“Social Security’s fiscal problems aren’t the result of fraudulent payments to people who are already dead. It is not benefits for the dead, but rather payments to the living that are driving the program toward insolvency.”
…
“Last year, Social Security distributed more than $1.4 trillion in benefits to more than 68 million Americans, mostly retirees (the program also pays benefits to some disabled people who are unable to work). Current workers had a little less than $1.3 trillion extracted from their paychecks to fund the program. Obviously, that math doesn’t balance.”
https://reason.com/2025/02/19/social-securitys-insolvency-is-driven-by-benefits-for-the-living-not-fraud-by-the-dead/
How To Recover From Debanking
https://reason.com/2025/02/20/how-to-recover-from-debanking/
“During what was probably the low point of the 2024 presidential campaign, Vice President J.D. Vance falsely accused Haitian immigrants living in his home state of Ohio of kidnapping, killing, and eating pets. He then doubled down by challenging the legal status of those same immigrants.
“I’m still going to call them an illegal alien,” Vance said defiantly in late September, despite the fact that many Haitian immigrants in the U.S. have legal status under a federal policy called Temporary Protected Status (TPS), which is granted to migrants who cannot return safely to their home countries due to natural disasters or conflicts. At the time, Vance argued that TPS for Haitians was illegitimate because “Kamala Harris waves the wand illegally and says these people are now here legally.”
In reality, the TPS program for Haitians had been in place since the Obama administration, when it was implemented in response to a devastating earthquake. President Joe Biden extended TPS status for Haitians—legally, despite what Vance claimed—last year.
The Trump administration is now partially reversing that extension and retconning reality to match Vance’s politically motivated delusions.”
https://reason.com/2025/02/21/trump-will-create-520000-more-illegal-immigrants-by-undoing-haitians-protected-status/
The fall of the U.S. dollar relative to other currencies will make imports more expensive. This increases the costs of imports on top of the more direct effect of tariffs.
The dollar’s decrease will make U.S. exports cheaper overseas, however, this may be counteracted by foreign countries retaliating against U.S. exports in response to Trump tariffs, and by foreign customers boycotting U.S. companies.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bD5iHKOOgg8
Is China Dumping the Dollar? – And is Ray Dalio Right about Reserve Currencies?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7nj4b-619A
Trump defying a Supreme Court order is a constitutional crisis. The crisis comes to a head with Congress derelict in its duty. The only one with the power to enforce limits on the president’s power is Congress through its power of impeachment and a little bit through passing legislation that restrains the president.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiBggW15jLk
“Passed in 1920, the Jones Act severely limits competition in the American shipping market by requiring that ships operating between U.S. ports be American-built, American-crewed, and American-flagged. The number of ships that meet the Jones Act’s standards has been declining for decades, and now fewer than 100 are in operation. Anyone who wants to ship goods—including rum—from Hawaii, Puerto Rico, or other outlying U.S. territories to the mainland is required to use one of those few dozen vessels.
Unsurprisingly, the lack of competition drives up shipping costs. The lawsuit points out that it costs roughly three times as much to ship rum from Hawaii to Los Angeles as it does to ship the same goods from Los Angeles to Australia—an international route where greater competition keeps prices lower, even though the trip is significantly longer.”
https://reason.com/2025/02/25/is-the-jones-act-unconstitutional/
“The rule intends to reduce federal bureaucracy by reverting the mission of CEQ to its origins. The agency, which was created with the passage of NEPA, was originally intended to advise the executive branch on environmental matters and NEPA implementation. In 1977, President Jimmy Carter signed an executive order that required federal agencies to comply with NEPA regulations published by the CEQ. Since then, the council has been the guiding agency for the federal government’s NEPA reviews.
Trump’s executive order reversed Carter’s, which rescinded CEQ’s regulatory authority over other federal agencies. The proposed rule, if implemented, would not strike down NEPA altogether (this would require congressional approval). Instead, it would remove CEQ’s NEPA regulations from the federal register and allow federal agencies to use their own rules to comply with the law. Many agencies, including the Department of Energy, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the U.S. Forest Service, already have their own NEPA regulations in place.
Any effort to streamline the NEPA process should be welcomed by all. Since its passage in 1969, the law has become a redundant, bureaucratic nightmare that has slowed down or killed key infrastructure, energy, and environmental projects.”
https://reason.com/2025/02/25/trump-administration-moves-to-streamline-environmental-reviews/
Elon Musk makes basic attacks against Social Security that Republicans have been making for many decades, and Joe Rogan is impressed like these are new ideas. Elon’s attacks are wrong or misleading in multiple ways.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C12IdscHGNo
Man who worked with Trump in his first term explains that Trump is not qualified to be president. He isn’t interested in policy, he doesn’t read his briefings, he’s vulnerable to being manipulated by praise, and he’s not concerned about the world but just about himself.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBIRPVUkWBA