Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – May 24, 2026
by Tony Wikrent
Americans are leaving the U.S. in record numbers and spending hundreds to learn how to do it
Jennifer Liu, May 17 2026 [CNBC, via DailyKos]
…A record number of Americans are leaving the U.S.: The country saw a net negative migration of between 10,000 and 295,000 people in 2025, according to research from The Brookings Institution. The widest estimated range was among people who left voluntarily, with Brookings estimating that between 210,000 to 405,000 people did so last year.
It’s the first time in at least 50 years that more people moved out of the country than moved in. Restrictive immigration policies and deportation efforts play a role, according to Brookings. Some U.S. citizens are emigrating for school, work, raising a family, retirement and everything in between.
Expatsi, a company that offers relocation tours for Americans, is becoming a sought-after resource for some….
The company, launched in 2022, held its second annual Move Abroad Con in San Diego on May 9 and 10. Some 600 Americans from around the country attended, double the number of people at the inaugural event held in May 2025, Expatsi co-founder Jen Barnett tells CNBC Make It.
A majority, 89%, said they want to leave the U.S. for political reasons, according to a sampling of 218 of the weekend’s attendees, per Barnett. Others say they hope to move for adventure and growth (73%), as well as to save money (57%). Roughly two-thirds of respondents hope to move within two years, they have an average monthly budget of $3,856 to work with, and hopeful movers are split among 44% individuals, 39% couples and 17% families with kids….
LinkedIn Is Doing What Bluesky Was Supposed to Do
[Popular by Design, via The Big Picture, May 20, 2026]
Rebuilding a public square on the platform you least expect. For a brief moment about a year ago, it really did look like Bluesky might work. Researchers and left-of-center intellectuals were flooding in, swapping starter packs, reassembling what felt like a nostalgic reunion of old Twitter. Then everyone arrived, and the center could not hold. A sharp argument that the post-Twitter intellectual conversation didn’t move to Bluesky or Threads — it quietly migrated to LinkedIn, of all places. Uncomfortable for everyone involved, but not wrong….
The people on LinkedIn are the people we should be trying to reach: policymakers, congressional staffers, civil servants, industry analysts, foundation program officers, and journalists at general-interest outlets. A 2025 Avoq survey of DC policy insiders found that 81 percent of Democrats, 84 percent of Republicans, and 78 percent of MAGA-aligned respondents use LinkedIn. Good representative data on LinkedIn compared to other platforms is notoriously hard to find, but this looks like a bipartisan footprint no other platform comes close to matching….
Discussion that actually moves understanding. The clearest evidence I have for all of this is my own cross-posting experience. I have often shared the same piece, including the more controversial ones, simultaneously on Bluesky, X, and LinkedIn, and the pattern has been remarkably consistent. On Bluesky, the reaction is usually either silence or a small pile-on when the piece challenges prevailing consensus, and substantive engagement is rare. On X, responses are a mix of real engagement and the usual ratio of slop, bad-faith screenshotting, and reply guys.
On LinkedIn, the pushback I get is both the most civil and the most productive: named professionals who actually work on the topic, often from perspectives I don’t share, who write multi-paragraph responses that engage with the argument rather than perform outrage about it. This holds even for pieces and takes I expected to trigger the most hostility, because people disagreeing under their own name with their employer looking over their shoulder have strong incentives to be reasonable.
War
Trump Cancels Last Minute Attack Amidst Reports Iran Has Now Clocked US Tactics
[Simplicius, via Naked Capitalism 05-22-2025]
All-Out War in Iran, That’s What Netanyahu Needs /Alastair Crooke & Lt Col Daniel Davis
[Deep Dive, via Naked Capitalism 05-23-2025]
Trump’s Hormuz ship insurance facility has done $0 business
[FT, via Naked Capitalism 05-18-2025]
Ken Klippenstein [via Naked Capitalism 05-18-2025]
“What Gallrein represents is something both parties have been quietly building toward for twenty-five years: the national security state as its own source of political legitimacy, floating above democratic accountability, not answerable to the public it claims to serve.”
Sweeping the strait: the companies gearing up to clear the Gulf of mines
[FTAlphaville, via The Big Picture, May 23, 2026]
Defence companies and marine contractors are preparing to deploy uncrewed mine-clearing systems in and around the Strait of Hormuz, as efforts to reopen the vital shipping lane draw attention to a new generation of naval drones. A new generation of uncrewed vessels could help restore traffic in vital shipping route.
Trump not violating any law
‘He who saves his Country does not violate any Law’
Joe DePaolo, May 4th, 2025
Joyce Vance, May 19, 2026 [Civil Discourse]
[TW: Best examination I’ve seen so far, of Trump’s $1.776 billion slush fund “settlement.” Vance was the first female U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama (serving from 2009 to 2017) and now teaches at University of Alabama School of Law.]
Almost as good as a pardon. Or maybe even better…
Joyce Vance, May 19, 2026 [Civil Discourse]
…It’s a pardon on steroids for Trump, Trump’s family, and Trump businesses. The government agrees in this document, signed by Blanche, that it will never prosecute or pursue any civil claims against any of the Trumps, “whether presently known or unknown” that could have been brought as of the date of the settlement agreement. That date is yesterday. The IRS is “forever barred and precluded” from pursuing “examinations” of Trump, “related or affiliated individuals,” and related trusts and businesses. Any proceeding over “tax returns filed before the effective date” of the settlement is now off limits. Any crimes committed before Monday, whether prosecutors were aware of them or not, are off the table. It’s a virtual get-out-of-jail-free card, and also a get-out-of-debt one.
I’ve seen a lot of settlement agreements, but never one like this where the government is giving the store away and getting nothing in return. As we discussed last night, the underlying lawsuit was on life support, most likely about to be dismissed because of legal flaws. Now, it’s become a vehicle for protecting Trump from all problems, criminal and civil, and not just tax matters—the subject of the lawsuit—but all matters. Any sins he may have committed or debts he owed but didn’t pay before now are forgiven.
The optics of this are so bad that it’s hard to believe Trump would expose himself to their consequences unless he really needed this deal. The protection it offers must be essential in some way we are as of yet unaware of. The Supreme Court has already given Trump immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts, but paying taxes, personal business transactions, and a whole host of other activities fall outside of the scope of that protection. And the unusual waiver of the government’s ability to pursue civil claims could cover a whole host of possibilities, anything from recovering unpaid taxes to suing for unpaid White House meals that a president pays on his own. Beyond that, there is the protection for virtually everyone connected to him—”any of the plaintiffs or related or affiliated individuals,” an incredibly broad provision.
