Source: Common Sense
by Paul Jacob
“First, Trump fires the holdover director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a radically anti-business agency. He appoints the new treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, as acting director. Bessent orders the agency to stop everything – ‘rulemaking, communications, litigation,’ Bloomberg Law reported. ‘A source inside the bureau who asked to remain anonymous said the order appeared to shut down the CFPB altogether, for the time being.’ So far, so good.” (03/03/25)
https://thisiscommonsense.org/2025/03/03/how-to-kill-a-bureau/
Source: Common Dreams
by Sanford F Schram
“In an interview with podcaster Joe Rogan, the world’s richest person Elon Musk late last week called Social Security ‘the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time’ It was yet another ‘pot calling the kettle black’ moment in the run-on sentence called Trumpism. I say run-on sentence because it is important to highlight Trumpism as featuring a nefarious discourse self-consciously deployed by Donald Trump and his acolytes to normalize their extremism. Trumpism as a discourse obfuscates so as to legitimate what has become its extremist threat to the existing political system, the rule of law and U.S. Constitution. It is a distinctive way of speaking that facilitates highly questionable action. We see this repeatedly in the Trump era. Trumpism as a discourse most prominently features three verbal maneuvers: gaslighting, coopting, and boomeranging.” [editor’s note: Well, at least this pundit considers the label correct, even though for the wrong reasons – SAT] (03/03/25)
https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/musk-ponzi-scheme-social-security
Source: WHEC 10 News
“New York State is cracking down on corrections officers who remain on strike at multiple prisons. Monday marks day 15 of the strikes. It comes after the union representing the prison staff and leaders of the state’s Department of Corrections and Community Supervision have reached a deal. Now, the state is following through on its threats of firing some employees and pulling healthcare funding. As part of the deal reached on Thursday night, prison staff had until the start of their shift on Saturday to return to their post without any consequences. DOCCS said on social media that, if a guard missed 11 shifts in a row, they’ll get a termination letter. Prison staff went on strike to demand higher staffing levels, no mandated overtime over 16 hours, and increased measures to keep them safe.” (03/02/25)
https://www.whec.com/top-news/new-york-state-issues-warning-begins-terminations-for-corrections-officers-after-two-weeks-of-strikes/
Source: EconLog
“The Unusual World of Israeli Democracy (with Rachel Gur).” (03/03/25)
https://www.econtalk.org/the-unusual-world-of-israeli-democracy-with-rachel-gur/
Source: Antiwar.com
by Marc Sills
“Whoever controls a chokepoint has the obvious advantage of keeping it open to merchant transit, ideally under ‘freedom of navigation’ rules and norms, such as are enumerated in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) – which the US has not ratified. On the other side of the coin, the very definition of chokepoints implies that they can be closed off and blockaded by force – presumably given some alleged military necessity, legal or otherwise.” (03/03/25)
https://original.antiwar.com/marc_sills/2025/03/02/slocs-and-chokepoints-panama-greenland-canada-and-indigenous-peoples/
Source: Fox News
“Boston Mayor Michelle Wu raised eyebrows over the weekend after she expressed condolences to the family of a knife-wielding suspect who was shot and killed by an off-duty officer after he allegedly tried to stab two people on Saturday night. The suspect, whose identity was not released by police, brandished a knife near a Chick-fil-A on Boylston Street, a busy part of the Massachusetts capital. He was fatally shot by an off-duty police officer who saw him targeting the two victims, police said. During a Saturday night press conference, Boston Police Commissioner Michael Cox said that the officer identified himself to the suspect and asked him to drop his weapon.” (03/03/25)
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/bostons-mayor-wu-offers-condolences-family-suspect-shot-after-allegedly-trying-stab-people
Source: The UnPopulist
by Mike Brock
“Donald Trump is a vehicle for Musk and Thiel to implement their radical ideas of replacing accountable governance with an unaccountable techno-monarchy.” (03/02/25)
https://www.theunpopulist.net/p/how-silicon-valleys-corrupted-libertarianism
Source: CNBC
“Euro zone inflation eased to 2.4% in February but came in slightly above analyst expectations, according to flash data from statistics agency Eurostat out on Monday. Economists surveyed by Reuters had expected inflation to dip to 2.3% in February, down from the 2.5% reading of January. So-called core inflation, which strips out energy, food, alcohol and tobacco costs, hit 2.6% in February, just below the 2.7% print of the previous month. The closely watched services inflation reading, which has proven sticky over recent months, also eased, coming in at 3.7% last month, compared to the January reading of 3.9%.” (03/03/25)
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/03/03/euro-zone-inflation-february-2025.html
Source: Antiwar.com
“Israel Blocks All Aid to Gaza as US Sends Weapons, Zelensky Clashes With Trump and Vanze, and More.” (03/03/25)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRT8T8ki_ss
Source: Orange County Register
by Steven Greenhut
“Even the basic concept of free speech has become another truncheon in the nation’s ongoing battle between tribes. Each side claims to be its champion, but neither consistently supports such principles. Conservatives were rightly aghast when the Biden administration tried to muscle social-media companies into quashing alternative views about pandemic-related policies. That wasn’t a violation of the First Amendmen — a point with which the U.S. Supreme Court agreed given that social-media platforms are private entities. But it was tawdry, nonetheless. Shortly after his second inauguration, President Donald Trump signed an executive order that claimed to restore our free-speech protections. Nice, but Trump continues his attacks on free speech through a variety of disreputable strategies.” (03/02/25)
https://archive.is/L6ie2
