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St. Ronnie quoted the Russian proverb   doveryai, no proveryai   (доверяй, но проверяй) meaning 'trust, but verify' in connection with a nuclear arms treaty with the Soviet Union. Reagan was referring to the posture towards a political adversary. In principle, our government should be an ally, not an adversary. We ought to be able to trust our police, our physicians, our food inspectors, our FDA, the Federal Reserve, etc.  Trump just fired the commissioner of labor statistics. Why? Not for dereliction of duty. Look, everyone including Trump knows that firing the messenger doesn’t change facts. What it does is sow distrust. And that’s the goal. Distrust of our military allies in our defense commitments. Distrust in our trade allies of our trade policies. Distrust in drug, vaccine and food safety. Distrust in our election system. Distrust in our justice system. In short, the goal here is to make Americans doubt experts, institutions and neighbors, and leave Trump as the sol...

Trump isn’t a jobs creator—the jobs reports are down. So what does Trump do? He fires the Commissioner of Labor Statistics. How many jobs will shooting the messenger create? Meanwhile, his threatened tariffs have stocks headed down. Will he fire Wall Street? A fed governor steps down, making room for a Trump appointment and setting the stage for a Trump takeover of the Fed. When inflation spirals out of control because of Trump rate cuts, who will he fire? Meanwhile, Trump is being played by his counterparties in tariff negotiations: ““They’re playing Trump,” said C. Fred Bergsten, a renowned economist who served on the Advisory Committee on Trade Policy and negotiations under both presidents Barack Obama and Trump. “They’re giving him a talking point that he can use to characterize his agreements as big deals with big pay offs, but there’s no ‘there’ there.”   “Contrary to accounts of Trump’s  “triumphant” performance  in trade negotiations, “America is a loser from all ...

My personal experience with opioids began in 2002. I was in a bike accident that landed me in the hospital with a broken clavicle, four fractured ribs, a punctured lung and a concussion. During my 3-day stay in the hospital, I was connected to an IV morphine line. I don’t remember much of that stay, other than I couldn’t keep any food down. I was sent home with a prescription for Percoset, which was about as bad. I finally settled on hydrocodone, which didn’t leave me nauseous but blunted the pain. I was on hydrocodone for a month. The only complications were constipation and loss of short-term memory. I had no problem stopping. I’ve always been grateful to my docs for the prescriptions. I see where the FDA is requiring new labeling for opioids: “ The agency is requiring opioid manufacturers to add to the prescribing information that higher doses are associated with increased risk of serious harm, and that the risks of serious harms persist over the course of therapy, among other chang...

Apparently, former Harvard law professor and professional grandstander Alan Dershowitz was turned away from a pierogi stand at a farmers’ market because of his politics. Never one to miss a chance at press coverage, Dershowitz feigned outrage and had the desired effect: “I said to the people who were approaching the tent where he was selling his pierogi, ‘do you really want to buy pierogi from a guy who won’t sell it to somebody based on his politics?’” Dershowitz said. “‘I think that would be wrong. You wouldn’t buy from somebody who didn’t sell to Black people, or gay people, or transgender people, or anything like that.’” Apparently, Professor Dershowitz believes people choose their race, sexual orientation and gender like they choose their politics. Good thing he’s retired. His former students should demand a tuition refund.   https://www.bostonglobe.com/2025/08/01/metro/dershowtiz-pierogi-vineyard/

Speaking at a Breitbart event, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent crowed about the new “Trump Accounts” in which the parents or employer can contribute up to $5000/year.   The funds are to be structured like IRAs and must be invested in portfolios tied to U.S. stock indexes. Quoth Bessent: “In a way, it is a backdoor for privatizing Social Security,” Bessent said at the Breitbart event. “If, all of a sudden, these accounts grow and you have in the hundreds of thousands of dollars for your retirement, that’s a game-changer, too.”   First of all, if “all of a sudden” these accounts exploded to hundreds of thousand of dollars, that will be because of a sudden massive increase in inflation. Which means those hundreds of thousands of nominal dollars aren’t going to buy hundreds of thousands of dollars in goods and services in retirement. Either Bessent doesn’t understand how money works or—more likely—he’s selling snake oil. Secondly, where are tens of millions of American families t...

Trump has trumpeted his EU fossil fuel deal to sell $250 billion worth of US oil, natural gas and nuclear technologies for each of the next three years. Like all things Trump, it’s all bluster. “Analysts were puzzled by a target that would involve decisions by shareholder-owned companies in a continent also trying to decarbonise its economy. “Even if Europe did want to increase its imports, I don’t know the mechanism by which the EU goes to these companies and tells them to buy more US energy,” said Matt Smith at energy consultancy Kpler. “The numbers were “pie in the sky”, he added. “Companies are beholden to their shareholders and have a duty to buy the cheapest feedstock.”   I suppose one upside to this is if it results in replacing Russia as a major source of European energy. But as a “deal,” it’s just standard Trump flummery. “European gas demand is soft and energy prices are falling. In any case, it is private companies not states that contract for energy imports,” he said. “...