The Economist, a Voice of the Crust.

Dzaleka’s strange economy exposes the variety of ways humans go about spending even very modest endowments.

It is partly for this reason that confined economies fascinate researchers. The most famous is Stalag VII-A. The Nazi prisoner-of-war camp, in modern-day Poland, was home to Richard Radford, a British army officer. After the war, on returning to Cambridge University, Radford wrote a paper describing how the camp’s rudimentary cigarette trade evolved into a specialised economy that used cigarettes as the currency by which the value of every other available good was expressed. Much as in Dzaleka, work was scarce and everyone’s endowments—packages sent by the Red Cross, a charity—were pretty much equal.

The camp’s economy allowed Radford to challenge an old economic assumption. The “labour theory of value” is most commonly associated with Karl Marx, but classical liberal economists such as Adam Smith and David Ricardo also believed that the price of a good mostly reflected how much work it had taken to produce it, or the perception of that work among buyers and sellers. In Stalag VII-A nobody worked, and everything still had value. The price of butter came from its scarcity relative to how much was sought, not the number of hours a milkmaid had spent churning.

The Labor Theory of Value is an outgrowth of mediaeval Just Price Theory, in which philosophers and theologians desperately scrabbled to figure out some way that the price of something is related in some way to something outside of the market.

It’s wrong, and it’s always been wrong. You can dig a hole and fill it up again and again, but all that labor hasn’t added a thing to the value of that patch of ground, and is totally unrelated to its price.

There is a distinction (which even prize-winning economists–yeah, I’m looking at you, Paul Krugman–don’t seem to grasp) between ‘value’ and ‘price’, and price is always determined by the market: What someone else is willing to pay in trade for your stuff. That is the thing and the whole of the thing.

As one might expect, this comes as a surprise to the people at The Economist, a Voice of the Crust.

ZMan yanks back the curtain.

The reason regular people feel so much economic angst, despite the appearance of material prosperity, is that we have reached the end of the line for this model, where costs are socialized but profits are privatized. The NBA is one example where the quality of the product has been disconnected from its financial success. In a true market economy, the owners of the Celtics would struggle to give it away, because the NBA, as an entertainment product, is in steep decline.

If you look closely, you will see this dynamic everywhere. The offset to those cheap products at big-box stores is the collapse of American manufacturing, and the social capital that came with it. The offset to cheap labor via immigration has been stagnant wages and emergency rooms that resemble Tijuana bus stops. The offset to a rising stock market is endless financial insecurity. The hidden costs have accumulated to the point where they can no longer be ignored.

The reason Trump is trying to usher in a new economic model is that the old one, the financialized economy, is running out of places to hide the costs of endless credit creation and the auctioning off of social capital. It is not just that we cannot borrow more money. It is that we cannot continue to socialize the costs of creating more credit money. Just as critically, we can no longer tolerate an oligarchy built on privatizing the profits of this system.

Read it.

After spending years pouring billions into left-wing progressive activism and demonizing conservatives for wanting financial transparency, the European Commission just received a giant blow from the inside.

In a bombshell report, the EU Court of Auditors (ECA) confirmed what right-wing groups have been saying all this time: there is no transparency, no oversight, and no clue where most of the money sent to non-governmental organizations (NGOs) will end up.

“Transparency is key to ensuring credible participation by NGOs in EU policymaking,” Laima Andrikien?, the ECA member in charge of the report, said.

However, despite some progress since our last audit, the picture of EU funding for NGOs remains hazy, as information on EU funding—including lobbying—is neither reliable nor transparent.

The key findings listed in the damning report speak for themselves. Most importantly, the EU seems to be intentionally violating its own transparency standards with its “opaque” system. Data is fragmented across incompatible online platforms, with key information mislabeled, buried, or outright missing—making reliable information “practically impossible” to find.

Read it.

The Soros-funded Civil Society Europe, an organisation that connects left-wing groups from across Europe, released a statement on Monday, April 7th, decrying the “attack” on NGOs by right-wing groups in the European Parliament.

“This attack resorts to misleading arguments to fabricate a scandal,” the statement reads. It claims that civil society organisations are a “crucial tool” for ensuring that “the rights of citizens” are “collectively heard for building an inclusive society and a shared European future.”

The statement comes after recent revelations that billions of euros in EU taxpayer funds have been spent on progressive political activism across the bloc.

Members of the national conservative Patriots for Europe (PfE)—the third largest group in the European Parliament and the main opposition bloc in Brussels—recently launched a campaign to force the Commission to disclose all contracts with EU-funded NGOs. In a report on Monday, the European Court of Auditors (ECA) also labelled EU funding of NGOs “too opaque.” The ECA criticised the European Commission for failing to clearly disclose information about advocacy activities carried out by NGOs using EU funds.

NBC News, a Voice of the Crust.

