Source: Cato Institute
by Norbert Michel
“A fully implemented CBDC gives the government complete control over the money going into and coming out of every person’s account. It’s not difficult to see that this level of government control is incompatible with both economic and political freedom.” (04/23/24)
https://www.cato.org/commentary/there-no-good-version-central-bank-digital-currency
Source: ABC News
“A legal challenge over the British government’s role in allowing weapons to be sent to Israel can be heard at the High Court later this year, a judge said Tuesday. Palestinian human rights organization Al-Haq and the U.K.-based Global Legal Action Network filed the challenge in December, calling for the U.K. to stop granting licenses for arms exports to Israel. They said they acted after Britain’s government ignored their written requests to suspend arms sales to Israel following the deadly Oct. 7 Hamas attack that triggered the Israeli-Hamas war. The case had been dismissed in February, but a High Court judge on Tuesday granted a judicial review hearing for it in October.” (04/23/24)
Source: The Dispatch
“Lady Law and Homeless Encampments.” (04/23/24)
https://thedispatch.com/podcast/advisoryopinions/lady-law-and-homeless-encampments/
Source: EconLog
by Kevin Corcoran
“Thomas Sowell frequently emphasizes the importance of thinking beyond the immediate and obvious impact of some economic policy and thinking through the larger implications. He actually wrote an entire book dedicated to this idea – Applied Economics: Thinking Beyond Stage One. A similar and useful exercise to evaluate an idea is to really try to work out not what will unfold next, but what that idea, if true, should imply for the present situation. Here are two common examples where this would come in handy.” (04/23/24)
Source: Adam Smith Institute
by Tim Worstall
“The entire concept of net zero — or even dealing with climate change at all — is based upon the idea that not dealing with climate change is more expensive than dealing with it. Now we’ve just got evidence that dealing with it through renewables — those oh so cheap forms of energy collection — is more expensive than we’d thought. 25 million households, £400 per, that’s £10 billion a year. That’s also £10 billion a year forever. So, dealing with climate change is now more expensive than we’d thought it was. The benefit of dealing with it is exactly the same as before. That changes the balance of how much dealing — rather than suffering from — climate change we should be doing.” (04/23/24)
https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/renewables-arent-so-cheap-then
Source: RealClearPolitics
by Jeremy Tate
“The commentary class was collectively shocked when new polling this week showed over 90% of Americans across the political spectrum share core principles. More specifically, the vast majority firmly believe in the importance of fundamental freedoms such as the right to vote, equal protection under the law, freedom of speech, and freedom of religion. Students of history – or even of current events in most of the world – know that tribalism is the norm and broad support for the freedoms we have in the United States can hardly be presumed. That Americans agree on such fundamentals in the face of the divisive forces of social-media echo chambers, cable news hyperbole, vitriolic electioneering, and the politicization of culture and commerce is the result of the quietly unifying victory of an otherwise highly politicized force: education.” (04/23/24)
Source: US News & World Report
“UnitedHealth says files with personal information that could cover a ‘substantial portion of people in America’ may have been taken in the cyberattack earlier this year on its Change Healthcare business. The company said Monday after markets closed that it sees no signs that doctor charts or full medical histories were released after the attack. But it may take several months of analysis before UnitedHealth can identify and notify people who were affected. UnitedHealth did say that some screen shots containing protected health information or personally identifiable information were posted for about a week online on the dark web, which standard browsers can’t access.” (04/23/24)
Source: Pioneer Institute
“Tax Man Confounded: Why High Rates Haven’t Yielded Higher Revenue.” (04/23/24)
Source: Underthrow
by Max Borders
“Underthrow requires more than zeal. It requires spirituality. (Yes, spirituality.) But this is neither New Age nonsense nor do-what-feels-good self-help. It requires discipline.” (04/23/24)
https://underthrow.substack.com/p/the-monk-and-the-missionary
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Jacob G Hornberger
“At the heart of the decades-long war on drugs is the notion that the federal government is people’s daddy. One of the purposes of a daddy is to keep his children from doing bad things. One of the most important parts of being a daddy is to prevent children from doing bad things to themselves, such as putting the wrong things into their mouths. That’s what the drug war is all about it — keeping adult-children from putting bad things into their mouths and punishing them when they do. But adult-children are different from children. Adults are adults. Nonetheless, the drug war converts them into adult-children.” (04/23/24)