Source: Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression
by Robert Shibley
“It’s no secret that politicians are getting more involved in higher education. And while some level of involvement with how colleges and universities operate is appropriate given the amount of taxpayer money spent on campuses, nobody should be surprised to learn that greater political involvement can pose academic freedom risks.” (03/04/25)
“In the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, you can learn that the first animals with backbones evolved during the early Cambrian Period, 525 million years ago. Outside of that museum, few backbones can be found in Washington, DC. As you wonder why, muse on the fact that all of the information on life’s history is contained in the museum’s David H. Koch Hall of Fossils. When Koch died in 2019, he had amassed a fortune of $50 billion. There was a time when that was considered real money. Not any more. Downtown D.C. has an ambient glow at night, the light from omnipresent office windows suffusing the dark, bland streets. Yesterday evening, after dinnertime, the lights were still on in many of the cheerless, rectangular government office buildings below Independence Avenue, buildings that the new administration just announced are for sale.” (03/05/25)
“If you were setting out to design a trade policy that would harm the American economy while undermining political support for its leadership, you might come up with something like the tariffs that Donald Trump just imposed on Canada, China, and Mexico. The new tariffs will raise prices for American consumers, weaken the American auto industry, and prompt severe retaliation from America’s top trading partners. … Usually, when elected officials implement foolish policies, they do so because they believe the political upside outweighs the substantive downside. What makes Trump’s tariffs so unusual is that the politics of them also appear to be terrible.” (03/04/25)
“For the most part, [Elon] Musk is correct to refer to Social Security as a Ponzi scheme. It pays out benefits from newer revenues, not by investing Social Security taxes in profitable ventures. There’s one respect in which it differs from the traditional Ponzi scheme, though. In the ‘private sector,’ Ponzi scammers try to hide what they’re up to. … Social Security, on the other hand, has transparently operated in a facially Ponzi-like manner for decades — and the US Supreme Court publicly declared, 65 years ago, in its ruling on Flemming v. Nestor, that no one is ‘entitled to’ any payout at all …. The sad truth that Musk didn’t bring up is that the victims have known — or at least should have known — they were being scammed since at least as early as 1960.” (03/04/25)
“Over the weekend, President Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency head Elon Musk made quite a stir with just two words posted on his social media platform, X. Responding to a post that, ‘It’s time to leave NATO and the UN,’ Musk replied, ‘I agree.’ The comment immediately made the rounds on social media and also on mainstream and alternative media. Was this the Elon Musk who owns X speaking, or was it the Elon Musk who has become one of President Trump’s closest advisors? Does it even matter? Having someone so close to the US president who advocates finally extracting the US from these international organizations is a significant and very positive shift for the United States.” (03/04/25)
“The waiting is almost over, Donald Trump is about to hit America’s workers with the largest tax increase they have ever seen. Trump’s taxes on imports (tariffs) from Canada, Mexico, and China will cost people in the United States somewhere around $400 billion a year or around $3,000 a household. This is far larger than any tax increase we’ve seen in the last half-century, and unlike tax increases put in place by Clinton and Obama, it will primarily hit low and middle-income households. Their tax increases primarily hit the top 1% percent, which is probably why they got so much more attention from the media. It is not clear what our reality TV show president hopes to accomplish with these tax hikes. His stated reasons don’t make much sense. Canada, Mexico, and China are already cooperating with the U.S. on the issues he is complaining about. There is a minimal flow of fentanyl and undocumented immigrants from Canada.” (03/04/25)
“In recent years, the quit rate for federal workers has been about one-quarter the rate for workers in general. Deliberate buyouts aside — the quit rate for federal workers will remain rock bottom. What makes me so confident that federal quit rates will remain low despite working conditions that most of them must find repugnant? To understand my answer, you have to ask another question: Why were federal workers quit rates so low in the first place?” (03/04/25)
“In war-torn Sudan, a key to peace may be in a child’s fingertips. After nearly two years of civil war, an estimated 25 million people in the predominantly Arab country in northeast Africa face acute hunger and 15 million have been forced from their homes. Roughly 90% of schools have closed, leaving 19 million children without a classroom. Yet along Sudan’s relatively calm Red Sea coast, thousands of displaced children have space in more than 600 schools that remain open. One, a third grader who fled fighting in the south with her family, sat sketching in a notebook with colored pencils. ‘The war is very bad,’ she told the United Nations last week from a classroom in Port Sudan. ‘I will share the colours with my siblings.’ ‘In times of crisis,’ UN News reported, ‘education is critical, not just for academic learning, but also for providing a sense of normalcy, stability and safety.'” (03/03/25)
