Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – September 28, 2026

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – September 28, 2026
by Tony Wikrent

They’re not capitalists — they’re predatory criminals

After One Year of Following Jeffrey Epstein’s Money, It Led Me to the Government We Have Now

Kait Justice [, via Naked Capitalism 09-24-2026]

… I had spent most of the year following Epstein’s money because I wanted to understand something that had bothered me from the beginning. Federal prosecutors had interviewed victims, prepared a draft indictment containing dozens of charges and subpoenaed records from Epstein’s companies, yet the case they were building never reached a courtroom….

I wanted to know how a person reaches the point where something like that becomes possible. I had to understand where Epstein’s money came from, who trusted him with theirs, what authority other people gave him, what he was actually doing for them and how the businesses attached to his name worked….

That led me into the a financial world I knew nothing about at the time, but it also pulled me toward Robert Maxwell, Adnan Khashoggi, BCCI, the Church Committee and government investigations that had already shown us something important about the period Epstein came of age in: governments, intelligence agencies, banks and private businessmen often worked through relationships and institutions the public could barely see while they were operating….

… Once I started asking that, the companies became impossible to ignore. Southern Trust had originally been called Financial Infomatics.

From what I understood, it described working with roughly 200 million personal profiles and combining information that could identify a person with biomedical information, genetic information, financial information and other records so the data could be analyzed together.

Then I found Southern Trust paying Novamente, the artificial intelligence company run by Ben Goertzel, for software. One $30,000 invoice from 2015 was for technology, installation and training to analyze gene expression and genetic variation. So Epstein’s company that had already described a business built around combining enormous amounts of information about people was now paying an AI company for software designed to analyze genetic and medical data. In 2015, over a decade ago….

That made the technology investments much easier for me to understand when they started appearing.

I found Epstein’s money in Peter Thiel’s Valar funds. Then I followed money that went through Ehud Barak into Carbyne, the emergency communications company whose technology can receive things like a caller’s location and live video when they contact emergency services. It currently manages millions of American 911 calls.

Then I found something that had turned up a few times but finally made more sense, Adfin.

Epstein’s Southern Trust and a Cantor Fitzgerald investment company had both put money into the same business, and I found the paperwork where Jeffrey Epstein signed for Southern Trust and Howard Lutnick signed for the Cantor company.

Cantor kept putting money into Adfin and eventually became its majority owner.

Howard Lutnick is now the United States Secretary of Commerce.

By then, this had become a recurring experience for me. I would open a document because I was trying to understand something Epstein was doing ten or fifteen years ago, and then I would look up the person or company involved and realize I was reading about something happening in the federal government right now.

The money was only part of it.

Epstein was also talking about digital currency long before most people were having conversations about stablecoins and digital wallets. In 2014, Vincenzo Iozzo sent him a proposal involving a digital currency where a wallet would be connected to a person’s real identity and their transactions could be permanently recorded. Iozzo explicitly pointed out what that would mean for privacy because advertisers could potentially know what people were buying.

Then, in February 2018, Steve Bannon asked Epstein how a $100 million bitcoin project could be announced during a conversation where they discussed when Trump would be forced to resign. Epstein responded with ideas involving a new coin, a donor advised fund, local exchanges and research into campaign finance law.

This is where the year I spent reading old Epstein documents started colliding with 2026….

A year later, I think I finally understand what I have been finding. Epstein spent decades helping billionaires, politicians and foreign governments do things most of us assume governments control. Things like moving enormous amounts of money, gathering information, making introductions between world leaders, advising countries, collecting data on people, funding artificial intelligence and working on new forms of private money.

Then I followed what happened to the people and businesses around him, and somehow I ended up here, with Howard Lutnick running the Commerce Department after Cantor invested with Epstein, Jared Kushner managing billions of dollars from foreign governments while also participating in American diplomacy, Trump’s family owning a digital currency company that now has approval for its own national trust bank, and Todd Blanche controlling the Justice Department and the Epstein files after representing Trump.

I think Congress needs to find out whether Epstein’s death actually ended what he was building, or whether his money, investments, contracts, technology, data and relationships simply went to other people who are now far more powerful than they were when he was alive….

The Tiny Magnet Maker That Attracted $1.6 Billion From Lutnick

[Bloomberg, via Naked Capitalism 09-25-2026]

Thiel’s Antichrist Confession: “If you’re evil… maybe you’re actually kind of good”

Jim Stewartson, September 26, 2026 [MindWar]

… The night before the ceremony, Thiel was asked in an interview by Axel Springer CEO Matthias Dopfner about the swirling controversy around the science fiction narrative that AI could “kill all humans”: “So why do we always moralize new technologies?”

The answer is one of the scariest and most deeply telling quotes I’ve ever heard.

“Yes, I’m gonna get in trouble for what I’m about to say, but I think we moralize way too much. And there’s always a question, I like to ask, what is the antonym of good? And the moral antonym is evil. The functional antonym is bad.

“A Ferrari is an evil car because it doesn’t get many miles per gallon. They are a trubby, is a bad car. It works less good than a golf cart. The former East German car. And so if you’re evil, you’re at least competent. And if you’re evil, you’re not bad. And therefore maybe you’re actually kind of good because you’re at least getting something done. […]

“And so if you’re in a world where 99% of the businesses, companies, people, political leaders, business leaders are totally incompetent. That’s the problem we should actually be talking about.” ….

Thiel’s CEO protégés, like Altman, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Alex Karp—who together control upwards of $10 trillion in stock market valuation—are another layer of his direct influence. But if the full reality of how OpenAI, SpaceX, Tesla, Facebook, and Palantir were built, and the true value of their products were understood, a large majority of that valuation would disappear. These companies are as much influence operations—corporate psyops if you will—as they are technology.

[TW: 99% of the elites are incompetent. That is the inevitable result of a system that elevates sociopaths like Trump and Thiel. Wall Street trading firms actually design their recruiting process to find and bring in sociopaths.

