Source: The Bulwark
by Andrew Egger

“It’s not a crime to be young and dumb in America. It’s not even a career-ending offense to be young and dumb in journalism. As ludicrous as [Nick] Shirley’s current output is, he’s plainly got a certain aptitude for video reporting. In a different world — one set up to restrain his worst and dumbest instincts rather than to reward them — a guy like him could turn out to be a solid reporter. … Guys like Nick Shirley aren’t trying to join a publication, they’re picking up a camera and trying to go viral on their own. They have no safety net, no sounding board, no mentorship, no way to grow beyond what they’re doing this minute. All they have is the zero-sum game of the algorithm: Get noticed or die. … That’s what the ecosystem rewards, so we’re going to get more and more of it.” (01/14/26)

https://www.thebulwark.com/i/184544780/magas-young-dumb-future

Source: Town Hall
by Mark Lewis

“Here is an interesting quote: ‘Snows are less frequent and less deep. They often do not lie below the mountains more than one, two, or three days and very rarely a week. They are remembered to be formerly frequent, deep, and of long continuance. The elderly inform me that the earth used to be covered with snow about three months every year. The rivers, which then seldom failed to freeze over in the course of the winter, scarcely ever do now. This change … in the spring of the year is very fatal to fruits … I remember that when I was a small boy, say 60 years ago, snows were frequent and deep in every winter.’ Well, that’s it, isn’t it? Global warming is a reality. … the above quote is from Thomas Jefferson in the year 1799.” (01/14/25)

https://townhall.com/columnists/marklewis/2026/01/14/the-left-will-never-give-up-global-warming-n2669371

Source: USA Today
by Dace Potas

“Interest rates aren’t a number just pulled out of nowhere. Higher-risk clients need to pay higher interest rates in order for banks to be willing to take their business. Telling banks they can only charge so much interest will make them more selective in whom they lend to. Trump and other populists imagine that in passing legislation capping interest rates, all other functions of the credit card industry will remain the same, just with a lower rate for consumers. The reality is that if banks cannot offset accepting riskier clientele by charging them higher interest rates, they simply will not expose themselves to the risk that some people provide. This means that low-income Americans or those with shaky credit histories will have no chance at obtaining credit cards.” (01/14/26)

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/columnist/2026/01/14/trump-affordable-housing-credit-card-interest-rates-misguided/88154547007/

Source: Common Dreams
by Les Leopold

“Trump has decided that the government should not give money to defense contractors who then reroute our tax dollars via stock buybacks to stockholders and executives. A stock buyback, for those unfamiliar, is when a corporation repurchases its own shares, thus boosting the share’s price, a legalized form of stock manipulation. CEOs, who are paid mostly in stock incentives, and large investors directly benefit from stock buybacks, and unlike with dividends, don’t have to pay taxes until they sell their shares. In the weapons industry, this isn’t news. Studies show that defense contractors spent three times more on dividends and stock buybacks than on capital investments needed to fulfill their contracts over the last decade. In Europe, it was the other way around with defense companies spending twice as much on capital investments compared to dividends. (They don’t do stock buybacks.)” (01/14/25)

https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/defense-industry-stock-buybacks