Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Alyssa Srebrenik
“In November 2022, OpenAI released ChatGPT, and within days, the world changed. Artificial Intelligence was no longer an abstract concept — it was real, powerful, and accessible to anyone with an Internet connection. From coding assistance to content creation, the technology spread like wildfire, sparking both excitement and fear. Governments scrambled to understand its implications, corporations rushed to integrate AI into their business models, and independent developers saw an opportunity to break Big Tech’s monopoly on cutting-edge technology. The most disruptive force in human history had arrived, and the first instinct of politicians and corporations was to chain it down.” (03/12/25)
“In the aftermath of U.S. President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance’s attacks on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the White House last Friday, a number of United States lawmakers, world leaders, and political commentators have expressed outrage at their defense of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, as well as their victim-blaming rhetoric toward Zelenskyy and the Ukrainian resistance effort. Their stance, however, is not unique: For decades, the United States has held similar positions regarding military conquests and occupations by Morocco and Israel. The critical response to Trump’s willingness to allow Russia to annex parts of Ukraine has centered on the dangerous precedent of allowing a country to hold onto lands seized by military force. Former President Joe Biden, citing the ‘rules-based international order’, repeatedly noted the illegitimacy of any nation unilaterally changing international boundaries and expanding territories by force during his presidency.” (03/12/25)
“Yesterday was another day on the tariff hamster wheel, with a morning frenzy of threats and counter-threats between the United States and Canada suddenly giving way to an afternoon of more conciliatory talk, ultimately dumping us more or less back where we started 24 hours prior. After pledging not to back down on a planned 25 percent surcharge on electricity exports to the United States, Ontario Premier Doug Ford changed his tune after what he described as a ‘productive conversation’ with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick …. That was a big-time win, to hear the administration tell it …. But it seemed plain that Trump had been rattled by the ferocity of Ford’s threats.” (03/12/25)
“It’s no surprise the Department of Education faces nearly 50 percent reduction in force after Tuesday’s notice this week. If the Department of Education was a publicly traded company, its stock would be in freefall, analysts would be issuing dire warnings, and shareholders would be calling for the CEO’s resignation. Why? Because in the business world, companies that spend billions of dollars without achieving measurable success eventually collapse. Yet, when it comes to government institutions, failure seems to have no consequences – except for the taxpayers footing the bill. With President Donald Trump wanting to abolish the Department Of Education, should this agency have been RIP a long time ago? Since its establishment in 1979, the Department of Education has ballooned into a bureaucratic behemoth. In 2023, the department’s budget was roughly $79.6 billion, not including an additional $120 billion in pandemic relief funds allocated to schools.” (03/12/25)
Source: Center for a Stateless Society
by Logan Marie Glitterbomb
“I will be the first to say that we will never truly win. We will never obtain all of our political goals. Hell, we’ll probably never achieve anarchism … at least not on a mass scale. But that doesn’t justify doomerism. We may never achieve even a third of our goals but we’ll achieve even less if we don’t even fucking try. People are dying and those numbers only grow when people decide not to stand up and fight. Yes, Trump won the election. So. Fucking. What? We still have to fight.” (03/12/25)
“U.S. President Donald Trump and his police-state goons are trying to frighten people who dare even come close to people protesting his or Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s policies. This is how dictators intimidate citizens, how freedom dies, and is a clear violation of our Constitution. And, in all probability, this is just the beginning of what historians will someday define as a very ugly episode in American history. Mahmoud Khalil, a Syrian-born Palestinian green card-holder who graduated from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs with a master’s degree and is married to an American who’s now eight-months pregnant, was seized from his New York residence over the weekend and transported to a barbarous detention facility in Louisiana.” (03/12/25)
“Amid the chaos created by the frenetic initiatives of the Trump/Musk administration, a central puzzle is what the DOGE boys are trying to achieve with this assault on the federal bureaucracy. Are they simply smart-ass tech-bros trying to break things as fast as possible? Libertarians dedicated to substantially shrinking government? Or budget busters who really believe that they can quickly find US$2 trillion in waste, fraud, and inefficiencies in the federal government? We do not know how soon this project will crash on the rocks of political and policy reality, or how much harm it will impose in the meantime. But an old chestnut of political-science wisdom can help us understand the logic of this unprecedented attack on federal administrators and the limits of its success.” (03/12/25)
“The implication is that there is somehow a hope to get the territory under Russian occupation back by military force. But I just don’t see it. The Ukrainians have certainly been scrappy and creative and did a better job beating back the Russian thrusts at Kiev in the early days of the war than I would have guessed they would. They are now, though, fighting a static war of attrition with a county 4x its size. So what, at this point after 3 years, is the alternate plan that preserves territory? If that plan is to send a million American soldiers to Ukraine and risk escalation of the war, a nuclear exchange, and possibly a Chinese attack on Taiwan while our back is turned, then I am not going to agree.” (03/12/25)
“As Democrats do some soul-searching over where to go next, one thing to keep an eye on is how they reposition their pet issues. Yesterday, Ezra Klein, an opinion columnist for the New York Times, put out a decently persuasive video on what Democrats need to do to get back in the good graces of the American people. He frankly acknowledges that Democrats biggest failure has been with regard to how they govern the cities and states they control. ‘You cannot be the party of working families when the places you govern are places working families cannot afford to live,’ he says near the beginning of the video. These areas are hemorrhaging people to red states and red counties, staying above water only through the good graces of loose immigration policies and the generous influx of international migrants.” (03/12/25)