[But you can’t say that 99% of all people are incompetent. The vast majority of people take pride in their work – if they find it meaningful. Thorstein Veblen devoted an entire book to this: The Instinct of Workmanship. The philosophy of civic republicanism is based on the belief that all individuals are capable of contributing something useful to society, and therefore all individuals have natural rights, and governments ought be so designed and so managed that individuals have the liberty to develop their talents to contribute to society. Individual liberty is not about licentiousness or being left untrammeled to acquire as much wealth and power as possible.]

Johnson, E.A.J., The Foundations of American Economic Freedom: Government and Enterprise in the Age of Washington (University of Minnesota Press, 1973), pages 194-195:

The general view, discernible in contemporaneous literature, was that the responsibility of government should involve enough surveillance over the enterprise system to ensure the social usefulness of all economic activity. It is quite proper, said Bordley, for individuals to “choose for themselves” how they will apply their labor and their intelligence in production. But it does not follow from this that “legislators and men of influence” are freed from all responsibility for giving direction to the course of national economic development. They must, for instance, discountenance the production of unnecessary commodities of luxury when common sense indicates the need for food and other essentials. Lawmakers can fulfill their functions properly only when they “become benefactors to the publick”; in new countries they must safeguard agriculture and commerce, encourage immigration, and promote manufactures. Admittedly, liberty “is one of the most important blessings which men possess,” but the idea that liberty is synonymous with complete freedom from restraint “is a most unwise, mistaken apprehension.” True liberty demands a system of legislation that will lead all members of society “to unite their exertions” for the public welfare. It should therefore be the policy of government to aid and foster certain activities or kinds of business that strengthen a nation, even as it should be the duty of government to repress “those fashions, habits, and practices, which tend to weaken, impoverish, and corrupt the people.”

Chapter Two, Republicanism, from Gordon S. Wood, The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787, Chapel Hill, Institute of Early American History and Culture at Williamsburg, Va., University of North Carolina Press, 1969:

In the minds of the most devoted Commonwealthmen it was the duty of a republic to control “the selfishness of mankind … ; for liberty consists not in the permission to distress fellow citizens, by extorting extravagant advantages from them, in matters of commerce or otherwise.” Because it was commonly understood that “the exorbitant wealth of individuals” had a “most baneful influence” on the maintenance of republican governments and “therefore should be carefully guarded against,” some Whigs were even willing to go so far as to advocate agrarian legislation limiting the amount of property an individual could hold and “sumptuary laws against luxury, plays, etc. and extravagant expenses in dress, diet, and the like.”

[The civic duty to do good and the principle that all people can contribute to society is also a substantial factor in economic performance. This is seen in the 1980s-1990s leap of Japanese automakers over US and European automakers. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology conducted a $5 million, five year study on the world automobile industry, designated the International Motor Vehicle Program (IMVP). In 1990, the results of MIT’s IMVP study was released as a book, The Machine That Changed the World, by James P. Womack, Daniel T. Jones, and Daniel Roos, published by Rawson Associates.

[The book detailed the rise and achievements of Toyota Motor Company in Japan—the lean production, just-in-time-inventory, continuous-improvement methods of manufacturing vehicles created and implemented by Eiji Toyoda and Taiichi Ohno. In the mass production assembly line system of Henry Ford and the other Detroit automakers, workers were given one strictly limited task to perform, repetitively, at a single station in the production process. Other workers were tasked with cleaning the area, or repairing tools, fixtures, and machines. Defects in assembly were rectified later, after the entire vehicle had been assembled, in a special “rework” area of the factory, that for some automakers, took up almost a quarter of the entire floor area.

[Ohno realized that the workers on line actually doing assembly knew as much, or even more, about their area of work, than these supporting workers and even the foremen and supervisors. Besides, being forced to tolerate a defect moving pass them directly conflicted with their pride in workmanship and seriously damaged morale (see Thorstein Veblen, The Instinct of Workmanship and the State of the Industrial Arts).

[Ohno reorganized Toyota’s manufacturing process by placing

workers into teams with a team leader rather than a foreman. The teams were given a set of assembly steps, their piece of the line, and told to work together on how best to perform the necessary operations. The team leader would do assembly tasks as well as coordinate the team, and, in particular, would fill in for any absent worker—concepts unheard of in mass-production plants.

Ohno next gave the team the job of housekeeping, minor tool repair, and quality-checking. Finally, as the last step, after the teams were running smoothly, he set time aside periodically for the team to suggest ways collectively to improve the process. (In the West, this collective suggestion process would come to be called “quality circles.”) This continuous, incremental improvement process, kaizen in Japanese, took place in collaboration with the industrial engineers, who still existed but in much smaller
numbers.

When it came to “rework,” Ohno’s thinking was truly inspired. He reasoned that the mass-production practice of passing on errors to keep the line running caused errors to multiply endlessly. Every worker could reasonably think that errors would be caught at the end of the line and that he was likely to be disciplined for any action that caused the line to stop. The initial error, whether a bad part or a good part improperly installed, was quickly compounded by assembly workers farther down the line. Once a defective part had become embedded in a complex vehicle, an enormous amount of rectification work might be needed to fix it.

….Ohno placed a cord above every work station and instructed workers to stop the whole assembly line immediately if a problem emerged that they couldn’t fix. Then the whole team would come over to work on the problem.

Ohno then went much further. In mass-production plants, problems tended to be treated as random events. The idea was simply to repair each error and hope that it didn’t recur. Ohno instead instituted a system of problem-solving called “the five why’s.” Production workers were taught to trace systematically every error back to its ultimate cause (by asking “why” as each layer of the problem was uncovered), then to devise a fix, so that
it would never occur again.

