Source: EconLog
by Pierre Lemieux
“A government powerful enough to do good is also powerful enough to do bad. A government powerful enough to decide under what conditions its subjects may trade is powerful enough to seriously disturb or ban their trading, internationally or domestically. A government powerful enough to financially support universities is also powerful enough to threaten them with penalties if they don’t repress opinions it does not like. A ruler powerful enough to define emergencies is powerful enough to increase his power with fabricated emergencies. A government powerful enough to require conformity to an ideology, say DEI, is powerful enough to forbid private institutions to embrace it or parts of it. A government powerful enough to ship non-citizens to a barbaric prison in El Salvador without due process is probably powerful enough to do the same to its own citizens. And so forth.” (04/18/25)
https://www.econlib.org/the-government-you-wished-for/
Source: Quillette
“Making the Case for ‘Free-Range Parenting.’” (04/19/25)
https://quillette.com/2025/04/19/podcast-281-making-the-case-for-free-range-parenting/
Source: Al Jazeera [Qatari state media]
“Russia unleashed a barrage of missile and drone strikes on Ukraine as a short-lived Easter ceasefire expired. Russian forces launched 96 drones and three missiles on eastern and southern Ukraine overnight, Ukraine’s Air Force reported on Monday. The swift return to major hostilities following a pause declared by Russian President Vladimir Putin comes as the United States struggles to persuade Moscow to agree on a longer-term ceasefire. The overnight assault targeted Ukraine’s Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovsk and Cherkasy regions, the Air Force wrote on Telegram. Air defence units intercepted 42 drones and redirected another 47.” (04/21/25)
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/4/21/russia-resumes-strikes-on-ukraine-as-easter-ceasefire-ends
Source: MSNBC
by Nicholas Sarwark
“A corrupt Republican president abuses his executive power to restrict free markets, placing legal constraints on free trade in goods and services, and then uses the granting of specific exceptions to shake down contributions from businessmen who are hurt by the restrictions. … That corrupt Republican president? Richard Milhouse Nixon. … Nixon’s wage and price controls inspired David Nolan to gather a group of free market Republicans — all disgusted with Nixon’s schemes — in his Colorado living room. This is how the Libertarian Party was born. … Now would be a great time for the Libertarian Party, founded in opposition to Republican corruption, to oppose another president’s meddling with the markets, potentially for his own gain. Alas, the current iteration of the party is far more dedicated to fighting MAGA-friendly culture war battles than standing up for free market principles.” (04/20/25)
https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/trump-tariffs-libertarian-party-free-markets-rcna200824
Source: Politico
“The Supreme Court blocked the Trump administration from deporting a second wave of Venezuelan immigrants under the Alien Enemies Act after lawyers rushed to the court and alleged that the administration was about to send dozens or hundreds of detainees to El Salvador in defiance of an earlier ruling by the justices. In a brief order released at about 1 a.m. Saturday, the court directed the administration to temporarily halt any plan to deport a group of Venezuelan nationals who have been detained in northern Texas and have been designated as ‘alien enemies.’ Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented. Alito indicated he would issue a fuller statement later.” (04/19/25)
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/04/18/trump-deportations-alien-enemies-act-00299474
Source: Reason
by Neal McCluskey
“Before the end of April, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear not one, but two important education freedom cases. At stake in both is the ability of families to determine what children will learn. Unfortunately, no matter how the cases are decided, neither will get us to where we ultimately need to be for a free and equal society: money following children to whatever education they and their families choose.” [editor’s note: Only separation of school and state would achieve the “free” part of that equation; nothing would achieve the “equal” part of it, at least in any good way – TLK] (04/19/25)
https://reason.com/2025/04/19/the-supreme-court-is-about-to-hear-2-education-cases-neither-goes-far-enough/
Source: CoinTelegraph
“Bitcoin prices appear to be breaking out of an extended period of consolidation as the asset climbs to its highest level since late March. Bitcoin surged above $87,400 on April 21, its highest price since March 28, according to TradingView. It has climbed by more than $3,000 from an intraday low of just over $84,000 on April 20. The asset has now gained 16% since its 2025 low of just below $75,000 on April 9, and the distance from its peak price has been reduced to 20%.” (04/21/25)
https://cointelegraph.com/news/what-happened-in-crypto-today
Source: The Dispatch
by Kevin D Williamson
“Fentanyl is a wonder drug. Not only is it useful for managing severe pain (e.g., for cancer patients and burn victims) but it also provides policy cover for … whatever. Donald Trump’s senior economic adviser, Kevin Hassett, knows that Trump’s tariff policy is dumb and destructive, and it is very difficult to make an economic case for it, so he insists that the tariffs are really part of a fentanyl interdiction policy. Trump would like to blame illegal immigrants for everything from heartbreak to psoriasis, and he reliably invokes fentanyl trafficking in his litany of immigration denunciations. The problem is that — as so often is the case with Trump and his sycophants — the facts do not quite line up with the story he would like to tell.” (04/18/25)
https://thedispatch.com/article/fentanyl-border-immigration-trump/
Source: CNN
“Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth shared detailed plans about a military operation against the Houthis in Yemen on a second Signal group chat, this one on his personal phone and including his wife, lawyer and brother, three people familiar with the chat told CNN. The chat was set up during Hegseth’s tumultuous confirmation hearing process as a way for his closest allies to strategize, two of the people familiar with the matter said. But Hegseth continued using the chat, which had more than a dozen people in it, to communicate after he was confirmed, the people said. The revelation comes as some of Hegseth’s closest advisers have begun sounding the alarm about the secretary’s judgment, including his former press secretary, John Ullyot, and three former senior officials Hegseth fired last week — his top adviser Dan Caldwell, deputy chief of staff Darin Selnick, and Colin Carroll, who served as chief of staff to the deputy secretary of defense.” (04/20/25)
https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/20/politics/hegseth-second-signal-chat-military-plans/index.html
Source: The UnPopulist
by Thomas Firey
“It’s probably the case that investors are shifting their portfolios away from a U.S. economy that seems increasingly endangered by Trump’s presidency. (Further evidence of this: the depreciation of the dollar, the currency used to buy U.S. goods and assets.) They may also fear stagflation and are demanding higher yields because they expect the Federal Reserve will pump up the money supply (and push up inflation) in response. This is not an idle worry given Trump’s browbeating of Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell to cut interest rates, even triggering fears that he’ll abuse his executive power and take the unprecedented and prohibited step of firing Powell. But there’s also a possibility of something much worse happening to the economy beyond inflation. Historically, many economic catastrophes resulted from the discovery that some prominent asset wasn’t nearly as sound as people thought.” (04/18/25)
https://www.theunpopulist.net/p/trumponomics-could-bring-far-worse