The Trump administration is considering launching drone strikes on drug cartels in Mexico as part of an ambitious effort to combat criminal gangs trafficking narcotics across the southern border, according to six current and former U.S. military, law enforcement and intelligence officials with knowledge of the matter.

Discussions among White House, Defense Department and intelligence officials, which are still at an early stage, have included possible drone strikes against cartel figures and their logistical networks in Mexico with the cooperation of Mexico’s government, the sources said.

Still, the administration has made no final decision and reached no definitive agreement about countering the cartels. And unilateral covert action, without Mexico’s consent, has not been ruled out and could be an option of last resort, the sources said. It is unclear whether American officials have floated the possibility of drone strikes to the Mexican government.

Read it.

A panel of inspectors general has been “wielding power” outside supervision of the president or Congress in targeting officials appointed during the first Trump administration that investigated waste, fraud, and abuse in government, according to a court filing.

Inspectors general have become a contentious issue after President Donald Trump fired 17 in January. However, inspectors general appointed by Trump in his first term have faced targeting from the Council of Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency, also known as CIGIE.

CIGIE is a body within the executive branch that serves as a watchdog of watchdogs of sorts. CIGIE has an integrity committee that investigates complaints against agency inspectors general. Over the last year, the council has faced scrutiny from Congress and pushback from IGs questioning the lack of transparency by the council and its objectivity.

Interestingly, one of the most powerful positions in CIGIE is held by a non-federal employee. The chair of the CIGIE Integrity Committee is Corporation for Public Broadcasting Inspector General Kimberly Howell, who was selected by a private nonprofit board. Nevertheless, the integrity committee can act against presidential-appointed and Senate-confirmed inspectors general.

Stewart Slater: “We recognise few greater injustices than people not doing what we want.”

Quillette

The history of human flourishing is a story of technological progress. From the taming of fire to the Industrial Revolution, our species has found ways to reshape the world, turning scarcity into abundance and hardship into comfort. Yet, when it comes to some of today’s concerns—climate change, food security, deforestation—the instinctive response is rarely technological optimism. Instead, the prevailing narrative emphasises social change: reducing consumption, altering human behaviour, and enforcing collective restraint.

Why do so many people reflexively favour social solutions—carbon taxes, regulations, lifestyle changes—while discounting the promise of technological breakthroughs? The answer lies in our evolutionary past and in the way our minds have been shaped to solve problems. As psychologist William von Hippel has noted, humans evolved for social solutions rather than technological ones. That cognitive legacy continues to influence how we approach modern challenges, often leading us to dismiss the very innovations that could provide scalable, lasting solutions.

For most of our history, human survival depended less on technological ingenuity and more on cooperation and social cohesion. Our ancestors did not invent their way out of problems; they solved them through alliances, negotiations, and collective rulemaking. Food shortages, for instance, were addressed not by developing advanced agricultural techniques—those came much later—but by rationing resources, redistributing wealth within the tribe, and reinforcing norms against hoarding.

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The year was 1992. The Clinton administration was trying to get Israeli Prime Minister Rabin to sign on the dotted line of the peace process to create a’ ‘Palestinian’ state, but Hamas terrorists wouldn’t stop killing Israelis.

15-year-old Helena Rapp was stabbed to death at a bus stop on the way to school. Several days later, Rabbi Shimon Biran, a father of four, was murdered by an Islamic terrorist.

Fed up with the latest killings, Prime Minister Rabin put 417 Islamists terrorists, including top Hamas leaders, on buses and dumped them in Lebanon.

On the six buses were Hamas leader Ismael Haniyeh, Hamas co-founder Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi, who would vow, “by Allah, we will not leave one Jew in Palestine”, Abu Osama, who helped draft the Hamas charter calling for the extermination of the Jews, Hamas co-founders Mohammed Taha, Hammad Al-Hasanat, and Mahmoud Zahar, who threatened “They have legitimized the killing of their people all over the world by killing our people”, Hamad Al-Bitawi, who proclaimed that “Jihad is a collective duty” along with Abdullah al-Shami, the head of Islamic Jihad, and many other present and future Islamic terror leaders deported to Lebanon.

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The White House announced that a Honduran national in the U.S. illegally has been indicted for allegedly stealing over 40 firearms from a Tennessee gun store, according to Breitbart and a DOJ press release. The guns, still bearing price tags, were found in his car.

“Under President Trump, criminals like this are being hunted down and taken off our streets,” the White House said on X.

The DOJ wrote in a press release: “Carlos Alberto Diaz-Chavez, 21, a citizen of Honduras without legal status in the United States, has been charged by criminal complaint with being an Alien in possession of a firearm, possession of a machinegun, possession with intent to distribute methamphetamine, and possession of a firearm in furtherance of a drug trafficking crime, announced Acting United States Attorney Robert E. McGuire for the Middle District of Tennessee.”

