“The outrage over $2 billion being handed to a Stacey Abrams-related start-up by the defeated Joe Biden administration is justified. But it is not surprising. Climate spending by the Biden White House was always political. In 2022, President Joe Biden tapped long-time Democrat operative John Podesta to oversee the disbursement of $375 billon to climate-related initiatives – monies that were included in the dishonestly named ‘Inflation Reduction Act.’ Those funds were supposed to be spent on projects that would drive the country towards Democrats’ goal of a 40% reduction in carbon output below 2005 levels by 2030. In reality, the funds set up a gigantic slush fund within the White House, available to Podesta as he set about boosting Democrats’ prospects in 2024.” (02/25/25)
Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by David Youngberg
“Los Angeles needs more housing. Now, more than ever.
The fires that roared through the city in January 2025 were nothing short of devastating, with over 16,000 structures destroyed and an estimated 150,000 people displaced. In the wake of the disaster, victims scoured the still-hot wreckage for scraps of their former lives. The immensity of their loss was only dwarfed by its suddenness. And then there’s the rent. The mass destruction of homes exacerbated L.A.’s already pricey housing market. Rents substantially shot up, sometimes more than doubling. As is often the case in the aftermath of disaster, the public demanded that the government freeze prices. Disasters create the political will necessary to enact sweeping reforms, but rent control is the wrong approach because it discourages construction and causes more harm than good. Fortunately the city has not (yet) gone down this route.” (02/24/25)
“High inflation spurred Donald Trump’s defeat of Kamala Harris last November. The economy was the top issue for most voters, and inflation was the top economic issue. As Biden’s partner in economic crime, Harris could not escape the blame for the torpedoing of the dollar’s value in recent years.” (02/24/25)
“President Trump recently issued an executive order instructing the US Mint to stop producing pennies. The reason for this is it costs nearly four cents to produce one penny. That’s right: the US government can’t even make pennies without losing money! President Trump may have signed the death certificate, but the Federal Reserve is the penny’s true killer. Since the Fed’s creation, the US dollar has lost over 97 percent of its value! President Trump’s hopes for a successful presidency may be the Fed’s next victim.” (02/24/25)
“You probably know the old joke about the three greatest lies: One size fits all, the check is in the mail, and … I won’t embarrass myself by repeating the third one. But the greatest lie of all is that democracy and capitalism are natural complements. Both, supposedly, thrive on free inquiry, free markets, and the rule of law. Milton Friedman argued that capitalism and freedom were two sides of the same coin. More recently, the Harvard economist Rebecca Henderson wrote in the Harvard Business Review, ‘The free market is one of the great achievements of the human race. It has been a driver of innovation, opportunity, and wealth around the world. But free markets need free political systems to succeed.’ Well, think again. In the past weeks, we’ve seen a near-total capitulation of capitalists to incipient dictatorship.” (02/25/25)
“Consider America’s roughly 14,000 Federal Aviation Administration air traffic controllers. If each of them spends just 10 minutes opening their work email, finding this request, drafting a response, proofreading it, and sending it off, that adds up to 2,333 hours of work. Can you think of a more cartoonish example of government waste than using 292 workdays’ worth of man-hours to clarify that, last week, air traffic controllers monitored airplanes? I actually can think of a more cartoonish example, in that it is even bigger in scale: Some 74,000 U.S. Postal Service letter carriers deliver mail on foot, making roughly $29 an hour on average. If they spend 10 minutes each, or 740,000 total minutes, drafting emails, that works out to nearly $360,000 in labor costs. For what? And how long will it take other workers to read ‘I was delivering letters’ 74,000 times?” (02/24/25)
“We’re all thrilled that Ross Ulbricht, the man who created a tax-free platform for selling illegal narcotics, weapons, and much more, now freely walks the streets of America. But what should libertarians think about people born in other countries who illegally come here to grow food, wash dishes, clean hotel rooms, and care for kids? Shouldn’t we support massive government efforts to exclude and deport them of all people? To answer my own rhetorical question: Obviously not. If libertarians won’t stand up for the rights of foreigners that our government treats like criminals for doing hard jobs without getting government permission — permission that is, by the way, almost impossible for them to obtain — then we stand for nothing and we are nothing.” (02/24/25)
“Politics is cutthroat. One tactic is insidious and effective: DARVO — Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender. Though often described in the context of Cluster B personality types, DARVO is more than just a psychopathology. It’s a strategic weapon wielded by those who seek to seize control of the narrative, silence their opponents, and dominate the public discourse. It’s no wonder. Politics selects for sociopaths. Those who deploy DARVO don’t just deflect blame — they invert reality. They deny wrongdoing, attack those who challenge them, and claim to be the real victims. But this is no ordinary deflection. It’s an unwholesome maneuver designed to keep adversaries on the defensive while rallying allies through manufactured grievance.” (02/24/25)
“I recently had a conversation of a kind that will be familiar to many of you. Anonymous Jones remarked that we Americans probably work too much and should spend more time with our families. I concurred, but added that American work habits are not an arbitrary corporate imposition but an aspect of a complex, organically evolved system of production and consumption, and that this cannot simply be rearranged according to the aesthetics and personal sensibilities of would-be social managers. (I’m tons of fun at parties, really.) Jones’[s] smugly offered response to all that was: Well, then, maybe we should consume less and be happy with that. Harrumph, etc. To which I added: But you aren’t talking about consuming less — you are talking about consuming more, in the form of leisure time.” (02/24/25)
“The Zizians add their story to the list of ignorant scientists. Ted Kaczynski, the so-called Unabomber, a mathematics Ph.D. and Berkely professor, was cut from the same sort of cloth. These stories would be ludicrous if they had not involved murders of innocent people and wasted lives, including the criminals’ lives, and if they did not suggest deeper knowledge problems. … Frederic Hayek explained the problem of ‘scientism,’ which he defined as an improper and naive application of the methods of the exact sciences to the study of society. It is very tempting, especially for narrowly focused scientific experts with no knowledge of economics, to neglect the varied preferences that motivate individual actions and to ignore the unplanned social order that results. A social order efficient for satisfying individual preferences is impossible to engineer and reconstruct from above.” (02/24/25)
