- GA: Atlanta pols approve funds for police training center despite fierce opposition
Source: NBC News
“A plan to build a massive public safety training center in Atlanta cleared its latest hurdle early Tuesday when lawmakers voted to help fund a facility dubbed ‘Cop City’ by opponents. Despite hearing more than 14 hours of testimony, mostly from opponents of the project, the Atlanta City Council agreed to allocate $30 million toward development of the $90-million, 85-acre facility where police, firefighters and emergency responders would train. The 11-4 vote around 5:30 a.m. local time prompted outrage and jeers within the chamber, where audience members chanted, ”Cop City’ will not be built.’ The vote comes after years of fierce opposition from protesters who worry the proposed campus will harm the environment and be used by police to ‘practice urban warfare.’ In January, officers fatally shot an environmental activist as workers across several agencies attempted to clear out the site.” (06/06/23)
- India: Regime drops evolution and periodic table from some school textbooks
Source: Financial Times [UK]
“India has dropped Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution and the periodic table of elements from some school textbooks, part of a widening campaign by the Hindu nationalist government that has prompted warnings from educators about the impact on teaching and the country’s vital tech sector. More than 4,500 scientists, teachers and others have signed a petition saying they ‘disagree with such dangerous changes in school science education and demand to restore the theory of Darwinian evolution in secondary education’ to grade 10 textbooks. … Since Narendra Modi’s government came to power in 2014, national and local education authorities have altered school textbooks, including axing chapters on India’s centuries of history under Muslim Mughal rule …. In a statement this week, NCERT said that the curriculum overhaul was a ‘need-based exercise aimed at reducing the content load, keeping in view the students’ mental health during the Covid pandemic and its aftermath.'” (06/06/23)
- FL: Federal judge sides with families, doctors versus DeSantis “anti-woke” stunt
Source: Axios
“A federal judge on Tuesday temporarily blocked a pair of Florida bans on gender-affirming care for youths while a legal challenge plays out, arguing that both are likely to be found unconstitutional. U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle, a Clinton appointee, wrote that ‘gender identity is real’ and agreed with the plaintiffs that gender-affirming care is ‘medically necessary.’ Four Florida families argued in their lawsuit that the bans violated the Constitution’s equal protection clause by singling out trans minors and asked the court to freeze the bans while the lawsuit is reviewed. Hinkle said that both of Florida’s bans represent a ‘purposeful discrimination against transgenders.'” (06/06/23)
https://www.axios.com/2023/06/06/judge-blocks-florida-transgender-health-care-ban
- SEC Gang Sues Coinbase for Not Asking Pretty Please With Sugar on Top for Permission to Do Stuff That’s None of the Regime’s Business
Source: CoinDesk
“The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sued U.S crypto exchange Coinbase (COIN) on allegations of violating federal securities law, a day after filing a similar suit against Binance.
According to the SEC, Coinbase has operated as an unregistered broker, exchange and clearing agency simultaneously, arguing that it solicited customers, handled orders, allowed for bids and acted as an intermediary all at once. The suit named Coinbase, Inc. and Coinbase Global, Inc. as defendants, but did not name founder and CEO Brian Armstrong or any other executive. ‘The Coinbase Platform merges three functions that are typically separated in traditional securities markets — those of brokers, exchanges, and clearing agencies,’ the SEC suit said. ‘Yet, Coinbase has never registered with the SEC as a broker, national securities exchange, or clearing agency, thus evading the disclosure regime that Congress has established for our securities markets.'” (06/06/22) - SpaceX Dragon cargo ship arrives at International Space Station
Source: United Press International
“The SpaceX Dragon cargo spaceship successfully docked with the International Space Station early Tuesday morning after taking off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida the day before. While the spacecraft’s departure from Earth was rocky — being postponed twice over the weekend before its launch on Monday — the automated docking went off without a problem at 5:54 a.m. EDT. The Dragon, which carried resupplies and experiments to the space station, is expected to spend about three weeks attached to the space station before it returns to Earth with cargo and research. The craft also delivered the two solar arrays to the ISS, which will increase the energy-production capabilities of the orbiting laboratory.” (06/06/23)
https://www.upi.com/Science_News/2023/06/06/SpaceX-ISS-NASA/7581686053251/
- Bulgaria: Parliament approves new regime
Source: ABC News