Read it.

Colossal Biosciences, the biotech start-up that’s attempting to revive the woolly mammoth, has brought not just one, but three dire wolves back from extinction. The species, which garnered plenty of attention in Games of Thrones, has not been seen on Earth for over 10,000 years, Bloomberg reported.

The pups in question are Remus and Romulus, two 6-month-old brothers that weigh 80 pounds each and extend four feet long, as well as the younger Khaleesi, a two-month-old female named after Emilia Clarke’s Daenerys Targaryen in the Thrones franchise. For reference, the brothers are nearly 20 to 25 percent larger than their closest living relative, the gray wolf, would be at the same age—and the duo is expected to be 140 pounds each when they’re fully grown. Among other differences, Remus and Romulus also have wider heads, larger teeth and jaws, and more muscular legs than its kin, Time reported. The trio currently live in a fenced-in nature preserve (in an undisclosed U.S. location), surviving off a diet of beef, deer, and horse meat, along with a special kibble.

Sure, let’s bring back a Pale0lithic apex predator. What could possibly go wrong?

If they wanted to bring something back, why not the Irish elk? At least you could eat it.

Read it.

Most of our readers are too young to remember the Vietnam War of a half-century ago, but those of us alive who held draft cards classifying us as 1A have a more personal perspective. In 1971, when I received my low draft number, all I could think was that perhaps I, too, would have to participate in the horror that was combat in that wicked war.

The Paris Peace Accords of January 1973—signed a month after I took my military physical—ended direct US involvement, although the US government continued to aid the South Vietnamese until their government and armed forces completely collapsed in April 1975. Today, Vietnam and the US are at peace with each other, but even today, unexploded US bombs continue to blow up and kill innocent people.

Steve Graham.

I see a lot of people, including RINO’s, criticizing Trump for increasing tariffs on foreign goods. The ignorance is amazing.

No one can answer this simple question for me: if tariffs are bad for an economy, how come they’ve been so good for the economies of the countries that put unfair tariffs on our exports?

How can it be that a practice that benefits all of our economic enemies can harm us when we do it to a lesser degree?

Another question: since Trump’s tariffs are tied directly to the tariffs and barriers imposed by other countries, if we want to get rid of them, why don’t we pressure the other countries instead of attacking our president? They can lower OUR tariffs in an hour by lowering their own.

I don’t know how well Trump’s tariff fight will work out, but I can’t see any reason at all why it shouldn’t be a whopping success. Sure, it’s hard on the stock market. Temporarily. Real investors know that the success of a market is measured in decades, not days. This is probably a great time to buy depressed stocks sold off by people with weak hands. “Weak hands” is the term career investors use to ridicule those who sell their stocks every time they dip. The people who buy high and sell low.

The US has the largest internal market in the world, meaning we have the big stick to beat everyone else with. Liars say the EU is the biggest, but that’s propaganda. The US is the biggest in terms of money spent, and that’s all that counts. The EU’s market is about half the size of ours. If you want to sell stuff to foreigners, you want to sell in the US. When the US blocks you, you’re like a diaper manufacturer who can’t sell to Walmart. You’re done.

Let’s see how we’re doing in 6 months.

Read it.

About 45 years have passed since a U.S. state last eliminated its income tax on wages and salaries. But with recent actions in Mississippi and Kentucky, two states now are on a path to do so, if their economies keep growing.

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A conservative Christian law firm is gearing up to countersue the Southern Poverty Law Center after the left-leaning firm attempted to bankrupt it with a “frivolous lawsuit” that demanded $200 billion in damages.

The SPLC represented a woman who dragged Liberty Counsel through nine years of legal purgatory, all based on a lie. The SPLC did not originally represent the woman, but joined the case after she sued Liberty Counsel, a conservative Christian law firm the SPLC has branded an “anti-LGBTQ hate group.”

“The Southern Poverty Law Center saw Liberty Counsel’s name and that’s when they started salivating, thinking they could come after Liberty Counsel and bankrupt us,” Mat Staver, the Christian firm’s founder and chairman, told The Daily Signal in an interview Friday.

Yet the entire case fell apart when the Vermont woman who sued Liberty Counsel, Janet Jenkins, admitted under oath that the very basis for including the law firm in the suit was a lie, Staver said.

Judge William K. Sessions III, a Bill Clinton appointee, granted Liberty Counsel’s motion on March 31. Sessions ruled that Jenkins’ case against Liberty Counsel had no merit. This came, however, after 9 years of legal proceedings involving 186,000 documents, over 500 pages of legal writing, over 5,000 exhibits, and 25 depositions, Staver said.

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Even the secretary general of the Muslim World League (MWL) thinks young British Muslims are becoming a “national security risk.” Former Saudi justice minister, Sheikh Dr Muhammad bin Abdulkarim al-Issa, says he would prefer it if British citizens of all faiths (and none, presumably) could focus on domestic issues.

