The Artful Dilettante is a native of Pittsburgh, PA, and a graduate of Penn State University. He is a lover of liberty and a lifelong and passionate student of the same. He is voracious reader of books on the Enlightenment and the American colonial and revolutionary periods. He is a student of libertarian and Objectivist philosophies. He collects revolutionary war and period currency, books, and newspapers. He is married and the father of one teenage son. He is kind, witty, generous to a fault, and unjustifiably proud of himself. He is the life of the party and an unparalleled raconteur.
A Super Bowl not being played on American soil has never felt more likely with the NFL’s international expansion of regular season games, with London making a strong case through British ambassador to the United States Peter Mandelson.
London’s Wembley Stadium has hosted regular-season NFL games for a decade, with it always being mentioned for the loftiest of the league’s expansion goals for an actual franchise.
While Mexico City, Toronto, and Munich would also love to be in the race to host arguably the biggest annual game on the world’s sporting calendar, Mandelson’s case gives England’s capital city a possible leg up.
‘I’ve made a big pitch for the first Super Bowl outside the US to take place in Britain,’ he told the Chicago Council on Global Affairs on Thursday, per The Times.
Mandelson’s assertion came as he asked if there were any workers from the NFL in the audience.
‘I want that Super Bowl in Britain. I don’t care when it takes place but I want it announced while I’m ambassador. We love it, we love it.’
Mandelson has only served as the ambassador since February, taking the role under President Donald Trump less than a month after the American took back the White House.
The earliest London could host the Super Bowl would be 2029, as the sites of the next three editions have already been announced by the NFL.
Levi’s Stadium, home of the San Francisco 49ers, will host the game in February, with it staying in California in 2027 in Inglewood, home of the Los Angeles Rams.
Atlanta will host the 2028 edition at Mercedes-Benz Stadium, with a few cities already positioning to try and get the 2029 edition.
Nashville’s new NFL stadium will open in 2027 and looks destined to host a Super Bowl over the next decade. Las Vegas wants the game back after hosting it in 2024.
Minneapolis is a longshot despite a glitzy new gridiron venue by being in a cold-weather city.
London weather by may grim in early February as well, but NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell breaking ground with an international championship game may make bringing the game overseas too exciting to pass up.
Forcing nuns—nuns!—to buy birth control (in the form of Obamacare medical insurance) should have been the canary in the coal mine of progressives’ vile, out-of-control authoritarianism. And to a large extent, in the center-right media space, it got the attention it deserved, but it truly deserved a deeper and wider audience, for it was a blinding flashpoint in the whole groin-focused-”reproductive-care”-gay-marriage-”gender-fluid”-what-are-your-pronouns arc launched in earnest during the Obama era.
Last November, when analyzing why Kamala lost, Clarice Feldman summed it up brilliantly:
For some reason I keep thinking about the saga of the Little Sisters of the Poor, beginning back at the end of the second Obama administration. It had, in miniature, the key elements of liberal political psychology that afflicted the Biden administration and the Harris campaign: the compulsive aggression and imprudence of liberal government, which ends up defeating itself through the inability to exercise even a modicum of political self-restraint, combined with the total inability of the aggressors to understand why anyone could doubt their rectitude. [Emphasis added.]
The American people are a great and good people with a deep sense of fairness. Whatever else we are, we are that. It’s ingrained within us. We fled the divine right of kings. We have intense discomfort with some people, who, simply by dint of blood, claim to have been born “superior” to us, having special rights we don’t have and can never get. The British pomp and circumstance is all very entertaining, but that’s them, not us.
Some of us (mostly women) might occasionally fancy watching a “fairy tale” of a royal wedding on television, but princes and kings? For real? Fairy tales are where they belong. We blew that clambake. We work for a living and dream big. We can each be our own kings (and queens), thank you very much. We earn it. Oh, and you’d better have a good reason for getting all up in my business, Mr. Big Government, or you’ll hear us complain loudly about it.
The Little Sisters of the Poor did complain…loudly. They complained all the way to the Supreme Court, and won (mostly), but not completely. Two blue states are still coming after them!
The above tweets are part of a much longer thread about how Democrats have been trying to force nuns to fund abortion.)
This level of authoritarianism needs a name: Progressive Neo-Puritanism. They are the Puritans of the 21st century. They will shun you, cancel you, and punish you if you do not comply. And they mean this on a nationwide basis, and that is their problem.
Our fifty laboratories of liberty are merely hubcap-popping speed bumps on their frenetic way to Progressive Utopia. Hence their need, their relentless drive, to get the Supreme Court to affirm things they haven’t been able or willing to get the Hill or the states to affirm through legislation, which is how it’s supposed to be done here in America.
We use the term “slippery slope” a lot. It’s a “slippery slope” indeed.
First, it was “tolerance,” right? Then “coexist.” Then it was legal “domestic partners.” Then came Obergefell with gay marriage. Almost immediately, there were articles in Salon and other left-wing organs talking about “throuples.” Then there were celebratory articles about women “marrying” trees, or their dogs, or themselves! Then came “gender fluidity” and the insistence on pronouns. Then they came for the nuns. And then…
…they came for our kids. Their “gender fluidity.” Their mutilation while they were still developing. Then came the drag-queen story hours in public schools for kids who hadn’t even begun puberty, much less finished it. And the books they publish! Have you seen “Gender Queer”? Good gravy. It’s pornography for kids. On and on… It has done nothing but grow more and more degenerate and dangerous to innocence.
Then, when we complain that we, as parents, should have a say over what our schools are teaching about sex and all things sex-related, we are vilified, shunned, canceled, and punished. Biden’s FBI sends agents to school parking lots to record license plate numbers of the parents who are complaining.
Somewhere along the way, “tolerance” of all their crazy ideas became an insistence on endorsement. They demanded we not merely, silently, just live and work alongside them. Somewhere along the way, that became insufficient. Silence became “violence.”
They needed us to endorse their insanity with compliance, like the whole pronoun thing. Certainly like Obergefell. Which, may—may—get a rehearing at the Supreme Court this fall, thanks to the Kentucky clerk who went to jail (for a few days) a decade ago for not issuing a wedding license to a gay couple because it violated her sincerely held religious beliefs.
I don’t know exactly when tolerance transmogrified into endorsement, but it’s corrosive. It’s got to stop. Compelled speech, compelled expression, is profoundly anti-American.
Liberals used to understand this during the Vietnam era with “conscientious objectors.” Nowadays, they want to force doctors to perform abortions even when it violates everything they hold morally dear.