Top Treasury lawyer resigns as Trump, IRS settlement announced
[The Hill, via Naked Capitalism 05-20-2025]
[Yves Smith comments: “This was THE chief legal officer. If Trump had not so surrounded himself with toadies and Congress was capable of getting out of bed, this would be a Saturday Night Massacre level event.”]
[PBS, via Naked Capitalism 05-23-2025]
Trump’s Own Handpicked Lawyer Quits Treasury in Disgust at Massive $1.8B Grift
[Daily Beast, via Naked Capitalism 05-20-2025]
[Yves Smith comments: “A more pointed telling of the same tale.”]
Trump’s More Than 3,700 Trades Astonish Wall Street Insiders
[Bloomberg/Yahoo Finance, via The Big Picture, May 18, 2026]
President Donald Trump’s latest financial disclosures show that he or his investment advisers made more than 3,700 trades in the first quarter, a flurry totaling tens of millions of dollars and involving major companies that have dealings with his administration. The President’s personal trading record, surfaced in disclosures, is itself a market-integrity story. Even by political-class standards, the activity level is remarkable.
Trump investment portfolio increases its frequency of trades, FT finds
Drop Site Daily, May 18, 2026
A Financial Times analysis of federal disclosures found that President Donald Trump’s investment portfolio executed more than 3,700 transactions in the first quarter of 2026—averaging a new trade roughly every 9 minutes and 45 seconds during trading hours since January 2025—with the cumulative value of transactions ranging between $220 million and $750 million. Trump’s filings missed the standard 45-day federal disclosure deadline, incurring late-reporting fees, while the Trump Organization and White House deny any conflict of interest, saying the assets are held in a trust managed by Trump’s children and traded through automated discretionary accounts overseen by independent third-party financial firms.
Trump’s Investments In Palantir And Nvidia Draw Scrutiny—Here’s What Companies Were Traded.
[Forbes, via The Big Picture, May 20, 2026]
President Donald Trump drew scrutiny Friday over millions of dollars of securities trades made in recent months involving companies his administration has also made deals with — though Trump’s son Eric said the trades were made by a blind trust. Forbes lines up the President’s recent trading activity against companies with direct policy exposure.
[Ritholtz: “Read alongside the WSJ pieces on his accounts — it’s a single story being told in pieces.”
See How Trump’s Accounts Were Busy Trading Big Tech Stocks
[Wall Street Journal, via The Big Picture, May 20, 2026]
Trump’s investment accounts had a surge in activity, with more than 3,700 trades in the first quarter. The WSJ’s data-driven look at the trading activity reported across Trump-family accounts — well-timed mega-cap entries and exits clustered around policy news. Make of it what you will.
Trump Moves to Hide Immigrant Detention Conditions as Prisoners Describe ‘Torture’
Whitney Curry Wimbish, May 20, 2026 [The American Prospect]
Trump Greenland Envoy Gives Away Game on Renewed Push to Claim Island
Malcolm Ferguson, May 22, 2026 [The New Republic]
“Greenland needs the deal.… Greenland could be exporting two million barrels of oil a day right now,” Landry said on Fox News. “Think about what that could mean. Think about what kind of pressure that would relieve in the Strait of Hormuz. Think about what kind of leverage that would give the Western hemisphere and America.… We could have those barrels on production within 10 months or so.”
How Trump plans to keep tariffs at the center of his economic policy despite stinging court losses
[The Conversation, via The Big Picture, May 19, 2026]
The legal setbacks haven’t shifted the strategy — only the legal authorities being invoked. Tariff policy as a will-to-power exercise….
[Tariffs] have failed to stimulate U.S. manufacturing and employment, while consumers and importers have absorbed the brunt of the price hikes. But to Trump, what seems to matter is that the Supreme Court took away his tariff-making power when it ended his emergency tariffs. He now wants that power back.
Indeed, that power was the appeal of the Liberation Day tariffs, which let Trump set tariff rates at any level and for any length of time, with the flexibility to assign different tariffs to different countries. With such tools, he could threaten more punishing levies to enforce bilateral trade deals.
In addition, he saw the revenue that those tariffs brought in as a source of power and has resented the Supreme Court order that they be refunded to the U.S. companies that paid them. Trump is even angry at any companies that have decided to collect the tariff refunds.
But Trump is especially furious at his Supreme Court appointees, Amy Coney Barrett and Neil Gorsuch, whose votes swung the February decision, and continues to excoriate them. He declared he was “ashamed” of all the justices who voted to strike the tariffs, characterizing them as “fools” and “lapdogs” who didn’t have “the courage to do what’s right for our country.” Trump also said the court’s decision would inadvertently push him to “impose tariffs more powerful … rather than less.”
In short, Trump is moving from his Liberation Day tariffs to what I call “revenge tariffs” – in an attempt to show the high court that it cannot stop him….
Tobacco industry scores FDA win days after $5 million donation to Trump super PAC
Drop Site Daily: May 21, 2026
The tobacco company Reynolds American donated $5 million to MAGA Inc. on April 30, and two days later Reynolds executives and lobbyists lunched with President Donald Trump at his Florida golf club. During the lunch, Trump called Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Marty Makary and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to complain about e-cigarette regulation, according to reporting on Wednesday from the New York Times. Less than a week later, the FDA issued new guidance bypassing its standard rule-making process to potentially allow major tobacco companies to sell flavored vapes and higher-nicotine pouches, opening a path into the $6 billion e-cigarette market. Makary resigned four days after the guidance was issued, telling associates he could not in good conscience remain at an agency that backed such a policy.
[Zeteo, via The Big Picture, May 17, 2026]
Miller, the deputy White House chief of staff, has never hidden his disfigured and dangerous psyche. But now Donald Trump has empowered him to execute his fascist impulses.
(anti)Republican assault on voting
Christopher Armitage, May 18, 2026 [The Existentialist Republic]
The Thomas Massie Affair – Election audits quell doubts. Please quell our doubts.
Thomas Neuburger, May 22, 2026 [God’s Spies]
… Was the Massie Election Stolen? ….
1. Massie Turnout Grew 19%. Opponent Turnout Grew 350%….
Strategic Political Economy
What matters: food or free markets?
Richard Murphy, May 21, 2026 [Funding the Future]
The battle over the next economic crisis has already begun, and what worries me most is not the shortages themselves. It is the growing resistance to doing anything effective about them.