With half of all British Muslims aged under 25, such youth claim they are growing more disillusioned and alienated—as a result of UK foreign policy in the Middle East. Specifically, it seems that ‘Gaza’, i.e. code for Israel, is being blamed for the failure of multiculturalism.

The comments follow a survey of 5,000 people, including more than 450 Muslims. Almost two-thirds of the Muslims asked said their relationship with non-Muslims is “positive” or “mostly positive”, while less than a quarter of non-Muslims saw the relationship the same way. Younger Muslims also reported viewing Britain as ‘less tolerant’ than did older generations. According to Dr. al-Issa, the solution is increased Muslim involvement in domestic politics—a process not without its critics.

Newsbusters.

If you got all of your news from CNN and MSNBC, you’d have a higher than 50/50 chance of believing the Trump administration had accidentally arrested and deported a naturalized American citizen living in Maryland, and for no particular reason.

Cable networks CNN and MSNBC have hopelessly twisted the story of an El Salvadoran illegal alien who recently was deported by the Trump administration. Over the past week, these two networks have referred to Kilmar Abrego-Garcia as a “Maryland man” or “Maryland father” a whopping 120 times, while identifying him as an illegal alien only seven times. Meanwhile, MSNBC alone aired thirteen objectively false assertions that Garcia was actually a legal resident.

MRC analysts looked at all coverage of Kilmar Abrego-Garcia’s deportation to El Salvador on CNN and MSNBC, from April 1 through April 6. In that time, the networks aired a combined 72 stories about Garcia (40 on MSNBC, 32 on CNN).

CNN referred to Garcia using terms such as “Maryland man” and “Maryland father” 51 times. Across the 32 news stories about him last week, only a single segment (3%) contained any mention he was in the country illegally, and just thirteen (41%) even bothered to mention he was from El Salvador, not America.

On MSNBC, Garcia was referred to by terms like “Maryland father” an absurd 69 times. Throughout the 40 segments discussing his deportation, his illegal status was mentioned in just six (15%), and only twelve segments (30%) pointed out that he was from El Salvador.

Read it.

The Colorado House of Representatives passed a bill Sunday that would remove kids from parents’ custody for behaviors like “misgendering” and “deadnaming” after Democrats cited the Southern Poverty Law Center to justify excluding parental rights groups from discussion on the bill.

The bill, HB 1312, passed with 36 votes in favor, 20 against, and nine absent in a largely party-line vote. One Democrat, Bob Marshall, voted against the bill.

The Colorado House of Representatives has 43 Democrats and 22 Republicans.

Rep. Jarvis Caldwell, a Republican, accused the House Democrats of silencing debate on the issue because they knew their position is unpopular.

“After preventing us from the ability to debate, Colorado House Democrats rammed through HB 1312,” Caldwell told The Daily Signal in a statement Monday. “It’s codifying into law that if their ideology confuses your child, and you don’t affirm that delusion, you’re committing child abuse and can lose custody of your child.”

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“I don’t approve of violence, but…”

But, in fact, they DO approve of violence, or at least think that violence can be justified to achieve political goals in the United States.

I’ve written a number of pieces about how the left has embraced violence, arguing that there is nothing fringe about the riots, assaults, vandalism, and even murder that has been sweeping our country.

During the George Floyd riots, we saw every Democrat politician in the country literally kneeling in celebration of the riots, egging them on, musing about how the violence was justified, calling the takeover of our cities the “summer of love,” and attacking Republicans for not embracing the “mostly peaceful” burning down of our cities.

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California did not materially comply with the requirements for seven of the 22 federal programs the state auditor examined, including “pervasive” noncompliance in its unemployment benefits program, which could put essential federal funding at risk.

“This report concludes that the State did not materially comply with certain requirements for seven of the 22 federal programs or clusters of programs (federal programs) MGO audited, including one program for which the noncompliance was pervasive,” wrote Deputy State Auditor Linus Li.

“Additionally, although MGO concluded that the State materially complied with requirements for the remaining federal programs it audited, the State continues to experience certain deficiencies in its accounting and administrative practices that affect its internal controls over compliance with federal requirements.”

The audit found that even in 2023 — years after the state made $55 billion in fraudulent COVID lockdown-era benefits payments — the state likely made “potentially ineligible payments” of nearly $200 million. The audit also found that of 138 pandemic unemployment assistance claimants that were tested, 91, or 66%, had verification issues.

Read it.

Two molecular control factors play a key role in splicing, the process by which precursor messenger RNA (pre-mRNA) is cut and reassembled into mature mRNA, a critical step before protein production can occur in the cell. These largely uncharacterized factors are essential for ensuring the proper function of the splicing machinery. A research team led by Prof. Dr. Ed Hurt at the Heidelberg University Biochemistry Center, in collaboration with colleagues from Fudan University in Shanghai (China), has uncovered how these two cellular “quality control inspectors” operate.

