Source: Bet On It
by Bryan Caplan
“I’ve been an economics professor for almost 30 years, but I don’t think I’ve ever before seen anything like the table below. I knew that claims that ‘58% of Americans can’t afford a $1,000 car repair’ were laughable clickbait. I knew that — measured by income — the middle class is disappearing… by becoming upper-middle class. But only recently did I start to fully appreciate the chasm between populist pessimism and actual data on Americans’ net worth.” (09/02/26)
https://www.betonit.ai/p/reflections-on-americans-net-worth
Source: Foreign Policy In Focus
by Macela Carmo Dos Santos
“For nearly three years, foreign ministries in Washington, London, and Brussels have debated arms embargoes on Israel in committee rooms, largely without result. Meanwhile, a much less formal network of ordinary people has been trying to accomplish the same goal from the ground up—one factory gate, one shareholder register, and one pension fund at a time. Palestine Action, the direct-action network founded in the UK in 2020 by Huda Ammori and Richard Barnard, is built on a simple theory of change: If governments won’t stop arming Israel, activists will go after the companies that do it for them.” (09/02/26)
https://fpif.org/trying-to-choke-off-the-weapons-behind-gaza/
Source: Reuters
“Prominent Hong Kong democracy activist Joshua Wong pleaded guilty on Wednesday to a charge of collusion with foreign entities, a national security [sic] crime [sic] that carries a maximum sentence of life in prison. Wong, 29, rose to international prominence as a teenage democracy activist in Hong Kong, one of a group of youngsters whose protest efforts have now effectively been outlawed by a sweeping National Security [sic] Law that Beijing imposed on the Asian financial hub in 2020. … Wong is already in jail serving an existing sentence on an earlier national security [sic] charge of conspiracy to commit subversion after he was among a group of democratic activists who participated in an unofficial primary election in 2020. His current sentence is scheduled to end in January next year.” (09/02/26)
https://www.reuters.com/world/hong-kong-activist-joshua-wong-pleads-guilty-collusion-with-foreign-entities-2026-09-02/
Source: BBC News [UK state media]
“Uber is cutting more than 3,000 jobs worldwide as part of a major overhaul designed to shrink management layers and refocus spending on its core business. The cuts amount to roughly 10% of its global workforce, bringing staffing back to levels last seen in 2021. Chief executive Dara Khosrowshahi told staff in a company email that the taxi and delivery firm had expanded quickly but accumulated too many layers and small teams that slowed decision‑making. He said the reductions would put Uber, which has its global head office in San Francisco, US, in a better position for its ‘biggest opportunities ahead of us’. The move marks one of Uber’s largest restructurings in years and signals a shift towards a leaner operating model. ” (09/02/26)
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cp3ky2w4y9no
Source: The Hill
“James Talarico links capitalism to white supremacy, says oil ‘not gonna last.'” (09/02/26)
https://thehill.com/hilltv/6057122-rising-september-2-2026/
Source: Common Sense
by Paul Jacob
“‘It’s not every day that Michigan’s bureaucracy violates state and federal law while disenfranchising more than 700,000 Michigan voters,’ opens the legal brief filed in the Michigan Supreme Court last Thursday by Americans for Citizen Voting – Michigan. ‘But that’s exactly what happened [last] week.’ The group (which I chair) has worked for the last year to place the Citizen Only Voting Amendment on Michigan’s November ballot. It makes two basic reforms: requires the Secretary of State to check the voter rolls, identifying and removing noncitizens in a fair process, and requires photo identification to cast a ballot.” (09/02/26)
https://thisiscommonsense.org/2026/09/02/maddened-in-michigan/
Source: Town Hall
by EJ Antoni, Ph.D.
“In a January Townhall column, I argued that the Venezuela operation was a win for America and a loss for China and Canada. Friday’s announcement from the Trump administration of an oil deal with Venezuela confirms that assessment. The agreement gives the U.S. a majority control of more than 65 billion barrels of proven reserves through a joint venture built around 17 strategic fields, with an initial production target north of 1.5 million barrels per day over a 25-year framework. On paper, it creates the second-largest private holder of proven reserves on the planet, behind only Saudi Aramco. But Americans need to be realistic about their expectations: this won’t translate into lower gasoline or diesel prices anytime soon.” (09/02/26)
https://townhall.com/columnists/ej-antoni/2026/09/02/america-wins-in-venezuela-while-china-and-canada-lose-n2682294
Source: US News & World Report
“Marlboro-maker Altria on Wednesday sued the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, seeking to force the agency to overhaul a product review process that tobacco companies say has stifled their growth in the key U.S. market, a legal filing showed. Under U.S. law, the FDA must review new tobacco products before they can be sold, assessing whether they provide a net public health benefit, such as helping smokers quit. But the system has been plagued by a huge backlog of applications and a booming illegal market of products sold without FDA authorisation. Altria’s lawsuit marks the latest industry challenge to a regime that has become one of the biggest obstacles facing tobacco companies in the $22 billion U.S. market. It follows an extensive lobbying campaign targeting President Donald Trump.” (09/02/26)
https://www.usnews.com/news/us/articles/2026-09-02/altria-sues-fda-over-tobacco-product-review-system
Source: The Atlantic
“How Trump Lost Asia.” (09/02/26)
https://www.theatlantic.com/podcasts/2026/09/david-frum-show-malcolm-turnbull-australia-pacific-china/688500/?utm_source=feed
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Jacob G Hornberger
“If we are ever to get our country back on the right track, it is imperative that we never forget that the U.S. national-security state and its foreign policy of interventionism are responsible for the wars in Ukraine and Iran. Let’s start with Iran. It’s obviously tempting to simply blame President Trump for launching his undeclared war of aggression against Iran. But the root cause of what has become a tar baby for Trump goes back a lot further — to the CIA’s coup in Iran in 1953 — a coup that destroyed Iran’s experiment with democracy.” (09/02/26)
https://www.fff.org/2026/09/02/the-root-causes-of-the-wars-in-iran-and-ukraine/
