A D.O.J. Whistleblower Speaks Out
Trump administration lying in court and defying court orders. The U.S. is not a healthy democracy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9dZk9YwguE
Month: July 2025
California’s Minimum Wage Hike Cost 18,000 Fast-Food Jobs as Employment Ticked Up in Other States
“The law transferred wealth from workers who lost their jobs to those who didn’t.”
https://reason.com/2025/07/16/californias-minimum-wage-hike-cost-18000-fast-food-jobs-as-employment-ticked-up-in-other-states/
Lawyers and Families Report Squalid Conditions and Lack of Legal Access at Alligator Alcatraz
“Prisoners at Florida’s newly opened immigrant detention center in the Everglades are suffering in squalid conditions and are cut off from legal access, according to attorneys, detainees, family members, and lawmakers.”
https://reason.com/2025/07/16/lawyers-and-families-report-squalid-conditions-and-lack-of-legal-access-at-alligator-alcatraz/
Trump’s Longtime Republican Attack On Education w/ Brittany Coleman | MR Live | Majority Report
Trump is destroying the Department of Education and making it so they cannot fulfill their law-mandated duties. The Constitution states that Congress makes the laws, and the executive faithfully executes them. This is not faithfully executing them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=and1R4YBDfc
Why Trump Just Gave China the Keys to A.I.’s Future
Under Biden, Nvidia couldn’t sell China their best chips. Trump came and banned the fourth best chip, which Biden allowed. Trump later reversed and allowed those chips thanks to: lobbying, China blocking the U.S. from rare earths, and accepting a strategy that getting China to use U.S. chips is better than forcing China to potentially be really innovative and make their own.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-_bykJa0Fc
Israel Strikes Syria, Mass Killings: What Happend in Syria?
In Syria, both Druze and Bedouins committed atrocities against civilians.
The Druze are not united. Some groups want increased autonomy from the Syrian government and are mostly anti that central government. Others want to work with the central government.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnMVZQu4orw
Debunking the 100,000 Medicaid Deaths Myth
“The sum of statistical lives saved vastly exceeds the number of actual lives.
Think of all the things that have saved your life. Every breath you take, every heartbeat, every car and lightning bolt that didn’t hit you. Yet, you’re only alive once. Even if we restrict ourselves to the effects of government programs, the total statistical lives saved by all programs is far greater than the population.
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Wyse and Meyer only show one side of the ledger—the reduction in mortality among people who gain Medicare eligibility. On the other side are the statistical lives lost from the people the money is taken from, or the programs cut.
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Counting statistical lives saved or lost is a debased currency, because it counts each actual life multiple times. And citing only the good side of the ledger makes it impossible to evaluate.
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after the Medicaid expansion, total expenditures increased by more than $1 trillion. That spending also costs statistical lives
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the money could have remained in taxpayers’ bank accounts, which also could promote good health. Mortality declines with income. Even if the Medicaid expansion were a cost-effective way to improve mortality, you have to consider the other side of the ledger.
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The lifesaving medical measures with the biggest impact, such as vaccinations and antibiotics, are relatively cheap. The Medicaid expansion may have relieved financial stress and made the program’s beneficiaries more physically comfortable, which are better criteria for evaluating its impact.
Now consider the 2013 NEJM study trumpeted by conservatives, which examined various health measures. It found that Medicaid enrollment resulted in large and statistically significant improvements in patients’ subjective estimates of their health and quality of life, as well as significant reductions in their financial stress. But it did not find a statistically significant impact on mortality.
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The two studies are more valuable in combination than individually. The NEJM study had the advantage of random assignment and detailed individual data. The NBER paper had a much larger sample size and time interval. Both found significant benefits to Medicaid recipients, although they did not establish that these benefits were any greater than could have been obtained by simply giving each recipient several thousand dollars per year. Neither study convincingly answered whether Medicaid improved health or saved statistical lives.”
https://reason.com/2025/07/17/debunking-the-100000-medicaid-deaths-myth/
3-Parent Babies Born Healthy in the U.K.
“Many more families might have benefited over the past couple of decades from similar treatments pioneered a quarter of a century ago, except that handwringing bioethicists helped to persuade the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to essentially ban them.”
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“Had the FDA stayed out of the way, many more families would have had the opportunity to use these and similar assisted reproduction technologies to have healthy children over the past 25 years.”
https://reason.com/2025/07/17/3-parent-babies-born-healthy-in-the-u-k/
Scott Bessent Takes Premature Victory Lap on Tariff Revenues
“The revenue undoubtedly came from a surge in imports to the U.S., which led to payments that filled federal coffers. It would seem to be a win for an administration that has staked an awful lot on waging a trade war with the entire planet to (take your pick) redress wrongs done to America, raise revenue for the government, and encourage domestic manufacturing and employment. But that victory lap comes too soon; the tariff windfall more likely represents efforts by U.S. firms to accumulate inventory before tariff rates rise even higher.”
https://reason.com/2025/07/18/scott-bessent-takes-premature-victory-lap-on-tariff-revenues/
Conservatives Shouldn’t Oppose California’s Potential Zoning Reforms
“In an ideal world, I control my property—but don’t get to tell other people what they can do with theirs provided they don’t intrude on my actual rights (as opposed to bogus ones that protect, say, my property values). As the late legal scholar Bernard Siegan explained, “There are very serious restrictions upon private property involved in zoning—where people, your neighbors, are telling you how you can use your land.””
https://reason.com/2025/07/18/conservatives-shouldnt-oppose-californias-potential-zoning-reforms/