Proteins, the fundamental building blocks of cells, carry out essential functions throughout the body. The instructions for building them are encoded in DNA. To translate this genetic information into proteins, the relevant DNA sequences must first be transcribed into messenger RNA (mRNA).

Initially, the cell produces a precursor mRNA (pre-mRNA) that includes both coding regions (exons) and non-coding regions (introns). Before the mRNA can be used to make proteins, the introns must be removed and the exons precisely joined together, a process called splicing, which takes place in the cell nucleus. The result is a mature mRNA strand made up solely of protein-coding exons, ready to guide protein synthesis.

UK Daily Mail.

Bear in mind that the Daily Mail is a British tabloid, so don’t take anything they say as … reliable.

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A host of teachers in Vienna have come forward to express their frustration about the difficulties of trying to teach migrant children—who evidently don’t want to be taught.

According to the publication Exxpress, Austria’s capital city, Vienna spends €2.2 million per year on free German, English, and mathematics courses for 12,000 children, most of them migrants, to help them integrate into society.

But it seems that the well-intentioned programme is utterly useless: many of the children don’t show up to classes at all, and when they do, they refuse to pay attention. Alarmingly, their parents don’t seem to care about their children’ s education either.

“Some children scream loudly in Arabic, eat crisps, throw worksheets on the floor, or run around the room,” one teacher complained. The children show absolutely no respect towards their teachers, some of whom are close to tears by the time their classes come to an end.

Most of the kids barely speak German, and can hardly put a complete sentence together, even though they attend German-language schools in Vienna.

Read it.

One of the great ironies of our age is the double standard of Big Environmentalism toward wind and solar, which commit numerous eco-sins that would not be tolerated otherwise. Dilute, intermittent, and thus inefficient? Yes. Energy sprawl requiring service roads and transmission lines in the wild? Yes. A threat to wildlife on land and in the water? Yes. And mining issues, even using child labor? Yes.

But it is “anti-CO2 or bust” for the foes of modern, prosperous living in a free society. They want a state of nature, a Garden of Eden, as if humankind did not matter. Deep Ecology is a religious cult—that is, in the area of energy, an enemy of Global Greening.

There comes a time in every ‘movement’ where people who started off full of idealism eventually descend to the point where it’s All About the Money.

The Wall Street Journal, sadly, these days a Voice of the Crust.

Fine by me. The Islamic Republic of Michigan has been a stone in the nation’s shoe for decades.

CNN, a Voice of the Crust.

Because, as we all know, miners and firefighters will have no protection unless it is provided by the Federal bureaucracy.

CNN, a Voice of the Crust.

Republicans are growing anxious about an emerging Texas primary engulfing one of their longest-serving senators, fearful that a hugely expensive intraparty feud will have major ramifications across the map in next year’s midterms.

And they want President Donald Trump to stop it.

Behind the scenes, Senate GOP leaders have personally asked Trump to back Sen. John Cornyn, who has occupied his seat for more than two decades and narrowly lost his bid to become Senate majority leader last fall.

John Cornyn is the Mitt Romney of Texas. The fact that he has a primary challenger who could win is all you need to know.

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Our media elites love to tout themselves as “independent” and “fact-based.” But on almost any story on President Donald Trump, they can’t help but put those words in the shredder.

The Kennedy Center illustrates one major difference between the two Trump terms. In the first term, the president deferred to the leftists who gave all the Kennedy Center Honors in 2017 to Democrats and Trump haters. He chose not to attend the ceremony so no honoree would refuse to attend and then hail themselves as “brave.” It was atypically polite and deferential, and Trump received zero credit.

In the second term, Trump quickly proclaimed himself Kennedy Center chairman and kicked out the management. While the Kennedy Center hasn’t been a blazing hot spot of woke culture, the media’s intense reaction to this action demonstrated this space is not for all Americans.

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Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has accused Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky of repeatedly deceiving the Trump administration about the proposed critical minerals agreement with the United States.

In a candid interview with conservative journalist Tucker Carlson, Bessent alleged that Zelensky “lied to our faces three times” about signing the deal, which would provide U.S. companies with access to Ukraine’s vital strategic minerals.”

Bessent explain that Carlson that he flew to Kyiv to sign the agreement with Zelensky—but the Ukrainian leader refused. Instead, Zelensky agreed to sign the deal during a meeting with Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio in Munich, Germany, which never occurred.

The Washington Poop, a Voice of the Crust.

Because, as we all know, Americans will have neither health nor safety unless it is provided by the Federal government bureaucracy.

Politico, a Voice of the Crust.

Exactly right.