[Certain statistics in IMVP study showed the startling differences in employee contributions to their companies. In all USA automakers, 17.3 percent of the workforce were in teams, compared to 69.3 percent at Japanese automakers. The hours required to assemble a vehicle were 25.1 in USA, some fifty percent higher than 16.8 hours in Japan. USA workers submitted 0.4 suggestions a year—less than one half each year. In Japan, workers submitted at staggering 61.6 suggestions per year.

[Assembly defects in USA were 82.3 for every 100 vehicles. In Japan, the defect rate was 60.0 for every 100 vehicles. ¹

[It was these changes to the manufacturing process, centered on much greater employee participation and input, that propelled Japanese automakers to catch and overtake US and European automakers in not just sales volume, but quality as well.]

Donald Trump and the Age of Evil – By any standard of morality, Trump is depraved. But adorned with the power of the state, he descends to another level — the level of evil.

Chris Hedges, Sep 25, 2026

Donald Trump exhibits the classic traits of psychopaths — superficial charm, grandiosity and self-importance, need for constant stimulation, a penchant for lying, deception and manipulation and incapacity for remorse or guilt.

But is he evil?

If, as the philosopher Susan Nieman writes, evil is not simply the opposite of good but inimical to it, if the aim of evil is to destroy all moral distinctions, then Trump qualifies as evil. Morality, for Trump, is for losers. All life is transactional. Self-interest and self-enrichment usurp all other considerations. No one else matters.

In her new book, “Call It Evil: Understanding the Trump Era,” Neiman argues that evil “isn’t cruelty but something much worse: the ideas that allow cruelty to become ordinary.”

She continues:

“There’s a difference between calling one action evil and calling another a crime. Crimes are things for which we have procedures—at least for punishing, if not for preventing. This means that a crime can be fit in some way into the rest of our experience. To call an action evil is to suggest it cannot—and that it thereby threatens the trust in the world that we need to navigate it. There’s no signpost on the border between evil and awful. Evil is what you say when your jaw begins to drop if you sense that a line has been crossed.” ….

“Once the supremacy of self-interest is enshrined as commonsense realism rather than a philosophical idea, moral capacities like empathy and shame become not just naïve but suspect,” Neiman writes. “Sadists exist and cause no end of pain. But the most common forms of evil arise from the view that only fools believe in anything but their own advantage.” ….

The institutions designed to protect democracy, to safeguard civic virtues, to foster equality — including the courts, law firms, universities and the media, all of which have been captured by the billionaire class — swiftly fell to their knees to curry favor with the Trump White House. The titans in Silicon Valley showered him and his campaign with millions of dollars. The supposed virtues these institutions and individuals claimed they championed were jettisoned. These virtues, they illustrated, were nothing more than branding, performance art, a sham.

To an enraged public Trump’s transparent greed and cruelty is preferable to the slick hypocrisy of the politicians, Republican and Democrat, who preceded him. He does not engage in their faux empathy. In fact, he seems incapable of empathy.

Once morality is for fools, virtue makes no sense. Once we believe we should grab what we can, even at the expense of those around us, we surrender to evil.

“Unlike the rest of us, he permanently exhibits the combination of motives we are told are the true forces driving human behavior,” Neiman writes of Trump….

[TW: The organizing principle of capitalism is that everyone pursuing their own self-interest results in the greatest benefit to society. This is obviously counter to civic republicanism, and why I believe that we must rebuild a republican spirit of governance, and why I insist Adam Smith and John Locke in particular should be disdained, not venerated. Their ideas are hostile to the very basis of good governance.]

Philippians 2:1-5
… complete my joy by being of the same mind, with the same love,
united in heart, thinking one thing.
Do nothing out of selfishness or out of vainglory;
rather, humbly regard others as more important than yourselves,
each looking out not for his own interests,
but also for those of others.

The Rogue Agents In The Boardroom – AI agents are learning to evade rules, hide information, and resist oversight — just like the Silicon Valley titans who built them.

David Sirota,  Sep 24, 2026

Who Says MAGA Doesn’t Read Books? – A “Mein Kampf” aficionado defends Trump’s exile of three news organizations in court.

Timothy Noah, Sep 25, 2026 [Backbencher]

Who are these people who represent President Donald Trump in court when he tries to expel reporters on the grounds that they published comments fed to them by, er, the White House’s own press office? The lead attorney is one Michael Velchik, senior counsel of the Justice department’s civil division. As I argue in my latest New Republic piece, the after-the-fact justifications for Trump’s decision to exile CNN, MS NOW, and Politico (later overturned by a district court judge) were every bit as crazy as the president who did the exiling. I am not a lawyer, but Liz Oyer, a former Justice department attorney, is a lawyer, and on Instagram she said “the brief is lunacy from a legal perspective.”

… Michael Velchik. This man, Oyer pointed out, has an interesting personal history. At Harvard he wrote a paper from the perspective of Adolf Hitler. In 2013, one year after he graduated, Velchik emailed a friend: “[I]s it bad that my favorite class at harvard was nietzsche and my favorite book i’ve read this year is mein kampf?” Later Velchik wrote a book review of Mein Kampf calling it “fascinating” and saying Hitler “understands the importance of propaganda.” Still later Velchik defended in court the administration’s ultimately unsuccessful attempt to withhold funds from Harvard on the grounds that Harvard was … antisemitic! (Cue rimshot.)

This week Velchik’s defended in court Trump’s attempts to curtail press freedom in the United States, just like Velchik’s favorite author. If the arguments were, as Oyer says, legal lunacy, consider the source.

The ‘End Times’ Fascists Want Doomsday. Can They Be Stopped?

Mehdi Hasan, Team Zeteo, and Naomi Klein, Sep 25, 2026

Authors Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor join Mehdi to discuss how Trump, billionaires, evangelicals, AI, and Israel have brought the world to a new and dangerous era that they call ‘end times fascism.’

∙

The Secret Monopoly Making Everything More Expensive – A proposed settlement would give Visa and Mastercard’s duopoly a free pass, and won’t deliver meaningful relief on swipe fees.