How is this not “authoritarian”? How is this not just reflexive obedience to the Church of Progressive Orthodoxy? How vile. Can you imagine? Being a physician, a healer—“first do no harm”—being forced into this gruesomely evil scenario? Yet progressives are just fine with it.
Well, I’m not fine with it. Never have been. Never will be. Thank God the right candidate won last November, or we’d be seeing acolytes to the Church of Progressive Orthodoxy insinuating themselves and their insane beliefs into every little nook and cranny of our lives right now. We can only hope Trump can get the swampy RINOs on the Hill to codify much of his agenda into law so we don’t have to fear what comes after him. Maybe they can start with some legislation to relieve The Little Sisters of the Poor.
State Department Abruptly Halts Visa Releases for Gazans After Loomer Exposes Shocking Footage of Refugees Shipped Into America
by Jim Hᴏft Aug. 16, 2025
The U.S. State Department has suspended all visa releases for individuals from Gaza after investigative journalist Laura Loomer exposed shocking footage of Palestinian “refugees” being quietly brought into the United States, allegedly under the guise of humanitarian visas.
Loomer posted video evidence on X showing Palestinian nationals claiming to be “refugees” arriving in U.S. airports, including San Francisco, Houston, Texas, St. Louis, Missouri, and Ohio.
According to her report, these individuals were assisted by a group called Heal Palestine.
Loomer wrote on X:
“Despite the US saying we are not accepting Palestinian “refugees” into the United States under the Trump administration, I have obtained video footage of Palestinians who claim to be refugees from Gaza coming into the United States via San Francisco and Houston, Texas this month. The Palestinians traveled from Gaza to the US with the help of a group called “Heal Palestine”.
How did Palestinians get Visas under the Trump administration to get into the United States? Did @StateDept approve this? How did they get out of Gaza? Is @SecRubio aware of this?
Who from the State Department is assisting “Heal Palestine”?
Why are any Islamic invaders coming into the US under the Trump admin?
Who approved the visas? How many more are being given visas to come into the US, and why are @GavinNewsom @GregAbbott_TX harboring Palestinian “refugees” in California and Texas?
This is a national security threat. We didn’t vote for more Islamic immigration into the United States.
Who signed off on these visas? They should be fired.”
The group facilitating the entries, Heal Palestine, describes itself as a nonpolitical, nonreligious U.S.-registered nonprofit founded in 2024 to deliver “urgent relief and long-term support” to Palestinians.
According to investigative X user Data Republican, Heal Palestine filed a 990-N (meant for charities under $50K in revenue) while receiving grants well over that threshold.
According to Data Republican:
“Heal Palestine (the group who is posting about welcoming Gaza refugees) has EIN 882454707 and filed a 990N for the year 2023. Yet, 990Ns are for charities with revenues under 50K and I found multiple instances of 50K+ grants.
Heal Palestine’s board is full of technocrats … but perhaps most telling is that there is a Mohanned Awad on the board who is publicly declared as bringing “UAE connections to HEAL’s Board.”
Steve Sosebee, the founder of Heal Palestine, also founded the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund (PCRF). They too got an enormous cash influx boost starting in 2023.”
Data Republican added:
“Today, the arrival of Palestinian refugees in the United States made social media rounds, and it was discovered to be the efforts of an organization called Heal Palestine.
Heal Palestine is led by Steve Sosebee, the same individual who previously partnered with the now-dismantled Holy Land Foundation (HLF), a U.S.-based charity founded by the Muslim Brotherhood shut down after being convicted of funneling millions of dollars to Hamas.
Sosebee was part of HLF’s fundraising operation.
His role: transport injured Palestinian children to the U.S. for care — explicitly picked to elicit sympathy.
HLF’s role: handle donor outreach, press, and scheduling.
The arrangement: HLF took 60% of the donations; Sosebee took 40%.
This was a coordinated financial pipeline to Hamas, a partnership between a U.S. nonprofit and the Muslim Brotherhood’s American fundraising
That was approximately twenty years ago and Sosebee somehow avoided DoJ scrutiny in the Holy Land Foundation case. And now the optics of these Palestinian refugees arriving in the USA are identical.
So, to whom is that 60% going to this time?”
Florida State Rep. Randy Fine blasted the revelations uncovered by Loomer:
“I am troubled by reporting uncovered by Laura Loomer that indicates that Gazans are being allowed into the United States. If true, this is absolutely unacceptable.
My office will be working with the relevant authorities to confirm the truth, understand how it happened, and seek immediate expulsion.”
Loomer confirmed she has already spoken directly with Fine, and that Senator Tom Cotton’s office is also investigating how these visas were granted.
After Loomer’s footage went viral and congressional pressure mounted, the State Department released a statement:
“All visitor visas for individuals from Gaza are being stopped while we conduct a full and thorough review of the process and procedures used to issue a small number of temporary medical-humanitarian visas in recent days.”
The Gateway Pundit has reached out to Healing Palestine for a comment.
Jim Hᴏft is the founder and editor of The Gateway Pundit, one of the top conservative news outlets in America. Jim was awarded the Reed Irvine Accuracy in Media Award in 2013 and is the proud recipient of the Breitbart Award for Excellence in Online Journalism from the Americans for Prosperity Foundation in May 2016.
If you’re thinking of relocating, looking at factors like education, the local economy, and overall quality of life could make or break your decision.
A new WalletHub study ranks all 50 states from best to worst places to live, using what it calls “key indicators of livability,” which include housing costs, quality of public education and healthcare, and quality of life.
These were based on factors such as homeownership rate, unemployment rate, high school graduation rate, life expectancy, and average hours worked per week. The study used data collected from the US Census Bureau, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Council for Community and Economic Research, among other sources.
“When deciding on a place to move, you should first consider financial factors like the cost of living, housing prices and job availability,” WalletHub analyst Chip Lupo said in the report. “Many states have strong economies, though, so you should also consider a wide variety of other factors, such as how where you live will impact your health and safety, and whether you will have adequate access to activities that you enjoy.”
Here are the 10 lowest-ranked US states to live in in 2025, according to WalletHub.
10. Alabama
Alabama ranked poorly in the economy and education-and-health indexes. Cavan-Images/Shutterstock
Although Alabama ranked first on the study’s affordability index, which considers factors like homeownership rate and annual property taxes, the state ranked poorly for its economy and its education and health.
In the education-and-health index, which looks at factors like life expectancy and the share of the population aged 25 and older with a high school or higher education degree, the state ranked fifth worst. Earlier this year, the state was ranked 50th in the US for public school education in a World Population Review study.
Adding to the state’s cons list: It was also ranked as having the ninth worst economy, which factored in markers like unemployment and poverty rates.
