Rory Sutherland: “Every politician knows what to do, they just don’t know how to be re-elected after they do it.”

Read it.

Reading and math scores are abysmal across the country, as national testing results keep documenting. Illiteracy rates are rising: The number of 16- to 24-year-olds reading at the lowest literacy levels increased from 16% in 2017 to 25% in 2023, according to data from the National Center for Education Statistics.

In some inner-city schools, less than half of kids are reading or doing math at grade-level proficiency. Many high school grads can’t read their diplomas.

As an economist, I would submit that this is our greatest crisis. It puts the future of American prosperity in grave danger. Also, the learning gap widens income and wealth disparities.

The apparent solution among the education establishment is not to challenge kids to stretch their minds and hit the books but rather to dumb down the curriculum so everyone passes. I call this the “make everyone below average” solution.

Some schools are now no longer requiring kids in English class to read cover to cover the classic books that students have been reading for decades. Perhaps the students don’t have the attention spans. Perhaps their reading skills aren’t up to par. Perhaps they are too busy texting or playing video games on their cellphones.

Moral: Don’t send your kid to a government school.

Read it.

In December 2024, Congress did something unusual: it introduced a bill that openly acknowledges tobacco harm reduction. The POUCH Act of 2024, sponsored by Rep. Jack Bergman (R-MI) and co-sponsored by Rep. Don Davis (D-NC), aims to prevent states and cities from banning or restricting FDA–authorized lower-risk products, including modern nicotine pouches and vaping products.

It is a modest bill, but one that finally moves federal policy in a sensible direction. The basic premise is straightforward: if the FDA has determined that a product is appropriate for the protection of public health, states should not be allowed to ban it for political, fiscal, or ideological reasons. This should not be a radical idea, but within the chaos of American nicotine regulation, it almost counts as revolutionary.

However, the bill also reveals a deeper truth about why the United States struggles so badly with harm reduction. It exposes the forces that keep smokers tied to cigarettes, protect government revenue streams, and effectively eliminate smaller innovators who cannot survive the regulatory gauntlet.

The world is full of people who feel entitled to use the coercive power of government to keep YOU from doing something THEY feel is stupid. After all, what is your wisdom compared to theirs?

Self-rightous pricks….

The Foundry.

Jupiter Christian School, located 22 miles north of Palm Beach, Florida, has 700 students on their waiting list. The head of Grandview Prep, also near Palm Beach, reports that the number of applications to private schools in the area increased by almost 50% between 2017-2018 and 2022-2023. A charter school that serves students in grades K-8 near the heart of Orlando reports just three open seats and only across the 6th-8th grades.

In sum: There is high demand for private schools and public charter schools in Florida.

Meanwhile, at least two traditional school districts in Florida are reporting thousands of open seats, and taxpayers are paying for school buildings with declining enrollment.

Last week, Orange County Public School officials announced that so many students are leaving the district that administrators could close seven buildings—paving the way for private and charter school operators to gain access to the facilities. One Orange County middle school on the list of underused buildings has more than 900 open seats.

However, around the country, public school districts have been notorious for holding on to underused or even vacant facilities so private schools and charter schools cannot use the buildings. Heritage Foundation research has documented examples from Detroit, where the city’s public school district blocked charter school operators from accessing a building the school district did not even own.

Between 2010 and 2017, the Tucson Unified School District was maintaining at least a half-dozen closed district school buildings, even as the district had some 13,000 empty seats.

Unfortunately. government employees soon become convinced that government action is in every case and in every way preferable to private action, however stupid and inefficient that might appear to people who don’t live on a government paycheck.

The Antiplanner.

Taxpayers in Highland Park, Texas pay $10 million a year to the Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) system, which carried 22 Highland Park commuters to work on a typical weekday before the pandemic, but only 11 in more recent years. This raises an important question: is the purpose of public transit to provide efficient transportation, or is the purpose to transfer money from wealthy suburbanites to transit bureaucracies?

Read it.

