“There are few characters more repellent than the late Jeffrey Epstein. His life left a line of human wreckage and misery. Those associated with Epstein have also faced public backlash and recriminations throughout the years. Recently, however, the Epstein scandal took a new turn. Due to unprecedented access to once-sealed material, the public is now combing through emails, appointment books, and photos with a voracious interest in his private associations and contacts. Most of these people are not accused of any criminal conduct, mind you — just notorious association. The result has been the humiliation and condemnation of various individuals revealed in the files. The question is whether we should consider the implications of such transparency and how it can expose those who are not accused of any crime.” [editor’s note: “If you’ve got nothing to hide, you’ve got nothing to fear” instantly disappears when it’s the powerful getting exposed – TLK] (12/13/25)
Source: The Daily Economy
by Daniel J Smith & Scott Beaulier
“When Sen. Bernie Sanders and New York City Mayor-Elect Zohran Mamdani recently rallied with striking Starbucks workers, they trumpeted a ‘New York where every worker can live a life of decency.’ Mr. Mamdani promised a $30 minimum wage in the name of dignity on the campaign trail. Their intentions might be noble; their logic isn’t. By artificially hiking entry-level wages through political mandates rather than skills, productivity or experience, they don’t lift up workers; they wall off the very on-ramp to mobility. We know this firsthand. Neither of our first real jobs was glamorous. They were at McDonald’s in Iron Mountain, Michigan (Scott) and Kmart in Midland, Michigan (Dan).” (12/12/25)
“A ‘Pareto improvement’ (named for the 19th-century polymath Vilfredo Pareto) is a useful idea from economics: It is change that makes at least one party better off without making anyone worse off — because different people have different preferences and priorities, it is possible to reallocate goods in a way that is not zero-sum. … Being able to spot a Pareto opportunity is also a big part of how political negotiation works — at least it was back when negotiation and compromise were what politicians normally did with their time instead of being part-time pundits and full-time social-media trolls. Donald Trump likes to present himself as the great deal-maker …. but he is not very good at it …. he cannot calculate the trade-offs, because he lacks two pieces of information critical to any negotiation: He doesn’t understand what the other guy wants, and he doesn’t know what he wants.” (12/12/25)
“Gabriel Garcia-Aviles was a 56-year-old grandfather with a work permit who’d been living in the US for over 30 years. He was a beloved member of his Southern California community. This fall, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents detained Garcia-Aviles and sent him to the Adelanto immigration detention center. He died around a week later, with ICE only informing his family that he was in critical condition once he was on his deathbed. At the hospital, his daughter Mariel found him ‘unconscious, intubated,’ and with ‘dried blood on his forehead.’ He had ‘a cut on his tongue and blood on his lips’ and ‘broken teeth and bruising on his body,’ according to reporting from LA Taco. No clear cause of death was given, leaving his family shattered and still searching for answers. That’s the second death this year at Adelanto.” (12/13/25)
Source: Reason
by C Jarrett Dieterle & Shawn Regan
“As traditional gathering places disappear, market-based funding could expand parks, courts, and other spaces that help people reconnect without raising taxes.” (12/13/25)
“My opponents feared it would destabilize marriage more generally. It didn’t. Marriage rates were 6.9 per 1,000 in 2015 and 6.1 today — a decline in line with the previous half-century. Not great, but there’s no sign that gay marriage had any serious impact. Divorce rates? They have actually improved since 2015: from 3.1 to 2.4 per 1,000 in 2023. … Married couples have higher household incomes, lower poverty rates, higher levels of employment, better health than unmarried ones, higher home-ownership rates — and report greater social acceptance. … queer activists, of course, loudly insisted that same-sex couples rejected the institution of marriage and would never join it. But the number of married gay men and lesbians more than doubled from 390,000 in 2015 to 823,000 now; and nearly 60 percent of same-sex cohabiting couples are now married, compared with 40 percent in domestic partnerships.” (12/12/25)
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone
“US forces have seized an oil tanker carrying some 1.8 million barrels of oil from Venezuela to Cuba as part of its ongoing series of warmongering escalations against the Maduro government. When asked what would be done with the oil, President Trump told the press, ‘We keep it, I guess.’ Meanwhile Chuck Schumer is refusing to oppose Trump’s regime change interventionism against Venezuela, and CNN just had former US intelligence official Beth Sanner on to proclaim that the Trump administration’s act of piracy ‘is absolutely normal.’ So Trump’s ostensible opposition in the political-media class are putting absolutely no inertia on this. The US pirating a Cuba-bound oil tanker from Venezuela illustrates how the empire is hurrying to shore up control over Latin America in the same way the US and Israel are quickly shoring up control over the middle east.” (12/12/25)
“It is hard to know whether Donald Trump or the MAGA movement he created is falling apart faster. The 79-year-old president is deteriorating rapidly before our eyes—cankles puffier, bruises and bandages on his hand more ever present. He’s nodding off at event after event, slurring his words, his behavior increasingly erratic. And he has become painfully sensitive to the fact that his decay is so apparent, going as far as suggesting that media outlets reporting about his health are guilty of treason. Of course, every effort he makes to prove he’s not one step away from melting into a bubbling orange puddle seems to make it clearer that he’s losing it. As bad as all that is, however, MAGA may be collapsing even more quickly than its creator.” (12/12/25)
“Democratic pols are knocking heads over homelessness: One approach to the problem reflects reality, and the other is sheer lunacy. On the lunatic side, Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani is vowing to let homeless encampments spill into every Gotham neighborhood. And in Connecticut, Democratic state lawmakers are about to pass a law that will keep local officials from cracking down on living rough in parks or vehicles. But Democrats with higher aspirations, like California’s Gov. Gavin Newsom and Boston’s Mayor Michelle Wu, are reading the political tea leaves — and distancing themselves as far as they can from such misplaced compassion. After all, Americans favor clearing homeless encampments by nearly two to one, an August AP-NORC/Harris poll found. The general public has it right: Freezing to death, being murdered, or dying of an overdose on a urine-soaked mattress does not equal kindness.” (12/12/25)
“In rejecting yesterday a redistricting plan backed by President Donald Trump, Indiana’s Republican-controlled senate did not merely deny Republicans two new U.S. House seats in next year’s midterm elections. They also engaged in a mass revolt against the president. … The significance of Indiana’s noncompliance lies not in the specifics of what was refused — attempts to gerrymander electoral maps are hardly unprecedented, even though a mid-decade battle violates norms — but in the act of refusal itself. Trump’s authoritarian project relies on the cultlike hold he has over his party. Republicans have come to understand that the cost of defying Trump is the death of their political career. … What politician is willing to sacrifice their career or their family’s safety for a single act of defiance Yet the spines of Indiana Republicans stiffened where so many others snapped.” (12/12/25)
