“Listening to most of the media and Canada’s prime minister, you’d think the U.S. and its northern neighbor were in a full-blown trade war after new tariffs were announced days ago. Au contraire: Anyone who checks the numbers can see this is merely a skirmish. On Aug. 22, the administration’s Section 338 tariffs took effect, at 50% on roughly $20 billion of Canadian goods, or about 5% of what Canada sells the U.S. Ottawa’s answer, effective Sept. 8, will be varying tariffs on roughly $20 billion of American exports to Canada, about 6% of what Canada buys from the U.S. While tariffs on $40 billion aren’t chump change, they’re a small portion of the roughly $900 billion in products and services that are exchanged across the U.S.-Canadian border annually.” (09/01/26)
“Presidents do not like hearing bad news. CIA Director John Ratcliffe went to Moscow to brief Russian counterparts on the U.S. assessment of the state of the war in Ukraine. The news could not have been good. Even if Ukraine is not winning the war, its costs to Russia in blood and treasure have been extraordinary. Now, Russia’s energy infrastructure is being increasingly shut down. Suppose Russian President Vladimir Putin reversed the favor, sending Foreign Intelligence Service head Sergey Naryshkin to brief President Trump on America’s ‘excursion’ into Iran. Imagine how that would go down if Naryshkin relayed the reality? Trump would be apoplectic. … Neither Trump nor Putin respond well to negative feedback. Few presidents do.” (09/01/26)
“Imagine you hear a speech in which a ruler, reflecting on his first months in office, boasts that he has secured the borders, imposed tariffs, purged the civil service of corruption, eliminated Marxism, and protected Christianity. You might reasonably assume it was delivered in Washington sometime in the past year. In fact, Adolf Hitler delivered it on March 23, 1933, before the newly constituted Reichstag in Berlin’s Kroll Opera House.” (09/01/26)
“The $18 billion settlement between Meta Platforms and 48 states announced last week involves a good deal of money as well as technological tweaks to limit the exposure of users under 18 years of age to 24/7 social media feeds. Supporters see it as a major step forward; critics, as the Monitor reported Thursday, say it doesn’t go far enough. Those differing responses, paradoxically, hint at an underlying confluence of viewpoints – that safeguarding the growth and development of children and teenagers is not a one-and-done deal, left to individual court cases or settlements. Rather, balancing the economic drive of private innovation against its potential excesses is a whole-of-society effort.” (08/31/26)
“I attended my first gay wedding in 1995. It was not on purpose. I was on a summer road trip, supported by a $500 travel grant from the University of Illinois, exploring identity-based intentional communities. Because I had so little money, the only groups I could study were the ones who offered free lodging, which generally meant pitching a tent on their lawn. The nice people at the Idyll Dandy Acres community outside of Nashville were happy to oblige. ‘We’re Radical Fairies,’ they told my friend Jeff and me. ‘Everyone is welcome here.’ The happy couple were camped next to us, two women from Britain. On the first morning, they threatened to break my acoustic guitar after I played ‘Mr. Tambourine Man’ for the fifth time. Then they invited me to their wedding. Was I really going to say no?” (09/01/26)
“Left-wing terrorism is a serious problem in the United States, though for political reasons it doesn’t receive anything like the attention right-wing violence gets. For example, when most people think of violence connected to abortion, they imagine attacks on abortion clinics — yet lately pro-abortion extremists have been firebombing crisis pregnancy centers across the country. These centers help women who want to have their babies or who are undecided about having an abortion: Women who are making a choice, just not the choice supposedly ‘pro-choice’ abortion advocates find acceptable. So a group calling itself ‘Jane’s Revenge’ (named for the ‘Jane Roe’ of Roe v. Wade) has declared war on anyone who might choose life.” (09/01/26)
Source: Independent Institute
by K Lloyd Billingsley
“New standards for replacement automobile tires will ‘save California drivers nearly $1 billion per year in gasoline and electricity costs, putting money back in their pockets. The standards will also reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by 2 million metric tons per year, equivalent to taking approximately 400,000 gasoline cars off California roads.’ That is the claim of the California Energy Commission …. The Commission seems unaware that tire manufacturers strive to deliver the best possible mileage. Unelected government commissions played no role in that process, and drivers are fully capable of selecting the tires that best meet their needs.” (09/01/26)
“People who believe capitalism is working out great are just sloppy thinkers who’ve fallen victim to survivorship bias and the just-world fallacy. Survivorship bias is when your analysis focuses on those who made it while ignoring those who didn’t. You got a decent job, bought a house, and are now living comfortably, which means the system works fine and there must be something wrong with anyone who can’t thrive under it. All the people who work just as hard as you do but still find themselves struggling go completely missing from your perspective. All the people who are just as clever and resourceful as you but haven’t found financial stability are conveniently overlooked.” (09/01/26)
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Jacob G Hornberger
“It’s important to remind ourselves that the Pentagon’s new socialist and imperialist deal to extract oil from Venezuela isn’t the only unconstitutional overseas endeavor of the U.S. national-security state. Nor are the Pentagon’s assassinations of drug-war suspects on the high seas. Nor are the Pentagon’s undeclared wars of aggression in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, and other countries. There is also Guantanamo Bay, the imperialist U.S. military base that was acquired in a strikingly in much the same way that the Pentagon is acquiring its socialist interest in Venezuelan oil — by using a puppet foreign regime to extract whatever U.S. officials want. But then there is also the blatantly unconstitutional ‘judicial’ system that the Pentagon established at Gitmo nearly 25 years ago in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.” (09/01/26)
Source: Niskanen Center
by Caitlin Rowley Gallamore & Lawson Mansell
“The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is taking the next step to reduce Medicare’s unnecessary spending in high-cost hospital settings. Medicare’s payment policies have profound impacts on the supply of healthcare — where, when, and how services are provided to patients across the country. Existing payment policies disconnect the value of healthcare services from their costs. And because much of the healthcare system uses Medicare prices as a baseline for payment, the ripple effects of these distortions spread far beyond into the private market as well.” (09/01/26)