Bondi pointed to the administration’s difficulty in standing up its planned ban on transgender troops serving in the military. A second federal judge in late March blocked the effort, calling it blatantly discriminatory.

“It’s basically a game of whack-a-mole with these District Court judges around the country who have a tremendous amount of power, they believe they do,” she said. “But that’s why we’re appealing all of these cases of course up to the Supreme Court.”

The basic question is, Who runs the Executive branch? The President, as it says in the Constitution? Or the Deep State, as has been developing since Nixon’s day?

USA Today, a Voice of the Crust.

First, an aide to President Donald Trump emails a leader of an independent agency to fire them. Then the leader sues, citing a law on the books that protects them from getting fired without cause. So the Trump administration shoots back that the law is unconstitutional. And they fight it out in court.

Legal observers following the trend think Trump is setting up a test case for the Supreme Court to revisit a 1935 decision that prevented a president from firing a member of Federal Trade Commission and paved the way for independent boards like the Federal Reserve to wield their power freely.

“I think the game is get it up to the Supreme Court,” said Thomas Berry, the director of constitutional studies at the libertarian Cato Institute. “And I think to some extent this is going to force the court’s hands.”

Among other roles, these boards set interest rates, insure bank accounts, protect children from unsafe toys, investigate airplane crashes, regulate public airwaves, enforce workplace discrimination laws, block federal workers from illegal firings, and allow workers to form unions.

So-called ‘independent agencies’ are major building blocks of the Deep State, carefully crafted so that if God forbid the Dramacrats lose the Presidency, some Republican who didn’t get the memo can’t come in and clean house.

One of Trump’s great virtues is that he doesn’t act like a politician, who would stroke his chin and consult widely before perhaps trimming an inch or two off of the Blob; he act’s like a business man, and in business the CEO can take a chainsaw to the operation and nobody can say him nay. And that’s exactly what is needed. People elected Trump to blow shit up, and that’s exactly what he’s doing, which is why all this media trash-talk isn’t affecting his popularity.

ZMan:

One of the amusing bits this week is how the kooks and lunatics all suddenly sounded like Milton Freidman when Trump announced his tariff policy. Suddenly people who often claim to be Marxists and anarchists were praising the glories of free markets. Some have enough self-awareness to see the problem, so they claim they oppose the tariffs because they are nationalist and you know who was a nationalist, so tariffs are fascism or something.
Most lack self-awareness, so they just screamed at the internet. The yesterday men of conservatism put on their knit ties and started chanting about Reagan. What they forget is Reagan used tariffs to protect American industry, despite opposing tariffs on theoretical grounds. In theory, a tariff free world might be the best, but we do not live in theory. We live in reality. The yesterday men always leave that part out when chanting about Reagan.
It all points to the fact that the old post-Cold War politics are spent. The people on the so-called left and right have nothing to offer. The kooks who used to distinguish themselves from the official left by championing populist items now oppose those items. They have no answer to Trump’s agenda because they have nothing to offer as an alternative. In the new politics, Trump is the radical overthrowing the old order and the self-styled radicals are the entrenched conservative interests.
None of this is to say the Trump agenda is flawless or that it will work. We are just getting started, so we shall have to wait and see how it unfolds. The basic scheme, however, is sound. American tariff policy will match the tariff schemes of other countries. If Canada wants to do business with us, they must negotiate a tariff schedule with Washington. It may be radically different from the one worked out with China, but Canada is not China.
The foundation of what Trump is doing is pragmatism. A good deal for Americans with regards to trading with Canada will always be different from what is good for Americans in a China deal. Rather than adhere to an ideological framework, economic policy will be situational. What is good now may not be good a year from now, so a year from now you will do something else. The radical idea at the heart of it all is realism. In an age drenched in ideology, reality is a radical idea.

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Ladd’s Arizona ranch shares 10.5 miles with the border of Mexico, and during the four years of the Biden administration, about 50 illegal aliens crossed through Ladd’s property daily, and sometimes that number rose to as many as 200, he told The Daily Signal.

“As soon as Trump got elected, it started slowing down,” Ladd said, adding that as of the beginning of March, Border Patrol told him they are “catching three a day, with no getaways” on his ranch.

Ladd attributes the dramatic decline of illegal border crossings through his ranch to Trump’s reimposing the “Remain in Mexico” policy and the “consequences” illegal aliens now face when they are caught illegally crossing the border. Illegal aliens who have criminal records “don’t want to take a chance” of being caught and risk being deported or imprisoned, he said.

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Far-left, billionaire-funded NGOs—closely aligned with the rudderless and imploding Democratic Party—have been waging a psychological warfare operation against the American people. Framed as “grassroots,” the party of hate and violence—evident in their “Tesla Takedown” color revolution aimed at killing Tesla to pressure Elon Musk on DOGE—has been building momentum in recent weeks to segue into anti-Trump protests this weekend. The goal is to manufacture the illusion that Trump is wildly unpopular, leveraging a vast network of dark money-funded NGOs that supply rent-a-protesters to rallies nationwide.