Carter Dougherty, September 23, 2026 [Washington Monthly]

War on voting

How Do You Stop Election Tampering Before It Happens?

Emma Janssen, September 22, 2026 [The New Republic]

War

Trump on Iran: ‘My question is, if and when do I blow the entire nation up?’

[The Hill, via Naked Capitalism 09-21-2026]

How to Survive in a World Without Rules

[Foreign Policy, via Naked Capitalism 09-22-2026]

Dangerous logic behind America’s emerging nuclear war strategy

[Asia Times, via Naked Capitalism 09-22-2026]

No Nukes?

Aurelien [via Naked Capitalism 09-23-2026]

Drug cartels are making alarming drone advances, U.S. assessment warns

[Washington Post, via The Big Picture, September 23, 2026]

The technological shift in Latin America, fueled by fighters returning from the Russia-Ukraine war, complicates President Donald Trump’s war on drugs, officials say. Alex Horton on the internal government assessment of Latin American cartels’ accelerating drone use.

Trump not violating any law

‘He who saves his Country does not violate any Law’

Trump Stuns By Saying ‘I Don’t Know’ When Asked Directly NBC’s Kristen Welker ‘Don’t You Need to Uphold the Constitution?’

Joe DePaolo, May 4th, 2025 [Mediaite]

Federal judge rules ICE’s NYC detention conditions “inhumane and unconstitutional,” orders sweeping fixes

Drop Site Daily: September 25, 2026

U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan issued a permanent injunction against ICE over conditions at the 26 Federal Plaza detention facility in New York City, writing in a 127-page opinion that officials “intentionally concealed or recklessly disregarded the truth” about compliance with his earlier orders and that ICE “objectively deprived detainees of sleep, sanitary living conditions, basic personal hygiene needs, sufficient food and water, and adequate medical care” by holding people far longer than the facility’s intended 12-hour limit.

Kaplan found detainees were also “severely restricted” from meaningfully accessing counsel, with phone calls limited to a few minutes and often overheard by ICE staff, calling the agency’s disregard of prior capacity limits “persistent, egregious, and, at a minimum, reckless, if not willful.”

The injunction requires ICE to provide at least 50 square feet of floor space per person, temperatures between 68 and 74 degrees, three daily meals, hygiene supplies, bedding for overnight detainees, an on-site medical professional at all times, and confidential attorney phone access….

Trump ‘Gleefully Eviscerating’ Efforts to Help Families With ‘Illegal’ Pocket Rescission

Jessica Corbett, September 26, 2026 [CommonDreams]

Elected Democrats—and even the Senate’s top Republican appropriator—blasted President Donald Trump late Friday for rescinding nearly $1 billion in congressionally approved spending that the White House deemed “wasteful and harmful” through a legally contested process….

House Budget Committee Ranking Member Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.) responded in a statement that “Donald Trump knows he can’t get these cuts through Congress, so he is illegally making them through the back door.”

“Trump’s actions are a blatant attack on Congress’ constitutional power of the purse,” he added. “It is exactly why we need to pass my Congressional Power of the Purse Act and stop any president from illegally overriding Congress.”

The Associated Press reported that “under federal law, Congress has 45 days to review the president’s proposed spending cuts before they take effect. But Trump made that all but impossible by announcing them with just five days left in the federal fiscal year and the House out of session through the November election.”

Senate Budget Committee Ranking Member Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) stressed on social media that “a pocket rescission is an illegal line-item veto. It is the president saying that he and he alone will convert a bipartisan spending bill (that has been signed into law) into a partisan spending bill. He is canceling the lines of spending he doesn’t like.”

“This violates the core separation of powers embedded in our Constitution in which it is the Congress, not the president, who decides what programs are designed and at what level they are funded,” he continued. “Republican colleagues said they would never let this happen. Well, here it is. They should ask themselves: ‘How would I like to have a Democratic president canceling out the Republican flavored programs he or she doesn’t like in a bipartisan spending bill that has been signed into law?’ If they have any integrity or any spine, they will join us in ending this practice.” ….

White House Airs ‘Illegal’ Trump Propaganda Ad ‘Paid For By the US Government’

Stephen Prager, September 24, 2026 [CommonDreams]

… The 30-second spot features numerous videos and images of Trump, set to the song “Love Me” by JMSN. It includes voiceovers by the president railing against “communism,” a label he’s regularly used to hammer Democrats as the midterm elections approach….

The video then goes on to amplify, in bright red letters, what the White House views as Trump’s signature policy accomplishments and goals: the “largest tax cuts in history,” “reigniting American manufacturing,” and “defend law and order and police.”

Footage from the 2024 Republican National Convention featuring Trump alongside Ultimate Fighting Championship president and CEO Dana White is then shown.

“He is the toughest, most resilient person that I’ve ever met,” White is heard saying about Trump. “And nothing was going to stop him from fighting so hard for the country he loves.”

As White is heard slathering Trump with praise, a message appears at the bottom of the screen in large white letters: “Paid for by the US government.”

Here’s the ‘Pathetic’ Reason Trump Is Running His Corrupt ‘Love Me’ Ads

Asawin Suebsaeng and Andrew Perez, Sep 26, 2026 [Zeteo]

When you talk to people close to President Donald Trump, they will be quick to tell you that he’s mad at the TV again, and he’s mad about Republicans who don’t want to talk about him. And that’s why he’s now forcing the federal government to run another pro-Trump propaganda campaign that Americans are paying for with their tax dollars.

The first such TV ad features the deeply unpopular president railing against “communists,” over a song pleading “LOVE ME,” with a disclaimer that it’s being “paid for by the U.S. government.” Watchdogs and lawmakers say the ad violates federal laws that bar the use of federal money for propaganda purposes, and prohibit federal employees from using official resources for politics. Some elected Democrats are demanding answers from the White House. Trump’s running these ads with taxpayer dollars despite his political operation having an obscene amount of cash to burn….

