“Some of the damage done by ‘campaign finance reforms’ has been reversed. And Tuesday, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in a case that likely will continue the court’s dismantling of measures the political class has enacted to control political speech about itself. This case can extinguish an absurdity: a campaign regulation supposedly intended to prevent parties from corrupting their own candidates. The multiplication of, and subsequent unraveling of, reformers’ laws to ration political speech is a decades-long lesson about cynicism in the guise of idealism.” (12/05/25)
“Americans, the Associated Press reports, spent a record $11.8 billion online on ‘Black Friday’ (the day after Thanksgiving) this year … and another record, $6.4 billion on Thanksgiving itself. Physical in-store traffic for Black Friday also ticked up versus the previous week, although shopping for deals has strongly moved online in recent years. What caught my eye about the story, though, was the headline, which suggests the record sales occurred ‘despite wider economic uncertainty.’ ‘Despite?’ More likely, in my opinion, ‘because.’ With inflation still running at about 3% annually, prices subject to Donald Trump’s seemingly random tariff policies, the job situation looking more uncertain and unpredictable than it has since the COVID-19 panic, etc., what have American consumers been up to? I can tell you what they’ve been up to, because I’ve been up to it myself. What we’ve all been up to is ‘waiting for the best deal if the purchase isn’t an emergency.'” (12/04/25)
Source: CounterPunch
by John W Whitehead & Nisha Whitehead
“Every military servicemember’s oath is a pledge to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. It is not an oath to a politician. It is not an oath to a party. And it is not an oath to the police state. Yet what happens when those same men and women are being told—by their own government—that obedience to power and loyalty to a political leader come before allegiance to the Constitution they swore to uphold? That question isn’t hypothetical. It is the moral line now being tested in real time, and it goes to the heart of what kind of country we are: do we live in a constitutional republic governed by the rule of law, or in a militarized police state where ‘legality’ is whatever the person with the most power and the biggest army say it is?” (12/04/25)
“Young people complain they’ve been permanently locked out of opportunity. They will never become homeowners, never be able to support a family, only keep treading water at precarious gig jobs forever. They got a 5.9 GPA and couldn’t get into college; they applied to 2,051 companies in the past week without so much as a politely-phrased rejection. Sometime in the 1990s, the Boomers ripped up the social contract where hard work leads to a pleasant middle-class life, replacing it with a hellworld where you will own nothing and numb the pain with algorithmic slop. The only live political question is whether to blame immigrants, blame billionaires, or just trade crypto in the hopes that some memecoin buys you a ticket out of the permanent underclass. Meanwhile, economists say things have never been better.” (12/04/25)
“The populist poles of the left and right are now linked in what political scientists call the ‘horseshoe.’ As each gets further from the center, it bends closer toward its counterpart on the other side. Both distrust markets, both want to micromanage industry, both are protectionist, both romanticize manufacturing work and resent the disruptions that come from open global competition. Both, in other words, are hostile to the core tenets of the liberal economic order that made America prosperous. Each side blames a different villain. For the left, it’s corporations and rich people; for the right, it’s immigrants and trade. But both sides insist that a brighter future is possible only through top-down political control, and neither wants to confront the real risk: a government already too large, spending money it doesn’t have and drifting toward fiscal crisis.” (12/04/25)
“Voting and making government more efficient only evolve tyranny to become more successful, giving false hope, making government easier to bear on the people, while tightening the chains. The Daughters of Liberty didn’t beg Parliament for lower taxes — they built parallel supply chains. Agorists do the same today: Monero instead of fiat, 3D-printed receivers instead of Form 4473s, mutual-aid networks instead of FEMA handouts, home churches and private schools instead of licensed 501(c)(3) compliance. Agorism is far from nihilism — it’s the proactive blueprint for a brighter future, harnessing innovations like cryptocurrencies for untaxed trade, 3D printing for self-reliant manufacturing, and sustainable agricultural techniques such as Walipini underground greenhouses to foster independence, (all year round greenhouses). Voting, on the other hand, veers closer to nihilism: people shrug, pick between two rotten options, and claim it’s the only path, all while surrendering to the system’s slow decay.” (12/04/25)
“There’s this thing in politics where people scramble to find something ‘good’ to talk about for their side, no matter how bad reality happens to be. It’s like someone being blown up in a terrorist attack, but their pants were not stained or torn at all – whew! It’s a special kind of ‘missing the forest for the trees’ you can only find in politics and dysfunctional relationships. Under the banner of ‘Tennessee Election Result Is a Fire Alarm for Republicans’, the editors at Newsweek have declared the results of a special election in December of an off-year to be something Republicans need to set their hair on fire over. Why? Because the Republican only won by 9 points in a district that Donald Trump carried by 22.” (12/04/25)
Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Jake Scott
“For many people, ‘AI’ is something small that fits neatly in their pockets, confined to their 6.1″ phone screen, consigned to a little icon that lurks on their home screen or in a folder labeled ‘productivity.’ … But in Southeast Asia, ‘AI’ is something real, tangible, physical—and increasingly intrusive. The region has long been recognized as the most attractive place for global tech firms to invest when it comes to growing their AI capacities, with over $55 billion having been poured in by major tech companies already—a figure that is expected to double by 2028—and it’s easy to see why. Southeast Asia in general benefits from low energy costs, vast tracts of undeveloped land, and—crucially—readily accessible water.” (12/04/25)
“After a month of effort, the picture is sadly and depressingly clear: The old, all too familiar broken equation remains jammed into place: There will be no peace deal on Ukraine, the remorseless virtual annihilation of the Ukrainian people will continue. US President Donald Trump and his top team genuinely want peace: But they have been blocked, pressured, brainwashed, love bombed and intimidated by the US Deep State and the leaders of Britain, France, Germany and NATO into refusing to pay the price that Russia insists must be paid for a war that Moscow has already won. Thus, the long slow remorseless drift into the abyss of global thermonuclear war continues. Indeed, it is likely to accelerate.” (12/04/25)
“Many people equate economics with the stock market, personal finance and business management. Whereas what economists actually study are incentives, choices, trade-offs, markets, institutions, and how scarce resources are allocated. Money is involved, but it’s only one piece. Non-economists tend to ignore trade-offs. They often assume we can have lower taxes and higher spending, or strict environmental rules and unchanged consumer costs. Many think we can have price controls and no shortages. Economists emphasize opportunity cost; everything has a cost, even if it isn’t a monetary one. Non-economists sometimes confuse individual behaviour with aggregate behaviour, reasoning from personal experience. They say things such as ‘I lost my job, so the economy must be worse,’ or ‘I’m spending more, so inflation must be rising.’ Economists focus on aggregate interactions, which often behave differently from individual components.” (12/04/25)