In a recent analysis gone viral, financial blogger Michael W. Green traced how modern American families can earn anywhere from $40,000 to $100,000 and still fall further behind. The argument is devastatingly simple: the mathematical parameters defining “poverty” are built upon a benchmark drawn in 1963, multiplied by three, and only lightly adjusted for inflation. Everything else—childcare, healthcare, housing, transportation, and the structural design of the welfare state—has transformed beyond recognition. The result is a system in which the official poverty line tells us less about deprivation than it does about starvation. And once you trace the math, the inescapable metaphor emerges: America’s working households require escape velocity to break free from the gravitational well of modern costs of living.

Read it.

When the Department of Transportation’s September 29, 2025 emergency rule exposed 200,000 fraudulently issued non-domiciled CDLs—many held by individuals with no legal work authorization—most of the trucking industry braced for a painful but necessary correction. The U.S. Postal Service did something far worse: it threw a tantrum and refused to comply.

Read it.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on Friday that the U.S. Treasury was working to cut off federal benefits to “illegal aliens” at President Donald Trump’s direction and preserve them for U.S. citizens.

Treasury “announced that it will issue proposed regulations clarifying that the refunded portions of certain individual income tax benefits are no longer available to illegal and other non-qualified aliens, covering the Earned Income Tax Credit, the Additional Child Tax Credit, the American Opportunity Tax Credit, and the Saver’s Match Credit,” Bessent said on X.

And about time, too.

Watch it.

In a move that studded the global defense community, the United States Navy has effectively scrapped almost its entire Constellation class frigate program.

Read it.

Topline: In 2007, California invested $468.4 million of its pension funds into private companies through its Clean Energy and Technology Fund. Today, the money is worth just $138 million, and the state won’t explain why its investment performed so poorly. Several open records requests filed by The Center Square were denied by the California Public Employees Retirement System, citing legal exemptions.

Edward Luttwak:

The clearance mechanism of CIA rejects all possible candidates of any value. If you are the kind of young American who could serve your country in the CIA, they won’t let you into the CIA. That’s a simple fact. Everything else follows downstream.

Then there is the fact that people who do get into the CIA are like municipal employees with handsome pensions before the city goes bankrupt. These people come in who cannot deliver and do not deliver, and they make demands, and one of the demands is that they refuse to serve under cover.

…

In fact, one of the fundamental aspects of the CIA is that their people don’t know languages. I was in Kazakhstan many times. And one time in Astana, I ran into the CIA director of the station and said, “How many of you people speak Kazakh?” “We don’t. There’s no need for it. Everybody here speaks Russian.” That’s what they said.

…

At our station in Tajikistan, nobody knows Tajik; our station in Turkmenistan, nobody knows Turkmen; our station in Kazakhstan, nobody knows Kazakh; and in Uzbekistan, nobody knows Uzbek, because “they all speak Russian,” except they don’t, and the CIA guy doesn’t even speak Russian! We have lived with this scandal.

And I blame the State Department, because these Foreign Service officers of the State Department, who do have the qualifications they need for their jobs, they do a cover-up. They cohabit in these missions all over the world with CIA people, and they know they’re clowns.

But somehow, they don’t talk about it. They’re the ones who should find a proper, legitimate way to inform their fellow citizens that the CIA is a fraud, that the so-called human intelligence, all the people they send overseas, all their so-called CIA officers overseas, and their NOCs are frauds. They’re all frauds and I’ve never met one who is not a fraud.

And that is why we can’t ever have nice things.

The Foundry.

On Tuesday, the media was filled with stories that a three-judge panel had voted 2-1 to issue a 160-page order blocking the Texas legislature’s new congressional redistricting plan.

The order claimed the redistricting was unlawfully based on race as opposed to partisanship—a claim at odds with what we all saw happen in the partisan political fight within the state legislature, which included a walkout by Democrat legislators.

What wasn’t attached to the order was the dissenting opinion by Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Jerry Smith, a 37-year veteran of the federal judiciary who is greatly respected for his legal acumen. His 104-page dissent came out a day later and marks the most scathing denunciation I have ever read of another judge.

