“The DSA has moved from a principled pro-democracy stand on world affairs to tankie turpitude. Today’s DSA includes explicitly communist factions. Yet Harrington rejected the brutality of Soviet and Chinese communism and his icons were real social democrats. In 1980, the DSA founder organized a conference attended by West Germany’s Social Democratic Chancellor Willy Brandt, Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme, and future French President François Mitterrand. In 1990, Mayor David Dinkins (the first DSA-member to serve as mayor of New York—not Zohran Mamdani) hosted Brandt, who was by then president of the Socialist International (an alliance of mainstream social democratic parties), at City Hall. Today’s DSA would regard those men as insufficiently socialist …” (08/05/26)
“The specs for Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s magical city-run grocery stores demand the moon, but shoppers will be lucky to find some overripe green cheese. As with most city contracting, the Economic Development Corp.’s official Request For Proposals outlines an implausible wish-list that will deliver less than half what Mamdani promised at more than twice the price. The city wants potential operators of the stores to submit specific financial plans for stocking, staffing and operating five supermarkets — when the city hasn’t built any of the five, nor chosen locations for three. These imaginary stores must be managed under a business plan out of Alice in Wonderland: No deli counter allowed, but they must sell fruit, tuna, bean, chicken, egg and potato salads. The operator should have a pre-existing ‘cost-effective” supply chain, but also source from “local suppliers and small businesses while keeping prices low.'” (08/06/26)
“The Supreme Court’s jurisprudence on warrantless border searches has previously focused on the illegal movement of goods and people in and out of the country. But a phone is a different kind of container from a car or a piece of luggage, and the high Court has yet to rule on digital searches. EFF rightly argues that device searches are different because only a few possible kinds of contraband can be contained on a phone—including child pornography. Nevertheless, as it stands, border officials anywhere in the country can initiate a manual search of your device simply by stating that they are looking for such digital contraband. That is a legal standard that is easily exploited as a pretext to target someone for reasons that have nothing to do with contraband, digital or otherwise.” (08/05/26)
“The return of hard populism and bombastic strongmen has raised once again some old questions: Why does populism keep coming back? And why can’t it get anything done for the people? A close look at the institution of individual private property, and the romantic collectivist counterargument for the organic unity of labor ownership, will shed light on why populism is so persistent. To foreshadow the conclusion: Marx understood the problem, but he missed the solution completely.” (08/05/26)
“Historically speaking, Uncle Sam isn’t very good at managing money. Because the politicians and bureaucrats who run the U.S. government aren’t good at managing money, they’ve opened the door to massive losses through fraud. In 2024, the GAO estimated that from 2018 through 2022, the U.S. government lost between $233 billion and $512 billion dollars per year to fraudsters. These are not small amounts of money. … If fraud comes in at the low end of the GAO’s estimates, it would reduce the federal deficit by 12.5%. At the high end, it would reduce the U.S. government’s budget deficit by 28%. Either way, reducing its fraud losses to zero would not be enough to eliminate 2026’s budget deficit.” (08/05/26)
“What economists have argued for generations is now reflected in public opinion: Americans see free trade as the better alternative to protectionism.” (08/05/26)
“As his war in Iran has imploded, his poll numbers have plummeted, the U.S. economy has cratered, and he finds himself in the grip of a steep cognitive decline, President Donald Trump has increasingly lashed out, calling for cataclysm, slaughter, and even genocide. As he tries desperately, if ham-handedly, to extricate himself from a losing war, the commander-in-chief of the world’s most destructive military offers up deranged rants, baying for blood and issuing orders that throw the concept of proportionality in warfare out the window. Trump’s bloodthirsty rhetoric has been borne out in asymmetrical slaughter, with Iranian fatalities exceeding American deaths by multiple orders of magnitude. And this follows similarly lopsided casualty tolls in Trump’s conflicts in Somalia, Venezuela, Yemen, and on the high seas.” (08/05/26)
“On August 6, 1945 at 8:15 am local time, our world changed forever when the US dropped the first atomic bomb used in war over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The immediate death toll was approximately 70,000 with ~140,000 to have died by year’s end. Three days later, the US would drop a plutonium bomb over the city of Nagasaki. The immediate death toll there was ~40,000 with ~70,000 to have died by year’s end with a combined total of ~210,000. Three weeks earlier, following the atomic bombing of New Mexico with the Trinity test, the nuclear age was thrust upon mankind. The nuclear legacies from victims and survivors of the atomic bombings, Hibakusha, and their history lingers to this day. The legacy extends from the mining for the nuclear materials and its impact on local communities to the processing, testing, use, storage, and waste management, as well as the impacts and risks of nuclear power to this day.” (08/06/26)
“It is individuals who make moral choices. Even if they have been brainwashed by society, schools, or even parents, it is still ultimately their choice whether to act or refuse to act. Even if they are enslaved, assured of several punishment for disobeying their master(s), it is still a personal, individual decision. Organizations, even governments, have no morals of their own.” (08/05/26)
“According to a new report from Advancing American Freedom’s Plymouth Institute for Free Enterprise, tariff lobbying revenues reached $9.9 million for the second quarter of 2026, a 690 percent increase over the same quarter in 2024 and a 956 percent increase over 2016 (pre-Trump) levels. The number of registered tariff lobbying disclosures has jumped 230 percent in just two years. At least 22 contracts listed ‘tariffs’ as their sole lobbying issue. The surge is not surprising. When the federal government arrogates to itself the power to decide who receives carve-outs and exceptions, it transforms a free and open market into a system of cronyism and influence currying.” (08/05/26)
