“President Donald Trump is threatening significant layoffs of federal workers unless talks aimed at ending the ‘Schumer shutdown’ show some progress. They’re not even close; as Senator John Kennedy posted on X: ‘You’d need an Excel spreadsheet to keep track of all the Senate Democrats’ demands for re-opening the government.’ After all, Team Trump has been encouraging the downsizing of federal agencies since it took office. Just eight days after the president was inaugurated, the Office of Personnel Management sent an email inviting almost the entire federal workforce to resign. As of today, some 150,000 federal employees have taken advantage of the offer; most will be leaving their positions in coming weeks.” [editor’s note: The Republicans control the House, Senate, and White House. The government is “shut down” because the Republicans want it “shut down” – TLK] (10/07/25)
“Let’s lay aside the somewhat dubious legal reasoning behind ‘determining’ that the U.S. is at ‘war’ with non-state actors, and the specious claim that such non-state actors are under the direct control of the Caracas regime, all of which seems like a clumsy and even embarrassing effort to get around Congress’s residual war powers. … Venezuelan aliens entering the country illegally have fallen to negligible numbers, so it seems unlikely that this is about the administration’s immigration policy, either. Chinese, Russian, and Iranian cooperation with Venezuela has been on the rocks these past few years, due to the Venezuelan regime being a terrible business partner on pretty much every metric …. So if it’s not about drugs, and it’s not about immigration, and it’s not about cooperation with American adversaries, what’s it about?” (10/07/25)
“While the media focus on the political and policy implications of the recent federal appellate court decision upholding in-part (and remanding in-part) a lower court summary judgment against President Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’ tariffs, there are both legal and judicial aspects of the case that merit attention as the case wends its way to expedited consideration by the Supreme Court. (The tariffs remain in place pending the Supreme Court’s decision; oral arguments are scheduled for early November.) First, it bears underscoring that while the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals endorsed the substantive aspects of the lower court’s decision, it nonetheless remanded the court’s remedy in the case — a permanent injunction — back to the court to apply the subsequently released Supreme Court’s decision in Trump v. Casa, Inc. regarding the authority of lower courts to issue ‘universal injunctions.'” (10/07/25)
“An email from Voters Not Politicians (VNP) predicts that if a certain popular ballot measure gets enough signatures ‘it’s likely to pass.’ Great! Wonderful to see democracy in action, eh? Not so much for this leftwing political action committee, however. ‘We have to keep this proposal off of Michigan’s ballot in 2026,’ the email went on. The initiative petition in question is Michigan’s Citizen Only Voting Amendment, which (1) clearly establishes that ‘only’ U.S. citizens are eligible voters in all state and local elections, (2) mandates that the Secretary of State check the voter rolls for citizenship status, and (3) requires photo ID to vote.” (10/07/25)
“80 years following the US atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Nobel Peace Prize Group, International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, or IPPNW, has just completed their 24th World Congress in Nagasaki. This congress brought together 324 intergenerational health professionals, medical students, and activists from the Global South and North from 34 of IPPNW‘s 56 member nations. The theme of this meeting was: ‘A World Without Nuclear Weapons—Nagasaki as the Last A-bombed City’. The timing of this year’s congress in Nagasaki is significant. Our nuclear world at 80 stands at the brink of nuclear war either by intent, miscalculation, or from disruptive technology. The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has moved the minute hand of their infamous Doomsday Clock to 89 seconds till midnight, the closest it has been since the atomic bombings.” (10/07/25)
Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by Ryan McMaken
“It was not the Renaissance or the Enlightenment that gave us ideas about limiting state power, opposing taxes, or protecting private property. Indeed, the best political ideas of the Renaissance — those that called for limits on political power — were holdovers from earlier medieval thought. In contrast, the late Renaissance is more characterized by innovations in political thought that asserted taxation is a good thing, and that kings ought to be able to raise taxes more easily for the good of a new thing we now call the sovereign state. … during the Middle Ages, taxation was considered to be appropriate only as an extreme measure in times of emergency, and as a last resort. Kings were expected to subsist on revenues from their own private property, and to respect the private property of others.” (10/07/25)
“The decline of Rome has been used to justify everything from military expansion to moral crusades, from welfare cuts to tax reforms. But amid the noise of comparisons, one of Rome’s sharpest critiques — delivered not by a statesman or historian, but by a satirical poet — has been largely ignored. In Satire X, Juvenal decries a citizenry that once chose consuls and generals but now hungers only for bread and circuses. It was not invading hordes or economic collapse that signaled the end of civic virtue, but a populace seduced into apathy by free grain and gladiatorial spectacle. That Americans so often cite Rome’s fall without invoking its most damning metaphor may reveal more about our condition than we care to admit.” (10/07/25)
“A ‘call’ to an interstate convention is an invitation for state representatives to meet at a particular time and place to discuss prescribed issues. During the Founding Era, convention calls were issued by the Continental and Confederation Congresses, by prior conventions and — most frequently — by individual states. Who gets the credit for calling the most important convention of all — the gathering that drafted our U.S. Constitution? Writers most often claim the Confederation Congress did, citing its resolution of February 21, 1787. However, the honor also has been claimed for the New Jersey legislature, the Virginia legislature, and the 1786 Annapolis Convention. Ironically, the most common assertion — that Congress called the convention — is the most obviously wrong.” (10/06/25)
“President Trump wanted an excuse to send National Guard troops to Chicago, and now he’s got one. The Windy City in recent days has done its best imitation of Los Angeles, where resistance to Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations created the justification for a Guard deployment a couple months ago. Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson hate the notion of the National Guard in the streets of the city, but have failed to rally Chicago residents to do the one thing necessary to avoid the deployment — let federal officers do their job. The word should have gone out long ago: Don’t riot outside ICE facilities. Don’t ram cars into ICE vehicles.” [editor’s note: The word should have gon out long ago to beat the ICE thugs down hard so they quit being thugs and get real jobs – TLK] (10/07/25)
Source: David Friedman’s Substack
by David Friedman
“A firm engaged in this sort of discriminatory pricing faces two practical problems. The first is the problem of distinguishing customers who will buy the good at a high price from those who will not. In the examples I have given that is done indirectly by characteristics of the buyer or the product. The second problem is preventing resale. It does no good to offer your product at a low price to poor customers if they then turn around and resell it to rich ones, thus depriving you of high price sales. This is why discriminatory pricing is so often observed with regard to goods that are consumed on the premises, transportation, movies, speeches, and the like. If GM sells cars at a high price to rich customers and at a low price to poor ones, Rockefeller can send his chauffeur to buy a car for him.” (10/06/25)
