with the idea, we need to arrive at an accurate estimate of the caliphates.” (02/11/26)
To Save Social Security, Stop Subsidizing Wealthy Retirees
Source: The Daily Economy
by Romina Boccia
“Social Security is drifting toward a cliff, and Congress keeps pretending the shortfall will fix itself. It won’t. Absent reform, benefits will be cut across the board by roughly 23 percent within six years. That outcome would harm retirees who depend on Social Security the most — while barely affecting the living standards of those who do not need financial support in old age. There is a better option: reduce distributions to the wealthiest retirees, preserving them for those most dependent on benefits.” (02/11/26)
https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/to-save-social-security-stop-subsidizing-wealthy-retirees/
NY Times columnist sinks to sick new low mocking JD Vance’s mom
Source: Fox News
by Jonathan Turley
“In a post on Bluesky, [Jamelle] Bouie mocked the addiction of the mother of Vice President JD Vance, saying that she should have sold her son for drugs. Bouie used Bluesky — a digital safe zone for viewpoint intolerance on the left — to post one of the most reprehensible attacks on Vance, [writing] that ‘this is a wicked man who knows he is being wicked and does it anyway.’ That is hardly notable on today’s rage scale. However, he then decided to use the painful addiction history of Vance’s mother, Beverly Aikins, against her son: ‘No wonder his mom tried to sell him for Percocets. I can’t imagine a parent who wouldn’t sell little JD for Percocet if they knew he would turn out like this.'” [editor’s note: Not a very nice thing to say about Vance’s mom, but he certainly described Vance accurately – TLK] (02/11/25)