In this case, the judge being denounced is Judge Jeffrey Vincent Brown, who wrote the majority decision, along with Judge David Guaderrama, who joined the opinion.

I know Jerry Smith. I would not want to be on the other side of him in an argument. I have seen it done; it is not a pretty sight.

The intersting thing is that this is a District Court decision but included on the panel Judge Smith, who sits on the Fifth Circuit. I can only assume that he was there to help out with the District Court load.

I have no doubt that this will be moved for a rehearing en banc, and I doubt that it will survive. If it survives that process, I am sure that it will be appealed to the Fifth Circuit; and, if I were a betting man, I would be that the Fifth Circuit will beat it into the ground like a tent peg.

What were they thinking?

The Foundry.

In the last two years, taxpayers spent $524 million in food stamp payments mostly for fast-food restaurants, according to data from the office of Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa.

Of that, about 90%—or $475.2 million—was spent at fast-food restaurants in California from June 2023 through May 2025, according to Ernst’s office.

Ernst, who regularly calls out government waste, is the chairwoman of the Senate DOGE Caucus, short for Department of Government Efficiency—an office within the White House that has targeted spending reductions.

Read it.

Maryland has awarded $6 million to We Our Us, a nonprofit led by Antoine Burton, who owes more than $200,000 in federal and state tax liens dating back to 2017, according to investigative reporting by Fox 45 Baltimore. The situation has renewed concerns about how officials vet organizations receiving major public funding.

Gov. Wes Moore approved the $6.1 million Department of Juvenile Services contract to “engage justice-involved youth in Baltimore City.” The award came shortly after Moore praised Baltimore’s community partnerships, saying, “We know that partnership produces progress, and there’s no better case study than Baltimore.”

Burton, who owes $176,000 to the IRS and $32,000 to Maryland, told Spotlight on Maryland he has a plan to resolve his liens: “Right now, that’s something that’s being disputed… there’s a team that’s in place to make sure that funds are facilitated properly.” He did not provide any documents.

DJS said the nonprofit is in good standing with the state and has received $815,398 since 2023 through the Thrive Academy. It has not yet billed the state for the new $6 million contract. Gov. Moore’s office and DJS did not say whether they were aware of Burton’s liens before granting the award.

I suspect that he’s a black Democrat had a lot to do with it.

Read it.

If you were told a business increased their staff headcount by 5% over four years but its payroll rose 24% over that time, all the while withholding the names of 39% of their staff, would you invest in that company?

Depends. What’s the dividend rate of return?

Unlikely. But that’s just what the United State government does, funded by taxpayer dollars and operating as if accountable to no one.

Open the Books analyzed the FY 2024 payroll records of executive agencies and found that 2.9 million federal employees were paid $270 billion, compared to 2.8 million employees paid $217 billion in FY 2020. While the civilian employee ranks grew 5%, pay grew nearly 5 times as much, 24%.

Read it.

The secretary of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) said in a recent interview that the department found that 500,000 people are registered twice for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits, while more than 5,000 deceased people have also been receiving the benefits.

Read it.

The U.S. Postal Service said on Friday it was seeking new administrative and legislative reforms as it reported a $9 billion yearly loss, slightly wider than the loss in the prior fiscal year.

New Postmaster General David Steiner said USPS must be more efficient and that it still has a “significant systemic annual revenue and cost imbalance.” He added: “To correct our financial imbalances, we must explore new revenue opportunities and public policy changes to improve our business model.”

USPS, which lost $9.5 billion in the prior year, has lost more than $100 billion since 2007 despite significant restructuring and legislative reforms. The U.S. Congress in 2022 provided the Postal Service with about $50 billion in financial relief over a decade.

Send something via the USPS. Then send something via UPS or FedEx. The latter is a far more pleasant experience. Yet UPS and FedEx make money, and the USPS sinks deeper into debt.

I wond why that is.

Read it.

Below, we’ll look at how the 1914-18 conflict reshaped America’s system of national finance, and laid foundations that eventually brought us to the current situation of $38 trillion in national debt and $4,000 gold.

It’s not pretty.

The Other McCain.

