“Before George Floyd, before Michael Brown, there was Trayvon Martin. Back in 2012, the 17-year-old was shot and killed during a struggle with another young man in a Florida gated community. The tragedy that day was discussed in the national media and eventually adjudicated in a court of law. When the trial was over, President Barack Obama said, ‘When Trayvon Martin was first shot, I said that this could have been my son.’ In December, an 18-year-old college student was stabbed by another young man in Southampton, England. The victim’s name was Henry Nowak. The American press ignored the story. The British press and politicians largely did too. Like Obama, I thought, this could have been my son.” (06/06/26)
“Of course, Weiss understands perfectly well the moment we’re in. She knows she wasn’t put in charge of CBS News because of her skeptical nature or keen journalistic eye. She was put in charge because she has shown that she can leverage a carefully crafted image as an iconoclast and teller of truths to launder MAGA propaganda so that it’s more palatable to centrists. She was put in charge because the Ellisons need Trump’s blessing for their mega merger – and if ever there was a favor tailor-made to win Trump’s approval, it’s kneecapping a major news network and toppling one of the last remaining pillars of broadcast journalism in the process. Weiss has positioned herself and her publications as bold disruptors, then leveraged that image to legitimize some of Trump’s worst rhetoric and policies. And few issues better demonstrate that pattern than immigration.” (06/05/26)
“Data centers have commanded significant ire recently, as their power demand rises and ratepayers are concerned about price increases. But this is a faulty narrative. At least to this point, data centers have not been shown to have caused higher power prices.” (06/06/26)
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Richard M Ebeling
“Those in political power always seem to be in a hurry. It is not surprising that their time horizons for ‘action’ never extend more than a few years ahead of them, though for different reasons. If it is a dictatorship, the tyrant in power can never be sure when an assassin’s bullet might cut his life short, or if some of his ‘loyal’ followers may be conspiring to overthrow him and replace him with one of their own. … why is it the case that in America today (and in most other modern democratic countries), those who hold political office seem so much in a hurry with short-term horizons guiding their actions, in their own way similar to dictatorships?” (06/05/26)
Source: David Friedman’s Substack
by David Friedman
“My recent posts dealt with the possibility of libertarians and Abundance liberals learning from each other. For that to happen members of both groups have to either alter their present views or add new ones. For a simple example of the latter, my interaction with Steve Schulhofer, described in my previous post, made me aware of problems with the criminal justice system of which I had been unaware; the two of us then worked out and proposed an approach to dealing with them. For an example in the other direction, a commenter on my post linked to a piece on problems with professional licensing. That is an issue libertarians that are very aware of that should be of interest to Abundance liberals as one of the things they might want to fix.” (06/06/26)
“The United States is not approaching collapse because it lacks power. It is approaching collapse because it has too often mistaken power for wisdom. Its armed forces remain unmatched in reach, its financial system remains central to global commerce, and its technology sector continues to shape the future. Yet these advantages can conceal a more dangerous condition: the erosion of judgment. A superpower begins to decay when it treats coercion as strategy, military reach as political authority, and exemption from rules as evidence of strength. The result is not immediate collapse, but a cumulative weakening of legitimacy, fiscal discipline, institutional trust, and strategic clarity.” (06/05/26)
“If you’ve ever been to a concert or sporting event, you’ve probably dealt with Ticketmaster. And if you have, you’ve probably overpaid. Ticketmaster is the closest thing the live events industry has to a monopoly. It controls the ticketing market at most major American venues and has used that power to squeeze fans with higher prices and limit competition, ultimately making live entertainment more expensive for everyone. That is why recent legal action against Ticketmaster and its parent company, Live Nation, was so encouraging. A jury ruled in April that it is an operating illegal monopoly. Remedies will follow; the question is when. Fans should not have to skip seeing their favorite band, team, or performer because a monopolistic corporation has found another way to extract money from them.” (06/06/26)
“Before Trump, we were also a nation almost universally regarded as essential: Nations believed that they needed access to U.S. banks to do business, access to U.S. markets to prosper, access to U.S. weapons to defend themselves. But by breaking decades’ worth of international agreements — not to mention threatening allies and betraying Ukraine — Trump quickly forfeited the world’s trust. By failing so spectacularly against Iran, a far weaker military power, Trump has dispelled much of the world’s fear. And now the fact that the world is managing economically despite Trump’s tariffs, while Ukraine is surviving despite Trump’s attempt to cut it off at the knees, has revealed that we are much less essential than everyone assumed.” (06/05/26)
“I don’t know if anyone but me noticed, but digital media died last month. In mid-May, a media mogul named Byron Allen bought a majority stake in BuzzFeed, which has been culturally invisible and financially struggling since shutting down its news division in 2023 and pivoting to AI content. Just weeks later, Vox Media, a collection of brands including New York Magazine, sold its more valuable properties to Lupa Systems CEO James Murdoch, the younger son of Rupert Murdoch. Companies like Vice and Vox were hailed as the future of media in the 2010s, standard-bearers of a new generation of youth-focused, internet-savvy publications that would take over from the New York Times and CNN.” (06/05/26)
