Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Gerard Lyons
“One word describes this Budget: bad, but it can be used three times, bad, bad, bad. Bad in terms of its fiscal consequences, economic impact and the incentives it embeds. Because so much of the Budget was trailed in advance, the initial impact of it may be seen as neutral. It’s not. The Red Book confirmed that Britain is a high public spending, high tax and high borrowing economy—and with no appetite ever to reform. The Budget provided a decisive shift away from a focus on economic growth to redistribution as a driver of fiscal policy. Tax hikes, not trimming public spending. Hitting work, not incentivising it. And saddling businesses with higher costs. The unintended consequences of the Chancellor’s 88 fiscal measures will be hard to quantify, but is unlikely to be economically beneficial.” (12/03/25)
“Across the country, entire neighborhoods are losing their grocery stores — and not just big chains, but independents as well as family-owned shops and markets. It’s part of a broader pattern of food access disappearing where it’s needed most, often in poorer neighborhoods, larger Black or Latino communities and areas with a history of disinvestment. Some companies, like Walmart and Kroger, promote themselves as ‘a community partner’ only to turn around and cite the very same conditions as reasons to leave. In the South and West Sides of Chicago and parts of Detroit or Kansas City, Mo., grocery stores have left, citing low profits, crime or aging infrastructure. Other times, stores simply consolidate or move to wealthier suburbs. Have city-run stores been tried? Yep! But mostly in rural areas. Baldwin, Fla. (a town of about 1,300) opened its own grocery store, in 2019, after the last independently owned one closed.” (12/03/25)
“…the bad news is that they can’t agree which one. I explained the debate more here, but the short version is: twin studies find that most traits are at least 50% genetic, sometimes much more. But molecular studies – that is, attempts to find the precise genes responsible – usually only found enough genes for the traits to be ~10-20% genetic. The remaining 35% was dubbed ‘missing heritability.’ Nurturists argued that the twin studies must be wrong; hereditarians argued that missing effect must be in hard-to-find genes.” (12/03/25)
“The Trump administration’s killings of scores of Venezuelans are justifiably provoking outrage. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth recently proclaimed, ‘We have only just begun to kill narco-terrorists.’ Donald Trump and Hegseth are cashing a blank check for carnage that was written years earlier by President Barack Obama. … Many Americans who voted for Obama in 2008 expected a seachange in Washington. However, from his first weeks in office, Obama authorized widespread secret attacks against foreign suspects, some of which spurred headlines when drones slaughtered wedding parties or other innocents. On February 3, 2010, Obama’s Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair stunned Washington by announcing that the administration was also targeting Americans for killing.” (12/03/25)
“Legitimacy doesn’t come from official recognition. Government attention is poison to innovation. Look at Bitcoin: the moment government began paying attention, regulators attacked it with taxes, rules, and other interference. This destroyed much of the freedom and utility of cryptocurrency. Keep your filthy government off my life! Government doesn’t need a process to smother every human activity. Life doesn’t need to be micromanaged by politicians. Liberty — freedom tempered with responsibility — is enough. The market regulates itself when freed from government meddling. Dishonest companies go broke without government protecting them from competition or from cheated customers. Anyone seeking government protection from competition or consequences is in the wrong. Monopolies can only persist with government help. Irresponsible individuals never learn to be better when protected from consequences, or from their victims, by government rules.” (12/03/25)
“The history of the twentieth century is, in large part, the story of competing totalitarian ideas put into practice, and the destruction, immiseration, and death they produced. … A quarter of the way into the twenty-first century, the difference between then and now could not be more stark. While ours is a moment racked by popular discontent, the diminution and desecration of formal and informal institutions (often at the hands of these institutions’ ostensible leaders), and a significant increase in the breadth of ideas in circulation, there has been very little in the way of legitimately new ideas this century, either at the level of ideology or public policy. Indeed, most of the bad ideas in circulation today are old bad ideas, not new bad ideas.” (12/03/25)
“Trump’s cynical abuse of the pardon power to reward allies or simply to enrich himself and his family is obviously corrupt, which is hardly news. But as Lord Acton knew, absolute power does not corrupt only those who wield it: It ‘corrupts absolutely’ those who are adjacent to it, who are servants of that power. It is difficult to imagine that figures such as Pete Hegseth would be doing what they are doing … without the promise of a pardon should it come to that. … Congress lately cannot manage to perform even its most basic functions, and so this is not exactly a ripe time for a constitutional amendment. But we should begin the work of converting the president’s unilateral pardon power into something less corrupting, for example by requiring that pardons be ratified by a two-thirds majority vote in the Senate — even a simple majority would be an improvement.” (12/03/25)
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone
“President Trump has been holding talks with top advisors this week regarding potential US attacks on Venezuela in order to bring about regime change in yet another oil-rich nation. As the western political/media class frames Venezuela’s President Maduro as a ‘dictator’ who must urgently be removed from power, it is worth noting that any US military operation to remove him would be taking place directly against the will of the American public. A recent CBS News poll found that seventy percent of Americans ‘would oppose’ the US taking military action against Venezuela. So here we have the president of a nation which calls itself a democracy, holding meetings to plan military operations which are completely and unambiguously against the wishes of the electorate, in the name of removing a dictator and spreading freedom and democracy. Interesting.” (12/03/25)
