“The really socialist mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani, the city’s new Handicapper General, wants to prevent the brightest children in the city’s school system from getting any extra training of their gifts and intelligence. So he’s trying to do what one of his predecessors, the pretty socialist Bill DeBlasio, failed to do: eliminate the public school system’s Gifted and Talented programs. What benefit could there be to students, their parents, and New Yorkers in general, in preventing gifted children from studying in schools and classrooms that give them the best chance of developing their gifts early in life? None whatsoever.” (02/06/26)
“Our lives are improved in all sorts of ways by courageous, risk-bearing entrepreneurs, who seek to change the world at a profit. For that reason alone, we should jealously safeguard an environment friendly to entrepreneurship. As the economic historian Deirdre McCloskey has shown through indefatigable research, when society is marred by envy of the richer and highly successful, we all suffer. Widespread prosperity soars, McCloskey demonstrates, when a culture in effect erects huge neon signs brightly flashing the message, ‘You think you have a great idea? Well, give it a go!’ That is not how people have felt through most of history. Envy that bred a fear of pioneers smothered innovation.” (02/06/26)
“The opening chords of The Rolling Stones’ ‘Gimme Shelter’ wash over a drone shot of Mar-a-Lago. As the camera shifts to a set of black high heels and then tilts up to the once-and-future First Lady, Mick Jagger screams ‘War, children, It’s just a shot away. It’s just a shot away.’ This is not a typical moment in what’s come to pass for a documentary in 2025: an endless stream of brooding explanations of lefty issues or recreations of murders rubber stamped for Netflix with overwrought scores. … But it’s this naked, smug lefty do-gooderism that has eroded the documentary form for the last two decades …” (02/06/25)
“In my recent post on US manufacturing jobs and tariffs, I mentioned a Wall Street Journal article that pointed toward American tariffs having little impact on Chinese exports; the exports are simply being shifted to other countries. In the earlier post, I discussed what that fact meant for US manufacturing jobs. Here, I discuss what that shift means for who bears the burden of the tax.” (02/06/26)
“The Trump phenomenon was supposed to be a changing of the old Republican guard, however imperfectly, for a new foreign policy ethos that was closer to Pat Buchanan and Ron Paul than Bill Kristol and David Frum. That’s exactly why so many neoconservatives and War Party Republicans got behind the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. So seven years ago, when Bolton tried to redefine Donald Trump’s America First brand as a continuation of McCain-Bush interventionism, I laughed. Did Bolton really think the conservative base was this gullible? I’m not laughing anymore. Hawks, including old neoconservatives, now present pro-war interventionism as America First all the time.” (02/06/26)
“If you’re ever asked to define the word oxymoron, just say ‘Congressional ethics.’ People instinctively burst out guffawing at the absurdity of linking Congress to upright behavior. But surprisingly, Republican congressional leaders say they’re now taking a bold stand for a little less corruption among their own members, targeting lawmakers who’ve been secretly enriching themselves through ‘insider stock trading.’ … recently, the party’s designated ethics watchdog, Rep. Bryan Steil (R-WI), rose on his hind legs to introduce the Stop Insider Trading Act. ‘If you want to trade stocks,’ Steil howled in operatic outrage, ‘go to Wall Street.’ Bravissimo! Except it was a fraud. Far from stopping the self-enriching stock scams of lawmakers like Bresnahan, Steil’s bill basically legalizes their corrupt transactions.” (02/06/26)
“Recent studies reveal a striking statistic: over the last decade, approximately 30% of primary care physicians have either retired or switched to non-clinical roles, leaving a notable gap in patient care. Something subtle has been happening in American medicine, and it’s easy to miss if you’re not looking for it. There have been no emergency declarations, no ribbon-cutting ceremonies, no breaking news alerts. No one has announced it officially. But if you pay attention — if you walk into clinics that once buzzed with conversation, if you notice how long it takes now to get an appointment, if you see how often a familiar nameplate disappears from a door — you begin to feel it. The waiting rooms are quieter. Not calmer. Not healthier. Just quieter in a method that feels wrong. The type of quiet that doesn’t signal relief, but absence.” (02/06/26)
Source: Macroeconomic Policy Nexus
by David Beckworth
“Quantitative Easing (QE) is back in the news. So, too, is the large size of the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet. The public’s renewed interest in these topics has been sparked by President Trump’s nomination of Kevin Warsh to be the next Fed Chair. Warsh is a vocal critic of both QE and the Fed’s expansive balance sheet, and he has called for a ‘regime change’ at the Fed on these issues. I am broadly sympathetic to Warsh’s concerns about the size of the Fed’s balance sheet, and in previous newsletters I have outlined several steps to carefully reduce it. In this piece, however, I will focus on QE itself.” (02/06/26)
Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Mark Nayler
“Spain receives much well-deserved praise for its rail network, the second-largest in the world after China’s, with around 4,000 kilometers (2,485 miles) of high-speed track. Rail travel in the Iberian country now accounts for 56% of all travel, more than road and air combined, with high-speed services connecting over fifty Spanish cities. In 2009, then-US President Barack Obama credited the 470-kilometer (292-mile) line linking Madrid to the southern city of Seville — the country’s first high-speed service, opened in 1992 — as one of the inspirations for creating a network of comparable efficiency across America. But after four incidents in less than a week, public trust in Spain’s world-class network has been shaken.” (02/06/26)