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If you don’t know who Michael Mann is, you’re luckier than some. Read on.

A year ago, I was a witness in the Mann v Steyn-Simberg libel trial. It was an extremely frustrating experience. Mann’s lawyers tried to block McKitrick and I from giving evidence against Mann. The judge ruled against them, saying that our evidence was relevant to the defense. However, the judge then prevented either of us from presenting evidence on Mann’s concealment of failed verification statistics or even on the verification failure of Mann’s statistical model. The judge didn’t even allow the presentation of a table published in Geophysical Research Letters. In mid-trial, the judge also reduced the time available for the defense by about 40% from the original allocation; the time available for McKitrick and myself was almost chewed up by defense objections.

The Crust takes care of their own.

Because Steyn was so weak, nearly all of the defense was taken up by Simberg’s lawyers. They were highly professional, but their strategy was focused almost entirely on the lack of damages to Mann, and, in particular, to Mann’s claims about lost grants. In my opinion, the issues about, for example, Mann’s concealment of adverse verification statistics were issues that ought to have been raised in cross-examination of Mann (rather than late in the day in direct examination of McKitrick or me), but none of this took place. Instead, the cross-examination went on and on about Mann’s grants – an issue which seemed far less important to me than putting Mann on the spot about his concealment of adverse verification statistics,

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Don’t ever say we don’t have useful stuff here.

The Washington Poop, a Voice of the Crust.

Last December, after months of worried research and work, we converted our Northern California home from gas to electric. We expected a bunch of benefits: Healthier indoor temperatures and air quality. A reduced carbon footprint. Lower energy bills.

The results have been more complicated.

Making decisions based on politics when they ought to be based on economics always costs you money.

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RNA vaccines packaged in tiny fatty containers called nanoparticles saved tens of millions from COVID-19. Now, researchers are trying to use similar nanoparticles to fight two other major killers, respiratory failure caused by lung infections such as flu and the atherosclerosis that leads to heart attacks and strokes. In both conditions, the endothelial cells that line blood vessels malfunction, turning down key genes. New research presented at the American Chemical Society (ACS) meeting here this week shows that nanoparticles carrying a payload of RNA can ramp the genes back up, promising to address the diseases at their root.

Nanoparticles are a familiar tool in medicine, but the scheme to use them to treat endothelial cells is “excellent work,” says Robert Langer, a nanoparticle therapy pioneer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Won Hyuk Suh, a biomaterials expert at the University of New Hampshire who organized the scientific session at the ACS meeting, notes that the findings are preliminary but calls them “very interesting and promising.” They were posted on the bioRxiv preprint server in January.

Atherosclerosis and respiratory failure due to infections such as flu might seem to have little in common. But both involve inflammation of endothelial cells. In the case of acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), the inflammation causes endothelial cells in capillaries adjacent to the lung’s tiny air sacs, or alveoli, to reduce levels of KLF2, a protein “transcription factor” that helps regulate a series of other genes needed for healthy cell function. As a result, these capillaries become porous, leaking fluid into the alveoli, which prevents oxygen from diffusing into the blood, often killing patients.

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The following reports and videos concern a recently-established Islamic community in Collin County, Texas that aims to become the sharia capital of America, a new, fully-Islamized version of the USA — the United Emirates of America, perhaps?

The East Plano Islamic Center (EPIC) is expanding in furtherance of a comprehensive plan, with some ominous overtones — for example, a compound-like building next door to the Plano police academy, overlooking a restricted-access parking lot and tactical mustering area. There is much about this plan that should make non-Muslims nervous.

The testimony of retired police Lieutenant Douglas Deaton at a meeting in Collin County discusses these issues and others related to the new EPIC city. I have only one quibble: Lt. Deaton said: “This is not about race. It’s not about religion. It’s about governance. It’s about sovereignty [emphasis added].” The problem with Islam — which few people in the West seem to understand — is that religion and governance are one and the same from an Islamic perspective. There is no separation between mosque and state — the concept is alien to Islam. As Muslims frequently tell the infidels, “Islam will dominate.” And when it does, it will govern. Islamic law — sharia — will be the law of the land. There will be no other source of law. Secular governance will no longer exist. Everyone will live in an Islamic paradise.

But that’s a minor quibble. Lt. Deaton gave an excellent presentation in the very brief time allotted to him. I couldn’t have done nearly as well.

You will notice no other ethnic or religious group attempting this sort of us-alone trick. The Irish don’t do it. Italians don’t do it. Poles don’t do it. Russians don’t do it. Catholics don’t do it. Episcopalians don’t do it. Buddhists don’t do it.

