Much has been written about the recent wildfires in Los Angeles, including articles on this page and other libertarian sites.

To justify the State of Israel’s current indiscriminate killing of women and children in Gaza, the Israeli regime’s supporters generally put forward a one-line explanation: “Israel has a right to defend itself.” This simple-minded incantation is deployed as if it is the final word. It is meant to communicate this idea: “some people from Gaza killed some Israeli citizens in October 2023. Therefore, the Israeli state can morally and legally kill any person in Gaza indiscriminately.”

Enter the Bitcoin vs. Gold Contest 2025 | Mises Institute

I have never been to Cuba. That is strange given that I have visited Florida more than 100 times, including at least three times to Key West, just 90 miles away. I’ve also been on a couple of Caribbean cruises and have been on Islands to the south and east of Cuba. I have seen Cuba from afar. I’ve been to Mexico a few times and also to Central American countries, but not Cuba.

Three years ago, in the December 17 issue of The Coffee Can Portfolio, I predicted:

The left’s great leap forward into authoritarianism will run into a brick wall of reality. A backlash is coming. Knowing the political right, they will somehow snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, but that’s a discussion for another day.

Last week, parts of Los Angeles, California, were devastated by a series of especially destructive wildfires. While fires are common in the southern California region, a couple of factors came together to turn last week’s flare-ups into major conflagrations.

Donald Trump has made it clear that he likes the idea of Greenland seceding from Denmark. “For purposes of National Security and Freedom throughout the World, the United States of America feels that the ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social.

Even though we are two weeks into 2025, I want to suggest some more New Year’s resolutions.

The Federal Reserve should resolve to stop enabling excessive federal spending by purchasing Treasury bonds, thus monetizing the federal debt. The Federal Reserve’s monetization of federal debt enables the federal government to amass trillions in debt while running a global empire abroad and a welfare state at home.

The American people feel the effects of the Fed’s debt monetization in the form of the regressive inflation tax.

This past January 6, a joint session of Congress certified the election of Donald Trump as president. The event was ceremonial, as everybody knew right after the November election that Trump had defeated Kamala Harris, whose efforts to fill in for dead “President” Joe Biden, had been a miserable failure, in an overwhelming victory. It was ironic that Harris, presiding over the session, had to read the tally of her own defeat.  January 6, 2021 was not at all like that.