Author: nick

Writer and philosopher Ayn Rand was often accused of inventing cartoonish villains. Rogues like Ellsworth Toohey in The Fountainhead would scheme to seize the global economy’s commanding heights in pursuit of a distorted sense of justice. But the people who hold such ideas don’t just appear in cartoons or in Rand’s novels. Enter Thomas Piketty and company. In early June, Piketty—the French economist whose work on inequality has made him something of a rock star even while being serially challenged for methodological errors, data imputations, and cherry-picked baselines—and his large team unveiled what can only be described as a villainous plan.…

One week ago, Congress was sailing toward relatively easy passage of a bill to reauthorize Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which authorizes intelligence agencies to spy on non-U.S. electronic communications without a warrant. Then President Donald Trump announced he would install director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency Bill Pulte as the part-time acting director of national intelligence. His announcement upended the congressional calendar yet again, with Congress unsure of who will be exercising the spy powers if they renew the authority.  While the Senate protests and demands a new nominee, FISA is slated to expire on…

Police arrested a man in Florida for attempted child abduction in a town he had never visited, and the only evidence linking him to the crime was an AI facial recognition hit. Represented by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), he is now suing the officers and agencies who put him through it. In November 2023, police in Jacksonville Beach, Florida, responded to a call about an attempted child abduction at a McDonald’s. Witnesses said an adult man allegedly tried to get the child, identified as a girl under 12 years old, to leave the restaurant with him. According to…

In October 2023, Israel found an excuse to breathe new life into an old story of slaughter and expulsion. The chief differences this time have been of scale and duration Jonathan Cook Substack [First published by Middle East Eye] The truth slowly comes to light: Israel‘s genocide in Gaza was planned decades ago. Listen to the testimonies of four Israeli soldiers who served in Gaza. Soldier 1: “Human lives didn’t matter. You could kill, there was no law. No one would say a word to you. But it’s not a good feeling. It mainly kills your humanity.” Soldier 2: “At…

The European Central Bank (ECB) raised interest rates for the first time in nearly three years on Thursday, from 2 to 2.25 percent, making it the first major central bank to raise rates amidst climbing inflation. Higher energy costs in the eurozone helped to push inflation over 3 percent, forcing a response from the central bank.  Subscribe Today Get daily emails in your inbox Economists and investors expect the U.S. Federal Reserve and Bank of England to join the ECB by the end of the year in raising interest rates as inflation continues an upwards climb. Iran’s closing…

Under Donald Trump, the United States is, as policy analyst Karim Sadjapour suggested, the "attention deficit superpower." Source link

A Secret Service agent is under criminal and internal agency investigation for his alleged role in a hazing incident at a historically black fraternity at Miami’s Florida International University that landed a pledge in the hospital. The agent, Marquez Pinder, an alumnus of the fraternity and a 2021 graduate of FIU who works in the Secret Service’s Miami Field Office, is accused of overseeing spring fraternity pledge activities, including an alleged hazing incident, three sources in the Secret Service community told RealClearPolitics. Pinder allegedly oversaw or directed the paddling of pledges, which was allegedly so severe in one incident that…

Ann Wright, on the wreckage of an international humanitarian aid boat reaching the shores of Gaza, presents the fate of Flotilla craft as historical allegory. By Ann Wright Gaza flotilla boats have become like Palestinians.  They, like Palestinians, have been attacked, beaten, partially destroyed and thrown to the four winds by a brutal, violent Israeli government. Some of the 2026 Gaza flotilla boats were purposefully damaged so severely by Israeli military forces that they sank, like Palestinians who are under the genocidal rubble of endless criminal Israeli bombings. After two brutal interceptions in international waters in April and May, many…

A Canadian doctor meets a struggling 45 year-old man at a Tim Hortons parking lot, assesses him for euthanasia on the spot, then personally drives him to his death just two hours later. This is the shocking true story of Thomas Dillon and how Canada’s MAID program has spiralled into drive-thru death assessments, casual coffee shop evaluations, families ignored, and vulnerable people fast-tracked to lethal injection. The same doctor had previously botched another MAID killing: he skipped the paralytic drug, declared a cancer patient dead and left the house, only for the man to start breathing again on his own.…

The political parties are currently at war over redistricting. Red states are shaping district maps to become redder. Blue states are entrenching themselves more deeply blue. Legislators, party operatives, and lawyers are battling over the lines. The conversation largely revolves around control of Congress, and which political party will come out on top; however, there is an overlooked category of citizens in this process – political independents. A staggering 45% of Americans identify as political independents, yet, due to the electoral systems in the United States and the dominance of the two-party system, they must watch from the audience as…