The White House wasn’t done, though. Trump’s administration is also planning to run an ad touting the president’s successful plot to kidnap Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, and it’s running a 60-second ad featuring Trump speaking at Mount Rushmore about how he’s brought about “the golden age of America.” The White House calls these taxpayer-funded propaganda ads “public service announcements,” and insists they are “very clearly not campaign ads.” ….

Letters from an American, September 24, 2026

Heather Cox Richardson, September 25, 2026

Ryan J. Foley of the Associated Press reported today, a report from the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that ICE had no strategic plan for spending the unprecedented $45 billion Congress gave it in Trump’s so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act last year, and has wasted tens of millions of taxpayer dollars on slapdash plans for mass detention.

It spent nearly $3 million for tents at Guantanamo Bay that were never used, $20 million for maintaining warehouses that were never used to house detainees and are now being sold, and excessive rates to lock people up. Foley reports that the Department of Homeland Security told the GAO that it would have a plan for spending its windfall by August 31, 2027, nearly a year from now.

After Trump announced the U.S. would accept meat from other countries in order to lower food prices, on September 22 the Department of Agriculture announced the recall of more than 167,000 pounds (75,750 kg) of raw pork, beef, and goat. The items were produced without federal inspection but carried false marks claiming they had been inspected by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The agency said the food “should be considered misbranded and unsafe to eat.”

Trump asked budget chief to draft order bringing health research funding under his control

[Politico, via Naked Capitalism 09-21-2026]

EPA launches drinking water study looking for traces of abortion pills

[The Hill, via Naked Capitalism 09-23-2026]

Trump says triumphal arch to be used for snipers, drones

[The Hill, via Naked Capitalism 09-21-2026]

Department Of Justice Hints At New Tool For Prosecuting Protesters

Dan Boguslaw [via Naked Capitalism 09-23-2026]

Trump officials plan to allow up to 17,500 more White Afrikaner refugees over next year

[Drop Site Daily, Sep 23, 2026]

The Trump administration notified Congress Tuesday it plans to allocate up to 17,500 refugee spots for fiscal year 2027, “primarily” for White Afrikaners from South Africa, according to a notice obtained by CBS News.

The State Department, which has effectively shuttered U.S. refugee resettlement program for all other groups, said Afrikaners “face the seizure of agricultural property without compensation” and discriminatory policies, claims the South African government has consistently denied.

The effort—which the announcement projects will cost $500 million—follows new U.S. sanctions imposed last week on South African officials accused of discriminating against the group.

‘It Should Be Illegal’: Trump’s 1,156 July Stock Trades Involved AI, Big Oil, Weapons-Makers, and More

Jessica Corbett, September 22, 2026 [CommonDreams]

Strategic Political Economy

Facts About Oil: A Reference Post – Types, use cases and producers in one easy chart

Thomas Neuburger, Sep 21, 2026 [God’s Spies]

What Is the Federal Bond Market Really?

Thomas Neuburger, Sep 25, 2026 [God’s Spies]

Global power shift

China’s Electric Aviation Advantage Is A Transport System, Not A Prototype

[Clean Technica, via Naked Capitalism 09-20-2026]

China is unusually well positioned for that test because it is not approaching electric aviation as an isolated aircraft problem. Its transport system is already removing many of the routes that aircraft serve poorly. China’s high-speed rail network reached about 50,400 kilometres by the end of 2025 and is expected to approach 60,000 kilometres by 2030. Dense city pairs can remain rail markets, leaving thinner regional routes, islands, difficult terrain, cargo links and poorly connected cities as a more clearly defined aviation opportunity….  China does not need battery aircraft to compete with 350 km/h trains between dense major cities. It needs them to become the better transport product on routes where another railway has poor economics and conventional regional aviation remains too expensive or infrequent.

Gaza / Palestine / Israel

Trump’s “Board of Peace” to unveil $2.45 billion Gaza plan

[Drop Site Daily, Sep 23, 2026]

Trump’s Board of Peace will unveil a six-month, $2.45 billion Gaza recovery plan Wednesday covering 66 projects, including temporary housing, rubble removal, hospital repairs, economic recovery, governance, and security, Axios reported. The plan estimates Gaza’s physical damage at $35.2 billion and full reconstruction costs at $71.4 billion over the next decade.

• About $1 billion is allocated to infrastructure, including $400 million for temporary shelters and $275 million for rubble and unexploded ordnance clearance, while $885 million would go toward security, including the International Stabilization Force, Palestinian police and a $20 million weapons buy-back program.
• Representatives from 35 countries, including the EU and several non-Board member states, are expected at Wednesday’s briefing. The full $2.45 billion has not yet been secured.

Oligarchy

A Reclusive G.O.P. Billionaire Pulls Back His Money From Senate Republicans

Theodore Schleifer, Sept. 23, 2026 [New York Times]

… Timothy Mellon, a reclusive Wyoming billionaire who is a grandson of the Gilded Age industrialist Andrew Mellon, gave nearly $200 million to support President Trump and other Republicans in the 2024 election. Only Elon Musk donated more.

Two years later, Mr. Mellon has given just $3 million or so in publicly disclosed donations to Republican candidates or groups. He also made a $20 million donation last month to help House Republicans, according to two people briefed on the contribution, which will not be disclosed until the next financial reports.

But Mr. Mellon has given nothing publicly so far to support Senate Republicans this fall — a move that has been conspicuous in the party’s financial circles, and shows how some influential Republicans remain angry about the party’s inability this summer to pass the voting legislation, called the SAVE America Act.