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9. West Virginia
West Virginia ranked the second most-affordable US state. Mihai_Andritoiu/Shutterstock
West Virginia had the highest homeownership rate in the WalletHub study, which contributed to its ranking as the second most affordable US state overall. It also had the fifth lowest crime rate in the study.
But the state ranked poorly in education and health and quality of life — WalletHub reported that, among all states, it had the fourth highest percentage of its population living in poverty.
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8. Oklahoma
Another study found Oklahoma to have the second worst public school resources and safety. Sean Pavone/Getty Images/iStockphoto
Oklahoma was ranked as the seventh worst state in WalletHub’s education-and-health index. When looking at the population of insured residents in each state, Oklahoma had the second lowest percentage of insured people, behind only Texas.
Oklahoma also came 49th out of 50 states on public school resources and safety in the World Population Review study.
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7. South Carolina
South Carolina was ranked the fifth least-safe US state in the WalletHub study. Sean Pavone/Shutterstock
South Carolina was ranked within the top 10 most affordable states, but that wasn’t enough to make up for its low rankings in other categories.
It was ranked the fifth unsafest state in the US, according to the WalletHub study, and it was within the 10 worst states in the education-and-health index.
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6. Nevada
Nevada scored poorly in the economy and affordability indexes. Getty Images
Nevada‘s unfavorable ranking is at least partly due to the state’s unaffordable housing, which contributes to it having the third lowest homeownership rate and third highest housing cost in the study.
The state’s economy was also ranked as the seventh worst in the country, and the state is in the top 10 unsafest states in the US.
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5. Alaska
In Alaska, residents work the highest number of hours per week out of every US state. Bruce Yuanyue Bi/Getty Images
Alaska, which was recently ranked as America’s worst state for business by CNBC, was ranked by WalletHub as the worst state for quality of life and income growth.
The WalletHub study also found that the state had the lowest rate of restaurants per capita and that its residents worked the highest number of hours a week when compared to all states.
Despite this, the state came fourth in WalletHub’s economy ranking.
4. Mississippi
Mississippi has the highest percentage of its population living in poverty out of every US state. Paul Brady Photography/Shutterstock
Despite being ranked as the eighth most affordable US state, Mississippi was found to have the second lowest quality of life out of every US state, and its economy ranking fell within the bottom 10.
People in the state work the fourth highest number of hours weekly out of every US state. Mississippi also has the fifth lowest percentage of insured population.
Additionally, its residents have the lowest average credit score in the country, according to recent Experian data, and have the highest percentage of its population living in poverty. The state also has the third lowest percentage of population age 25 and older with a high school diploma or higher.
3. Arkansas
Despite poor rankings, Arkansas was ranked as the fifth most affordable state. Michael Warren/Getty Images
Having the third worst quality of life out of every US state, Arkansas was also found to be the sixth unsafest, and it ranked within the bottom 10 for education, health, and economy.
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2. Louisiana
Louisiana was ranked as the worst US state to live in last year. Sean Pavone/Shutterstock
Found to have the worst economy out of every US state by the WalletHub study, Louisiana ranks as the second worst state when it comes to education and health, as well as percentage of population living in poverty.
The state, which was ranked as the worst US state to live in last year, also has the third highest crime rate and its residents work the highest number of hours weekly, WalletHub reported.
New Mexico was ranked as the worst US state to live in in 2025. Daniel A. Leifheit/Getty Images
Ranked as the worst US state to live in in 2025, New Mexico, which had the highest crime rate of any US state, was ranked as the second unsafest. It also has the third worst education-and-health ranking and the third highest share of its population living in poverty.
Kristine Villarroel is a Life Fellow covering lifestyle for the Editorial Partnerships team at Business Insider.
She has previously worked writing about music, culture, entertainment, tech, travel, and real estate. Her work has been featured on Teen Vogue and Wired.
She graduated from the University of Florida with a degree in journalism. There, she worked as the arts and culture, Spanish, and engagement managing editor of The Independent Florida Alligator.
Sometimes you can’t help but marvel at how much we’re all willing to pay for the illusion of “green progress.” New Jersey decided—like half the country—that climate purity would be achieved by wind turbines, solar panels, and endless press conferences declaring victory against bad old fossil fuels. But someone forgot to run the numbers, and now the bill arrives, with a little note attached: “Due immediately. No refunds. See: your monthly utility statement.”
Let’s start with the latest funhouse mirror: PJM’s capacity auction. You’ll see the acronym “PJM” all over any story about electricity markets, grid drama, and ratepayer headaches up and down the Eastern seaboard. So what actually is PJM—besides an endless font of regulatory press releases and auction results?
PJM, when it’s at home, stands for Pennsylvania-New Jersey-Maryland Interconnection. Despite the name, it’s not just those three states anymore. It’s now the largest regional transmission organization (RTO) in the United States, covering all or part of 13 states (think New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Virginia, Illinois, etc.) plus Washington, D.C., stretching from the rust belt to the edge of the South. Its territory spans 65 million people—nearly one fifth of the country—so what happens in PJM’s control room often decides whether your air conditioner hums or whimpers in August.
But PJM isn’t a power company. It owns no transmission lines, no power plants, no substations. It’s the air traffic controller of the grid—coordinating the flow of electricity across 88,000 miles of high-voltage transmission, managing more than 1,400 power generators, and pulling the levers of gigantic energy marketplaces where utilities buy the electrons they deliver to your living room. When you hear about capacity auctions, day-ahead markets, or “grid reliability events,” PJM’s the referee moving pieces around the giant chessboard of supply and demand.
PJM works around the clock—like a cross between NASA’s control room and the pit bosses in Vegas who used to give me the hairy eyeball—tracking generation, monitoring demand in real-time, and dispatching power plants to keep everything balanced minute to minute. They’re charged (pun intended) with making sure the lights stay on for hospitals, factories, schools, and your midnight TikTok habit. Their holy grail? Reliability and low cost, achieved by—ideally—always calling on the cheapest available source of power and preventing rolling blackouts when the weather or a misbehaving power plant throws a wrench in the works.
Importantly, PJM doesn’t serve customers directly or send you a bill. Your utility—PSEG, JCP&L, Atlantic City Electric, and the like—buys power at these massive auctions and passes the costs through to consumers. When PJM’s auctions spike, your rates spike. When the grid creaks due to “renewable integration,” “data center demand,” or “retiring nuclear plants,” PJM rings the alarm bell and shuffles the mix, often asking utilities (and by extension, you) to pay more for reliability.