After appearing on BBC Radio Five Live to discuss Rachel Reeves’ proposed food price cap, I came away convinced that many people still believe markets can solve every problem. Faced with shortages of food, fuel or energy, their answer remains the same: let competition work, let prices rise and let markets adjust.
But what happens when people cannot afford those prices?
Markets can ration food by price. They can ration fuel by price. They can ration energy by price. What they cannot do is guarantee that everyone gets access to essential goods when shortages emerge.
That is the issue we need to confront.
In this video, I explain why I think Britain faces the risk of a genuine supply crisis, why free-market dogma could make that crisis much worse, and why the opposition to intervention is already organising itself. Calls for rationing, market support, public provision or emergency government action are already being dismissed as socialist or statist.
The real question is simple. When shortages arrive, should access to food, fuel and energy depend upon the ability to pay, or should the government act to ensure everyone gets what they need?
Global power shift
Build Where You Sell: Sizing Up China’s Automotive Strategy for North America (Part I: Mexico)
Warren Browne, May 19, 2026 [Industry Week]
Chinese sales growth has been spectacular in Mexico. Thirteen Chinese vehicle manufacturers are now selling in Mexico, generating 275,000 in sales in 2025. The Detroit 3 automakers and Tesla sell an additional 158,000 units imported from China.
In total, China-sourced vehicles captured 26% of the Mexican light vehicle market in 2025. Not surprising given the multitude of entries, only one China-sourced vehicle sells over 25,000 units—Chevrolet’s Aveo. Other models sell quite a bit less. Yet, the total sales level finally rattled the Mexican government into action.
In a move to protect their automotive industry, the Mexican government raised vehicle tariffs to 50% on China-sourced imports, from 20% in 2025. A tariff level that high will influence demand. Thus, a 14% sales decline is expected this year. Moving forward, sales will continue to decline each year to a maximum of 185,000 units by 2030….
Kandrach: US surrendering biotech lead to China
[Boston Herald, via Naked Capitalism 05-17-2025]
What’s the Sticker Price of Exorbitant Privilege?
[The Two Cents, via The Big Picture, May 22, 2026]
A clean Substack walk-through of the dollar’s “exorbitant privilege” — what reserve status earns the US, what it costs, and what would actually shake it. The de-dollarization chatter usually skips the math; this one shows it. That raises the obvious question: what would it take for the US to lose its privilege now? Where is the tipping point? Is it just about the US fiscal and macro fundamentals? Carolin Pflueger (U Chicago) and Pierre Yared (Columbia) don’t think so.
Gaza / Palestine / Israel
Pro-Israel Lobby Operations Remain Shrouded in Secrecy, Despite Tax-Exempt Status
[DAWN, May 20, 2026]
Russia / Ukraine
Declassified: UK Knew NATO Expansion ‘Would Provoke’ Russia War
Kit Klarenberg, May 17, 2026 [Global Delinquents]
Oligarchy
Monopoly Round-Up: The Rage of the Billionaires Is Coming
Matt Stoller, May 18, 2026 [BIG]
Master Plan Bonus: The Man Who Helped Build the Imperial Presidency
May 15, 2026 [The Lever]
A rare interview with Ronald Reagan’s attorney general [Edwin Meese], who helped make presidential power a cornerstone of the conservative agenda.
An Assessment Of The Accelerating Timeline for “You Will Own Nothing”
Patrick Wood [via Naked Capitalism 05-23-2025]
Today’s Debate Ammunition – The City of London Corporation
Richard Murphy, May 18, 2026 [Funding the Future]
Today’s Debate Ammunition is on the City of London Corporation and its influence.
I am posting it in full here, but it is best read as a PDF, available here….
The City of London Corporation is not a harmless constitutional relic — it is an active instrument designed to protect capital from democratic accountability, operating as a state within the UK state. Through its privileged access to ministers, its corporate voting rights, and its role as the hub of a global offshore network, it systematically enables wealth to escape taxation and regulation while constraining elected governments. It should be abolished, and the offshore network it anchors should be dismantled through mandatory transparency….
The secret power behind the City of London
Richard Murphy, May 18, 2026 [Funding the Future]
Who really governs Britain?
In this video, I explore the hidden political power of the City of London Corporation and the offshore finance network linked to it.
Most people have heard of the City of London, but very few understand that it operates under a unique constitutional structure unlike anything else in the UK.
Businesses vote in its elections. It has its own police force. It enjoys extraordinary political access. And it acts globally on behalf of finance capital.
I argue that the City lies at the centre of the global tax haven system connecting London to Jersey, Guernsey, Cayman, Bermuda, Gibraltar, the British Virgin Islands, and more. Together, these places create a network designed to protect wealth from taxation, regulation, and democratic accountability.
This matters because governments increasingly behave as though the financial sector has veto power over democratic choice. Policies are shaped around “market confidence” rather than public well-being….
Industrial Capitalism Needed Us. Primitive Accumulation Doesn’t.
[Un-Diplomatic, via Naked Capitalism 05-18-2025]
Imperfect Guardians – Minnesota Legal Studies Research Paper 2026-6
Amna A. Akbar and Ryan Doerfler [113 California Law Review 2225 (2026)]
Abstract
Professor David Strauss attributes the U.S. Supreme Court’s reactionary jurisprudence to a breakdown of elite consensus. He observes that lawyers and judges disagree about the proper “victims” of our political process: Are they Black, Brown, and LGBTQ+ people or, instead, Whites, Christians, and gun owners? Strauss worries the jurisprudential approach that emerged from Carolene Products now allows for judicial intervention on behalf of groups loaded with political power. Even then, he insists on the classic liberal defense of the courts: that courts serve as an important if imperfect check against the majoritarian domination of minorities.
In this Essay, we identify as critical to such defenses the unstated conjecture that elites are more enlightened than popular majorities—the conjecture that, for all of its limitations, juristocracy is still preferable to “crude” majoritarianism. The corresponding portrayal of ordinary people as relatively bigoted, irresponsible, or ignorant—read: unable to self-govern—animates liberal politics in the United States more broadly. We argue that confidence in the comparatively reactionary character of ordinary, working-class, and poor people in the United States is in no way proportional to the evidence. That confidence reflects less a grounded finding, and more ideology or faith in the need for elite rule. To allow these commitments to go untested is particularly dangerous in the face of the authoritarian politics of hyper-concentrated wealth and power that has become a feature of contemporary life. Such discourse diverts attention from the fundamentally undemocratic nature of the U.S. state and allows governing elites to blame “the people” for problems elites have a disproportionate hand in creating.