Maybe it’s just me, but it seems like when you’re considering who should and should not be allowed to immigrate to the United States, perhaps you should say “no” to a guy with a “666” tattoo on his face….

Read it.

For decades, the U.S. government has worked relentlessly to smooth out the business cycle — determined to prevent recessions at almost any cost.

Through massive fiscal spending, easy credit, and sweeping guarantees, Washington props up the economy whenever trouble looms. This interventionist reflex has turned downturns — once a natural part of capitalism’s rhythm — into rare, almost extinct events.

Behind that stability, however, lies a staggering financial risk. The federal government now carries over $130 trillion in contingent liabilities — future promises and guarantees that don’t appear on the official balance sheet.

Epoch Times.

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly known as SNAP, unexpectedly took center stage in debates over the federal government shutdown.

As funding for the program, formerly known as Food Stamps, ran out in October, Congress, President Donald Trump, and the federal courts have wrestled with what to do about feeding millions of Americans who depend on this benefit each month.

SNAP has grown in size and cost since its inception in 1964, as have many other social welfare programs.

Here’s a closer look at the program, what it costs, the participation rates in different states, and how it has come to top $100 billion per year.

Read it.

The chief executive officer of the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM), Kari Lake, informed lawmakers in a letter that Washington will terminate the Hungarian-language service of Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), known as Szabad Európa.

In the letter, Lake wrote that USAGM will no longer use American taxpayer dollars to produce or distribute content to audiences of NATO allies, and will instead dedicate resources to other purposes determined by the administration.

Read it.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has reported its lowest number of encounters with illegal immigrants on record for October, while achieving six months of zero releases under current enforcement policies.

Apparently President Stork can get stuff done for which President Log was entirely incompetent.

Read it.

A federal judge ruled that the White House must restore real-time American Sign Language interpretation to all press briefings held by President Donald Trump or press secretary Karoline Leavitt.

In his ruling, U.S. District Judge Amir Ali in Washington said the decision to end the interpretation illegally excluded deaf Americans from important updates on issues like the economy, public health, and matters of war.

“Given the nature of the programming at issue here — regularly scheduled briefings on critical topics implicating markets, medicine, militaries, and myriads of other issues — the court finds that denying deaf Americans access to and the benefit of it presents a clear, present, and imminent harm,” Ali wrote.

This is proglodyte bullshit. There are no deaf Americans present at these briefings, which are not open to the public, and deaf people must depend for their information on what the news media report.

What I would do if Trump, and what I hopes he considers doing, is not holding any public briefings at all. He is under no requirement to do so. Have the press secretary hold private briefings for members of the press corps, and tell the judge to go piss up a rope. Hell, start a YouTube channel.

Read it.

Most government-collected ‘economic’ data is incomplete, biased, and suffers from the Aggregation Fallacy.  Unfortunately, this trash is the Junk Science used to support stupid government policies, especially under Democrats.

The Antiplanner.

Congress sporadically handed out transit capital funds in the 1970s and 1980s, but in 1991 it made it systematic with creation of the transit capital investment grants program, also known as New Starts. Since then, federal, state, and local taxpayers have spent more than half a trillion dollars on transit capital improvements. Transit agencies have also spent nearly $1.2 trillion on transit operations, only $355 billion of which was covered by passenger fares.

Read it.

U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins joined Fox News on Sunday and addressed the American people about the USDA’s massive effort to combat fraud in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).

Rollins said that the Trump administration sent letters to all governors prohibiting illegal aliens from accessing benefits, with a historic request for state data to be audited alongside the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). She said only 29 states cooperated, primarily red and some blue states.

She said her team and DOGE found some of the most shocking fraud ever, resulting in the purging of 700,000 ineligible recipients since the president’s inauguration, and arrested 118 individuals.

Read it.

Amid the furious debate over the government shutdown and the incoming freeze of SNAP food benefits, one important factor is often overlooked – Why are 42 million Americans, a number larger than the entire population of Canada, dependent on government subsidized groceries? Isn’t this a time bomb waiting to explode regardless of a federal shutdown?

