Source: Independent Institute
by Phillip W Magness

“The significance of trade to the Revolution’s origins helps to resolve a long-observed paradox about the colonists’ motives. Despite the Revolution’s reputation as a tax revolt, Americans paid relatively low tax rates compared to people in England proper. The total sum was ‘paltry,’ and most of Parliament’s new revenue measures were ‘moderate and often short-lived,’ to quote economist Deirdre Nansen Mccloskey. They nonetheless sparked a political upheaval against the assertion of a novel and foreign authority. The issue was not the tax rate; it was the fact that Parliament could claim a tax power over trade, and thus over all else.” (07/06/26)

https://www.independent.org/article/2026/07/06/america-founded-tariff-men/

Source: Town Hall
by Derek Hunter

“What a difference political affiliation makes. Democrat Graham Platner is now on the outs with the party, not because of assaulting women, but because he is accused of assaulting a fellow Democrat. That party has lost its soul, as has the media. When Platner was accused of assaulting and abusing a conservative woman he dated, none of these people cared. ‘She can’t be trusted, she’s a conservative activist’, they said. The devotion to victims, the currency of victimhood, disappeared when it wasn’t one of ‘their team’. Ro Khana, a ‘progressive’ leftist hypocrite from California who rails against wealth while amassing a fortune of hundreds of millions of dollars through marriage and stock trades, was unbothered when a conservative woman told of how Platner was physically abusive with her, just as long as ‘there were no more shoes to drop’.” (07/07/26)

https://townhall.com/columnists/derekhunter/2026/07/07/democreeps-only-believe-women-when-its-useful-to-them-n2678931

Source: Persuasion
by Harry Cheadle

“Alicia Kennedy, one of the most celebrated food writers of her generation, sometimes seems to approach food as a series of moral dilemmas waiting to be untangled. In her new memoir, On Eating—a useful starting point to consider progressive culture as a whole—she writes that alcohol ‘is one of the most wasteful things one can consume, producing twelve times the wastewater for the amount of spirit created.’ Climate change may make wheat scarce, she worries. Sugar, meanwhile, conjures up a litany of horrors—it was originally harvested by slaves, and the present-day sugar industry is often accused of mistreating workers. … For at least a decade, left-of-center, educated, middle-class-and-above Westerners have become inflamed with guilt for the way we live. In a roundabout way, the left has reinvented the idea of sin.” (07/06/26)

https://www.persuasion.community/p/progressives-have-reinvented-sin

Source: The Daily Economy
by Thomas Savidge

“Pandemic-era aid allowed many states to expand spending without confronting long-term costs. The bill is coming due.” (07/07/26)

https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/states-relying-on-federal-aid-face-a-reckoning/

Source: Beat the Press
by Dean Baker

“I’m serious, and this is not just my disgust with everything Trump. There is no good reason for the overwhelming majority of people in the country to ever put a dollar in a Trump account for their kids. To be clear, I’m not in favor of tax-sheltered accounts in general. They strike me mostly as a very inefficient way to accomplish public goals, in this case making education more affordable. The more efficient route would be to have more public funds go to support public colleges and community colleges. The tax-sheltered account route also favors higher-income people. Over a quarter of households owe no income tax, meaning they would get no benefit whatsoever from putting money in a tax-sheltered account. Another 20 percent are in the 10 percent bracket, meaning the account would just save them just 10 cents on every dollar invested. By contrast, the highest income households save 37 cents on every dollar invested in a tax-sheltered account.” (07/07/26)

https://cepr.net/publications/if-your-financial-adviser-recommends-putting-money-in-a-trump-account-fire-them/