“Bulgaria’s parliament on Tuesday formally approved the country’s new government proposed by the two main political rivals in a bid to end a 30-months-long political crisis …. The GERB party of ex-Premier Boyko Borissov, which won the April general election, and the runner-up, the pro-European liberal coalition ‘We Continue the Change — Democratic Bulgaria’ have agreed to form the first-ever Bulgarian government where the post of prime minister will change hands halfway through. Lawmakers voted 132-69 to elect Nikolay Denkov, a 60-year-old chemistry professor and former education minister, as prime minister. Denkov is a founding member of the reformist ‘We Continue the Change’ party. In a separate vote, legislators also approved the Cabinet, in which GERB’s Maria Gabriel, a former European Commissioner, will serve as deputy head of government and foreign minister. After nine months, Denkov and Gabriel will switch positions for the rest of the term.” (06/06/23)
- Merck Sues US Regime to Halt Medicare Drug Price Negotiation
Source: US News & World Report
“Merck & Co sued the U.S. government on Tuesday, seeking an injunction of the drug price negotiation program contained in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which it argues violates the Fifth and First Amendments to the U.S. Constitution. This is the first attempt by a drugmaker to challenge the law, which the pharmaceutical industry says will result in a loss of profits that will force them to pull back on developing groundbreaking new treatments. … The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, argues that under the law, drugmakers would be forced to negotiate prices for drugs in the government’s Medicare health insurance program at below market rates. Merck asserts this violates the part of the Fifth Amendment that requires the government to pay just compensation for private property taken for public use.” [editor’s note: How would they be “forced to negotiate?” Can’t they just say “don’t want your business?” – TLK] (06/06/23)
- France faces 14th day of nationwide protests against pension reform
Source: France 24 [French state media]
“French unions are seeking to reignite resistance to President Emmanuel Macron’s raising of the retirement age with what may be a final surge of nationwide protests and scattered strikes Tuesday. … French anti-pension reform protesters briefly occupied the headquarters of the Paris Summer 2024 Olympics Committee in northern Paris on Tuesday, a spokesperson for the games said. … Electricians on Tuesday cut power to a large area of Issy-les-Moulineaux, a commercial district south of Paris that is home to several media and IT companies, in protest against the government’s pension reform law passed earlier this year.” (06/06/23)
- The Right’s War on Drag Is Flagrantly Unconstitutional
Source: The Nation
by Elie Mystal“I was driving my family home after seeing the live action Little Mermaid, and I off-handedly said to my wife: ‘The only thing that could have made that movie more inclusive was if Ursula was played by a drag queen.’ It was a rookie parenting mistake because I was immediately peppered with ‘what is a drag queen?’ questions from my 10 and 7 year old boys, only I hadn’t thought through how to explain the concept to children who think it’s a given that people will dress how they want. … Defining ‘drag’ to the satisfaction of children is difficult. Defining drag so that you can ban people from performing in it is, or should be, constitutionally impossible. That hasn’t stopped bigoted Republican legislators and governors from trying.” (06/06/23)
- Truth Serum: The Other Ehrlich Bets
Source: Bet On It
by Bryan Caplan“We’ve all heard about the Ehrlich-Simon bet. Simon the cornucopian bet that resources would get cheaper, Ehrlich the doomsayer bet that they would get pricier, and Simon crushed him. There’s a whole book on it. What you probably don’t know, however, is that in 1995, Paul Ehrlich and Steve Schneider proposed a long list of new bets for Simon — and that Simon refused them all.” (06/06/23)
https://betonit.substack.com/p/truth-serum-the-other-ehrlich-bets
- He Is the Eggman
Source: Common Sense
by Paul Jacob“Humpty Dumpty was a good egg. Well, that’s what we tend to think, but the original nursery rhyme doesn’t specify an eggman (goo goo g’joob) at all. And says nothing about his character. All the rhyme says? He had a great fall, and the king’s forces — masculine and equine — couldn’t make him whole. This was brought to mind with yet another pratfall by President Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., along with yet another stream of journalistic puffery trying to make the octogenarian seem like a good egg — and the falls insignificant.” (06/06/23)
- The case for Plan B
Source: Niskanen Center
by Brink Lindsey“In my previous essay, I argued that rising to the challenge of the permanent problem is daunting but manageable: you can get there from here. Working within the existing institutional structures of liberal democratic welfare-state capitalism, we can see lines of incremental progress and reform that lead to a substantially more dynamic and inclusive society …. I don’t just think that the policy reforms we advocate can take us to a much better place; I also think that enough of this agenda can actually get enacted and implemented to make a decisive difference. But the fact that I’m not winding down this series shows that I believe some other things as well — in particular, that developing and enacting incremental reforms within existing institutional structures does not exhaust the set of constructive responses to the permanent problem.” (06/06/23)