So next time you see “PJM” in the news, remember: it’s not a company, it’s not a government agency, and it’s not run by mad scientists or Wall Street quants. It’s the big, complicated, nonprofit grid manager whose job is to juggle electrons, forecast tomorrow’s peaks, referee the markets, and—hopefully—keep your dinner out of the dark. If they cough or sneeze, everyone from New Jersey to Ohio checks their fuse box—just to be safe.
Now for years, the PJM auction price for “guaranteed” power—the kind that keeps your lights on after sunset—hovered around $29.92 per megawatt-day. That number just jackknifed straight through sanity’s guardrails and into $329.17/MW-day for 2026. That is a tenfold hike.
(Note that the unit of $ per megawatt-day reflects the market’s annual capacity payment to generators for guaranteeing their availability, regardless of actual energy delivered. The figure is not meant to be directly converted into an energy unit ($/kWh) for retail bills, as it covers standby and reliability commitment, not dispatched energy.)
Utilities don’t swallow those costs; they pass them through like hot potatoes, and suddenly, one fifth of your bill is just “capacity”—meaning “back-up for things that don’t work when it’s cloudy, calm, or 5 p.m.”
Why the spike? The grid’s been forced into a juggling act worthy of Cirque du Soleil. New Jersey, like every other “green leader,” retires gas plants and nuclear units as a matter of policy, then pins its hopes on renewables that need transmission lines and grid storage which aren’t built yet. There’s a 143 gigawatt backlog—yes, gigawatts, yes, backlog—in PJM’s project queue, most of it wind and solar waiting for bureaucrats, lawsuits, regulatory “streamlining.”, and continued consumer stupidity. In theory, the state could bathe in zero-carbon glory, but most of these projects are frozen in the interconnection swamp, with offshore wind delayed at least two years and solar farms bottled up behind transmission shortages.
Now toss in the wildcard: the AI/data center gold rush. What used to be a footnote on the demand page now accounts for 4% of total load in the PJM region—with a straight trajectory to 12% before 2030. Nearly 70% of this year’s price hike? Blame the server farms, chewing through terawatts so your robot butler can hallucinate about cat videos. PJM’s own models now admit overall demand growth has tripled, and may hit 5%/year soon—while new “clean” supply trickles in, stuck on the rails.
And what does all this cutting-edge renewable ambition actually mean for you? By August 2025, residential rates have spiked to 19.74¢ per kWh. The average bill is now $129/month—20% over the national average, with low-income families choosing between groceries and the privilege of running the water heater. Business owners are seeing $2,800 monthly charges for midsize operations.
The utility companies will offer you energy-saving tips, maybe a rebate on a smart thermostat, but explain—very quietly—that they’re just forwarding the PJM costs from upstream. Auction results, demand modeling, global fuel instability, renewable delays: all rolled into your statement, no line-item for “wishes.”
Grid modernization? Sure. The Board of Public Utilities rewrites some rules, pushes for “streamlined” solar connections, and promises to bring everyone into the clean energy fold. But each improvement needs billions for transmission upgrades, “enhanced reliability standards,” and, inevitably, more interconnection paperwork, which brings you… more delays and higher costs.
All the while, billions in clean energy projects (offshore wind, storage farms, hydrogen pilots) are being canceled nationwide—$14 to $22 billion in 2025 alone—due to political uncertainty, people looking hard at the real costs of “renewables”, vanished tax credits, and the occasional leadership shuffle. Meanwhile, moratoriums, regulatory drama, and lawsuits ensure that, for every “transformative” wind project launched, two more are killed or delayed.
And here’s the kicker: while the advocates chant that “solar and wind are the cheapest forms of energy,” the real world keeps offering up rate hikes, capacity crises, and bills that read like a ransom note.
What we’re buying isn’t reliability or affordability—it’s a perpetual promise of future savings, forever in the next quarter, if we’re lucky. So New Jersey residents get stuck paying for capacity the grid can no longer guarantee, backups for power sources that quit at sunset, and transmission lines waiting for someday.
The folly? Instead of getting affordable “clean” energy, ratepayers are underwriting a circus of subsidies and speculative projects whose delays and failures are a matter of public record. When your rates spike, remember: it’s the cost of betting the farm on renewables dependent on fickle weather, bureaucratic magic, and a market that values wishful thinking over working electrons.
And when politicians tout the beauty of renewables as prices climb and climb, just ask—how much does hope cost, per kilowatt-hour?
Because in New Jersey, you’ll find out on your next power bill, whether you asked for it or not.
On Friday, Russian President Vladimir Putin flew to Alaska to meet with President Trump in an effort to resolve the long-running war with Ukraine. (Too many geographically handicapped people believed SNL’s skit deriding Sarah Palin, asserting that she had said she could see Russia from her home, and they were surprised to learn how short an eastward trip from Russia is to the United States.) For a long time, corporate media largely has framed the war as one of an innocent party viciously attacked by a big neighbor, one that is worthy of unending military and financial support. As Trump has signaled, he’s had enough and wants Ukraine’s neighbors. whose interest is greater than ours, to step up, several Western European leaders have mouthed support. In advance of the summit, Stephen Bryen set out some relevant facts most of which are not well-publicized elsewhere:
Support for the war has dropped substantially in Ukraine: “More than three years into the war, Ukrainians’ support for continuing to fight until victory has hit a new low. In Gallup’s most recent poll of Ukraine — conducted in early July — 69% say they favor a negotiated end to the war as soon as possible, compared with 24% who support continuing to fight until victory.
This marks a nearly complete reversal from public opinion in 2022, when 73% favored Ukraine fighting until victory and 22% preferred that Ukraine seek a negotiated end as soon as possible. Yet, Zelensky continues doing whatever he can to sabotage the Trump-Putin meeting in Alaska and to behave as if Ukraine’s army still has some hope of winning a war they are clearly losing.”
Europe is in no realistic position to enforce any ceasefire which might be agreed upon: “A European military contingent is, theoretically, supposed to enforce a ceasefire, the other demand made by Zelensky and his European allies. The idea behind this is a sort of plan (one hesitates to call it that, but it is what it is) to get a cheap ceasefire deal, send in troops, and then restart the war against Russia.”
In fact, Europe has no means to follow through on this — having neither the troops nor the cash to back up Zelensky’s intransigent position.
Now consider this: if Trump and Putin start to work out a relationship, Europe will be on the outside looking in mainly because they have taken an extreme Zelensky position on Ukraine. Trump is a trade maven. He will promote any deal with Russia by touting investment and technology sharing. Where does that leave the Germans or Italians or anyone else in Europe?