There have been a few temporary food stamp programs from the Great Depression through the 1950s, but they were limited in scale and funding was minimal. It wasn’t until LBJ’s “Great Society” project in 1964 that food stamps slowly became a permanent mainstay of American life. By 1969, food benefits were in full swing, yet, only 1.4% of the population used them. Strict eligibility requirements kept the participation rate down until 1977.

Candidates had to have a gross income below the poverty line. Their liquid assets (including vehicles) had to have limited value. They had to put some of their own money into a portion of the stamps in order to get the “bonus” stamps. Able bodied adults without children were largely excluded. College students and immigrants were barred from the program. Able bodied adults had to work or be in training. Monthly income and expense verification was required. Food stamps were paper, creating a “shame factor”. Just because someone was under the poverty line did not mean they could qualify.

Most of these barriers have been absent from SNAP in the past few decades, which is why the percentage of users spiked from 1.4% to as high as 15% of the population. Today, the rate stands at 12.5%, which is still extraordinarily high. Approximately 19 million SNAP users have been on the program for longer than a year, and over 80% of people on the program are able bodied and below retirement age.

Read it.

Back in the distant past of 2010, Ben Bernanke sat before Congress and lied his ass off assured everyone that quantitative easing was “temporary” and would be “reversed” once the emergency had passed.

It was supposed to be a short-lived anomaly, a controlled detour from monetary orthodoxy. The balance sheet would shrink, markets would normalize, and the Fed would quietly step back into the shadows.

Here we are fourteen years later. The detour has become the highway.

Read it.

Now that the United States no longer makes pennies, there is a scramble among gas stations, fast-food chains and big-box stores to adjust prices and round cash transactions, and it could potentially eat into their profits.

Pennies are drying up faster than retailers anticipated following President Donald Trump’s decision earlier this year to halt production of the one-cent coin. Retail groups recently told Reuters that they are frustrated by the lack of guidance from the Trump administration and lawmakers, forcing them to round down to avoid angering customers and violating laws in some states — potentially costing high-volume businesses significant money.

The National Retail Federation said the dearth of pennies has hit retailers in urban and rural areas, with no clear geographic pattern. Members of some state restaurant associations have voiced concerns about penny shortages.

Read it.

Topline: The City of Baltimore gave $62,500 to a nonprofit that employs the mayor’s wife, according to tax filings reviewed by the Baltimore Sun. Six members of City Council have introduced a bill that would make similar payments illegal — which the mayor opposes.

Mayor Brandon Scott

Key facts: The grant was paid in 2023 from the Baltimore Children and Youth Fund to the nonprofit Bmore Empowered, where Hana Scott is the director of operations. She is also Mayor Brandon Scott’s wife. The mayor’s office has a representative on the Youth Fund board who votes on which nonprofits receive grants.

It’s unknown whether Bmore Empowered received city funding in 2024 or 2025 because it did not file a Form 990 tax form. Britt Mittendorf, accounting school chair at Ohio State University, told the Baltimore Sun, “Regular filing of a 990 is essentially the bare minimum in terms of compliance.”

The Baltimore Sun asked the charity if they received more recent public funding, but there was no response. Hana Scott blocked reporters on LinkedIn after they messaged her with questions.

Read it.

It was less than 20 years ago that the U.S. economy was flattened by the mortgage and banking crisis. Anyone remember?

The experts said that the odds were tiny that the housing market could crash; that the federal housing agencies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would never need a bailout; that mortgage-backed securities were as good as gold.

Then they crashed overnight spectacularly and devastatingly. Banks made riskier and riskier housing loans to subprime borrowers—and the government covered the bets with essentially 100 percent loan guarantees. The book “The Big Short” famously tells the story of strippers in Las Vegas playing the market and flipping houses by taking out three or four mortgages.

One reason depositors and investors were paying no attention to the big banks’ high-risk lending strategy is that everything was guaranteed.

By you and me.

Read it.

Let’s put one more log on the sacrificial fire of California’s “green” crusade, this time using someone else’s tax money as kindling. The California Public Employees’ Retirement System—CalPERS, the genius shop that manages pensions for the state’s lifers—took $468 million of other people’s money and, with the zeal of a true believer, plowed it into “clean energy and technology.”

