Source: Karl Dickey’s Freedom Vanguard
by Karl Dickey
“More tariff fun with our neighbors to the north coming up this week. Trump’s dumb Canadian tariffs drop this coming Wednesday, imposing a punitive 50% tax on Canadian imports to the United States. This includes steel, aluminum, lumber, cement, and various consumer goods. Emergency talks are underway, and hopefully, before you read this, the situation will have been resolved, but not likely. And the gaslighting of the American people continues under Trump, trying to make it sound like Americans are not paying extra for goods caught in the tariff net, but the bottom line is. The Trump administration attempts to sell tariffs as some kind of bizarre patriotic weapon to punish foreign governments for taking advantage of us financially, but the only ones penalized are American businesses and consumers.” (08/16/26)
“It should be obvious by now that Trump is not thankful for an independent judiciary, which he views as an illegitimate obstacle to his policy agenda and personal whims. That much is clear from his over-the-top denunciations of recalcitrant judges and justices, whom he habitually accuses of political bias or cowardice, sometimes recommending their impeachment. It is also clear from the arguments that Justice Department lawyers have made in court, especially during Trump’s second term.” (08/16/26)
“On August 5th, the Department of Veterans Affairs, Office of the Inspector General (VA OIG) released a report entitled ‘Review of Radiology Staffing and Services at the VA Washington D.C. Healthcare System’. The blandly titled report was an indictment of the second Trump administration’s misguided return-to-office (RTO) policy. The OIG documented that the RTO caused a ‘mass exodus’ of radiologists from the medical center and delays in patient care (although no documented patient harm). Additionally, the report found that facility leaders didn’t follow appropriate protocols in notifying quality management of known problems and failed to track incomplete radiologic studies. The OIG report appeared just five days after The American Prospect reported on multiple problems at the DC VA Medical Center, one of them being the loss of its radiologists.” (08/17/26)
“In a world where every bank transfer, card swipe, and digital payment leaves a permanent trail for the state to follow, the need for tools that restore private exchange has never been greater. Governments expand financial surveillance under the banners of ‘anti-money laundering’ and ‘tax compliance,’ while inflation and capital controls punish ordinary people simply for trying to preserve their wealth or trade freely. Agorists have long understood that the most effective path to liberty is not petitioning rulers but building parallel systems that operate outside their reach. Zano is one of those systems. It is not merely another privacy coin. It is an open-source Layer-1 blockchain designed from the ground up so that every transaction, every asset, and even the type of asset being transferred remains hidden by default.” (08/16/26)
“Normally when we speak of ‘losing’ something or ‘costing’ something, it’s in terms of already having that thing. You lose $50 on a bet, or a steak dinner costs you $50. Using the definition preferred by supporters of ever-increasing government revenue, though, I ‘lost’ thousands of dollars yesterday when I walked past a bank instead of walking in, waving a gun at the tellers, and taking all the cash from their drawers. It ‘cost’ me thousands of dollars. And committing to not robbing every bank I happen to walk past in the future ‘costs’ me too. I’m ‘losing’ all that money! Oh, the humanity! … even if one supports taxation for the purpose of funding government operations, it’s beyond dishonest to claim that cutting, or just not raising, taxes is a ‘cost’ or a ‘loss’ to government.” (08/15/26)
“The rapid spread of public surveillance cameras represents something far more consequential than a new piece of police technology. It represents a fundamental change in the relationship between the individual and the state. These cameras allow government agents to record, identify, catalog and retroactively track the movements of people who have committed no crime, are suspected of no wrongdoing and have done nothing to invite government scrutiny. That’s not public safety. It’s an assault upon individual privacy. Privacy is not a privilege granted by government. It is an aspect of personal liberty that government exists to protect. It is a natural human right protected from the government in the Bill of Rights. The fact that a person leaves his home and travels upon a public road does not mean that he has surrendered that right.” (08/14/26)
“[D]ecentralization prevents a lot. The idea is that because you control and own your own data, and because the entire network isn’t owned by a single person or company, you have long-term freedom that can’t get taken away by the whims of the company behind whatever platform you’re using. On a centralized and closed platform, if ownership shuts it down or changes it in ways you find intolerable, you’ve got two options: stick it out and suffer or leave and lose all your friends. On a decentralized and open network, if the particular piece of it you’re on (the server, the app) shuts it down or changes it in ways you find intolerable, you’ve got a third option: head somewhere else, but keep your connections to all your friends. … Decentralization is, in other words, insurance. And that’s why it’s such a hard sell.” (08/14/26)
“Before reading Mark Pennington’s recent book, Foucault and Liberal Political Economy: Power, Knowledge, and Freedom, it would not have occurred to me that libertarians could learn anything from the social theories of Michel Foucault. Pennington has persuaded me that some beliefs associated with Foucault, and postmodernism more generally, are not devoid of merit. As will be discussed below, however, the beliefs that he identifies as postmodern differ somewhat from the collection of beliefs that I have hitherto associated with postmodernism.” (08/16/26)
Source: Karl Dickey’s Freedom Vanguard
by Karl Dickey
‘FDR signed the program into law in 1935. Demographic shifts and federal spending created trillions in unfunded liabilities. Private accounts offer a direct path to real wealth.” (08/14/26)
“The Watergate-era maxim still applies today: follow the money. In American education, the question is not how much money is spent, but where the money goes. Does funding follow institutions, or does it follow children? Does it serve adult interests, or truly benefit students? This distinction increasingly explains why some states spend more without producing better results, while others see academic gains by empowering parents with meaningful educational choices. New York City is a striking example. In 2024, its Department of Education spent roughly $40 billion, about $36,000 per pupil, one of the highest levels in the nation. Despite this massive investment, student literacy outcomes remain dire. Recent reports found that in 503 of 906 NYC schools studied, most students failed both reading and math exams. State data revealed only 29% of eighth graders were proficient in reading.” (08/14/26)