How Billionaires Captured American Politics—and Taught Ordinary Americans to Bow to Oligarchy
Sharon Kyle, May 17, 2026 [LA Progressive]
From Citizens United to Super PACs and billionaire candidates, America’s political system has steadily normalized concentrated wealth, weakened democratic accountability, and conditioned citizens to view oligarchs as saviors rather than threats to democracy.
Felonomics
Who Died When Elon Musk Killed USAID?
Julian Scoffield, May 22, 2026 [The American Prospect]
Nicholas Enrich’s new memoir details the human toll of the agency’s dismantling.
Trump’s war is wrecking Trump’s economy
[Washington Post, via The Big Picture, May 22, 2026]
The U.S. war on Iran has upended energy markets and gut-punched the global economy, especially countries in Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and Europe. But the United States is not nearly as immune to the economic fallout from the war as U.S. President Donald Trump seems to think—and it is starting to show. There is a whole slew of economic indicators flashing “check engine” across the dashboard of the U.S. economy that show that the prolonged war in the Middle East is reigniting inflation, fouling supply chains, and dampening hopes of a tax-cut-fueled growth spurt this year.
The carnage of mainstream neoliberal economics
Nestlé Killed Millions of Infants
[Bentham’s Bulldogs, via Naked Capitalism 05-20-2025]
What Sports Gambling Is Learning From Big Tobacco
Danny Funt, May 20, 2026 [The New Republic]
Why is America’s leading advocate for gambling addicts now pushing betting bills?
U.S. employers spend more than $1.5 billion annually on union avoidance
Margaret Poydock, Teke Wiggin (LaborLab), and Celine McNicholas, May 20, 2026 [Economic Policy Institute]
-
Over the past several decades, large law firms have developed substantial business specializing in union avoidance services. This includes exploiting the National Labor Relations Board’s (NLRB) administrative processes and creating nearly endless delays for workers who are trying to form a union.
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Large law firms—such as Littler Mendelson, Morgan Lewis, and Jackson Lewis—have represented employers in their fights against some of the largest organizing efforts over the last decade, including Amazon, Starbucks, and Trader Joe’s….
Military Minerals: How US Military Demand Is Intensifying Extraction on Indigenous Lands
[Transition Security Project, via Naked Capitalism 05-22-2025]
Falling wages, spiraling credit card debt
Stephen Semler [via Naked Capitalism 05-18-2025]
Trump Defends Chinese Purchases of US Farmland
[Morning Ag Clips, via Naked Capitalism 05-22-2025]
The United States Has a Food System Crisis, Not a Food Shortage
William Murphy [via Naked Capitalism 05-22-2025]
Transcript: Shelia Bair, former FDIC Chair
Barry Ritholtz, May 18, 2026 [The Big Picture]
They’re not capitalists — they’re predatory criminals
[London Review of Books, via The Big Picture, May 23, 2026]
Everybody Loves Our Dollars: How Money Laundering Won
by Oliver Bullough.
Weidenfeld, 336 pp., £25, January, 978 1 3996 1809 0How to Launder Money: A Guide for Law Enforcement, Prosecutors and Policymakers
by George Cottrell and Lawrence Burke Files.
Biteback, 400 pp., £25, February, 978 1 83736 040 6…Since fewer and fewer people are using banknotes, it follows logically that fewer banknotes are needed, and therefore that fewer banknotes are being printed and put into circulation. Right? Wrong. In the UK, there is £1300 cash in circulation for every single one of us, but the amount of cash we actually hold is one seventh of that figure. The value of banknotes in circulation has been rising sharply for decades, and not just in the UK. In 2005, the total value of all the dollar bills in circulation was $759 billion. By 2015, it was $1.38 trillion. Last year, it hit $2.395 trillion. As Kenneth Rogoff put it in The Curse of Cash (2016), the dumbfounding thing is that ‘no one quite knows where exactly most of it lives or what it is used for.’ According to Oliver Bullough, in his alarming and unsettling book Everybody Loves Our Dollars, in 2022 the average American held $418 in cash, but there was $7357 of cash in circulation for every American man, woman and child. That means that a typical household of four represents $27,756 of missing cash, 80 per cent of which is in the form of the highest denomination US banknote, the $100 bill. That is a hell of a lot of $100 notes unaccounted for, especially when you bear in mind how seldom most people use, or even see, a $100 bill….Bullough’s other big policy recommendation is to switch some of the hundreds of billions of dollars spent on compliance to research. The illicit flows of money, ‘between 2 and 5 per cent of everything’, are such an important phenomenon in the contemporary global order that our current state of ignorance is indefensible. I haven’t even mentioned gold, which is used all the time in criminal transactions, let alone cryptocurrency, the single biggest recent innovation in money laundering….
BlackRock Private Credit Fund’s Valuations Are Probed by DOJ
[Bloomberg, via Naked Capitalism 05-19-2025]
[Yves Smith: “Important. The SEC oversees private fund managers. See for instance this ACA report from March Private Credit Under SEC Scrutiny as Liquidity Pressures Rise. This means the SEC found enough that it did not like that it not only made a DoJ referral but the DoJ took it up. The SEC has plenty of power to impose fines but only the DoJ can pursue a criminal case. Mind you this is just an investigation but is looks mighty serious. But again remember this action is only against one fund so in theory the implications for BlackRock, which is ginormous, look limited. But this is a big deal in that it suggests that investor worries about valuations are bona fide.”]
Biotech lobby groups are set to trap farmers and breeders in patent minefield
[Corporate Observatory Europe, via Naked Capitalism 05-19-2025]
Restoring balance to the economy
Hawaii Just Found a Way to Keep Corporations Out of Politics
Harold Meyerson, May 18, 2026 [The American Prospect]
A new law makes clear that corporations derive their powers from states, and they don’t necessarily include the right to spend on elections….
Last Thursday, Gov. Josh Green signed into law the first piece of American legislation that curtails corporations’ ability to engage in electoral politics. It doesn’t—because it couldn’t—undo the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United, which holds that corporations have the right to spend their resources on political campaigns. That would require another Court ruling striking down Citizens United, or a constitutional amendment banning such spending.
