“The idea that tax cuts, deregulation, and a slightly less destructive monetary policy can produce enough economic growth to eliminate deficits has been an article of faith among many conservative economists and Republican politicians since the late seventies. An insight of supply-side economists is that, since cutting taxes incentivizes people to work and invest, government can increase revenue by cutting taxes. Over time, the growth produced by low tax rates is expected to enable government to reduce or even eliminate its debt without making spending cuts. This theory benefits Republicans who can campaign promising to cut taxes while avoiding discussing what may be unpopular spending cuts. One of the problems with this theory is deficit spending itself inhibits economic growth by causing the Federal Reserve to monetize the federal debt.” (10/19/26)
“The Republicans have been so successful at hyping the fraud around the Feeding Our Future child nutrition program in Minnesota that even liberal Democrats reflexively all say ‘fraud’ when they discuss Minnesota. Apparently, it is news to even well-informed types that Trump and his sycophants lie about liberal politicians, especially successful ones like Minnesota Governor Tim Walz. Rather than wallow in contrition over the fraud that took place, it would be worth spending more time in Reality Land. No one should ever apologize for fraud. It is a serious crime, especially when the money was designated for a nutrition program designed to help children from low- and moderate-income families. But we need a sense of proportion. Fraud in government programs will never be zero.” (10/19/26)
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone
“Politico has a new article out titled ‘Anthropic quietly pitches its own AI safety bill to lawmakers’, revealing the contents of a leaked confidential draft on regulations the tech giant would be willing to accept in the name of public safety. Buried in paragraph four of the article, we come to the real story in these revelations: ‘The bill would let the government block a model’s release or use only if it poses a foreseeable, imminent risk of more than $1 billion in damages, or of killing or seriously injuring more than 50 people.'” (10/19/26)
“In my previous post, we asked whether AIs could improve themselves all the way to absurdly high levels of superintelligence. My conclusion: today’s feedback loop is probably too weak, because improving AI faces diminishing returns at every step. Even fully autonomous AIs doing all the research and coding don’t make those diminishing returns disappear. We should keep updating that conclusion as real-world parameters and data change. But we didn’t look closely at another possibility: running millions or billions of AI minds in parallel. How much do they help? That’s what we’ll look at here.” (10/19/26)
“What if people care only about the quality of the words, not the production mechanism? What if they are very happy to read AI-generated novels? Then two points would be worth noting. First, although one of my conclusions falls (humanity doesn’t stop reading), human writing does cease with profound consequences. Second, the doubt over watermarks should in theory go away—if readers care only about the quality of the output, AI watermarks would not be detrimental to those who publish AI-generated content. But that scenario suggests a weakness in the position of those who most strenuously advocate for AI writing. The vehemence with which they oppose watermarks (or the use of Pangram) suggests that they do not believe this. They know that what they sell depends on the readers not knowing the source. They are fighting to prevent people from acting on their preferences.” (10/19/26)
“For many obvious reasons, America needs an aggressive Congress to emerge from the November elections ready to restore the government’s balance of power. If the Iran War is still underway, one of the new Congress’s first jobs should be to end it. President Trump says he won’t resume strikes against Iran before the elections. It is not clear what he plans for afterward. But in addition to usurping Congress’s war powers, hurting the economy and costing U.S. and Iranian lives, this war of choice violates a sacred contract between commanders-in-chief and American families: the assurance that our sons and daughters will be sent to war only when there is a clear and present danger to national security and no other option but the military. Instead, Trump’s greed, personal grievances, ego and failure to learn from history all appear to play a role in this war.” (10/19/26)
“Journalism is experiencing one of its worst crises when it’s needed the most. Overall, news consumption is dropping. And it’s worse among young people, who largely get their news through social media, not news outlets. People under 30, more than any other age group, trust social media sources of news. The problem is that it’s hard to tell if your favorite social media source is a citizen journalist or a paid promoter. In a recent in-depth report, The New York Times revealed that social media platforms are rife with accounts that are paid to promote campaigns parading as personal opinion. Rather than hire well-known influencers with huge followings, politicians and organizations are now hiring huge numbers of accounts with smaller followings.” (10/19/26)
“Should this be seen as the Hans Christian Andersen story, in which the narcissistic emperor is finally exposed as a naked fool by a truth-telling child? Donald Trump is certainly all of these things: narcissistic, naked in his support for Putin and a fool. But the parallel doesn’t quite work because it hasn’t taken a child to reveal this. He has done it himself, in plain sight …. a better literary parallel might be Ian Fleming’s James Bond novel Goldfinger, in which the evil Auric Goldfinger attempts to stage his theft from Fort Knox with the help of a group of American mafia bosses, one of whom is the gloriously named Pussy Galore.” (10/19/26)
“This month, journalist Catherine Herridge is in the fight of her life — and the stakes for the country could not be higher. The former Fox and CBS reporter has long been one of the most prominent investigative journalists in the U.S., particularly on national security stories. She is now on her last appeal to the Supreme Court, attempting to protect the most vital prerequisite of the free press: confidentiality of sources. At issue is a 2017 story that aired on Fox News concerning a Virginia-based training firm patronized by Pentagon officials. Herridge exposed ties of the University of Management and Technology to the Chinese military. It was the kind of difficult, complex story that made Herridge such a respected figure in her profession. The subject of the story, University of Management and Technology founder Yanping Chen, sued, claiming that the exposure had led to her loss of employment.” (10/19/26)
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Jacob G Hornberger
“Right-wing and left-wing interventionists and interventionist mainstream-press commentators are up in arms over President Trump’s decision to ease economic sanctions against Russia in connection with the Russian government’s agreement to supply diesel fuel to the United States. The notion is that nothing — not even the midterms — must be permitted to interfere with the Cold War II racket that holds that Russia is an aggressor nation that is hell-bent on conquering the world and, therefore, that it is necessary to target the Russian populace with severe impoverishment and even death by starvation or illness with ever-more economic sanctions. … In the eyes of national-security statists, it is imperative that we continue hewing to the official narrative. Russia is coming to get us, just like before.” (10/19/26)