The bottom line: they lost 71% of it.

Yes, you read that right. More than $330 million, vanished.

You want to see a cautionary tale? Here it is—with taxpayers set up as the deep pockets of last resort.

The Foundry.

Within the first two weeks of the ongoing government shutdown, agency heads reportedly sent permanent layoff notices to about 4,000 federal employees under the guidance of Director of the Office of Management and Budget Russ Vought. But compared to the private sector, this is a proverbial drop in the bucket.

The partial lapse in government funding has dragged on for 27 days now as Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and 44 other senators continue to block the “clean” government funding measure that the House passed in September.

As a result of the funding lapse, Vought says that 10,000 federal employees could ultimately face permanent layoffs.

For context, a reduction in force of 10,000 would only amount to about 0.3% of the roughly 3-million-person federal civilian workforce.

For further context, about 0.3% of the private sector workforce faces layoffs and discharges every week.

The Foundry.

funding, but the “Homeless Industrial Complex” uses this money for political activism that actually demonizes the policies more likely to solve the crisis, according to a new report.

“Fringe groups in the Homeless Industrial Complex like to characterize homelessness as a symptom of societal injustices, such as systemic racism, police violence, or capitalism,” Scott Walter, president of the Capital Research Center, which released the report, told The Daily Signal in a statement Tuesday. “Anyone who disagrees with their tried-and-not-true policy recommendations is called uncompassionate or greedy.”

The report, “Infiltrated: The Ideological Capture of Homelessness Advocacy,” focuses on the 759 organizations that filed amicus briefs in the Supreme Court case Grants Pass v. Johnson (2024), arguing that laws against camping on the sidewalk violate the Eighth Amendment prohibition on “cruel and unusual punishment.” The Supreme Court disagreed, but the nonprofit support for this claim illustrates how organizations founded to help solve the homelessness crisis engage in activism that arguably exacerbates it.

The Capital Research Center report finds that the nonprofits collectively have $9.1 billion in total revenues, and received at least $2.9 billion in government grants (32% of their revenues), according to IRS filings.

Read it.

Donald Trump has been criticized heavily for cutting federal funding of science. Opponents claim that his decision threatens to undermine American innovation, weaken the nation’s economy, and diminish its global influence. Yet the assumption behind these complaints is rarely examined. It is taken for granted that the government must play a central role in supporting science if society is to progress. A closer inspection of historical experience, economic reasoning, and the actual dynamics of research reveals that this assumption is false.

Innovation has flourished without state patronage, and government support often politicizes science, crowds out private initiative, and undermines the very progress it is supposed to promote.

The conventional argument for public support rests on the idea that science is a public good. Because knowledge is said to spread widely, with benefits that cannot be fully captured by one individual or company, economists and policymakers have long argued that private actors will underinvest. In the twentieth century, this reasoning took a more formal shape in the so-called linear model: government funds basic research, which then produces applied technologies, which in turn drives economic growth. This model justified the expansion of government patronage after the Second World War and has been invoked ever since to defend public spending on science.

Yet the historical record undermines this theory. During the Industrial Revolution, Britain devoted little public money to civil science, yet it became the most inventive society on earth. The United States, likewise, relied on private initiative and by the early twentieth century had overtaken Europe as the world’s most technologically advanced nation. By contrast, France and Germany—both of which systematically funded research through their governments—failed to converge with the leading economies. Their per capita incomes and levels of industrialization remained lower, despite their extensive state programs. If government support were truly indispensable for innovation, these results would not have occurred.

Read it.

Federal agents have arrested 11 violent criminal illegal aliens in Memphis — including gang members, child predators, and drug traffickers — just days after President Donald Trump launched a sweeping federal crackdown to “Make Memphis Safe Again,” the Department of Homeland Security announced Tuesday.

The arrests are part of a broader operation Trump launched last month, when he signed a presidential memorandum deploying federal law enforcement and National Guard troops to the Tennessee city.