- To Save the News, We Must Open Up App Stores
Source: Electronic Frontier Foundation
by Cory Doctorow“Apple’s App Store started off with a pretty straightforward proposition: when publishers sold an app to readers, Apple would process the transaction and take a 30 percent cut. After that, publishers could use any payment processor they wanted — including Apple — to handle future purchases, such as per-article fees, recurring subscriptions, or other transactions. But as the iPad — and other devices that tapped into the App Store, the iPhone and iPod — grew in prominence and became more structurally important to publishers’ businesses, Apple altered the deal. In 2011, Apple announced that every in-app transaction had to be processed by Apple, and that Apple would take a 30 percent commission on all revenues generated by every app user. To ensure that publishers didn’t do an end-run around this new deal, Apple banned apps from directing users to the web to process payments.” (06/06/23)
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/06/save-news-we-must-open-app-stores
- The Trouble with Politics in Pop Culture
Source: American Institute for Economic Research
by Blake Scott Ball“In 2023, our politics and our entertainment have become so blurred that we can hardly distinguish one from the other. As a result, we are inundated by politics everywhere we turn. Late night television, the morning sports recap, Disney movies, even the beer aisle at the local supermarket. But as the volume of politics in our daily lives has increased in the twenty-first century, the quality of that content has drastically declined. And since our public education system does a dreadful job of teaching history and civics, often sacrificing the humanities on the altar of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics), Americans’ understanding of their own political system is the chief casualty. We could point to many culprits in the decline of the popular American political culture, but I blame Kevin Spacey.” (06/06/23)
https://www.aier.org/article/the-trouble-with-politics-in-pop-culture/
- America Doesn’t Need Regime Change
Source: Quillette
by Damon LinkerReview of Regime Change: Toward a Postliberal Future by Patrick J. Deneen.” (06/06/23)
https://quillette.com/2023/06/06/america-doesnt-need-regime-change/
- US Trade Deficits Are Growing Larger. Or Are They?
Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by Laurent Hynes“Another year has brought another record United States trade deficit, along with the usual dismissal of it as anything but a symbol of American excellence and a booming economy. It is true that, in our modern monetary system, a balance of payments deficit is simply the aggregate exchange of domestic asset ownership for foreign goods and services and not a problem in and of itself. Measuring economic activity in fiat currency, however, is akin to using an ever-changing tape measure, and we must be highly suspicious of any conclusions derived from such figures.” (06/06/23)
https://mises.org/wire/us-trade-deficits-are-growing-larger-or-are-they
- Loosening Youth Employment Regulations Empowers Teens
Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Kerry McDonald“Critics of efforts to loosen youth employment restrictions, such as a bill New Jersey lawmakers passed last year allowing 16- and 17-year-olds to work up to 50 hours per week in the summertime, argue that widening access to work can burden teenagers and even be exploitative. They instead advocate other policies, like encouraging immigration, that could alleviate widespread labor market shortages without impacting teens. This is a both/and situation. We should encourage immigration and open our borders to newcomers, and we should reduce barriers that make it harder for teenagers to work. Both are desirable policies that expand human flourishing.” (06/06/23)
https://fee.org/articles/loosening-youth-employment-regulations-empowers-teens/
- The Silencing of the Experts
Source: Brownstone Institute
by Thorsteinn Siglaugsson“‘If I said openly what I’m saying to you now, I would be fired from my job right away,’ a friend of mine, a young consultant at a major firm, recently said. And the topic we were discussing wasn’t even related to his job. But he and his colleagues are not expected to participate in public discussion. This rule is almost universal. Consultants, lawyers, doctors, specialists in any field, working at companies or institutions, or even just independently, are simply not allowed to express their own opinions in the public domain. Those who break this rule do not hold onto their jobs or their clients for long. The people who enter those professions are usually among the best educated and most intelligent, people whose participation in public discussion and debate would doubtless be very valuable. But their voices are not allowed to be heard.” (06/06/23)
- Headlines vs Data: What Does the Jobs Report Actually Say?