Happy Oligarch Day as Trump-Aligned Billionaires Take Over Hollywood

Matt Stoller, Sep 21, 2026 [BIG]

The Fine Print In Democrats’ Hollywood Merger Surrender

[The Lever, Sep 22, 2026]

$1 Billion in Secret Cash Is Reshaping the Midterms

[Brennan Center for Justice, via Naked Capitalism 09-24-2026]

Felonomics

How Trump’s Labor Policies Are Cutting Worker Pay

Lawrence S. Wittner, Sep 24, 2026 [LA Progressive]

… In March 2025, kicking off his assault on workers’ wages, Trump rescinded a Biden administration executive order that had increased the minimum wage that federal contractors must pay their workers who are employed in government services. These 400,000 workers included janitors in federal buildings, food service workers, cashiers in gift shops and national parks, and security guards. Thanks to Trump’s action, the minimum wage for these workers fell from $17.75 to $13.30 an hour, a 25 percent pay cut.

Workers directly employed by the federal government received particularly harsh treatment. Shortly after taking office, the Trump administration, through a combination of firings, bad-mouthing, and pressures toward early retirement, inspired a mass exodus of over 300,000 federal workers from their jobs and incomes. Furthermore, Trump deprived more than a million federal workers (a large majority of union-represented federal employees) of their right to collective bargaining, which, among other things, severely limited their ability to secure higher wages. In this context, Trump froze the wages of most federal employees for two years in a row. Raising their pay, he said, would be “irresponsible.”

During 2026, the Trump administration took additional action to lower the wages of American workers. It adopted policies? that deprive workers of wage, salary, and overtime protections by facilitating their misclassification as independent contractors rather than as employees. The administration also rescinded another Biden-era regulation that made overtime pay available to increased numbers of salaried workers. Consequently, 4.3 million salaried employees no longer qualify for the time-and-a-half pay for overtime work, a policy established by the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938….

Another indication of Trump’s disdain for the federal minimum wage is his administration’s effort to exclude millions of American workers from even this pathetic $7.25 per hour guarantee. In 2025, the administration proposed removing more than three million home care workers for the elderly from federal minimum wage (as well as overtime pay) protection. It also widened the opportunity for corporations to pay disabled workers less than the minimum wage. Thanks to such exemptions, disabled workers in some states earn only about $4 an hour….

The System for Using Evidence to Improve Federal Programs Has Been Gutted

[Can We Still Govern?, via Naked Capitalism 09-24-2026]

The carnage of mainstream neoliberal economics

We Cooked With A Former McDonald’s Chef. What He Showed Us Was Shocking – Here’s how fast food is the latest victim of enshittification.

Video by Sanya Dosani and Joey Yee, Sep 21, 2026 [More Perfect Union]

The Pentagon asked industry how fast it could make more weapons. The numbers remain private.

[Military Times, via thejackpot.blog/node/TodaysWaterCooler20260921]

“Deputy Defense Secretary Steve Feinberg gave industry leaders until Aug. 26 to submit plans for “significantly faster, more aggressive delivery schedules and/or increased production for critical capabilities,” according to his Aug. 5 memo.” More: “The memo identified 16 critical programs under consideration for accelerated production or increased procurement. The responses were intended to inform the department’s fiscal 2028 budget request.” And: “The Pentagon did not respond to questions about how many companies responded to Feinberg’s request or whether the department had accepted or funded any of the proposals.”

Health care crisis

Even medical professionals are skipping health insurance because of high prices

[Washington Post]

AI Battle Between Insurers and Hospitals Jacked Up Patient Prices by Nearly $1 Billion

[Common Dreams, via Naked Capitalism 09-25-2026]

Restoring balance to the economy

Seattle becomes first city to ban surveillance pricing

[Supermarket News, via Naked Capitalism 09-24-2026]

Can the States Stop the Corporate Domination of Our Politics?

James Baratta, September 22, 2026 [The American Prospect]

Big news: $590m for NC – Largest environmental payment ever

Jeff Jackson [North Carolina Attorney General], Sep 22, 2026

… This is about the PFAS “forever chemicals” contamination in southeastern NC.

In short, a chemical plant outside of Fayetteville polluted the river for years with PFAS chemicals that don’t break down. They last forever.

The plant was owned by DuPont and then Chemours. They knew the pollution was happening, they covered it up, and half a million people living downstream have suffered as a result.

We were hoping the EPA would take this seriously, but they failed. They could have really held these companies accountable, but instead they gave them a slap on the wrist.

So we stepped up, and now we’ve gotten at least 20x what the EPA got for our state.

The biggest piece is going directly to the communities downstream that got hit the hardest. That was very important to us. Those communities have suffered for years and they deserve the biggest chunk of the payment.

The second piece goes to the state’s PFAS cleanup fund. That will be about $55m.

The third piece is really important. Chemours has already been ordered to clean up their mess, and they have been forced to spend over $1 billion to do that.

BUT, there’s a chance they could go broke. Given everything they now have to pay, bankruptcy for Chemours is a real risk.

If that happens, we need to make sure the cleanup continues, so for the third piece of the deal we made sure that if Chemours goes broke, DuPont will be on the hook to continue paying for the cleanup.

In other words, if the small company goes bust, the big company still has to pay.

[TW: A Republican Attorney General would never have pursued this to the end.]

Is nature priceless? This study spotlights its huge value for the world’s economy

[Christian Science Monitor, via Naked Capitalism 09-25-2026]

“But one thing we know is that if you don’t put a value on it, its value is zero.”

It’s the accountability, stupid. Make crimes criminal again.

Garrett Graff, September 22, 2026 [Doomsday Scenario]

British passenger operator Chiltern moves to public ownership

Robert Preston, September 22, 2026 [International Railway Journal]

CHILTERN Railways became the next passenger operator in Britain to return to public ownership on September 20, as the government pursues its policy of not renewing operating contracts with the private sector as they come to an end.

Formerly operated by Arriva, Chiltern Railways had 1110 full-time employees as of March 31 and managed a total of 35 stations. The company operates commuter and long-distance services on a 349km non-electrified network running from London Marylebone to Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire, Warwickshire and the West Midlands.

According to official statistics compiled by the Office of Rail and Road (ORR), in 2025-26 Chiltern Railways operated 9.9 million train-km, recording 24.1 million passenger journeys and 1.28bn passenger-km.

