Source: Washington Monthly
by Carter Dougherty
“A proposed settlement would give Visa and Mastercard’s duopoly a free pass, and won’t deliver meaningful relief on swipe fees.” (09/23/26)
https://washingtonmonthly.com/2026/09/23/the-secret-monopoly-making-everything-more-expensive/
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone
“Doordash has reached a historic $131.5 million settlement to repay workers in New York City for wages the food delivery app stole from them over the last four years, which sounds like a big win for the little guy if you don’t think about it too hard. … A hundred and fifteen million dollars. What do you think would happen to you if you stole $115 million from your employer? Can you imagine that not being treated as a crime? Can you imagine going ‘Haha, ya got me! I’ll return the cash. Can’t blame a guy for trying!’ and then paying a small fine and just going back to your life like it was no big deal? Of course you can’t. You know you’d be arrested, handcuffed, prosecuted for grand larceny, and then spend many years behind bars.” (09/24/26)
Source: Eastern New Mexico News
by Kent McManigal
“Why are we forced to pretend not to know the solutions? To pretend solutions are mysterious or too hard? Because government doesn’t benefit from solved problems. It loses power when problems are solved and people no longer beg to be rescued. Often, getting government out of the way is the solution. Crime is a solved problem. To pretend that no one knows how to reduce crime is a lie that only serves the criminals — both freelance and governmental. The solution is to stop criminalizing things everyone has a natural human right to do, including both what they choose to put into their bodies, and defense of person and property with the most effective tools ever invented for the purpose.” (09/23/26)
Source: In These Times
by Ramya Gosike
“The cost of healthcare just keeps going up — and millions of Americans are set to lose coverage. Under the GOP’s so-called ’Big Beautiful Bill’, around 17 million people in this country will lose health care thanks to the law’s Medicaid cuts, failure to renew Affordable Care Act subsidies and other changes. Those cuts accelerate after this year’s midterms. Instead, that money is going toward tax cuts for the rich plus record budgets for Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Pentagon. Immigrants — including well over 1 million residents who are lawfully present — will be especially hard hit. ” (09/23/26)
https://inthesetimes.com/article/immigrants-healthcare-ice-medicaid-medicare-snap-cuts-obbb
Source: Independent Institute
by Edward J López & Jon Murphy
“A country’s overall BOP must sum to zero. That is by accounting definition. When domestic buyers send money out to bring imports in (the current account), foreign exporters return money domestically as investment (the capital & financial account). The BOP is a form of double-entry bookkeeping applied to international trade. But it also means that the current account—composed mostly of trade in goods and services—can be in deficit, while the capital & financial account is in surplus.” (09/23/26)
https://www.independent.org/article/2026/09/23/unbalanced-treatment-balance-of-payments/
Source: Cato Institute
by Pierre Lemieux
“Politicians, government officials, and foreign policy analysts (especially of the ‘realist’ sort) regularly speak of the ‘national interest.’ The meaning of this expression may seem obvious: It is the public interest when the public considered is composed of the individuals within a ‘nation’ (as opposed to the ‘global public interest’ or a ‘sub-national public interest’). I take ‘nation’ to mean a society of individuals, not simply their state. But in reality, just as with the ‘public interest’ in general, the ‘national interest’ has little scientific or rationally ascertainable meaning.” (Fall 2026)
https://www.cato.org/regulation/fall-2026/dangerous-national-interest
Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by Connor O’Keeffe
“As a politician, Donald Trump has always been almost unmatched in his ability to direct and steer the media in ways that benefit him. Throughout his first term, Trump was excellent at making sudden policy reversals and grand, out-of-the-blue announcements that would leave the legacy media scrambling to keep up and therefore keep news consumers from looking too closely at his actual actions for too long. He would completely make up accomplishments and great political victories and operate as if they were real. … That approach of essentially creating and stoking delusions of success in the minds of voters is not actually a bad strategy for a politician. … But the fact remains that Trump has done very little to improve the material well-being of the American people and quite a lot to worsen it.” (09/23/26)
Source: Libertarian Institute
by James Bovard
“President Donald Trump signaled that he is entitled to raze the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts if he is not permitted to add his name to the building’s front wall. … The Trump administration’s contortions on this issue almost make Trump’s ravings on the Reflecting Pool seem sane. The Kennedy Center was doing fine financially until Trump took it over at the start of his second term. His behavior is Exhibit A on why culture should be separated from the State. Ironically, aside from his childlike obsession with renaming the Kennedy Center after himself, Trump has made some excellent proposals on federal cultural subsidies.” (09/23/26)
https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/crazy-cultural-commissar-trump/
Source: Law & Liberty
by Gary Winslett
“How does anything get built? What are the political precursors to development? Michael Munger has an interesting, and at times persuasive, argument that self-interest combines with particular institutional designs, such as public hearings, to create a prisoner’s dilemma where everyone knows that development is in aggregate desirable but wants that development to be in the next town over. This is, in many ways, the conventional story of NIMBY (not-in-my-backyard) politics. That story isn’t wrong per se, but it’s missing a critical component: culture. … I argue that three cultural practices (growth orientation, property rights norms, and positive-sum attitudes) act essentially as gates. If a place fails on any one of them, it is very likely to underbuild. Development will thus, over time, gravitate toward places that can pass all three of these cultural tests.” (09/23/26)
Source: Liberalism.org
by Jason Kuznicki
“‘Civilization’ has been an anchor for a host of moral panics, outbursts of violence, and dubious state-aggrandizing schemes. Liberalism’s enemies may say that we can’t have it. And yet we must, and we will. Liberalism isn’t just compatible with civilization. Liberalism offers an understanding of civilization that’s worth wanting and defending.” (09/23/26)