Month: May 2025

Javier Milei’s Free Market Reforms Are Starting To Pay Off

Posted on by Lone Candle

“Argentina’s poverty rate fell sharply in the second half of 2024, according to official data released this week, marking a major milestone for President Javier Milei’s sweeping economic reforms.
According to the country’s official statistics agency, the National Institute of Statistics and Census (INDEC), the poverty rate fell to 38.1 percent between July 2024 and December 2024—down nearly 15 percentage points from the first half of the year. Household poverty also declined by 13.9 percentage points, hitting 28.6 percent. And extreme poverty was cut by more than half, falling from 18.1 percent to 8.2 percent.

It’s a major turnaround from the beginning of Milei’s presidency. When he took office in December 2023, he inherited a poverty rate of 41.7 percent, which quickly surged to 53 percent as his administration launched a “shock therapy” program to end Argentina’s economic misery.

One of the biggest drivers behind the poverty decline is the sharp drop in inflation. Annual inflation, which reached 276.2 percent a year ago—one of the highest in the world—dropped to 66.9 percent last month. Monthly inflation has also dropped, from 25.5 percent in December to just 2.4 percent in February.*

“These figures reflect the failure of past policies, which plunged millions of Argentines into precarious conditions while promoting the idea of helping the poor, even as poverty continued to increase,” Milei’s office said in a statement following the release of the INDEC report. “The current administration has shown that the path of economic freedom and fiscal responsibility is the way to reduce poverty in the long term.”

In other words, Milei’s bet on free market reforms is starting to pay off.”

https://reason.com/2025/04/02/javier-mileis-free-market-reforms-are-starting-to-pay-off/

RFK Jr. Hires a Vaccine ‘Skeptic’ To Find the Cause of Autism

Posted on by Lone Candle

“Vaccine “skeptic” David Geier has reportedly been hired by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) as a data analyst to oversee a new study probing the possible links between vaccinations and autism.

High-quality research and transparency are not likely outcomes from a project headed by Geier. Geier and his physician father, Mark, have published in a variety of obscure journal articles claiming that vaccines cause autism. Based on those sketchy publications, they began hiring themselves out as “expert witnesses” in hundreds of vaccine-related lawsuits. Mark Geier was stripped of his medical license by the Maryland Board of Physicians over dosing autistic children with his home-brewed treatments.

The Geiers asserted that their research had found that tiny amounts of ethyl mercury preservative (thimerosal) in some vaccines was the culprit behind the rise in autism diagnoses. Interestingly, thimerosal has never been used in the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine that has most widely been blamed for causing autism. However, excepting seasonal flu vaccines, thimerosal in the U.S. was removed from any other vaccines in 1999. Amusingly, the Geiers took note of that fact and published an article in 2006 claiming that autism rates were subsequently declining. As it happens, the rate of autism diagnoses has increased since then. Evidently tiny amounts of mercury in vaccines has nothing to do with autism.

In any case, the claim that vaccines cause autism has been comprehensively debunked.
“The problem with the Geiers’ research is that they start with the answers and work backwards,” said Dr. Steven Black, director of the Kaiser Permanente Vaccine Study Center in Oakland, California, in 2005. “They are doing voodoo science.”

By applying his methodology in his new study of the putative relationship between autism and vaccines, Geier will doubtlessly and transparently get the answers that our new secretary of Health and Human Services thinks he already knows.”

https://reason.com/2025/04/03/rfk-jr-hires-a-vaccine-skeptic-to-find-the-cause-of-autism/

Joe Biden’s Handlers Definitely Knew. Did the Media?

Posted on by Lone Candle

“CNN’s Jake Tapper has released a book on this subject: Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again. That’s in addition to the books by Parnes, Allen, and Whipple. One can’t help but wonder, however, why it took so long to get the real story. Maybe journalists weren’t properly clued in to Biden’s decline until after the debate? That’s a bit hard to believe, though: At the very least, Special Counsel Robert Hur’s claims some months earlier that Biden appeared to be an “elderly man with a poor memory” should have set off alarm bells.”

https://reason.com/2025/04/03/joe-bidens-handlers-definitely-knew-did-the-media/

What you need to know about the AIR WAR between INDIA and PAKISTAN

Posted on by Lone Candle

A lot of uncertainty in what’s really going on in the air war between India and Pakistan. A lot of propaganda and biased commentators.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elImXpteVdI

Court Frees Palestinian Student Arrested by ICE at His U.S. Citizenship Hearing

Posted on by Lone Candle

“The arrest of Mohsen Mahdawi was a test of just how far President Donald Trump’s power over immigrants could go. Mahdawi, a ten-year legal U.S. resident and a student at Columbia University, was at his interview to become a U.S. citizen earlier this month. But because he wasn’t a citizen yet, the Trump administration argued that it could deport Mahdawi for his protest activity, and had Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents pick him up at the immigration center.

On Wednesday, however, a federal judge ordered ICE to free Mahdawi, who was born in a refugee camp in the Palestinian territories, while his case proceeded. “The two weeks of detention so far demonstrate great harm to a person who has been charged with no crime,” U.S. District Judge Geoffrey Crawford said at the hearing, according to ABC News. “Mr. Mahdawi, I will order you released.””

…

“”Noncitizen residents like Mr. Mahdawi enjoy First Amendment rights in this country to the same extent as United States Citizens,” he emphasized. “If the Government detained Mr. Mahdawi as punishment for his speech, that purpose is not legitimate, regardless of any alleged First Amendment violation. Immigration detention cannot be motivated by a punitive purpose. Nor can it be motivated by the desire to deter others from speaking.””

https://reason.com/2025/04/30/court-frees-palestinian-student-arrested-by-ice-at-his-u-s-citizenship-hearing/

Senate Republicans Voted Overwhelmingly To Continue Trump’s Trade War

Posted on by Lone Candle

“As a legal matter, President Donald Trump’s trade war rests on the claim that imports to the United States constitute an “unusual and extraordinary” threat requiring urgent executive action.
That’s an absurd argument, of course. The fact that Americans choose to buy or sell goods across international borders is not an emergency—it’s not even a minor worry—and certainly should not justify a massive expansion of executive power.

But Trump is going to do whatever he wants until someone stops him. On Wednesday, the Senate had a chance to do that. Instead, Republicans voted overwhelmingly to keep the “emergency” going, and thus to keep the trade war going too.

The Senate voted 49–49 on Wednesday evening to block Sen. Rand Paul’s (R–Ky.) resolution that sought to end the emergency declaration Trump signed on April 2 to impose his so-called “Liberation Day” tariffs on nearly all imports to the United States.”

https://reason.com/2025/05/01/senate-republicans-voted-overwhelmingly-to-continue-trumps-trade-war/