Now under public ownership, Chiltern Railways is due to introduce 25 additional services each weekday with the timetable change on December 13. According to the Department of Transport (DfT), this will provide an additional 10,000 seats each weekday in order to tackle overcrowding in the peaks, as well as 5000 more seats on Saturdays and 3000 on Sundays….

Creating new economic potential – science and technology

UP Deploys First Two Battery-Electric Locomotives in Southern California

Carolina Worrell, September 24, 2026 [Railway Age]

The two Wabtec FLXdrive battery-electric locomotives are the first of four units ordered by [Union Pacific]. Two additional locomotives are scheduled to arrive in October, completing the four-unit fleet that will operate in the greater Los Angeles area….

The locomotives will undergo testing in a range of railroad operations, including switching and local customer service. UP said operating the units in a busy rail yard will provide data on battery-electric technology’s performance, reliability and operational capabilities….

Each FLXdrive locomotive is equipped with approximately 7,000 battery cells and provides about 2.7 megawatt-hours of energy storage. The locomotives produce zero tailpipe emissions during operation….

Information age dystopia / surveillance state

What Do AI Giants Really Want? All the money in the world, and absolutely no liability.

David Dayen and Matt Stoller, Sep 22, 2026 [Organized Money]

Is AI About To Create Another ‘Big Short’?

David Sirota, Sep 20, 2026 [The Lever]

Two new papers quietly circulating on Wall Street spotlight the danger of an AI-related economic collapse that would hit everyone. Can anything be done to protect against it? Yes.

Where’re All The AI Chips?

Ed Zitron, 22 Sept 2026

A few months ago, I asked where all the data centers were, because I was struggling to find proof that very many were being finished despite all the capex spending, construction, and the skyrocketing cost of RAM.

The answer to that question was, effectively, “nowhere.” The vast majority of Microsoft data center projects I could find had barely gotten started, aside from the massive OpenAI-dedicated “Fairwater” data centers that are “open” in the sense that some of the buildings are turned on, with the remainder either being actively built or with construction expected to start at some later point….

I Don’t Want to Read What You Didn’t Write

Colin Breck [via The Big Picture, September 23, 2026]

A pattern I see is that people use AI to build something new, then they use AI to retrospectively summarize what they have already built into a design document. Reading a document like this isn’t just difficult—it is punishing. The design document is no longer a proposal to build consensus, bring people along with you, and refine ideas through slow, deliberate thinking—it is a summary made by a machine, in exhausting detail, without context or perspective. It is unreadable. Inhumane. Colin Breck on people who rarely wrote anything original suddenly producing extensive AI-generated proposals, tickets, and summaries — all unreadable.

Publishing’s AI Reckoning

[Publisher’s Weekly, via Naked Capitalism 09-24-2026]

New Mexico jury finds Facebook liable for deceiving users about privacy protections

[Associated Press, via Naked Capitalism 09-26-2026]

Climate and environmental crises

India must face up to the fact that the Himalayas are on their deathbed and understand what happens if those mountains die

[FirstPost, via Naked Capitalism 09-22-2026]

Here’s What California Is Learning From Solar Panels Built Over Irrigation Canals

Ella Jackson, Sep 21, 2026, updated Sep 24, 2026 [KQED, via Pluralistic]

California solar panels tower over canals in Turlock, proving to save water, produce clean energy and improve local water quality.

Democrats’ political malpractice

The Accidental Candidate

New York Magazine.

“Troy Jackson emerged from nowhere to succeed Graham Platner in Maine’s Senate race. Now the Establishment is taking control.”

Troy Jackson campaign taken over by D.C. consultants, drops “genocide”

Drop Site Daily: September 22, 2026

NY Mag reports: New York Magazine reports that national Democratic consultants running Troy Jackson’s Senate campaign have pushed him to soften his messaging on Gaza and avoid questions about Israel. Rebecca Traister reports that out of state advisors and “consultants, some connected to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and national party leaders,” have discouraged open Q&As and sought to minimize opportunities for Jackson to discuss Gaza, despite his previously unequivocal support for a total arms embargo and his description of Israel’s assault as genocide.

• A campaign document seen by Drop Site instructs Jackson to say, “I think what’s happening in Israel and Palestine is horrific, senseless violence. I think Israel has the right to defend itself, but I do not support the United States sending offensive weapons that enable more killing.” It also encourages him to call for “the release of the hostages,” though Hamas holds no hostages.
• A person familiar with the campaign tells Drop Site News: “They have told him to stop saying genocide, moved him to blocking offensive only, and his answers are pissing off voters.” Drop Site reviewed campaign materials that instruct him to say, when asked whether it is a genocide, “START with ‘I’ve said what I’ve said.’ Do not sound like you’re walking back the previous position and do not invite an argument over semantics.”

Resistance

How an Obscure New Mexico Law Can Put Todd Blanche in Front of a Grand Jury Over the Epstein Files, in Dozens of Counties at Once

Christopher Armitage, Sep 20, 2026 [Existentialist Republic]

The Bill That Lets You Sue Politicians for Insider Trading Just Went Out to Every Democratic State Legislator in America

Christopher Armitage, Sep 20, 2026 [Existentialist Republic]

Successfully emailed to all 3,502 state legislators along with the 24 Democratic governors, and mailed in print with a personal letter to 1,519 legislators and every governor. Meetings are next.

 

Big Balls Now Exposed to Serious Criminal Charges in at Least Six States

Christopher Armitage, Sep 22, 2026 [Existentialist Republic]

New DOGE Grand Jury Petition Kit Just Dropped.

