Why America’s Inequality Story Doesn’t Add Up
Source: Reason
“Taxes, benefits, and household data make America look more unequal than it is.” (01/02/26)
https://reason.com/2026/01/02/why-americas-inequality-story-doesnt-add-up/
Fortunately, Liberals Can More Easily Defeat the Resurging Totalitarian-Isms of Yore
Source: The UnPopulist
by Daniel M Rothschild
“Both extremes are recycling old ideologies, but liberalism has a far stronger hand to counter them before they cause the death and destruction of the last century.” (01/02/26)
https://www.theunpopulist.net/p/fortunately-liberals-can-more-easily
Where did capitalism really begin?
Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Sven Beckert
“It is impossible to pinpoint an exact place or moment when capitalism began. Capitalism is a process, not a discrete historical event with a beginning and an end, and it did not drop fully formed into a particular location. Even today, no society is organised along fully capitalist lines, and some have argued that a fully capitalist world is a theoretical impossibility. Efforts to isolate one patch of soil as capitalism’s place of origin — Florence, Barbados, Amsterdam, Baghdad, the southern English countryside, or Manchester, for example — have all proved insufficient. That is because the capitalist revolution had always been a process that drew energy from myriad sources.” (01/02/26)
US regime slashes proposed tariffs on American buyers of Italian pasta
Source: BBC News [UK state media]
“Italian pasta is set to be spared from high-level US tariffs that the Trump administration had threatened against 13 producers. The move could have resulted in American importers being taxed at a rate greater than the value of the actual pasta itself, and prices rising sharply for US consumers. But on Thursday, the Italian foreign ministry said the proposed rate had now been drastically cut back. In a statement of its own, the US said the 13 firms had addressed many of its concerns. It previously accused the companies of selling their products at unfairly low prices and threatened tariffs of almost 92%. Tariffs are a type of tax paid by a consumer who imports a product.” (01/03/26)
NM: Homeowner kills intruder
Source: Albuquerque Journal
“A 20-year-old was killed in a shootout with a homeowner during an apparent burglary in Clovis just after midnight Thursday.Clovis police were dispatched to a house in the 2500 block of East 7th Street, near Hillcrest Park, around 12:30 a.m. Friday after a 911 caller said he had been shot by a burglar, according to a news release shared on the department’s Facebook page later in the day. The man told police he had shot back at the intruder — identified as Keilyn Parker– and that he and a woman were hiding inside a closet in the home, the release states. Officers arrived and transported the man and Parker to Plains Regional Medical Center. Parker did not survive his injuries, according to the release.” (01/02/26)
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/clovis-homeowner-kills-intruder-marking-040400257.html
Freedom Works with Paul Molloy, 01/02/26
Source: Freedom Works
“Kevin Erdmann, Mercatus Center ‘US Housing Wealth is a Mirage.'” (01/02/26)
https://internetradiopros.com/freedomworks/?name=2026-01-03_zfw12292025.mp3
Musk vs. Mamdani: Unmasking the Media’s Fake Narratives
Source: Karl Dickey’s Freedom Vanguard
by Karl Dickey
“I am not sure if you caught Zohran Mamdani’s swearing in ceremony and his speech as he became New York City’s new mayor, but it was an eye opener for sure. I am going to leave his notion that the collective is better than the individual comment aside as I want to focus on a gesture he did during the event, that was precisely the same as Elon Musk made during a similar event almost a year ago. Yet, the mainstream media has taken two dramatically different views to create a false narrative that the public happily ate up.” (01/02/26)
https://palmbeachexaminer.substack.com/p/musk-vs-mamdani-unmasking-the-medias
Why capture of Maduro didn’t require approval from Congress
Source: Fox News
by Jonathan Turley
“In an extraordinary military operation, the United States launched a large-scale military operation in Caracas, Venezuela, early Saturday, with Special Forces seizing President Nicolás Maduro and his wife. There is a pending 2020 indictment of Maduro in the Southern District of New York, where he is expected to be taken to face prosecution. The operation comes not long after the 37th anniversary of the capture of Manuel Antonio Noriega on Dec. 20, 1989. Noriega was convicted of drug and money laundering offenses and sentenced to 40 years in prison. He was tried in Miami. Maduro was indicted in a four-count superseding indictment …” (01/03/25)
Switzerland: Regime launches criminal investigation over deadly fire at ski resort bar
Source: Al Jazeera [Qatari state media]
“Public prosecutors in Switzerland have opened a criminal investigation into the managers of the bar in Switzerland’s Crans Montana, where at least 40 people died in a fire. Two days after the fire, in which 119 people suffered injuries, including severe burns, officials were still trying to identify many of those killed. Attention has also turned to how one of Switzerland’s worst tragedies could have occurred. The bar’s two managers are suspected of offences including homicide by negligence, causing bodily harm by negligence and arson by negligence, prosecutors in Valais, the canton that is home to the bar in the upscale ski resort of Crans-Montana, said in a statement on Saturday. They did not name the pair.” (01/03/26)
Trump’s Threat to “Rescue” Iranian Protesters Is Reckless
Source: Eunomia
by Daniel Larison
“The last thing that protesters in Iran need are threats of intervention from the U.S. government. The last thing that the U.S. needs is another conflict in the Middle East. The U.S. is not helping anything in Iran by threatening to attack the country. It is a reckless threat, and it puts the U.S. and Iran on yet another unnecessary collision course.” (01/02/26)
https://daniellarison.substack.com/p/trumps-threat-to-rescue-iranian-protesters