Rather, the Hawaiian law is based on the fact that in the United States, corporations are created and given their powers by the charters of the individual states. Indeed, corporations simply are a legal creation of the state, everywhere they exist, by definition. The new law simply states that corporations doing business in Hawaii do not have the power to engage in local, state, or federal political campaigns, that that was not one of the powers enumerated in the state’s corporate charter. It further specifies a range of penalties—including losing the right to conduct any business in the state at all—if they do.
Corporations’ rights to free speech are not addressed by the new law….
The idea that states can use their corporate-creating powers to curtail the corporate domination of politics is something new under the American jurisprudential sun—at least, it hasn’t been floated before. It originated with Tom Moore, a former counsel and chief of staff to a member of the Federal Election Commission who is currently a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. In a paper that CAP published last September, Moore wrote that the states’ “underlying authority to define and limit corporate powers never disappeared. It simply went quiet: unused, untested, and unmentioned—until now.” Moore roots his argument in 200 years of law and practice. He cities Chief Justice John Marshall’s 1819 opinion in Dartmouth v. Woodward, in which Marshall wrote….
The Affordability Case for Public Factories
Joel Dodge, May 18, 2026 [Washington Monthly]
Last month, the Congressional Progressive Caucus unveiled a “New Affordability Agenda,” a package of policy reforms aimed at addressing voters’ cost-of-living concerns. The agenda includes efforts to reduce the costs of childcare, housing, and electricity, among other household expenses. But one plank stood out as surprisingly bold: A proposal for the federal government to engage in the public production of prescription drugs. The Affordable Drug Manufacturing Act, introduced by Senator Elizabeth Warren and Representative Jan Schakowsky, would allow the federal government to manufacture certain generic drugs and sell them at a discount. Under the bill, a vial of insulin, for example, would drop from $300 to $50….
For years, the liberal response to concentrated corporate power has been to regulate it, sue it, or subsidize consumers trapped by it. All those tools have their place. But each approach has limits. Lawsuits take years. Regulation can be fought, weakened, or rolled back by lobbyists. Subsidies can be captured by the very firms whose pricing power made them necessary.
But the Progressive Caucus proposal suggests another way is possible by reviving a forgotten policy tool used to counter concentrated production of critical goods, as my colleague Ganesh Sitaraman and I explain in a new paper: public factories….
Creating new economic potential – science and technology
New panels produce hydrogen fuel using only water, sunlight and no electricity
[Interesting Engineering, via The Big Picture, May 20, 2026]
This grid-independent system eliminates the need for traditional electrolyzers in green hydrogen production. A direct-solar-to-hydrogen panel design with efficiency numbers that, if they hold up at scale, would matter. Big “if” — but the field has had a quietly good year. This grid-independent system eliminates the need for traditional electrolyzers in green hydrogen production.
Information age dystopia / surveillance state
AI convinced them they had learned something they had not – a different kind of failure entirely
[X-Twitter, via Naked Capitalism 05-23-2025]
…Nearly a thousand high school math students in Turkey were split into three groups and put through four sessions of ninety minutes each. One group practiced with GPT Base, a standard ChatGPT-4 interface that could answer any question directly. One group practiced with GPT Tutor, a version of the same model that had been prompted to guide students with hints rather than hand them the answer. One group practiced with nothing but their textbook and their own head.
During the practice sessions, the AI groups looked like a miracle. The GPT Base group solved 48% more problems than the students working alone. The GPT Tutor group solved 127% more….
Then the actual exam came, and AI was not allowed. The students who had practiced with GPT Base scored 17% worse than the students who had practiced alone. Seventeen percent worse, despite having solved nearly half again as many problems in the sessions leading up to it. The students who had struggled the most, who had sat with the confusion and worked through it without a tool to rescue them, were now the only ones who could actually do the math when it counted.
Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent
[That Privacy Guy!, via The Big Picture, May 20, 2026]
Including a back-of-envelope on the climate cost at billion-device scale. The ‘opt-out’ fiction continues. At a billion-device scale the climate costs are insane.
[SavingAdvice.com, via Naked Capitalism 05-17-2025]
Google Search as you know it is over
[TechCrunch, via The Big Picture, May 23, 2026]
Instead of returning a simple list of links, Google Search will drop users into AI-powered interactive experiences at times. Google is also introducing tools that can dispatch “information agents” to gather information on a user’s behalf, along with tools that let users build personalized mini apps tailored to their needs. TechCrunch on the AI-overview pivot quietly cratering publisher referral traffic. The business model underneath most of the open web is being rewritten in real time.
When an App Download Turns Into a Government Record
Christina Maas, May 21, 2026 [Reclaim the Net]
The DOJ just issued subpoenas to Apple, Google, Amazon, and Walmart demanding the names, home addresses, phone numbers, and complete purchase histories of over 100,000 people who downloaded a single phone app.
The app maker offered to hand over anonymized data.
The government said no, it wants names attached to addresses attached to purchase histories, and it’s assembling the complete customer database from twelve different companies after the app maker refused to build it a backdoor for monitoring users….
X Agrees to Review Illegal “Hate” Within 48 Hours Under UK Online Safety Act
[Reclaim the Net
Collapse of independent news media
Pulitzer-winning newsrooms are quietly publishing mountains of gambling slop
[Popular Information, via The Big Picture, May 17, 2026]
A large network of prominent regional newspapers have posted thousands of low-quality articles promoting gambling and prediction markets. Advance Local, which owns The Oregonian, The Cleveland Plain Dealer, The Star-Ledger, and several other award-winning newspapers, has quietly published more than 17,000 online articles since 2022 pushing promo codes for sports books, online casinos and, more recently, prediction markets. Judd Legum on serious newsrooms quietly running gambling content farms for affiliate revenue. The journalism cross-subsidy has gotten unsubtle.
CBS Cancels Itself, Not Just Colbert
[New York Times, via The Big Picture, May 19, 2026]
What I didn’t anticipate was that the foundation of Mr. Colbert’s success was something new to late night: hard-core, point-of-view political comedy. He had developed it while contributing to “The Daily Show” on Comedy Central. A broadcast network, steeped in the traditional “both sides” style of Johnny Carson, was going to expect him to drop that as well as the character. The NYT opinion page on a network deciding it would rather not have an audience than have one with opinions. A useful case study in what happens when corporate parents start managing for the regulator, not the viewer.
How Palantir is becoming embedded in major newsroom operations
[Middle East Eye, via Naked Capitalism 05-23-2025]
Democrats’ political malpractice
There’s One Thing All Democrats Must Agree On, or They’re Dead in 2028
Michael Tomasky, May 22, 2026 [The New Republic]
The DNC’s 2024 autopsy is a waste of your time. The answer to the party’s woes lies deep in a New York Times poll released the same day….
