Source: Law & Liberty
by Alex J Pollock & Edward J Pinto
“Once again, we have efforts to release Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from the conservatorship of the Federal Housing Finance Agency in which they have been confined for nearly 17 years — ever since the US Treasury did a 100 percent bailout of their creditors in 2008. … The US Treasury owns all the senior preferred stock of Fannie and Freddie; this stock has a combined liquidation preference of $341 billion as of December 31, 2024. This is more than twice their combined total book equity. In other words, not counting the government’s investment, Fannie and Freddie are deeply insolvent, and have been since 2008.” 903/31/25)
“Anyone who remembered Donald Trump’s first-term as president knew what to expect. So it’s no surprise to them that virtually every day brings a new outrage, another crisis and unabated turmoil. If you’re a federal employee or a private firm worker with a government contract, no matter how competent, you worry that come tomorrow you won’t have a job to support your family. If you’re on Social Security or Medicare you fret opening your emails. If you’re a farmer who invested money in a Department of Agriculture program, you may be out of luck. If you’re a parent with a child in special education or a dependent with a disability you worry about losing any government assistance. You might say that on Nov. 5, 2024, we asked for all this and now we must live with it.” (03/31/25)
“Bringing manufacturing back to the US is a complex challenge that requires a realistic assessment of economic, logistical, and structural factors. While political rhetoric often frames reshoring as a straightforward solution to job losses and trade imbalances, the reality is more nuanced. It’s one thing to incentivize existing manufacturing firms to relocate to the US; it’s another to rebuild entire supply chains and industrial ecosystems that have lain fallow. Simply imposing tariffs or offering subsidies won’t undo decades of economic shifts overnight. Instead, a sober approach requires acknowledging the trade-offs, understanding which industries can feasibly return, and recognizing that reshoring may not necessarily lead to the same kind of job growth that manufacturing once provided. This creates a difficult, perhaps insurmountable, trade-off.” (03/31/25)
“Appeasement was a bad idea in 1938, but it’s often a good idea. Ukraine would be wise to appease Russia. Ukraine’s supporters in the United States and Europe insist that any agreement ending Kyiv’s war with Russia must not involve Ukrainian territorial concessions, or Russia will profit from an inexcusable act of aggression against its neighbor. However, demanding a return to pre-conflict borders ignores current military realities. Russian forces occupy approximately 20 percent of Ukraine’s prewar territory, and there are no signs that Kyiv’s position is likely to improve. Indeed, Ukraine’s latest offensive into Russian-held territory near Kursk has been a spectacular failure. The long-term prospects for Ukraine in a war of attrition are not encouraging either.” (03/31/25)
“The best way to respect the complicated diversity of these regions or any region for that matter is with a no-state solution based on the principles of pan-secession and panarchy. Allow any population of consenting citizens the right to form a nation anywhere at any time as long as that nation is governed by voluntary citizenship rather than geography. … This is the dream of panarchy or many anarchies; a world governed beneath a million flags with each flag free to represent any ideology or creed that its people desire so long as citizenship remains a choice, and boundaries are defined purely by who happens to occupy that patch of dirt at any given time.” (03/30/25)
“When Donald Trump entered office, he faced a number of choices that had confronted the last three Republican presidents, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush. They all had the choice to either shrink government and reduce deficits or slow government growth while cutting taxes. They had the choice of using American power to restore deterrence by invading belligerents (e.g., Grenada, Panama, Iraq, Afghanistan) or targeting enemies without deploying ground troops to change governments. Republicans could either impose tariffs to ensure trade balances and fair trade or argue that free, even if unfair, trade was in the U.S.’s interest by lowering consumer prices, keeping domestic producers competitive, and assuming foreign subsidies were unsustainable.” [editor’s note: Hanson’s IQ seems to diminish with each op-ed he writes – TLK] (03/31/25)
Source: The Peaceful Revolutionist
by David S D’Amato
Today, our discussions about the relations between states take for granted vast, well-equipped, and highly professionalized militaries, sophisticated in both battlefield and political terms. Even states much smaller than the United States today spend tens of billions every year on their military forces and surrounding bureaucracy. But at the dawn of the modern age, there were very few standing armies. A standing army was a luxury too costly even for the richest and most powerful figures in present-day Germany. When Emperor Ferdinand II needed an army, he went to market to procure one with gold. The Thirty Years’ War stretched the fiscal and administrative capacities of the state as it existed, transforming it into something much more like the state we know today; war preparations and intensive military buildup provided the motivating force necessary to the kinds of hierarchical bureaucratization associated with the modern state.” (03/30/25)
“Managing Rand’s estate would entail more than handling her personal property. By the end of her life, her philosophy of objectivism — which proclaims the glory of individualism and the evils of altruism — had become a full-blown movement, and it was now [Leonard] Peikoff’s job to guide it forward. … With Rand no longer around to defend herself from critics, Peikoff redoubled his efforts to protect her. In 1989, he excommunicated a prominent objectivist named David Kelley — he’d read a Kipling poem at Rand’s burial ceremony — for the sin of speaking to a group of libertarians. (Despite Rand’s reputation, she was opposed to the libertarians of her time, dismissing them as anti-intellectual anarchists.)” (03/30/25)
“Globally, the list of major spacefaring nations — China and Russia preeminent alongside the U.S., with India, a country in an advanced stage of democratic backsliding, Japan, and the European Union in a second tier — does not inspire confidence that space policies and practices will be shaped with particular concern for liberal and democratic values. One can easily imagine a future in which authoritarian nations — or ones experiencing democratic backsliding — divide space into spheres of influence, much as they are prone to do on Earth. Perhaps they would designate particular celestial territories, orbits, or activities as the rightful province of one power or another. A private-sector space economy might fit into this crabbed scenario, but it might be dominated by well-connected companies that are willing to toe an autocratic line.” 903/30/25)
Source: In These Times
by Frederick Clarkson & Ben Lorber
“On October 12, 2024, tens of thousands of people thronged outside the U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C., for what organizers called the ’A Million Women’ rally. The event was staged by a clutch of leaders of the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR), a dynamic and fast-growing Christian Right movement that has influenced hundreds of millions of people around the world, including tens of millions in the United States. Timed to coincide with the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur, the themes of the gathering included winning Christian ’dominion’ over political institutions, mobilizing voters and — in keeping with the movement’s focus on the idea of spiritual warfare — exorcizing demons from the Capitol. But, although what limited media attention the event drew didn’t cover it, another major purpose was rallying support for Israel.” (03/31/25)