Even more likely, US interest in the NATO alliance will continue to disintegrate. Why back Europe if Europe is undermining US strategic interests? If key European allies continue to try and undermine any Ukraine deal, Washington will see it as harming US national security. You cannot keep backing Zelensky and expect otherwise.
Zelensky, for his part, defies democratic norms. Not only does he not follow public opinion, but he sees to it that he keeps martial law in place, refuses to have elections, and jails or exiles his opponents. During the worst of times for the British in World War II, with the loss of most of Europe, the retreat from Dunkirk, the Blitz on London, Britain never declared martial law, nor did they jail opposition politicians (other than some Nazis), attack minorities or close down churches they didn’t like.
Zelensky won’t change direction. He will continue to try and undermine US-Russian negotiations. But Europe needs to rethink its support for a Zelensky-led Ukraine. It is digging a deep hole for its future.
Aside from all this, we do have ample evidence that Ukraine under Zelensky is completely corrupt, a money-laundering machine through which billions of dollars were washed and ended up in the pockets of the Left and cronies. Hardly a sympathetic victim worthy of our wasting more arms and money to defend.
Unfortunately for Zelensky’s grand plan, Trump saw through it, and both he and Putin rejected a ceasefire, preferring an end to the war altogether.
President Trump outlined the next steps:
A great and very successful day in Alaska! The meeting with President Vladimir Putin of Russia went very well, as did a late night phone call with President Zelenskyy of Ukraine, and various European Leaders, including the highly respected Secretary General of NATO. It was determined by all that the best way to end the horrific war between Russia and Ukraine is to go directly to a Peace Agreement, which would end the war, and not a mere Ceasefire Agreement, which often times do not hold up. President Zelenskyy will be coming to D.C., the Oval Office, on Monday afternoon. If all works out, we will then schedule a meeting with President Putin. Potentially, millions of people’s lives will be saved. Thank you for your attention to this matter!
It is too bad we do not have a detailed readout on the actual conversation at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson. Trump’s use of provocative symbols, F-35s and a flyover involving a B-2 stealth bomber, and the lack of the usual protocols (no honor guard and no national anthems), hardly was conducive to a diplomatic encounter of heads of state. Moreover, the use of a military base, explained as a “security measure,” was inappropriate, but the Russians, anxious to state their case to Mr. Trump, intent on showing deep respect for the United States, accepted the venue and the conditions, even the escort of Mr. Putin’s Presidential aircraft by US fighter jets.
The bottom line is, at least for now, US policy has shifted. The US and Trump no longer support a ceasefire but want to settle the Ukraine war through negotiations. How long that will take, and even if it is possible, remains to be seen. Meanwhile the war continues and, for the most part, Russia will continue pushing to take Pokrovsk and to expand the contact line further to the west. Ukraine, already stretched and now with uncertainties on military supplies, is facing a crisis.
(Trump’s provocative setting has echoes of Putin’s. In a meeting with Angela Merkel, who is terrified of dogs, he brought his own pooch in to her obvious discomfort.)
Here’s what likely happened at the Alaska Summit. The broad outlines of a Ukraine peace agreement were already in place — otherwise Trump wouldn’t have agreed to a summit at all. Yesterday was about confirming that everyone’s on the same page and committed to moving forward. Trump’s new insistence on going straight to a full peace agreement, not just a cease fire, is another sign of that. On Monday, little Zelensky will be told what the deal is. He might throw another tantrum, in which case he and his European friends will eventually find out the hard way that it won’t end well for them. Or he might come to his senses, accept reality, and take the deal, in which case things will move very quickly.
Mahncke views Zelensky’s latest tweet about how well his war is going as akin to a Hitler-in-the-bunker statement.
Whether or not you agree, my view is that reality wins in the end, and Trump’s view, unlike Zelensky’s or Britain’s or Germany’s or France’s, is one that accords with it.
There’s no better example of how little faith Americans have that government officials will tell the truth than the public’s blasé reaction to UFO announcements. In the last ten years, The New York Times has run stories about secret Pentagon programs tasked with retrieving alien craft. Members of Congress have held hearings on “mysterious orbs” and invited government witnesses to testify about black budget projects supposedly reverse-engineering alien technology. Secretary of State Rubio and director of National Intelligence Gabbard have both suggested that the UFO issue is serious. Yet eight billion people around the world collectively shrug.
Can you imagine what the public reaction would have been like had national newspapers and prominent officials released similar details in the 1950s? With the 1947 Roswell Incident still fresh in Americans’ minds, government confirmation of UFOs would have been the most important story in the world. Every article written and television report broadcast would have been framed around the alien/UFO phenomenon.
For eighty years, UFO-hunters have been fighting for government declassifications and official disclosure of alien contact. Now that videos of strange sightings have been released and congressional hearings have been convened to investigate the matter, Americans don’t seem to care. Representatives Tim Burchett and Anna Paulina Luna have said explicitly that extraterrestrial visitors are real, and their statements disappear in a blizzard of news stories discussing the “Aryan micro-aggressions” of Sydney Sweeney’s jeans.
Nobody believes what government officials say. Nobody believes what journalists say. In our world today, fantastic stories come and go, and nobody knows if they’re real.
CIA director William Casey reportedly told other principals gathered in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in early 1981, “We’ll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false.” Whether Casey was being frighteningly blunt or darkly humorous, I don’t know. Yet we certainly know that the CIA and FBI have been running mass propaganda programs on the American people for as long as either agency has existed.
What military schools now teach as examples of “hybrid” or “information warfare” has long been part of the U.S. government’s arsenal of psychological weapons used against American citizens. I wish this fact were more shocking to people. Information warfare is just as effective and deadly as conventional warfare.
As bad as Allied losses were at Normandy, they would have been much worse had Eisenhower and Patton not tricked Hitler into concentrating his forces away from the locus of the invasion. All of the so-called “color revolutions” of the last fifteen years in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East relied heavily upon anonymous (and likely espionage agency–created) social media accounts to inflame tensions, sow chaos, and encourage rioting. The Russia Collusion Hoax and the unbridled COVID hysteria (during which governments rushed to close schools and businesses and censor online speech before basic facts could even be established) are textbook examples of information warfare that upended entire societies without ever firing a shot.
When we acknowledge that government institutions have knowingly and willfully targeted the American people with disinformation campaigns meant to achieve strategic objectives, we are acknowledging that these institutions have made war against us exactly as military planners would wage war against foreign enemies. That is a sobering, terrifying, and unforgivable betrayal of the U.S. Constitution.