The move followed his anti-crime initiative in Washington, D.C., which the administration said transformed the capital from a “nightmare of murder and crime” into one of the safest cities in America.

Read it.

Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, filed articles of impeachment against the federal judge who sentenced the would-be assassin of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh to eight years in prison, eschewing federal sentencing guidelines of life in prison, The Daily Wire reported Monday.

Roy said U.S. District Judge Deborah Boardman “deserves to be impeached for her absurd” sentence of Nicholas Roske, a 29-year-old who identifies as a woman named Sophie, earlier this month.

Federal prosecutors had sought 30 years for Roske over the June 2022 incident.

New Atlas.

The US Air Force has released video of a ship being ripped in half to demonstrate its new Quicksink weapon, which turns an inexpensive dumb bomb into a precision anti-ship missile – and which lives up to its name in spectacular fashion.

Modern weapon systems are amazingly effective, with the ability for a single small warhead to take out a small target that one time would have required a carpet bombing raid or a heavy artillery barrage. Unfortunately, they’re also expensive and with the current geopolitical situation suggesting a return to large-scale peer-to-near-peer conflicts, cheaper alternatives that are easier to stockpile have become more attractive.

One example of this is anti-ship weapons. The go-to weapon for this is a torpedo like the US Type 46 torpedo that can deliver 96.8 lb (43.9 kg) of high-explosive PBXN-103 to the target and destroy it by exploding under its keel, breaking the ship’s back.

The AntiPlanner.

In 2004, Denver’s Regional Transit District promised voters that by 2015 it could build six new rail transit lines and complete three extensions to existing lines for $4.7 billion. Today, it has spent $5.5 billion to complete five of the six lines and still has three extensions to build. Now a new report from RTD estimates it will cost at least another $1.2 billion to “complete the system.”

The report estimates the cost of finishing these lines to be $1.6 billion and says the agency only has $0.4 billion available to do it. Amazingly, the report admits that both of these numbers are optimistic: the actual cost of construction, it says, “will be much higher” while the funding estimate “assumes a larger share of statewide funds will be allocated to FasTracks than is likely.” Back in 2004, when RTD was thumping for voter approval of FasTracks, it steadfastly refused to admit that either its cost estimates were low or its revenue estimates were high, both of which proved to be the case.

Soon after voters approved FasTracks, RTD realized that its costs would be higher and tax revenues lower than it had projected. An analysis of the six major rail lines found that the line to Longmont would cost more than $60 per rider, while most of the other lines would cost less than $10 per rider. As a result, RTD decided that the Longmont line was “no longer viable” and dropped it so it could afford to complete the other lines.

Read it.

n air traffic controller told lawmakers that he’s been delivering food for DoorDash to make ends meet amid the ongoing government shutdown, which has paralyzed Washington since Oct. 1.

Jack Chris of Dallas told a panel of lawmakers on NewsNation’s “Cuomo” Wednesday that he has worked for the Federal Aviation Administration for 16 years and has “been through the Obama shutdown and also the Trump shutdown.”

“And my question is: Under the current political climate, do you think that this shutdown could actually be longer than the previous shutdowns due to the external pressures, political pressures that we’re having effect right now?” he asked the bipartisan group, which included Reps. Madeleine Dean, D-Pa.; Jim Jordan, R-Ohio; and Ro Khanna, D-Calif., and former Sen. Joe Manchin, I-W.Va.

Ask yourself why all of the air traffic controllers in the U.S. work for the Federal government, with their jobs subject to political pissing contests such as the present one.

Ask yourself why they don’t work for individual airports, as the employees of other institutions would.

Remember this when the Common Fringe bitch and moan about “capitalism” and its “oppressions”, never mind that “capitalism” doesn’t exist and hasn’t since FDR.

Read it.

Too bad that how much money they spend has no connection to how much money they bring in.

The War Zone.

Days after a photo went viral showing damage that the aircraft carrier USS Truman incurred during a February collision with a freighter was apparently painted over, the Navy released an explanation.

