Source: Show-Me Institute
by Patrick Tuohey

“In a series of sketches for Saturday Night Live, Billy Crystal played a fictionalized version of actor and director Fernando Lamas as host of the talk show ‘Fernando’s Hideaway.’ Crystal’s character would often say that it is better to look good than to feel good. This was on my mind as I reviewed recent evaluations of St. Louis’s guaranteed basic income pilot by Washington University’s Center for Social Development. The review’s claims will sound familiar to anyone who has followed these pilot programs around the country. … But as economists Hilary Hoynes and Jesse Rothstein of the University of California, Berkeley note in a review of the universal basic income literature, the new wave of guaranteed-income pilots is ‘not well suited’ to answer the most important questions about the policy.” (03/12/26)

https://showmeinstitute.org/article/economy/economically-feeling-better-isnt-the-same-as-being-better/

Source: Persuasion
by Francis Fukuyama

“It is hard to overstate what a complete shambles American foreign policy has become since Donald Trump launched his war against Iran on February 28. Trump clearly believed that the initial decapitation strike would lead to the collapse of the Islamic regime and its replacement by a new leadership willing to work with the United States. He seems to have had Venezuela on his mind as a model, as he referred to it several times during the war’s first week. He and his associates failed to anticipate Iran’s capacity to strike back, as it launched rounds of missiles and drones at U.S. allies and bases in the region, disrupting Gulf economies and raising gasoline prices in the United States. What is particularly maddening about this is that anyone who has lived through the last quarter century of U.S. Middle East policy should have understood that war would produce multiple unintended and devastating consequences.” (03/12/26)

https://www.persuasion.community/p/how-not-to-do-regime-change

Source: The Bulwark
by Joe Perticone

“As Trump’s military ‘excursion’ intensifies, they are taking extraordinary care to avoid saying ‘war’ and ‘boots on the ground.'” (03/12/26)

https://www.thebulwark.com/p/the-words-of-war-republicans-refuse-boots-on-the-ground-iran

Source: Common Sense
by Paul Jacob

“As a gun owner in Rhode Island, you may think that no matter what wacko state laws legislators impose to make it harder to buy weapons, at least you’ll remain secure in your right to the arms you’ve already legally purchased. Not so. Bearing Arms alerts us to the fact that two bills pending in the state legislature jeopardize your right to keep your already owned — lawfully obtained — firearms. One bill does so immediately. The other paves the way for follow-up legislation that does so immediately.” (03/12/26)

https://thisiscommonsense.org/2026/03/12/island-of-dispossessed-guns/

Source: New York Post
by Bjorn Lomborg

“Many in the West gaze in awe at China’s apparent dominance in green energy. ‘“China is becoming a green superpower,’ read a BBC headline last month. ‘China’s Green Triumph,’ trumpeted The New York Times. China is indeed churning out solar panels, wind turbines, electric vehicles and batteries that flood global markets — proof, advocates say, of an inevitable green transition. Yet these supposed marvels are forged amid overwhelming and surging use of fossil fuels, particularly coal. Its real energy achievements — dramatic energy ramp-ups to fuel prosperity, and advances in nuclear power — remain overlooked. In 2025, as the world invested $2.3 trillion in green energy, more than a third of that investment, $800 billion, came from China, nearly matching the US and the EU combined. But spending isn’t the best measure of investment quality. After China’s real-estate bubble went bust in 2020, capital flowed into the solar-panel industry, and the sudden influx created vast overproduction and overcapacity.” (03/11/26)

https://nypost.com/2026/03/11/opinion/dont-buy-green-china-hype-heres-beijings-real-energy-agenda/