…But there was one thing they seemed to agree on: “Still, the economic populism pushed by a growing number of Democratic midterm candidates has found a receptive audience. More than 80 percent of the party’s backers thought the political and economic system should be torn down entirely or needed major changes, and nearly 90 percent called the economic system unfair.”
That’s the secret sauce, right there. That’s the answer. There was one question in the poll that to me was more important than all the others. It was wordy, so bear with me: “Now I’m going to describe two hypothetical Democrats. Tell me which of the two you would be more likely to support in the next Democratic primary for president. A candidate who promises to lower prices by going after corporate monopolies and price gouging. [Or] a candidate who promises to lower prices by making it easier to build housing and expand energy production.”
I’m not quite sure why housing and energy were considered the opposite of monopoly power and price gouging, but hey, I didn’t write it. Anyway: Going after monopolies and price gougers won 67 to 30 percent. It won massive majorities from every category in the cross-tabs. Young people, 75 percent; old people, 68 percent. Men, 65 percent; women, 69 percent. Whites, 70 percent; nonwhites, 65 percent….
Establishment Democrats Still Don’t Get Why They Lost in 2024
Yves Smith, May 21, 2026 [Naked Capitalism]
Yves here. This piece attempts to describe why the Democrats sucked in 2024 as shown by the Kamala defeat. But IMHO even though Democrats are kinda sorta poking at the corpses of various losses, they still have not come to grips with the real issue. The reason they have shied away from having messages beyond “Orange Man/Republicans bad!” is that any ideas that would rally their long-abused base would have champion the interests of ordinary workers. Since the party now celebrates the professional-managerial class as the apotheosis of what Americans should be and is bankrolled by squilloinaires who got rich by preying on the lower order, they have set themselves up to be relegated to the dustbin of history.
By Sam Rosenthal, the political director for RootsAction. Originally published at Common Dreams
Rejecting The Health Care Trap
David Sirota, May 16, 2026 [The Lever]
An oligarch-funded think tank is trying to preemptively undermine Medicare For All even before Democrats win back power. Some candidates are rejecting the ploy.
The Democratic Party’s donor class is freaked out by the prospect of a massive populist wave election that doesn’t just switch control of Congress, but puts into office the particular kinds of Democrats they loathe — the kind who may actually fight to get big stuff done, like, say, Medicare For All. And so they’re rolling out a set of proposals designed to prompt Democrats to begin negotiating against themselves and prevent that fight from even happening.
Last week, the oligarch-funded Searchlight Institute, led by Sen. John Fetterman’s former top aide and the policy brain trust for a new billionaire-funded “party within the party,” got itself a headline proposing that Democrats coalesce around free primary care and creating the public health insurance option that the party promised 18 years ago and then dropped….
Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed rightly called the proposal out for what it is — a cynical ploy. Responding to the example of someone getting a free primary care consultation but then no additional coverage, he said such a person “then has to be admitted and STILL faces an insane deductible and financial ruin… because they got sick.”
Resistance
Christopher Armitage, May 23, 2026 [The Existentialist Republic]
For years, Clarence Thomas has been showered with gifts. Flights on a billionaire’s private jet, lavish vacations cruising on his superyacht, summer stays at his Adirondacks compound, tuition for a child Thomas was raising, a quarter-million-dollar motorhome a wealthy friend paid for. A reasonable person could look at all of it and wonder whether a justice on that kind of receiving end might be inclined to side with the wealthy, powerful, and conservative interests that keep appearing before his Court. That is a fair question, but it is not the question this article asks.
This article asks something narrower. Set the influence aside. Those gifts were income, and income belongs on a tax return. Thomas treated them as nothing, and no public record shows he ever reported a dollar of it. Under Virginia law, leaving income that size off a return, if it was done to cheat the state, is a felony. The evidence is already public, and he could be charged on Monday. First, the charge itself….
So this lands in one place, and it is not Washington D.C. It lands in Fairfax County, Virginia, where Thomas signs and files his return, and where elected officials hold the power to act on it. Three officials can move on this, and they can each do something different, so we ask each one for what they actually have the power to do.
Steve Descano, the Fairfax County Commonwealth’s Attorney, holds the charging power. He can open the investigation, convene a grand jury, and bring the counts, and he happens to be a former federal prosecutor who spent six years in the Justice Department’s Criminal Tax Division, which means the case would reach someone who already knows exactly how to read it. Governor Abigail Spanberger holds a different lever. Under Virginia Code section 2.2-511 she can formally request that the Attorney General take the case up, the request that unlocks state involvement beyond the county. Attorney General Jay Jones can act on that request if it comes, and short of that he can receive a referral and add the weight of his office to the call.
You can contact all three. Ask Descano to open the case before the clock on the 2020 return runs out this spring. Ask Spanberger to make the section 2.2-511 request. Ask Jones to stand ready to take it up. Not one of them answers to the federal apparatus that has shielded Clarence Thomas for thirty years. There is no legal reason this cannot begin on Monday. There is only the decision to treat him like everyone else.
Here is where to reach them, by phone or by email. Steve Descano, Fairfax County Commonwealth’s Attorney: phone 703-246-2776, email through the office contact form at fairfaxcounty.gov/commonwealthattorney, mailing address 4110 Chain Bridge Road, Suite 114, Fairfax, VA 22030. Governor Abigail Spanberger: phone 804-786-2211, email through the contact form at governor.virginia.gov/contact, mailing address P.O. Box 1475, Richmond, VA 23218. Attorney General Jay Jones: phone 804-786-2071, email mailoag@oag.state.va.us, mailing address 202 North Ninth Street, Richmond, VA 23219.
A call or an email takes two minutes, and you do not have to live in Virginia to send one….
[Variety, via The Big Picture, May 23, 2026]
Paul McCartney, a surprise guest on the final episode of “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert,” provided a poignant capper to the series by being given the ceremonial honor of turning out the lights in the Ed Sullivan Theater, a location with which he has plenty of history. The final number had McCartney and Colbert singing the Beatles‘ classic “Hello Goodbye,” accompanied by Elvis Costello, former band leader Jon Batiste and current band leader Louis Cato, eventually joined on stage by a parade of staffers dancing through and around the stag in a line, as the house band finally gave the ’60s tune a New Orleans-style coda. Variety on the Macca-closes-the-Ed-Sullivan-Theater stunt that ended the show. The Beatles bookend was on the nose, but earned.