The reason it’s a problem is that Islam is an existential threat to Western Civilization in general (which the European Union are having their noses rubbed in every day) and the United States in particular. Immigrants historically have gradually assimilated into the general American culture while maintaining their unique traditions and contributing to the ‘melting pot’ — except Muslims, who attempt to establish Islam and shari’a law wherever they go. It’s all in the Koran. Go and read it.

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When we buy more goods and services from a foreign country than they buy from us in a given time period, we have a trade deficit with them. That means we are sending them little pieces of green paper (or more usually, digital bits) that represent a future claim on wealth. They can’t eat the green paper or the digital bits (i.e. dollars). They can’t build anything with them. We are getting valuable products in exchange for a future promise. Thus we can consume more now than we would in the absence of a trade deficit.

What do the recipient countries do with the pieces of green paper or digital bits? Since the dollar is the world’s reserve currency, they often use them to purchase goods and services from another country. So Taiwan might give us advanced semiconductors in exchange for digital bits and then pass the digital bits on to Saudi Arabia for oil. Then Saudi Arabia might use them to buy petroleum engineering services from the US, at which time we would be obligated to make good on the promise we made to Taiwan that those digital bits would be worth something. Because dollars flow around the globe, our trade deficit with a particular country is of no concern to us.

Our overall trade deficit is a good thing because it allows us to consume more goods and services now. Even better: because we have the world’s reserve currency, many of these dollars circulate overseas and have not yet (and may never be) used to demand goods and services from us. In 2022 the St. Louis Fed estimated that $1.1 trillion in Federal Reserve banknotes were held overseas. This does NOT include the vast amounts of digital currency held overseas. So foreigners have given us goods worth $1.1 trillion in exchange for banknotes alone. And they are holding them as a store of value and a means of exchange. They have yet to ask us to give them any goods or services in exchange for those banknotes.

A point that I have made several times on this very blog.

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“This was an illegal act,” said U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis of Maryland, an Obama appointee. She gave the administration until 11:59 p.m. Monday to free Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a citizen of El Salvador, from the El Salvadoran prison where he is being held, and return him to the United States where he is not a citizen.

Abrego Garcia, 29, was among the hundreds of illegal immigrants—a large percentage of them MS-13 and Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua gang members —expelled from the U.S. to El Salvador last month.

Although the Trump administration acknowledged in court records earlier this week it made an “administrative error” when it deported Garcia without an interview, the fact remains that he has no legal status in the United States.

Garcia crossed the border illegally in 2012 by his own admission, and claimed he had to flee El Salvador as a teenager to escape gang violence when he was detained in 2019. Both the original immigration judge and the Board of Immigration Appeals found there was sufficient evidence that Garcia was a member of MS-13 and, as such, a danger to the public.

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Nearly two months after a top Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) official and support team arrived at IRS headquarters to investigate waste and fraud—aiming to streamline a bloated and corrupt federal bureaucracy—the Trump administration has begun a sizeable workforce reduction across the federal agency.

Fox News reported late Friday evening that the IRS will begin laying off about 20,000 staffers — up to 25% of the workforce — on Friday and through next week.

Most job cuts will center around the IRS Office of Civil Rights and Compliance, which protects taxpayers from discrimination, audits, and investigations.

White House spokesperson Liz Huston told Fox News, “In a stark contrast to the previous administration’s wildly unpopular plan to hire thousands of additional IRS agents, President Trump is focused on saving tax dollars, eliminating bloat, axing useless DEI offices, and increasing the agency’s efficiency.”

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Murals honoring Hamas and Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine terrorists were featured Saturday at a protest that American Muslims for Palestine, a group recently accused of serving as Hamas’s “propaganda arm in New York City,” helped organize.

Several Hamas flags, including one depicting a militant of the terror group, were also spotted among the crowd of thousands of protesters, many of whom bused in from across the country. Speakers included Council on American-Islamic Relations executive director Nihad Awad, who once said he was “happy to see” Hamas attack Israel, notorious anti-Semite Linda Sarsour, and Grant Miner, the Columbia University graduate student expelled for storming a campus building.

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In the 1980s, peanut allergies were almost entirely unheard-of. Today, the United States has one of the highest peanut-allergy rates in the world. Disturbingly, this epidemic was precipitated by institutions that exist to promote public health. The story of their malpractice illuminates the fallibility of respected institutions, and confirms that public health’s catastrophically incorrect guidance during the Covid-19 pandemic wasn’t an isolated anomaly.

The roots of this particular example of expert-inflicted mass suffering can be found in the early 1990s, when the existence of peanut allergies — still a very rare and mostly low-risk phenomenon at the time — first came to public notice. Their entry into public consciousness began with studies published by medical researchers. By the mid-1990s, however, major media outlets were running attention-grabbing stories of hospitalized children and terrified parents. The Great Parental Peanut Panic was on.