Source: Libertarian Institute
by Ryan McMaken“The Bureau of Labor Statistic (BLS) released new jobs data on Friday. According to the report, seasonally adjusted total nonfarm jobs rose 339,000 jobs in May, well above forecasts. The unemployment rate rose slightly from 3.4 percent to 3.7 percent (month over month). Headlines in the mainstream media declared the headline employment data to be evidence of very strong job growth and economic success. According to Politico, the latest jobs numbers are evidence of a ‘remarkable resilience of President Joe Biden’s economy’ and NPR declared the job market to be ‘sizzling hot.’ Yet, May appears to be yet another month in which it seems nearly every economic indicator except the payroll jobs data points to an economic slowdown.” (06/06/23)
https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/headlines-vs-data-what-does-the-jobs-report-actually-say
- Right-Wing Culture Warriors Want to Kill Academic Freedom to Save the People
Source: The UnPopulist
by Jonathan Marks“Exactly nine days before Florida Governor Ron DeSantis announced his presidential bid, he signed SB266, a grab-bag of initiatives designed to weaken left-liberals and their ideas at Florida’s state universities. Among other things, the law stripped all ‘state or federal funds’ for ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ (DEI) initiatives on college campuses. Conservatives have come to regard these programs, which their proponents consider essential to removing artificial barriers that impede the success of groups that have suffered and suffer from discrimination, as a Trojan Horse for the social justice causes of the ultra-woke. … What justifies scrapping the prevailing understanding of academic freedom? Namely, as [Christopher] Rufo claimed at Stanford, U.S. universities have become politically correct orthodoxies more oppressive than those ‘under Soviet Communism in Hungary.’ Rufo learned that during his recent six-week visit to Hungary, an ‘illiberal democracy’ according to Prime Minister Viktor Orban himself, and a laboratory for squelching academic freedom.” (06/06/23)
https://www.theunpopulist.net/p/right-wing-culture-warriors-want
- Zealots for Freedom
Source: Law & Liberty
by Bradley J Birzer“Some books become good friends. They not only stimulate our minds, but they also speak to our very souls. The Individualists: Radicals, Reactionaries, and the Struggle for the Soul of Libertarianism, by Matt Zwolinski and John Tomasi, is such a book. The two authors do everything humanly possible to uncover and reveal the deepest roots of modern and post-modern libertarianism, tracing its very diverse and tenuous strands back to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, noting that, ultimately, it’s a radical form of classical liberalism. At one level, it’s a biography of the very idea of libertarianism, but at another level, it’s an intellectual autobiography of anyone who considers him- or herself libertarian.” (06/06/23)
- Sterling Crisis Ahead!