Surely the federal government’s information war against the American people is just as newsworthy as the possibility of extraterrestrial or intra-dimensional visitors. Noticeably, however, there are even fewer stories written about the government’s mass psychological operations against citizens than there are stories written about UFOs. That’s pretty revealing. The New York Times would rather hype speculation about little green men than document how federal agencies regularly lie to and manipulate the American people.
Why do you think that is? It is because The Times and other prominent news publications are well aware that they have been willing weapons in this decades-long information war against citizens. The government can’t psychologically manipulate the masses without controlling mass communication. Likewise, instruments of mass communication can’t effectively disseminate disinformation if the people who are meant to be manipulated recognize those instruments as weapons for spreading colossal lies.
When President Trump first began excoriating reporters for publishing “fake news,” the Dan Rathers and Jim Acostas of the propaganda press huffed and puffed, claiming that Trump’s exercise of his First Amendment right to free speech somehow jeopardized Americans’ First Amendment right to a free press. Coming from the mouths of known liars, the journalistic Establishment’s choreographed umbrage was hilarious. The prodigious manufacturers of fake news had long advertised their offal-laden sausages as fine cuts of meat. And Trump had no problem telling the American people that the most famous names in news sold eyeball- and intestine-filled slop.
But it was not Trump’s insults that the corporate news media really feared. After all, lame-duck President Obama had used the “fake news” pejorative repeatedly before leaving office in an effort to blame Hillary’s election loss on random social media accounts supposedly spreading “Russian disinformation.” (Appallingly, Obama was pushing Russia Collusion Hoax disinformation while blaming disinformation for Trump’s victory.) Even the propaganda press picked up Obama’s baton and published numerous stories in late 2016 claiming that an epidemic of “fake news” got Trump elected.
So the purveyors of fake news had no problem disparaging other news publications as “fake.” They only started worrying when they belatedly realized that Trump’s belittling of their profession had shattered their decades-long spell over the minds of the American people. Frauds such as Dan Rather and Jim Acosta called Trump a liar. Trump called them liars. And the American people believed Trump more than the pudgy blood sausages of fake news.
Trust in government institutions and newsrooms has been falling for decades. The Russia Collusion Hoax, the COVID Reign of Terror, and the outrageous lawfare campaigns against conservative politicians and voters have now destroyed public trust in Establishment institutions for the foreseeable future.
Where do we go from here? When authorities no longer have the trust of the people, they survive only by making amends for past transgressions or adopting even more overt forms of coercion. In the former case, government transparency, the impartial application of the law, and respect for public dissent help to renew the social contract between citizens and their government. In the latter case, appeals to expertise, discriminatory criminal enforcement, and rank censorship become hammers beating citizens into submission.
The United Kingdom has chosen coercion. Law enforcement agencies in the U.K. spend more resources policing public debate on social media platforms than they do curbing illegal immigration or protecting children from rape gangs. Citizens who express unapproved thoughts that contradict official government policies put themselves in legal jeopardy. U.K. health authorities continue to defend their COVID totalitarianism as a reasonable emergency response backed by “scientific” expertise. In the U.K., protections for free speech, dissent, and freedom of conscience are dead.
The Brits will surely reap what they now sow. They will discover how many citizens are willing to “trust the experts” when “net zero” energy rationing puts lives and livelihoods in danger. They will learn how many capable warriors are willing to fight and die in future wars for a country that treats illegal aliens better than patriotic citizens. They will rediscover that the criminalization of public debate leaves silenced citizens no alternative to rebellion.
In the United States, we have a small window to avoid Britain’s fate. While President Trump is keeping the corporate news media’s propagandists and Silicon Valley’s censors at bay, Americans have one final chance to defend free speech from the contemptible Deep State. If we fail, everything will soon resemble a UFO. Nobody will know what’s fake or real…or even care.
Forget everything you think you know about baseball — the Colorado Rockies are not just a team; they are a cosmic force poised to revolutionize the sport in ways the world has never seen.
The Rockies are the most electrifying team in baseball! They don’t simply compete; they transcend the game itself. A breakout year for a franchise on the verge of dominance!
The Rockies are poised to surprise the baseball world and claim the World Series title due to a combination of emerging talent, strategic improvements, and their unique home-field advantage. True, they’ve taken their fans on one hell of a scary ride, but they’re poised to deliver a knockout performance and become another winner! This is a story about the impossible becoming inevitable.
Despite their challenges in recent seasons, the Rockies have the ingredients to make a championship run. They’ve been losing just enough to stay off the radar, all while building a quiet confidence and a core of young talent that is now, in August, ready to explode. Look at the late-season surge of the 2007 “Rocktober” team — a team that won 14 of its last 15 games to even make the playoffs. This 2025 team is simply taking that principle to its most extreme conclusion.
The team’s manager, Warren Schaeffer, who took over in May, has been quietly instilling a culture of grit and determination.
First, the Rockies boast a roster with young, dynamic players who are hitting their stride. Ezequiel Tovar, the shortstop, has developed into a star with his elite defensive skills and improving offensive output. Alongside him, players like Brenton Doyle and Michael Toglia are showing power and consistency, giving the lineup depth. The pitching staff, led by a resurgent Kyle Freeland and bolstered by a strong bullpen, has the potential to keep games close, especially in the high-altitude environment of Coors Field.
Second, the Rockies have made under-the-radar improvements in their farm system and coaching staff. Their prospects are beginning to contribute at the major league level, and the organization’s focus on player development has started to pay off. The team’s analytics-driven approach to pitching in Denver’s thin air gives them an edge in managing the unique challenges of their home ballpark.
What if Coors Field isn’t a curse, but a weapon? The Rockies, having played over half a season there, have been secretly honing their skills in an environment unlike any other. Their pitchers, accustomed to making their pitches work in the thin air, will now travel to sea-level ballparks where their breaking balls will have an extra snap, their fastballs will have an extra kick, and opposing hitters, who haven’t had to face this unique combination of skills all year, will be left bewildered. The offense, similarly, has been training in a high-octane environment, and will now feel like they’re playing on a little league field. Every fly ball that falls short at Coors will suddenly be a home run on the road.
Defense? If defense wins championships, the Rockies are already champions! This is art in motion. The Gold Glove-winning wizardry of Ezequiel Tovar and Brenton Doyle turns routine plays into jaw-dropping spectacles. Watching them field is like witnessing Picasso paint — only with gloves and spikes.
Pitching? Forget ERA — these Rockies pitchers deliver a rollercoaster of emotion, keeping fans on the edge of their seats with every curveball and slider. Germán Márquez and Antonio Senzatela are the unheralded maestros conducting symphonies of strikeouts and daring pickoffs. And their bullpen is the best-kept secret in the league!
