Source: Show-Me Institute
by Elias Tsapelas

“Missouri’s Department of Social Services (DSS) has been tasked with integrating its Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and Medicaid eligibility systems while preparing for new community engagement requirements. This integration has been needed for years, but the new federal rules make it urgent. The goal is straightforward: simplify how benefits are administered while reducing costly errors. If Missouri cannot bring those error rates down, the state will be responsible for a larger share of program costs.” [editor’s note: Why not just eliminate the “benefits,” and with them the need for that “administration?” – TLK] (03/24/26)

https://showmeinstitute.org/article/state-and-local-government/cost-of-delaying-safety-net-modernization/

Source: The Price of Liberty
by Nathan Barton

“In the past several weeks, we have heard a lot of claims about the tragedy at a girl’s school in southern Iran. … The building was indeed part of the IRGC base until 2016, when a new wall was built dividing that area and that building from the rest. Apparently as part of the conversion of the building into a school. But American intel agencies: analysts and reviewers, did not know this. We submit this is not an excuse: there is no excuse for a negligent action like this. No excuse for killing innocent children, or even their teachers and staff. And we cannot even blame the IRGC or the tyrants of the Islamic Republic for perhaps attempting to use a girl’s school as a human shield for their military base. The blame rests solely on the intelligence agencies of the FedGov, both civilian and military. And therefore, upon their superiors.” (03/23/26)

https://thepriceofliberty.org/2026/03/23/stupidity-not-malice/

Source: In These Times
by Shane Burley

“Rabbi Jessica Rosenberg, like hundreds of other residents and organizers in the Twin Cities, now keeps a strict schedule — at least every other day — of long volunteer patrols for vehicles driven by federal immigration agents occupying the region. In about two and a half months, thousands of agents unleashed wanton violence across the country as they abduct an average of more than 60 residents per day; shooting, killing and firing chemical weapons at nonviolent protesters, and extrajudicially arrest preschoolers and send them across the country. Things have been hard, but neighborhoods have also become more united and communication has become systematized and effective. … We talked just days before the massive January 23 economic shutdown, where there was a stunning amount of participation and support across the state, and somewhere between 50,000 to 100,000 people poured out of work, school and their homes to fill the streets.” (03/23/26)

https://inthesetimes.com/article/the-new-antifascist-consensus-ice-rapid-response-community-defense

Source: Niskanen Center
by Elliot Lo

“The Department of Energy’s Speed to Power Initiative addressing large-scale transmission and generation projects represents an important step toward ensuring affordable and reliable power, both focus points of the Trump administration’s national energy emergency declaration. The need is significant: In 2022, Grid Strategies estimated that insufficient capacity to deliver the lowest-cost generation cost consumers $20.8 billion. Increased ‘reconductoring’ of aging powerlines stands out as a highly promising tool to remedy this issue quickly.” [editor’s note: The solution to the problems of long-distance transmission via “grids” is to abandon “grids” in favor of local and decentralized power generation. Anything else is just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic – TLK] (03/24/26)

https://www.niskanencenter.org/transmission-is-the-problem-reconductoring-is-part-of-the-solution

Source: JimBovard.com
by James Bovard

“A recent Facebook memory notice reminded me of when I was young and naïve and full of political hope. Okay, maybe I wasn’t full of political hope but at least I wasn’t as old at the end of the last century. Facebook flashed a jpeg image with a quote from my 1999 book, Freedom in Chains: ‘It is absurd to expect governments to descend gradually, step-by-step into barbarism – as if there was a train schedule to political hell and people could get off at any stop along the way.’ When I wrote that book, I reached deep within to dredge up whatever remnants of positive thinking that I could find. But that didn’t stop the Los Angeles Times from denouncing my ‘political paranoid’s view’ in which ‘government assumes an overweening, menacing aspect.'” (03/23/26)

https://jimbovard.com/blog/2026/03/23/our-train-trip-to-political-hell/