Source: Independent Institute
by Daniel Sánchez-Piñol
“This November, voters will decide on the California Billionaire Tax Act (Prop 40), which would retroactively impose a 5 percent tax on the wealth of residents worth more than $1 billion. Its supporters say it could raise $100 billion, even though several billionaires have already left the state or plan to. Beginning in 2020 and intensifying in 2021, a tidal wave of entrepreneurs and businesses left California, including tech billionaires Elon Musk and Larry Ellison. It’s not hard to see why: the state’s high taxes, heavy regulations, and increasingly contentious political climate have made it clear that success is not welcome.” (10/09/26)
“One is doing a bit of cynical pandering, the other is condemning anyone opposed to the tech future—and neither is willing to look in the mirror.” (10/09/26)
“In February 2003, the intelligence that August Hanning’s service had handed to Washington turned up in Colin Powell’s presentation to the United Nations Security Council, in the case for invading Iraq. On the morning of 6 October 2026, masked officers walked Hanning, now eighty, out of his house near Münster in handcuffs, on suspicion of attempted treason and espionage. The secrets that undid him had been sitting on a hard drive in that house, and some of them had been shared with Berlin by its allies. The United States is the first of those allies.” (10/09/26)
“The cartels are losing political cover, and they know it. The Trump administration has treated the Western Hemisphere as a security problem rather than allow diplomatic courtesy to block needed action. Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro is in U.S. custody. Colombia elected Abelardo de la Espriella, who ran opposed to negotiations with armed groups and won. Argentina, Chile, Ecuador, Paraguay and others have aligned with Washington’s enforcement policies. The Shield of the Americas coalition now coordinates intelligence and operations against cartel networks, but with a handful of exceptions: Mexico, Brazil, Cuba and Nicaragua. That is the Donroe Doctrine in practice: American predominance in the hemisphere, applied to migration, Chinese footholds and the drug trade. Critically, this is a major shift in the operating environments for the Sinaloa Cartel, CJNG (Jalisco New Generation Cartel) and the Colombian and Venezuelan networks that fed them.” (10/10/26)
“An alleged gangbanger in this country illegally [sic] was shot and wounded by ICE [gangbangers] in The Bronx on Thursday. And by the way New York politicians immediately reacted (with press conferences and outraged tweets the length of ‘War and Peace’) one would think ICE had made swiss cheese of a sweet grandma as she handed out Werther’s Originals to the neighborhood children. All the usual suspects reflexively grabbed a microphone and called to ‘abolish ICE’ in the name of Oscar Belgal, who reportedly used his car to smash through a vehicle barricade before accelerating toward ICE [gangbangers]. Belgal’s 5-year-old son was in the car and was unharmed, no thanks to his pathetic excuse of a father. Still, an outraged Mayor Mamdani stood alongside AG Tish James and Public Advocate Jumaane Williams declaring war on ICE.” (10/09/26)
“The U.S. ends its military campaign in Baghdad after 23 years of fighting. The campaign cost 4,418 US troops their lives and will end up costing nearly $3 trillion through 2050.” (10/09/’26)
“As the midterm elections approach, it’s safe to say that things don’t look great for Donald Trump’s Republican Congressional majority. He has responded by the usual threats and bluster, but also by promising to send voters money. Now, it should be said that politicians make promises all the time – to voters in general or to more specific constituents. This is part of the process. But sending out quick payments to voters right before an election, and promising a big payday if voters deliver his party a victory, are highly unusual moves.” (10/09/26)
[W]hy exactly is it so bad that screens have destroyed so many people’s ability to focus and read since 1980, and even more dramatically since 2007? What do we lose if people no longer read like it’s the 1770s? Quite a bit, [James] Marriott contends. One significant concern for him is the damage to politics that he blames on the decline of reading: ‘Perhaps the most worrying victim of the Great Simplification is our public discourse. It seems that our distracted and trivial culture increasingly struggles to sustain a rational debate on almost any issue.’ In other words, reading trains our brains to engage with ideas in earnest and to use our attention spans to listen to elaborate arguments and process them afterwards. But those who do not have these skills are unable to engage with serious arguments in the public sphere.” (10/09/26)
Source: The American Prospect
by Whitney Curry Wimbish
“Thousands of people are preparing to protect the midterm elections and mobilize immediately if President Trump interferes with the results. They are drawing lessons from the American civil rights era and from fights against authoritarianism worldwide, attending political education classes, and reassessing exactly how much they will risk, personally, to stand between a government takeover and the will of the voters. ‘There’s a deeper, broader, bolder set of efforts afoot to prepare people for much more existential scenarios that could come our way that would call into question the pillars of our democracy itself for what it’s for and who it’s for,’ said Jackson Potter, vice president of the Chicago Teachers Union. ‘People are zeroing in.’ He’s organizing with May Day Strong, which this month hosted more than 750 ‘solidarity school’ training sessions nationwide.” (10/09/26)
Source: The American Conservative
by Philip Pilkington
“Treasury bonds are not just any old asset. For one, they are the debt of the U.S. government. If they become uninvestable, the capacity for Washington to live beyond its means through debt issuance is open to question. Treasuries are also the benchmark asset for the entire global dollar system that has allowed the U.S. to run enormous deficits for decades. If this asset starts ‘trading like a meme stock’ and generating awful returns, foreigners will opt for something else. … The Trump administration has become fixated on the Strait of Hormuz, seeing it as a decisive battlefield on which the U.S. can win the war. But the Strait is merely a means to an end. For Iran, that end is to slowly demolish the American economy and financial system until the pressure becomes too much and the U.S. backs off.” (10/09/26)