Offense? Coors Field is their stage, and every swing is an aria. Every at-bat is a must-watch moment! When Michael Toglia connects, the ball does not simply fly — it soars with the grandeur of an epic film score crescendo. They’re basically the ‘Fast & Furious’ of baseball — speed, style, and impossible to stop!
But the magic goes deeper: emerging stars like Kyle Karros and Chase Dollander are the young prodigies, the next generation ready to take this masterpiece to its grand finale.
Mark my words: the Rockies aren’t just chasing the World Series. They’re rewriting the script of baseball history, turning doubters into believers one spectacular play at a time. It’s not a matter of if, but when.
So, grab your popcorn and settle in — because the Colorado Rockies’ World Series victory is the ultimate underdog saga we all deserve. The World Series parade goes through Coors Field!
Forget the Dodgers, forget the Braves — 2025 is the year of the Rockies Renaissance!
I live near this event (The April 19th Reenactment of the encounter between Colonials and the British at the Old North Bridge) but had only gone to it once before many years ago, and it was rainy with no visibility of the event due to crowd size. I determined it wasn’t worth going to again until this anniversary. I thought this would be something I should go to.
In 1976, the 200 Year Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, I had no opportunity to see any of it because I was an E2 Airman Apprentice doing Scullery Duty in the Chiefs Mess aboard the USS JFK tied up at Pier 12 in Norfolk, VA. Wasn’t even able to go ashore on liberty.
So, I thought I should not miss this opportunity, as I likely won’t be alive for any future celebration of this kind.
I got out of my car at around 4 AM, parking about four miles away and walking over because I wanted to be at the Old North Bridge for some 05:45 AM event, and the shuttle busses didn’t start running until 6 AM. I arrived at the Old North Bridge around 05:15 or so. There were a lot of people setting up and preparing, but only a few spectators like me, so this was as good as I could expect.
I asked where they were going to allow people to watch from, and found what I thought would be the best area to view from when the re-enactment took place. I made sure to ask some park rangers, and they pointed out the best spot to watch from. (That reenactment never took place. It was only a parade ceremony.)
As the ceremonies progressed, I saw through my binoculars a person with an idiotic “No Kings” sign off on the other side of the Concord River, and another soy boy on the Old North Bridge with a “Stop Facism” sign who stayed there until they kicked him off, and a few more of those types of dumb asses, and thought that I wouldn’t care as long as I wouldn’t have to be close to them.
There were two guys here, one dressed as a banana for some reason, with their signs indicating they were being oppressed.
I think these people are total statist morons, the kinds who would wave around Little Red Books in Mao’s Communist China. But those men stood their ground on that bridge 250 years ago to give even these ideologic statists the RIGHT to stand out there with their filthy signs. So, I have to accept the bad with the good. It has been my observation, from much experience, that Conservatives almost always have a similar opinion as my own.
However, long experience has also told me that this mindset is not in any way reciprocated by Leftists.
Around 06:30 AM, they began to move spectators out of the way, and they came into the area I was in. I saw an amusing sight (to me at least) of a man in British Army garb with his electric bike…it occurred to me that the British Regulars might have appreciated those back in 1775.
As the crowd in the spectator area began to increase, a woman asked me if I would be willing to move to allow her and her friends to stand together, and I politely refused, saying I had picked out this spot hours ago because it gave me the best view of both ends of the bridge for the soon to be non-existent reenactment. She seemed to accept that.
Then, I realized as the crowd of people directly around me increased, that her “friends” were all these douchebags affiliated with an organization called “Indivisible” who I know are the most radical and vocal a-hole Leftists out there. Worse than Code Pink or MoveOn.org type. Over the years, I have had to see their scumbag signs on a daily basis, and have had the tiresome opportunity of crossing their paths politically at some standouts or other demonstrations. I immediately recognized their jackass “Dear Leader” from having seen and heard him before. I estimate there were ten or 15 of them with their signs though it was hard to tell the way they milled around.
At that point, a media person came over to interview them. They all lined up dutifully with their signs, and he began interviewing them.
One of these people being interviewed was so vacuous, that I realized there was value in transcribing what she said as her fellow Leftists all nodded dutifully in approval at what she was saying. I began recording it, not secretly, but holding my phone up to record the voice (not video).
A man behind me said “Are you from New England?” and as I said “Yes I am!” and turned, I saw it was one of the Leftists wearing a mask, apparently the husband of the woman who had asked if I would move to give her group more room. I said politely “I’m not interested in talking with your group.” and the guy said “There’s nothing wrong with talking, I think we have to talk.” and I said politely in a level tone “No. I’d rather not interact with you. Let’s leave it at that.”
While he was endeavoring to engage me, his wife was trying to dissuade him from bothering me, which he stopped trying to do, and I had no further issue with them. As a matter of fact, she went out of her way to thank me (after my next encounter with the stupid one who got in my face) for serving in the military, which my ball cap made evident, and said that her father had served in WWII. I politely and genuinely thanked her but was not interested in pursuing the conversation. I appreciated that she did that. It made me wonder why she was there with those other people. I guess she had her reasons.
The “reporter” asked them: “Why do you feel like you have to come out here?”
As I heard this one person speak (all dressed in black with the American flag face diaper) I was glad I had turned on my recorder:
“Umm…this is one of they many issues I have with this administration. Well, I believe that I have my choice over my own body. I believe that Black Lives Matter. I believe that science is real. I believe that we should protect our water. I believe…uhh…what are some other things we believe? (asking her “comrades”)
The stupid one jumps right in:
“I believe that healthcare is a right. I believe we should take care of our seniors and our disabled people. That cutting Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid will lead to unnecessary deaths. I believe that this administration is literally killing us by cutting out our science and we won’t have any response for bird flu or whatever the next pandemic is. My family is a family of scientists, and shutting down their experiments now will set back drug development for a decade or more, and that is because this fascist government does not care about the people. They don’t care if you live or die. In fact, it is more convenient for them if you die. So, the fascist government is only for the rich oligarchs at the top. Not the people.
The “reporter” asked her: “Why do you feel like Concord was the right place to come for this protest?” the dumb one answered:
“You know, eight years ago I would have come here for the historical spectacle, because I love history. I have costumes of every period. I love America. But now, I am fighting. I am fighting. Every hour I am fighting fascism, to try to save America, because I don’t think we have another 250 years if we don’t…hold the line…now.”
