Source: David Friedman’s Substack
by David Friedman

“Congratulations, your cancer is cured. But that might be a heart attack.” (03/04/25)

https://daviddfriedman.substack.com/p/my-views-of-the-trump-administration

Source: In These Times
by Hamilton Nolan

“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)

https://inthesetimes.com/article/state-of-the-union-trump-dc-protest

Source: The Atlantic
by Roge Karma

“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)

https://archive.is/f8jCk

Source: Garrison Center
by Thomas L Knapp

“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)

https://thegarrisoncenter.org/archives/19399