Source: Cobden Centre
by Alasdair Macleod“Of the four major western alliance currencies, only one shares its underlying economic characteristics with one of the others. In this respect, sterling is the poor man’s dollar. While financial headlines have focused on the dollar, sterling has been side-lined. But this is now changing.” (06/06/23)
- A Plea Not To Risk Nuclear War
Source: Antiwar.com
by Ted Snider“As the West pours more advanced weapons into Ukraine that have the range to strike, not only inside Russian occupied territory in Ukraine, but inside the internationally recognized territory of Russia itself, the risk of nuclear war looms. Russia’s nuclear deterrence policy states that Russia ‘hypothetically’ could allow the use of nuclear weapons only if there is ‘aggression using conventional weapons, when the very existence of the state is threatened.’ Recently, there has been a gathering flurry of articles arguing that the US should take that risk. Russia’s launching of this horrible war in Ukraine was illegal and insane. The only thing that would be more horrible and more insane would be ending the conventional war with a nuclear war. The only sane answer to this war is to end it in a way that wont end everything else too: through a negotiated settlement.” (06/06/23)
https://original.antiwar.com/ted_snider/2023/06/05/a-plea-not-to-risk-nuclear-war/
- Florida Republicans Admit They Made a Big Mistake With Anti-Immigrant Law
Source: The New Republic
by Prem Thakker“Florida Republicans passed a bill criminalizing the transport of undocumented people into Florida, requiring hospitals to ask about immigration status on intake forms, invalidating out of state driver’s licenses or other forms of government ID issued to undocumented people, and preventing local governments from issuing identification cards to undocumented people. Now, after sparking backlash among thousands of immigrants (who make up a great deal of Florida’s economy), some Florida Republicans are trying to backpedal and do damage control. On Monday, Representatives Alina Garcia, Rick Roth, and Juan Fernandez Barquin hosted an event sponsored by Hialeah Mayor Esteban Bovo, also a Republican. The trio, all of whom voted to pass the anti-immigrant bill, clumsily attempted to appeal to the thousands of people their party has alienated.” (06/05/23)
- Student Loan Borrowers Get Deeper in Debt from Pause in Payments
Source: Independent Institute
by Craig Eyermann“A remarkable new working paper shows the household finances of student loan borrowers have become more burdened by debt during the last three years. Although many have been excused from making payments since 2020, many of these borrowers responded to that relief by taking out other kinds of loans. … Having their student loans on pause gave these borrowers more cash, which they turned around and used to pay for new loans. Loans they took out after their student loan payments were paused. How much more debt have these student loan borrowers taken on?” (06/05/23)
- Awkward Libertarian Baby Reveal
Source: Reason
“A family’s reveal party doesn’t go as expected.” (06/06/23)
https://reason.com/video/2023/06/06/awkward-libertarian-baby-reveal/
- Commentary Podcast, 06/06/23
Source: Commentary
“Why There’s No Establishment Any Longer.” (06/06/23)
https://www.commentary.org/john-podhoretz/why-theres-no-establishment-any-longer/
- Serious Trouble, 06/06/23
Source: Serious Trouble
“The Legal Brief: Beyond the Machine.” (06/06/23)
https://www.serioustrouble.show/p/the-legal-brief-beyond-the-machine
- Rising, 06/06/23
Source: The Hill
“Briahna Joy Gray and Robby Soave react to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Elon Musk’s joint discussion about Twitter Spaces.” (06/06/23)
https://thehill.com/hilltv/rising/4036619-rising-june-6-2023/
- The New Abnormal, 06/06/23
Source: The Daily Beast
“Matt Gaetz Doesn’t Want You to Know He Wears Unisex Blazers.” (06/06/23)
https://www.thedailybeast.com/matt-gaetz-doesnt-want-you-to-know-he-wears-unisex-blazers
- Stay Free With Russell Brand, episode 140
Source: Stay Free With Russell Brand
“FBI Secrets EXPOSED | Whistleblower EXCLUSIVE Interview.” (06/06/23)
- Advisory Opinions, 06/06/23
Source: The Dispatch
“Lower Your Expectations.” (06/06/23)
https://thedispatch.com/podcast/advisoryopinions/lower-your-expectations/
- The Bryan Hyde Show, 06/06/23
Source: The Bryan Hyde Show
“Eric Peters from Eric Peters Autos is my guest as we do our best to sift fact from fiction in current events.” (06/06/23)
- Pod Save America, 06/06/23
Source: Crooked Media
“12 Angry Hopefuls.” (06/06/23)
- Antiwar News with Dave DeCamp, 06/06/23
Source: Antiwar.com
“Blinken Rejects Ceasefire in Ukraine, US Accuses China of Unsafe Manuever in Taiwan Strait, and More.” (06/06/23)
- System Update, 06/05/23
Source: System Update
“Overnight, the Western Press Radically Rewrote the Truth About Ukraine to Serve Biden’s Endless War Policies.” (06/05/23)