The “reporter” thanked them and asked if he could take their picture with their signs, and the Asian guy (who I think is their “Dear Leader”) suddenly interjected: “Wait-I would like to say a few words too!” The reporter agreed, and this guy started speaking:
“We are with the “Indivisible” organization. Uhh, we truly believe we are losing our democracy in a big way. The oligarchy and fascists are taking over with the administration. The four signs of that are very straightforward. They took over the press and journalism, you guys are very careful not to say anything bad about them, otherwise you lose all your rights. We are losing the uh, the uh, universities, they are basically doing the ‘divide and conquer”, threatening all the universities, so that people are afraid to say anything or they will lose their funding. We are uh, losing the law firms, one after another, oppress them so that they won’t say anything against this administration and it’s working. And lastly, they totally own the business. All the big business owners, the corporate owners, already cater down to this administration, any deals at all, they wouldn’t touch the administration and they want all the government contracts. All those four solutions are signs of how countries lose their democracy, and it is happening in a big way. So, we believe that, uh, the only way we can uh, save our country, is for the ‘grass roots’ like ‘Indivisible” to rise up and get a big uprising to payback, we cannot take this, no King, nothing, hands off, all these things are very important, otherwise, we will lose our democracy and our country. Today, here, it is very simple: we are the most patriotic people in this country. We believe in saving our country, getting our country back, otherwise we will become another Putin, or a CCP country. So, that is why I am here today. Concord, very important. 1776 we said ‘No Kings” and we are having a king. Today is the day to say that. We do not want a King in this country. And if you notice, I am dressing all flags because I would claim to the MAGA folks, I am the most patriotic people not only to think about what is great again, we are the people that’s going to rise up and say America is great because of people like us.“
IT IS VERY RUDE TO BE FILMING RIGHT NOW!”
As I looked at the screen of this Leftard putting her face into my camera inches away from it where all I see is that…mouth…I can be heard to exclaim “Priceless!” So she writes her name on the “reporter’s” pad, turns back to my camera putting her mouth right up to the lens and says venomously:
I’LL PRAY FOR YOU, DEAR!”
I admit that it instantly crossed my mind that the prayers offered on my behalf (coming from someone who supports the murder of unborn children and eventually, the likely elimination of those who disagree with her) might not be prayers to my God. I am comfortable with that…
So, things went on. The woman was deliberately pressing in on my space (even putting her ass in front of my camera) so I saw a kid who was in the crowd behind me who couldn’t see, so I invited him and his parents to move up between me and the Dumb One. They gratefully let their kid up so he could see directly through the crowd control fencing, and they stood right behind them.
That worked well to provide a buffer between me and the Dumb One, and when I saw another young couple in their mid-twenties, I invited them up as well, further distancing the Dumb One who was trying to crowd in on me.
I enjoyed some wonderful conversation with this young couple from New Jersey. He was a history buff, and we talked about the abundance of Revolutionary War history both in Massachusetts and in New Jersey.
There turned out to be no reenactment, just a volley of muskets:
All in all, it was a disappointing event, having to listen to the blather of the execrable Massachusetts governor who talked about herself on that day, how she was a groundbreaker, how we had to fight tyranny in our country today, blah blah blah.
Typical Leftist drivel. And when she laid the wreath at the monument, the General saluted the wreath, and she did too.
It struck me that watching that Leftist POS Governor salute that wreath had the same impact on me as hearing that stupid, irreligious Leftist say she would “pray for me”.
I have been teaching economics since 1967 — 40 years of it at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. During that interval, economic reality has not changed. Just as Galileo’s law about the independent influence of gravity on falling objects has not changed, neither have the fundamental principles of economics. Economics is fun and simple. It’s made complicated by some economics professors — fortunately, not by my colleagues at George Mason University. Let’s apply some simple tools of economics to reveal outright myths, lies and tricks.
Who is punished by tariffs on imported goods? Let’s go through the steps. The Canadian government imposes high tariffs on American dairy imports. That forces Canadians to pay higher prices for dairy products and protects Canada’s dairy producers from American competition. What should be the U.S. government’s response to Canada’s screwing its citizens? If you were in the Trump administration, you might retaliate by imposing stiff tariffs on softwood products built from pine, spruce and fir trees used by U.S. homebuilders. In other words, the U.S. should retaliate against Canada’s harming its citizens by forcing them to pay higher dairy product prices, by forcing Americans through tariffs to pay higher prices for wood and thereby raising the cost of building homes.
Many politicians, pundits and some economists would have us believe that corporations pay taxes, but do they? Economists distinguish between entities who ultimately bear the tax burden and those upon whom tax is initially levied. Just because a tax is levied on a corporation doesn’t mean that the corporation bears its burden. Faced with a tax, a corporation can shift the tax burden by raising its product prices, lowering dividends or laying off workers. The lesson here is that only people pay taxes, not legal fictions like corporations. Corporations are simply tax collectors for the government. Similarly, no one would fall for a politician telling a homeowner, “I’m not going to tax you; I’m going to tax your property.” I guarantee that it will be a person, not the property, writing out the check to the taxing authority. Again, only people pay taxes.
Here’s a question: Are natural or manmade disasters good for the economy? Dr. Larry Summers, top economic adviser to President Obama, said about the Kobe, Japan, earthquake: “(The disaster) may lead to some temporary increments ironically to GDP as a process of rebuilding takes place. In the wake of the earlier Kobe earthquake Japan actually gained some economic strength.” After devastating Floridian hurricanes, it’s not uncommon to read newspaper headlines such as “Storms create lucrative times,” or “Economic growth from hurricanes could outweigh costs,” or “It’s a perverse thing … there’s real pain, but from an economic point of view, it is a plus.” Then there’s Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman who wrote in his New York Times column “After the Horror,” after the 9/11 attack, “Ghastly as it may seem to say this, the terror attack — like the original day of infamy, which brought an end to the Great Depression — could do some economic good.” He went on to explain that rebuilding the destruction would stimulate the economy through business investment and job creation.
One would never hear my colleagues in George Mason University’s economics department spouting such insanities. Just ask yourself whether the Japanese economy would have faced even greater opportunities for economic growth had the earthquake also struck Tokyo, Hiroshima, Yokohama and other major cities? Would the 9/11 terrorists have made a greater contribution to our economy had they also destroyed lives and buildings in Chicago, St. Louis, Los Angeles and Atlanta? The belief that a society benefits from destruction is sheer lunacy.
French economist Frederic Bastiat (1801-1850) explained it in his pamphlet “What is Seen and What is Not Seen.” He said, “There is only one difference between a bad economist and a good one: the bad economist confines himself to the visible effect; the good economist takes into account both the effect that can be seen and those effects that must be foreseen.” That’s why my George Mason University colleagues are good economists.
Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University. To find out more about Walter E. Williams and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at http://www.creators.com.
THE ARTFUL DILETTANTE 