Stephen Colbert’s Last Show: Laughing Well Is the Best Revenge
[New York Times, via The Big Picture, May 23, 2026]
The “Late Show” cancellation was a disappointment. But a surreally lovely final episode turned it into a cancellebration. The NYT’s formal review of the finale. The show held its tone to the end, which in 2026 broadcast comedy is itself a small victory.
[Harper’s, via Naked Capitalism 05-23-2025]
[TW: A letter to the editor by Jeh C. Johnson, Secretary of Homeland Security under Obama from 2013 to 2017.]
What Have We Done? Imagine yourself as a new college graduate.
Jim Stewartson, May 20, 2026 [MindWar]
… For decades, we allowed the worst of us to breed at the top of the pyramid. We allowed dark psychologies to oversee the slow erosion of our institutions, the degradation of our morals, and the capture of our technology. We sorted the psychopaths to the top because they talked a good game, made us money, or rationalized our grievances. We got lazy and comfortable. We did not do the work to ensure the system would still be there for our kids.
What we have done is fail. We have failed to do our jobs to keep the system working for our children and grandchildren. We failed to recognize that the evils of our past were never something we could leave behind, that we had to be constantly diligent against them. We failed to learn from history, so now we are repeating it.
But what I experienced from being with thousands of college kids—yes, I’m old enough to call them that—contained none of the darkness the regime is selling. The psychopathologies that captured the United States government and the technology industry are not shared by our youth.
The death of empathy, respect, and love has been greatly exaggerated. There is a wave of young people who take care of the stray cats near their apartments, who make friends with their neighbors, and accept people for who they are, not what they look like or where they came from.
But the people who screwed it up for them—the grown-ups who dropped the ball on keeping the system working—need to understand these young adults don’t care about our purity tests, our establishment politics, or our liberal sensitivities. They just want a job, a nice place to live, and maybe a family. They want a government that lets them be who they are and shuts the hell up.
They have no loyalty to the system that existed because they watched it die. They were the generation to see the death of the neoliberal experiment….
Conservative / Libertarian / (anti)Republican Drive to Civil War
Trump FACES New SCANDAL as HIDDEN Power Network GETS EXPOSED!!!
YouTube (video)
Sidney Blumenthal and Sean Wilentz speak with Katherine Stewart, investigative journalist and author of Money, Lies and God, about Trump’s manipulation and dependence on his Christian Nationalist base, the organization behind the religious right, and the pedophile scandal of Paul Pressler (…who really remade the Southern Baptist Convention…), who is Mike Johnson’s mentor, that is being suppressed.
Paul Pressler helped ordain the marriage between white evangelicals and the Republican Party, all while accusations of sexual abuse piled up. Right-wing groups are still using his political playbook…..
[The Western Edge, via The Big Picture, May 17, 2026]
An essay on the disappearance of cultural innocence — for kids, for institutions, for ourselves. Heavy lift, worth carrying. This is History 221, The Far Right in America: 1920-2020. For a semester, students immersed themselves in an examination of America’s most ultraconservative political groups and figures, from the Ku Klux Klan, to the John Birch Society, to neo-Nazis, to the far-right creations of the modern political moment, like the Patriot movement and the embrace of Christian nationalism. Welcome to being young in America.
The South Rises Again
The Long Shadow of the Confederacy: Voting Rights and America’s Unfinished Civil War
Cynthia McDermott, May 17, 2026 [LA Progressive]
The (anti)Federalist Society assault on the Constitution
The supreme court’s takedown of American democracy is complete
[The Guardianvia The Big Picture, May 17, 2026]
Austin Sarat with the full arc from Bush v. Gore through the latest term. A useful refresher on how we actually got here. Since the Citizens United decision of 2010, the justices have dismantled Americans’ voices. The only solution is at the ballot box.
The Roberts Court Is Pushing the US Toward Existential Conflict
Bill Blum, May 24, 2026 [Truthdig, via CommonDreams]
By gutting the Voting Rights Act and granting President Donald Trump irmmunity, the Supreme Court has helped set up a fight over the future of US democracy.
Civic republicanism
Why Public Policy’s Core Value Should Be Equality
Mark Glick, Gabriel Lozada, and Darren Bush, May 18, 2026 [Institute for New Economic Thinking]
In a new, comprehensive report, researchers Mark Glick, Gabriel A. Lozada, and Darren Bush make a simple but vital argument: public policy should be designed to move society toward greater economic equality.All of it. Full stop.
The authors reject the old saw that equality comes at the expense of efficiency or growth. In fact, they show that countries with greater equality than the United States often perform better on measures of social well-being and economic health.
At the heart of their argument is a challenge to the core assumptions of neoclassical economics. Humans are not simply selfish, hyper-competitive actors, they argue. The preference for fairness and equality is deeply human — socially, psychologically, even biologically.
As they write: “In unequal societies, humans experience stress, leading to many social pathologies, as shown by extensive literature in epidemiology. Well-being can be increased by reducing inequality, independent of increases in GDP.”
It’s a point proponents of the Abundance Agenda may want to grapple with. Growth alone is not enough. A society can become wealthier while also becoming more anxious, fractured, and unhealthy. Equality, the authors argue, is not the byproduct of prosperity, but of what makes prosperity possible.
Western leaders play their part in our charade democracies. Can you spot the tell?
Jonathan Cook, May 20, 2026 [via Naked Capitalism 05-23-2025]
The super-rich and their vassals are deeply invested in the system because it richly rewards them. They’ll deploy everything they can – from the media to the ‘security’ forces – to prevent change.
Two pronounced – and inverse – trends in western societies have long been observable, and yet they are rarely noticed or discussed….
The first trend is this: the nearer to power a politician or official gets, the more their behaviour has to align with the structural interests of the billionaire class. Or put another way, the only route to power for any individual in our societies is by subordinating their personal beliefs and values to the interests of a rapacious, predatory class of capitalists.
The second trend illuminates the first. The further a former office holder moves away from the centre of power, the more room there is for their humanity to resurface – assuming they were not a hollow vessel for power to begin with, or turned permanently sociopathic through years of service to elite interests….
Let’s begin with the second of these trends, which is easier to identify.
Fourteen years ago, Israeli film maker Dror Moreh released an Oscar-nominated film called The Gatekeepers, based on interviews with what were then the six surviving former heads of the Shin Bet.