“The exterior cosmetic damage to USS Harry S. Truman (CVN 75) sustained from the collision will get repaired during the ship’s upcoming Refueling Complex Overhaul (RCOH) at Newport News Shipbuilding as planned,” a Navy official said. “Immediately following the collision, while in Souda Bay, Greece, new bulkheads were installed inside each of the damaged spaces to establish weathertight integrity.”

The carrier is expected to begin RCOH in the next twelve months. We have reached out to the Navy for a firmer date.

Read it.

With left-leaning news outlets in serious decline thanks to a decade of TDS-fueled propaganda, Seattle Mayoral frontrunner Katie Wilson wants to use taxpayer money to fund vouchers that can be used for “local news outlets” of choice.

The plan to pass out the $100 vouchers would be funded through “a small property tax levy, a capital gains tax, or a digital ad tax,” journalist Jason Rantz reports.

Read it.

• Ratings of FEMA, CIA, CDC, FDA, EPA, IRS have declined significantly

Gee, just the agencies most affected by partisan politicization. That might have something to do with it.

• Democrats’ positive ratings of most agencies have fallen; Republicans’ have improved

Democrats are no longer driving the truck. Republicans are in the driver’s seat. That might have something to so with it.

Read it.

It’s easy to tell urban and suburban settings apart: suburbs are just a part of the city that’s dominated by single-family homes and manicured lawns. Rural living, in contrast, isn’t about construction style; it’s about access to services. In a rural place, you’re not getting municipal water or sewer, you have no local police department, and fire or EMT services might be a long way away.

Rural jurisdiction is funny too: you no longer have to deal with city planning departments or HOAs, but it’s not the bargain you might be hoping for. You probably need a permission straight from the state capital to build a septic system or dig a well — and if you’re unlucky, you might get a visit from the feds, too. The much-politicized Sackett v. EPA decision involved a family who bought an unassuming rural plot to build a single-family home, and ended up getting pulled into a decade-long fight with the federal government. The fight was about regulatory power, not the (near-zero) impact of what the Sacketts wanted to do. When the family finally prevailed, half the country gave them cross looks.

The need to interact with such distant and incomprehensible bureaucracies is probably to blame for the siege mentality among some rural populations. When a regulator in Sacramento decides it’s time to ban gas-powered chainsaws or leaf blowers, it’s good for the suburbs, where such equipment is a nuisance, and where batteries are usually enough. At the same time, it’s preposterous to those who own a forest and need to keep tree diseases and fire risks in check. We bought a top-of-the-line battery-powered Husqvarna saw; it’s great for small projects, but woefully inadequate for more serious forestry work.

Government employees have long noses and just love to stick them into YOUR business.

Read it.

Three years ago, RealClearInvestigations reported that the FBI was undercounting the number of armed civilians who had thwarted active shooters by a factor of three.

Even though the FBI acknowledged the issue at the time, it never corrected the error involving the politically fraught issue. In the years since, the problem has only gotten worse. Since RCI’s 2022 article, the FBI has acknowledged just three additional incidents of armed good Samaritans stopping active shooters from 2022 to 2024, and none in the last two years. In contrast, the Crime Prevention Research Center (CPRC), which I head, has documented 78 such cases over that same period – a 26-fold difference.

The discrepancy highlights systemic problems in the nation’s record-keeping regarding the politically potent issue of crime and safety. The refusal of many local jurisdictions, including Chicago, Maricopa County, Arizona, and New Orleans, to provide accurate crime data to the FBI has long made comparisons with many cities unreliable. The ongoing Justice Department investigation into whether Washington D.C. police falsified crime rates to create a “false illusion of safety” may provide more evidence to distrust the numbers that local authorities submit.

Navy Matters.

The last Avenger class mine countermeasures (MCM) vessel, USS Devastator (MCM 6), has now been retired.[1] Our surface MCM capability is now entirely in the hands of the Independence class LCS. Yes, that LCS. The ship and MCM module that has suffered years of delay, failure after failure, and no realistic operational testing. That one. That disaster. No, this isn’t a Halloween horror story, although it should scare you to death. This is our current naval MCM reality.