“While we should not trust any public pronouncements made by the Iranians (nor should our government take private ones at face value either), the regime has effectively acted in keeping with the perception it wishes to create: Iran’s leaders are not impatient for negotiations, nor do they seem willing to make accommodations in advance of any, while simultaneously demanding preconditions from the United States. The only indications of Iranian eagerness to seek peaceful resolution come from Trump — who has a less than firm relationship with the truth — claiming that the Iranians have told him privately they are desperate to give in to each of our demands. That would strain credulity under any circumstances, but especially after the president has made many, many claims of Iranian surrender or concession over the course of the nine-week conflict, all of which have proven to be demonstrably false.” (05/04/26)
“The so-called ‘AI race’ is propelling stock markets to new highs even as geopolitical turbulence rattles investors. Artificial intelligence may prove to be the rare technological revolution capable of generating real growth despite the headwinds of tariffs and misguided industrial policy. Yet the data centers powering this next generation of innovation have become a flashpoint for public anxiety. Maine has outright banned new large data center construction, and average Americans are increasingly convinced that these facilities are to blame for rising electricity bills. The statewide data, however, tell a different story. Newly published research finds no meaningful link between the number of data centers in a state and its electricity prices and points instead to a far less glamorous culprit: bad state energy policy.” (05/04/26)
“An entrepreneur casts a certain kind of spell. He brings resources, people, and capital together in a way that enables him to make others better off, so they will make him better off. He is a master of mutualism. His magic lies in his ability to carry all this out sustainably, imposing no costs on anyone other than his partners in mutual gain, all within the Law of Consent. This distinguishes him from a political entrepreneur who practices dark dialectics. That means, somewhere in his spellcasting, the political entrepreneur colludes with those who have seized the authority to compel others. Dark dialectics is the art of mingling persuasion and compulsion — like money and power — to dominate. A subversive entrepreneur casts his spells in dangerous territory, where political entrepreneurs and powerful authorities, wielding monopolies on violence, roam the land. This makes the subversive entrepreneur the rarest among entrepreneurial spellcasters.” (05/04/26)
“In the week-plus since the latest attempt on President Trump’s life, many on the Right and in the political Center are, at long last, waking up to the possibility that the political opposition today is not entirely normal. It’s not unprecedented either, but it’s far from what we have come to expect in the so-called ‘civilized’ world. As the polymath and public intellectual Eric Weinstein put it on Twitter/X, ‘These aren’t deranged liberals. They are normalized revolutionaries.’ By now, the story of how these revolutionaries came to be normalized is well-worn.” (05/04/26)
Source: ProSocial Libertarians
by Andrew Jason Cohen
“All borders, including those of voting districts and nation-states, are legal constructs. Legal constructs serve a purpose, of course. That a country extends to the ocean tells us something, but without a legal ruling about how far into the ocean it controls, we risk repeated skirmishes at sea, for example. The same is true of voting districts. Should Joe’s vote count in district 2? Or one of the other 5? Should he be allowed to decide for himself? Perhaps he’d choose 2 because the polling place is closest to his home or his kids’ school. Perhaps he’d choose 3 because the polling place is closest to his office. Perhaps he’d vary by year. It’s apparently important to people — and is obviously important to the duopoly — that people only vote in set areas. Do you actually care about that? Is it really problematic to let people vote where they choose?” (05/04/26)
“The Pentagon claims that attacks on civilian boats in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific have severely curtailed the import of illegal drugs to the United States. And President Donald Trump says this has saved more than 1 million American lives. Experts call these assertions laughable and reporting by The Intercept shows that claims by the White House and War Department are baseless, phony, or both.” (05/04/26)
“Unlike every other TomDispatch piece, this one won’t be broken up with section titles for a simple reason. It’s all about Donald J. Trump and when it comes to him, in this strange world of ours, no one ever really gets a break. In that context, here’s my advice to you: Don’t get old. For years, I managed not to do so, but unfortunately that’s all over now and I’m increasingly an old man. In fact, I’m not quite two years older than Donald J. Trump.” (05/03/26)
“Picture yourself at the kitchen table on a Saturday morning, coffee getting cold, sorting through the mail. Among the usual suspects (credit card statements, HOA notices, something from the DMV that is probably not good news), you find a bill you did not ask for. The federal government has quietly added a line item to your household tab: $18,000 a year. No vote. No debate. Just arithmetic catching up with decades of bipartisan borrowing without consequences. That is precisely what the Brookings Institution’s 2026 fiscal chart book shows is required to keep the debt-to-GDP ratio capped at its current level through 2036. Budget fellow Jessica Riedl calculates that stabilization demands an extra $2.6 trillion in annual revenue by that year. Spread across approximately 144 million American households, the arithmetic is brutal: roughly $18,000 per household, per year.” (05/04/26)
“The neocons got their war. The question every taxpayer and every voter who believed Trump’s promises should be asking is: who else got what they wanted? The answer is not difficult to find. It is sitting in earnings calls, stock filings, and futures trading records. Washington does not even bother to hide it anymore.” (05/04/26)
