What the Bond Market Reveals about Congress, the National Debt and the Middle Class

Source: Independent Institute
by Alexander William Salter

“High bond yields informally signal that the government absorbs too much of the nation’s scarce capital.” (10/05/26)

https://www.independent.org/article/2026/10/05/bond-market-revelations-congress-debt-middle-class/

The Flaw In The Barack Obama Fantasy About Women In Government

Source: Karl Dickey’s Freedom Vanguard

“Recently, a speech by former President Barack Obama about his fantasy of having women in charge went viral. ‘If you put women in charge of every government for like two years and then just kind of saw, alright, how are things going? I have a strong belief that things would — they wouldn’t be perfect — but they’d be better,’ he said in a discussion with historian Doris Kearns Goodwin at Salem State University. This is not the first time he has expressed his fantasy that if women ran every country, living standards would improve and we’d have fewer wars. … I did my best, and could find no scientific evidence that if women ran the governments of the world, we’d have more peace and/or a higher standard of living. The reality of it is, though, that to achieve these things, we need less reliance on gender and race, and more a focus on ideology.” (10/06/26)

https://palmbeachexaminer.substack.com/p/the-flaw-in-the-barack-obama-fantasy

The Solution to University City’s Budget Problems Is Privatization

Source: Show-Me Institute
by David Stokes

“University City is facing significant budget problems this year, driven in large part by costs associated with things the city does itself that private companies could better handle. As a resident of University City who works for a free-market policy organization that often supports government privatization, you can imagine my reaction to being given the opportunity to put my knowledge to work for my hometown. ‘Like a kid in a Delmar-Loop candy store’ would be the quickest analogy.” (10/05/26)

https://showmeinstitute.org/article/economy/the-solution-to-university-citys-budget-problems-is-privatization-2/

The Rise of Gig Economy Warfare

Source: New York Times
by Katrin Bennhold

“At first, it seemed like a large terror attack on a British air base had been thwarted. Then the story turned stranger. The five men arrested last week had been traveling in white vans in the middle of the night near a base in southern England that the U.S. has used in its war against Iran. The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps had warned over the summer that ‘any base used to launch attacks on Iranian territory’ would be ‘a legitimate target.’ The arrests suggested that threat had materialized. But the details we’ve learned since then have been confusing. The men in the white vans? Not radicalized ideologues or hardened operators, but ‘unwitting chumps,’ one official said. … British security officials have warned for years about the dangers of these sorts of plots. Russia pioneered them; Iran has since taken up the mantle.” (10/05/26)

https://archive.is/RlWvi

How the Courts Became a Safe Haven for Corporations

Source: The American Prospect
by Zachary Groz

“Last week, a federal district judge paused enforcement of a New York state law that banned landlords from using a centralized algorithmic platform to set rents. That platform, run by software company RealPage, had been the subject of a three-year federal antitrust investigation, which found the firm had facilitated something akin to a pricing cartel among rental property owners. Using a combination of public and proprietary data from landlords, the company had created an AI-powered tool that allowed property owners to coordinate rent hikes, suppressing competition and maximizing profits. While the Trump administration eventually settled the federal case, municipalities took notice and, starting with San Francisco in 2024, began outlawing the practice. Philadelphia, Berkeley, and Minneapolis followed suit, and late last year, New York took those regulatory measures a step further, becoming the first state to prohibit algorithmic rent-setting.” (10/06/26)

https://prospect.org/2026/10/06/how-courts-became-safe-haven-for-corporations/

AI Made the List—but Humans Still Did the Killing

Source: Foreign Policy
by Sharon Weinberger

“In NAZA, no one is worrying about rogue AI killing us off—that’s more a concern for Silicon Valley companies looking to raise capital. Rather, the film is rightfully concerned about the way that AI allows the military to justify killing ever more people, even as these systems absolve humans of the moral responsibility for choosing targets. ‘My role is entirely technical,’ says one IDF member, describing his part in the Gaza war. In this sense, AI gives soldiers a certain remove from the decision-making and even imbues such systems with virtue, since machines aren’t driven by hatred. … if AI is supposed to transfer responsibility for killing from humans to computers, and thus absolve humans of moral responsibility, it doesn’t quite work.” (10/05/26)

https://archive.is/KMTOV

Why is there a growing rebellion against the traditional tax system in the States?

Source: The Price of Liberty
by Nathan Barton

“Of course, the regressives and other enemies of liberty will tell you it is because people (especially those awful libertarians and sickening followers of Christ) are greedy and selfish, have no real compassion for the poor or people who wear different skin (or clothes) than they do, and the whole long litany we hear constantly. Clearly, TPOL and many of our readers disagree. (So we are even more evil, right?) But the rebellion against taxes is real, and the reasons people are rebelling are real and growing.” (10/05/26)

https://thepriceofliberty.org/2026/10/05/why-is-there-a-growing-rebellion-against-the-traditional-tax-system-in-the-states/

The Three-Party Problem

Source: The Dispatch
by Yascha Mounk

“The smart money in American politics has always bet against the rise of third parties. The reasons are both obvious and numerous. … The supposedly smart money is often based on conventional wisdom. But the problem with the conventional wisdom is that it is usually right for a long stretch—before suddenly proving to be disastrously wrong. Take, as an example, the longstanding conviction among political scientists studying the American primary system that party insiders ultimately decide who gets the presidential nomination, a supposed certainty that blinded large parts of the field to Trump’s rise in 2016. When it comes to third parties, we may now be approaching a similar paradigm shift.” (10/05/26)

https://thedispatch.com/article/third-parties-independents-voter-discontent/

Moderation in the Pursuit of Liberty

Source: Garrison Center
by Joel Schlosberg

“Wall Street Journal columnist Barton Swaim’s ‘A Suggestion for Young Radicals’ to embrace moderation (October 1) might seem to bring the second least appealing news hook for a commentator whose outlet is named after the abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison who famously asserted that he would rather ‘tell a man whose house is on fire to give a moderate alarm’ than ‘use moderation in a cause like the present … I will not equivocate — I will not excuse — I will not retreat a single inch — AND I WILL BE HEARD.’ At least Swaim’s contribution keeps the Journal‘s op-ed page going when even the New York Times has moved on to so-called ‘guest essays.'” (10/05/26)

https://thegarrisoncenter.org/archives/20920

Trump’s Other War

Source: Ron Paul Liberty Report
by Ron Paul

“As the midterm election draws near, a number of Republicans in tough races are distancing themselves from President Trump’s war. The war is unpopular because it has inflicted economic pain on the already-suffering American people. No, I am not talking about the Iran War. I am talking about President Trump’s tariff war.” (10/05/26)

https://www.ronpaullibertyreport.com/archives/trumps-other-war