Christopher Armitage, Sep 25, 2026 [Existentialist Republic]

Today The Existentialist Republic published grand jury petition kits for six counties, five updated kits and one fully new, in the counties where residents asked for them. Each kit asks a local court to convene a grand jury over DOGE’s handling of Social Security records:

• Santa Fe County, New Mexico
• Shawnee County, Kansas
• Tulsa County, Oklahoma
• Nelson County, North Dakota
• Douglas County, Nebraska
• Lancaster County, Nebraska

We built each kit after several rounds of calls with residents of that county who expressed interest in the petition process. On those calls we walked through how the process works and what to expect from the court and the county election office, based on how past citizen petitions have gone in their state. More residents have signed up in other counties, and their calls and kits come next.

Download the kits here. Each kit holds the petition and signature sheet tailored to its county, a checklist of the rules that get petitions rejected, a filing timeline, an explainer, and a talk track for the people collecting signatures….

The petitions rest on the federal government’s own January 16, 2026 filing in AFSCME v. Social Security Administration. In it, the Justice Department told a federal judge that DOGE Team members shared Social Security data through Cloudflare, a server the agency never approved, and that the agency “has not been able to determine exactly what data were shared to Cloudflare or whether the data still exist on the server.”….

Over the last year this community has worked together and filed police reports over DOGE’s conduct and asked their attorneys general and district attorneys to investigate, with our team crafting template police reports tailored for all 50 states. That’s 50 states’ worth of criminal codes.

In July, we explored citizen-petitioned grand juries as an option in the six states that allow them and in that same article launched an effort to educate and activate residents in those states. This campaign continues that work….

How to kick Flock out of your town

[Blood in the Machine, via Naked Capitalism 09-21-2026]

Todd Blanche’s Law License at Risk With Additional NY Misconduct Complaints From Epstein Files Cover-up

Christopher Armitage, Sep 25, 2026 [Existentialist Republic]

Conservative / Libertarian / (anti)Republican Drive to Civil War

House Republicans Pitch a Plan to Cut Social Security to Billionaire Donor Harlan Crow

Alex Lawson, Sep 23, 2026 [Common Dreams]

This Monday, House Republicans held a hearing focused on creating a closed-door commission to cut Social Security and Medicare. The hearing was for an audience of one: billionaire donor Harlan Crow….

Republicans wanted to keep the hearing quiet, so they held it far from Washington DC. This was a “field hearing,” held all the way in Dallas, Texas. Specifically, it was held at Old Parkland, a “business campus” owned by none other than Harlan Crow.

Normally, when Congress holds a field hearing, they are seeking testimony from members of the general public. But when I showed up with Texas seniors and people with disabilities, they refused to let us in. Medically vulnerable people were forced to wait outside in 100°F heat….

The Wealthy Miami Residents Who Are Plotting Cuba’s Future

[Wall Street Journal, via Naked Capitalism 09-21-2026]

Crypto super PAC Fairshake launches $30 million campaign against Sherrod Brown

Drop Site Daily: September 21, 2026

Fairshake, the crypto industry’s main super PAC, is beginning a $30 million ad and mail campaign against former Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio, according to the New York Times. Brown is now running for JD Vance’s former Senate seat in Ohio.

• Crypto industry interests are expected to retaliate after every Senate Democrat—including senators previously supportive of the industry—blocked the pro-crypto Clarity Act last week.
• Fairshake, which has $120.4 million alongside two affiliated groups, spent $41 million against Brown in 2024, and its spending this cycle is expected to lean heavily Republican.

The FBI Anti-Corruption Squad Was Circling Susan Collins — Until Trump Got in the Way

William Turton, Avi Asher-Schapiro, Molly Redden and Kirsten Berg, September 22, 2026 [ProPublica]

The (anti)Federalist Society assault on the Constitution

US Citizens ‘Could Lose Their Right to Vote’ After Supreme Court Gives Green Light to Trump’s Voter Purge Database

Stephen Prager, September 25, 2026 [CommonDreams]

The Unitary Executive Theory in All of Its Historical Perversity – A misinformed idea underlies much of the work of John Roberts’s Supreme Court.

Jack Rakove, September 24, 2026 [Washington Monthly]

[Rakove is professor emeritus at Stanford University, and served as president of the Society for the History of the Early American Republic. He was awarded a Pulitzer Prize winner for his book Original Meanings: Politics and Ideas in the Making of the Constitution. He is recognized as a leading scholar on the American Revolution, the U.S. Constitution, and James Madison’s political thought, with books such as Revolutionaries, The Beginnings of National Politics, and Beyond Belief, Beyond Conscience: The Radical Significance of the Free Exercise of Religion.]

Civic republicanism

Bonta sold us out to Trump’s oligarchs

Cory Doctorow, September 22, 2026 [Pluralistic]

… Stoller says he’s “in a strangely good mood” about this because of all the political capital it took to get this over the line (unlike, say, Disney-Fox, which sailed through with nary a hitch), saying that it indicates that the public is fed up with monopolies. He’s right, they are fed up with monopolies. Everyday Americans, Democrats and Republicans, are telling pollsters they’d back a politician who campaigned on shattering monopoly power….

… the settlement includes a clause that says they don’t have to do any of the things it says they have to do. This is the “force majeure” clause, which is not like a normal force majeure clause (which allows the parties to back out of their commitment in case of war, wildfires, etc). This force majeure clause lets Warnermount tear up the entire agreement if there’s a strike or a recession.

• Pollsters Urge Dems to Attack Monopoly Power. Candidates are Listening. https://libertyandpower.substack.com/p/pollsters-urge-dems-to-attack-monopoly

Private Schools Are Bad for Society – The starting point for any honest discussion.

Hamilton Nolan, Sep 22, 2026 [How Things Work]

Letters from an American, September 19, 2026

Heather Cox Richardson, September 20, 2026

On September 19, 1676, three hundred and fifty years ago today, Nathaniel Bacon and his followers burned Jamestown, the capital of the Virginia Colony. The destruction of the seat of government was the culmination of a year of conflict between Governor Sir William Berkeley and poor settlers in the colony. Fears of another such uprising in the future led Virginia lawmakers to make sure poor men would not make common cause, passing laws to divide them along racial lines….