Source: Chris Matthew Sciabarra
by Chris Matthew Sciabarra
“Two years after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the war had taken a deep emotional toll on the entire family, not just those on the battlefield but everyone at home as well. Mom was trying to keep a positive outlook, at least in her letter writing, in her hopes for an early Allied victory. In a letter dated December 5, 1943, [my uncle] George replied: ‘I see you are still trying to predict when the war will be over with. I gave that up, not that I am discouraged but I guess I may as well get used to taking things the way they come.'” (08/26/25)
“A new report released Friday from the Congressional Budget Office is surprising, even stunning. The ‘CBO’ is not thought to be a friend of Republican presidents and Congresses. Questions always arise from ‘supply-siders’ about whether CBO rejects serious ‘dynamic scoring’ of developments in the law and in major regulatory actions. Whatever the agency’s methodology, it issued a report on the Trump tariffs at the close of last week. ‘We project that increases in tariffs implemented during the period from January 6, 2025, to August 19, 2025 will decrease primary deficits (which exclude net outlays for interest) by $3.3 trillion if the higher tariffs persist for the 2025‒2035 period,’ Phillip Swagel, CBO’s director wrote. ‘By reducing the need for federal borrowing, those tariff collections will also reduce federal outlays for interest by an additional $0.7 trillion.'” [editor’s note: So under perfect conditions, over a ten-year period, tariffs would reduce the politicians’ deficits by about 20% at the expense of American consumers? Big whoop – TLK] (08/26/25)
“Banking is probably the most highly regulated industry in America, especially after the 2008 ‘financial crisis.’ Peter Conti-Brown and Sean Vanatta have produced the first comprehensive account of how our system came to be. This may be the best book ever written about bank regulation. For those inclined to say ‘That’s like being the tallest building in Topeka, Kansas,’ the absence of competition is significant. Banking has been conspicuously missing from scholarship on the administrative state.” [editor’s note: If you’re interested in trivia, the tallest building in Topeka, the state capitol building, is only three feet shorter than the tallest building in Washington, DC, the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception – TLK] (08/26/25)
“When I was in 5th grade, I read a fun little book called Donkey’s Can’t Sleep in Bathtubs and Other Crazy Laws. Since I didn’t know any economics at the time, the idea of “crazy laws” was novel to me. My mature reaction: Even today, it’s striking how almost all of the book’s crazy laws are full prohibitions — the titular law aside, other examples include ‘You can’t keep ice cream cones in your back pocket,’ ‘You can’t wake a sleeping bear to take a picture,’ and ‘Women can’t drive in housecoats.’ The same mentality that looks at petty problems and thinks, ‘There ought to be a law’ almost never thinks, ‘This calls for a $.37 Pigovian tax.'” (08/26/25)
Source: CounterPunch
by Tatishe Nteta, Adam Eichen, Alexander Theodoridis, Jesse Rhodes, & Raymond La Raja
“Americans are paying close attention to the prolonged Epstein controversy. Our polling finds that 3 in 4 respondents have heard, read or seen ‘a lot’ or ‘some’ about Epstein. Moreover, most believe that Trump is fumbling the matter. … When we drill down on the 47% of 2024 Trump voters who disapprove of Trump’s handling of the Epstein controversy, we find significant cracks in the MAGA facade. Among members of this group, 28% now disapprove of Trump as president.” (08/26/25)
Source: Common Dreams
by Rev. Graylan Scott Hagler
“In my 50-some years of community and political ministry, and organizing that resisted Boston’s test with ‘stop and frisk’ after the hoax of Charles Stuart murdering his wife and blaming it on a Black man, I thought I had seen it all. Then when Edward Coristine (a 19-year-old former Department of Government Efficiency worker and software engineer known online as ‘Big Balls’) was assaulted in Dupont Circle in reportedly a carjacking incident it was deja vu of Boston and the neighborhood where I lived, Roxbury, being turned upside down again. I thought I had already seen the worst of white reaction to Blackness, but again I was wrong.” (08/26/25)
“How a supply chain failure brought down an ancient civilisation: a tale with disturbing implications for present day societies with their brittle energy logistics.” (08/26/25)
“Short version: no. … US Treasury interest rates are set in the market, not by the Federal Reserve. Like most prices (and an interest rate is a price), the rate emerges from the intersection of supply and demand. The rate is not set by the Federal Reserve. The Federal Reserve tries to influence rates through its monetary policy, but it does not set rates. If the Federal Reserve lowers its rates but the fundamental supply and demand in the marketplace does not change, neither will Treasury rates. It’d be like pushing on a rope: no matter how much you push, it’ll just coil in on itself.” (08/26/25)
Source: The American Conservative
by Eldar Mamedov
“The Trump administration’s deployment of more than 4,000 sailors and Marines to the southern Caribbean — reportedly to combat drug cartels — marks a dangerous escalation in its policy toward Venezuela. While President Donald Trump is right to identify transnational criminal networks as a threat to the health and safety of the American people, this militarized approach ignores strategic realities, contradicts intelligence assessments, and risks repeating the errors of past interventionist failures.” (08/26/25)
