“Americans don’t have a ton of experience with ‘totally aware’ society, but I’ve seen where it leads. In the Soviet Union everyone was conscious of being watched all the time, by the old lady sitting on the bench outside your apartment to taxi drivers and phone operators. It was dangerous to be quiet, spurring the organic appearance of a citizen type referred to as a Sovok. The Sovok never stopped talking. … At first it annoyed, then you realized constant displays of orthodox stupidity were a rational defense against political surveillance. A nation full of people saying dumb things round the clock is a natural consequence of mass monitoring. Which brings us to modern America.” (04/01/26)
“The threat of a city government shutdown loomed large in Chicago in December 2025 as the city faced an end-of-year deadline to close a projected $1.2 billion deficit. To counteract the impact of President Donald Trump’s 2025 tax law, Mayor Brandon Johnson had pitched a budget in October that would require some of the law’s biggest beneficiaries to pay more. His proposed payroll tax — on corporations with more than 1,000 employees — would, according to his administration, amount to less than 0.01% of the Trump tax cuts bestowed on companies like Google and Walmart. But a standoff ensued after a group of Chicago City Council alderpersons — led by Nicole Lee, a former United Airlines executive — announced they would refuse to cross a ’red line’: a new tax on the city’s largest corporations, including United.” (03/31/26)
“Almost 750 U.S. troops have been wounded or killed in the Middle East since October 2023, an analysis by The Intercept has found. But the Pentagon won’t acknowledge it. U.S. Central Command, or CENTCOM, which oversees military operations in the Middle East, appears to be engaged in what a defense official called a ‘casualty cover-up,’ offering The Intercept low-ball and outdated figures and failing to provide clarifications on military deaths and injuries.” (04/01/26)
Source: David Friedman’s Substack
by David Friedman
“Capitalist countries such as Japan were much more productive than China. To learn why, special economic zones were created, areas within which Hong Kong businessmen and other foreign investors would be permitted to start businesses. The plan was to use such zones to experiment with capitalist principles that might be useful to a socialist economy …. They were intended as a way of quarantining dangerous ideas to prevent them from infecting the greater society while at the same time extracting whatever in them was of value. Over the next thirty years the first, Shenzhen, expanded from a village of 30,000 inhabitants to a city of fourteen million, pulling in ambitious Chinese from all over the country. In 1984, the authorities responded to the success of the first four zones by authorizing fourteen more. Still more followed. The exception ate the rule.” (04/01/26)
Source: Bluegrass Institute
by Caleb O Brown & Patrick Jaicomo
“The federal government’s dramatic expansion of immigration-focused cooperative policing agreements with state and local authorities (about 1,500 agreements across 40 states) comes against the backdrop of the historic unpopularity of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Worse, recent reporting indicates that American citizens are increasingly facing federal assault charges in cities with large immigration crackdowns despite video evidence that regularly contradicts the claims of federal agents. It’s time for states to step back and reconsider their cooperation with the feds in this arena and all others when it comes to policing. The state-federal collaboration campaign undermines some of federalism’s most basic aspects and reduces state control over state police officers.” (04/01/26)
“I don’t like things that are bothersome, unnecessary, and intrusive. It’s even worse when those same things are harmful and are forced into our lives. Like government. It’s said a man needs a government like a fish needs a bicycle. I think it’s worse than that. The situation is more akin to telling the fish he can’t survive without the bicycle, forcing him to buy one, tacking him to its seat to force him to ride it, and then demanding he thank you for the bike you’ve provided.” (04/01/26)
“A person of genuine self-esteem doesn’t boast about their successes at the expense of others’ losses. Truly confident people who achieve their goals don’t feel the need to diminish others for their alleged failures or the need to corral an audience to ‘listen’ to tall tales of their achievements. … But this way of thinking is anathema to Trump, who has always embraced a binary, dualistic view of the world, where there are winners and losers, where the ‘art of the deal’ takes place in the context of a zero-sum game, whether in trade or in war. In a cutthroat struggle to the top, rules need not be obeyed. The only rule is to win at all costs.” (04/01/26)
“Ashley N’Dakpri grew up watching her aunt run Afro Touch, a New Orleans hair-braiding shop. She learned the craft as a child and eventually took over Afro Touch’s Gretna, Louisiana, location, building a thriving business as natural hair styling boomed. Then the state stepped in. The Louisiana Board of Cosmetology informed her that without an ‘alternative hair design’ permit — requiring 500 hours of government-mandated training — she was braiding hair illegally. Even though N’Dakpri had spent years perfecting her trade and helping her customers, she needed a government permission slip to keep working. … a bill moving through the 2026 Louisiana legislative session would actually increase the training requirement from 500 to 600 hours …. There’s a motive hiding in plain sight: 600 hours is precisely the federal threshold that unlocks Title IV student loan funds for vocational programs. More red tape, more debt, more cosmetology school revenue — and fewer braiders.” (04/01/26)
“If the pending Artemis II mission is successful, it will not just send Americans around the moon and back for the first time in more than half a century — it will send them further than any human being has traveled into space. If the rest of the Artemis program proceeds on schedule, astronauts will return to the lunar surface by the end of the decade. That’s been a long time coming. The government has been working to get Americans back on the moon since the Bush administration created the Constellation program in the mid-2000s. Wondering why it’s taking so long, given that the original moon mission required only seven years? The answer involves the familiar forces of government inefficiency and pork barrel congressional politics.” (04/01/26)
“As the U.S. and Israel’s war against Iran enters its second month, Iran has found a new way to hold leverage over the world economy: closing and opening the Strait of Hormuz at will. Iran’s ability to shut off one of the world’s major shipping routes, which transports one-fifth of the world’s oil and gas, allows it to dictate the cost of energy in the U.S. and everywhere else. Reporting suggests that Iran’s control over the strait won’t clear up whenever the war ends. … on Monday, the Iranian parliament passed a bill that would impose tolls on any ship passing through the strait, while banning U.S. and Israeli vessels from entering.” (04/01/26)
