“I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but it’s almost like the GOP is secretly promoting the Democratic Socialists of America, which is now producing a lot of the energy and excitement within the Democratic and Republican parties. The DSA champions many views that exist wildly outside the mainstream of American politics, including the abolition of the police, prisons, the Pentagon and the U.S. Senate. This is all, to borrow a term from social science, bat guano insane. … but I’m not too worried, even if the GOP fails to weaponize the Red Menace. If you tune out the noise and simply look at the more mainstream question of socialism’s alleged rise in popularity, fears of a socialist takeover of America are absurdly overblown.” (07/29/26)
“For decades, cameras have been installed on American roads to snap pics of speeding (or not-speeding) vehicles so that fines can be mailed to the guilty (or innocent) motorists. These cameras are supposedly about ticketing for speeding. But they have also often been used as a means of revenue extraction. Now there’s a new angle. Super-smart, super-dumb artificial intelligence is being merged with street cameras.” (07/28/26)
“On January 6, 2021, Trump attempted to stage a coup and he will surely try again. Last time, only the integrity of a handful of Republican officials spared the Republic that fate. Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, rebuffed Trump’s demand to find exactly 11,780 votes, and Vice President Mike Pence refused to go along with Trump’s scheme, laid out in detail by John Eastman, to refuse to certify the results. This time, Trump is relying on four possible strategies to steal the election. The survival of our democracy depends on whether each of them can be foiled, and how.” (07/28/26)
“Students who are not taught the history of America’s founding, including the importance of limiting government to a few well-defined functions and separating power among three branches of government and between the federal government and the states, will be less likely to support constitutional government. Similarly young people who are not taught that prosperity comes from free markets, private property, and sound money will be more likely to believe the socialist delusion that the key to prosperity is surrendering our liberty to politicians. The lack of education in basic economics is why many confuse our current economic system with the free market and thus blame capitalism for problems caused by the government.” [editor’s note: It’s also why many confuse free markets with capitalism – TLK] (07/28/26)
“In eighteenth-century czarist Russia, a fake village was built by a Russian governor named Grigory Aleksandrovich Potemkin to deceive Catherine the Great about the condition of the peasants she ruled. ‘Potemkin Village,’ according to Time magazine, ‘signifies any deceptive or false construct, conjured often by cruel regimes, to deceive both those within the land and those peering in from outside.’ In Washington a few years ago, the media partnered with the Biden administration to concoct a Potemkin Village to deceive Americans about President Joe Biden’s faltering fitness for office. … Donald Trump is not as physically feeble as Joe Biden, though he is a shadow of his vitality in his first term. But Trump’s delusions on the Iran War seem as bad or worse than any imaginary vision that sent Biden wandering off stage at the wrong time.” (07/28/26)
“[Sam Tunick] was asked for a PIN to unlock his phone for an illegal, warrantless, and unjustified search. He gave the agents a number … a ‘duress code’ which, upon use by an agent, not by Tunick, erased all data on the phone and performed a complete factory reset rather than unlocking the device. Now, Tunick finds himself facing trial on charges of violating 18 US Code §2232, ‘Destruction or removal of property to prevent seizure.’ Two problems with the charge: First, Tunick didn’t destroy or remove anything. The CBP agent who stole his phone did. Second, the law only applies to ‘authorized’ searches and seizures. Absent a warrant issued by a court ‘upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized,’ no such ‘authorization’ exists.” (07/28/26)
“The FBI office in charge of maintaining the terrorist watch list is seeking an artificial intelligence system for pre-crime policing, according to procurement documents obtained by Reason. The request for information for vendors, posted by the FBI’s procurement division in March, solicits potential bidders for a project that would supercharge the Threat Screening Center (TSC) with new predictive AI capabilities—just as its focus moves from Islamist terrorism to domestic dissent. … The terrorist watch list maintained by the TSC is by its very nature a pre-crime entity—it seeks to prosecute crimes before they occur.” (07/28/36)
Source: ProSocial Libertarians
by Andrew Jason Cohen
“It’s never been clear to me why anyone would think that lowering the tax burden on wealthy people is more important than lowering it on poor people. I think we should lower the burden as much as possible on everyone, consistent with maintaining a just society. … Consider the mortgage deduction: why is it good to give home owners a tax break but not good to give home renters a tax break? What justifies that deviation? I’m not offering an answer; I want us to take the question seriously.” (07/28/26)
Source: Bluegrass Institute
by Joseph Verruni & Travis Fisher
“Kentuckians are right to worry that data centers will drive up their electric bills. When a single facility demands as much power as Owensboro, someone pays for the new plants and wires that serve it. The General Assembly is still arguing over how to make sure that someone isn’t the residential ratepayer. There is a simple answer, and Kentucky law currently forbids it: let large consumers build their own grid.” (07/28/26)
“In 1992, Congress created what’s commonly known as the 340B program in order to help safety-net hospitals and clinics stretch limited resources to serve low-income and uninsured patients. By requiring pharmaceutical manufacturers to sell prescription drugs at steep discounts to qualifying hospitals and clinics, the logic went, the 340B program aimed to keep medications accessible and affordable in underserved communities. Nearly 35 years later, however, the program bears little resemblance to what Congress had in mind, and there’s no reliable way to know whether patients still benefit from its growth.” (07/28/26)