The Shin Bet publicly describes itself as Israel’s domestic intelligence service. But that gives no sense of its real function….
It takes brains as well as brawn to keep an ugly, dehumanising system of oppression like this running for so long and in ways that don’t embarrass allies too greatly. The Israeli army is the muscle. The Shin Bet is the brains.
The latter’s main job is to constantly surveill Palestinian society and devise ways to subvert and weaken it to prevent Palestinians from successfully resisting their gradual dispossession and eradication.
The Shin Bet oversees Israel’s extensively documented torture programme – one that relies on systematic rape and sexual abuse of Palestinian prisoners, including by specially trained dogs….
You might imagine that anyone who has spent years in charge of an institution like the Shin Bet must be depraved to an unimaginable degree. A person with no conscience or moral compass. A monster without redeeming qualities.
And yet in The Gatekeepers, released in 2012, the six former heads of the Shin Bet seem all too recognisably human as they critically evaluate what the agency was up to during their tenure. Each expresses varying degrees of remorse or doubt about their work – from torture to targeted assassinations.
One, Avraham Shalom, observes that Israel’s military has become “a brutal occupation force” and compares Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians to Nazi Germany’s occupation of Europe in the Second World War.
These, Israel’s ultimate insiders, conclude that the occupation they were responsible for running has hollowed out the moral core of Israeli society and at that the same time undermined its security. In other words, they argue that the occupation is making Israel less safe, not more….
[TW: History shows that no matter what an oppressor does, humans remain human. I placed this discussion of shin bet, and our present system of oligarchy, in the Civic republicanism section to contrast it with one of that philosophy’s key principles – doing good.]
We can find our own versions of the Shin Bet much closer to home – powerful organisations that lack meaningful oversight or accountability and are driven by their own aggressive internal logic.
Corporations are the main institutions shaping the way our societies function under globalised capitalism. They are soulless, predatory, extractive, polluting, profit-driven business empires seeking monopolistic domination over parts of the economy.
I have discussed the necessarily psychopathic traits of corporations before….
Gibara, like other CEOs, understands that he and his corporation do many unpleasant things. However, he can slough off personal responsibility – both to himself and to others – by pointing out that he must submit to the rules of a system he did not invent.
He doesn’t run the corporation. The corporation runs him.
He must follow orders – not orders from a boss, but orders inherent in the logic of a capitalist system in which his corporation is legally compelled to maximise profits and returns to shareholders.
That inevitably means, behind the scenes, using some of those profits to manipulate the political system, bribe politicians through donations or cash stuffed in envelopes, and rewrite legislation – that is, subvert democracy – so that labour laws are “relaxed”, environmental protections are stripped out, harms to the public obscured.
That inevitably means working covertly to weaken or destroy trade unions, collective bargaining, the right to strike, or any other measures that might protect the wages and rights of workers and lessen profits….
Benjamin Franklin letter to Joseph Priestley, Passy, Feb. 8, 1780
I always rejoice to hear of your being still employ’d in Experimental Researches into Nature, and of the Success you meet with. The rapid Progress true Science now makes, occasions my Regretting sometimes that I was born so soon. It is impossible to imagine the Height to which may be carried in a 1000 Years the Power of Man over Matter. We may perhaps learn to deprive large Masses of their Gravity & give them absolute Levity, for the sake of easy Transport. Agriculture may diminish its Labour & double its Produce. All Diseases may by sure means be prevented or cured, not excepting even that of Old Age, and our Lives lengthened at pleasure even beyond the antediluvian Standard.
O that moral Science were in as fair a Way of Improvement, that Men would cease to be Wolves to one another, and that human Beings would at length learn what they now improperly call Humanity.
Letter from John Adams to Abigail Adams 12 May 1780
I must study Politicks and War that my sons may have liberty to study Painting and Poetry Mathematicks and Philosophy.
Report of the Commissioners to Fix the Site of the University of Virginia, August 1818
…We should be far too from the discouraging persuasion, that man is fixed, by the law of his nature, at a given point: that his improvement is a chimæra, and the hope delusive of rendering ourselves wiser, happier or better than our forefathers were. As well might it be urged that the wild & uncultivated tree, hitherto yielding sour & bitter fruit only, can never be made to yield better: yet we know that the grafting art implants a new tree on the savage stock, producing what is most estimable both in kind & degree. Education, in like manner engrafts a new man on the native stock, & improves what in his nature was vicious & perverse, into qualities of virtue and social worth; and it cannot be but that each generation succeeding to the knowledge acquired by all those who preceded it, adding to it their own acquisitions & discoveries, and handing the mass down for successive & constant accumulation, must advance the knowledge & well-being of mankind: not infinitely, as some have said, but indefinitely, and to a term which no one can fix or foresee. Indeed we need look back only half a century, to times which many now living remember well, and see the wonderful advances in the sciences & arts which have been made within that period. Some of these have rendered the elements themselves subservient to the purposes of man, have harnessed them to the yoke of his labours, and effected the great blessings of moderating his own, of accomplishing what was beyond his feeble force, & of extending the comforts of life to a much enlarg[ed] circle, to those who had before known it’s necessaries only….
Lyndon Johnson’s version of “do good” – the Great Society
Heather Cox Richardson, May 23, 2026 [Letters from an American, May 22, 2026]
On May 22, 1964, in a graduation speech at the University of Michigan, President Lyndon Johnson put a name to a new vision for the United States. He called it “the Great Society” and laid out the vision of a country that did not confine itself to making money, but rather used its post–World War II prosperity to “enrich and elevate our national life.” That Great Society would demand an end to poverty and racial injustice.
But it would do more than that, he promised: it would enable every child to learn and grow, and it would create a society where people would use their leisure time to build and reflect, where cities would not just answer physical needs and the demands of commerce, but would also serve “the desire for beauty and the hunger for community.” It would protect the natural world and would be “a place where men are more concerned with the quality of their goals than the quantity of their goods.” ….
Wealth is righteously earned and poverty is righteously dispensed: The cult of the just world
[Welcome to Hell World, via The Big Picture, May 17, 2026]
To state the obvious to anyone reading this newsletter every single one of these people mentioned – yes even Beyonce and Taylor Swift 🙁 – got their billions the same way any other did: exploiting the labor of workers in a cruel economic system maximized for the few to be able to do just that. The end. A scathing piece on the moral architecture that makes American inequality feel deserved. Calvinism dies hard.
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