It’s Easter time again, which means it’s time to talk about chocolate. Simaran Sethi at the Los Angeles Times this week highlights the plight of cacao farmers:

With a tax code that exceeds 72,000 pages in length and consumes more than six billion person hours per year to determine taxpayers’ taxable income, with an IRS that has become a feared law unto itself, and with a government that continues to extract more wealth from every taxpaying American every year, is it any wonder that April 15th is a day of dread in America? Social Security taxes and income taxes have dogged us all since their institution during the last century, and few politicians have been willing to address these ploys for what they are: theft.

During the campaign, candidate Trump constantly railed against Janet Yellen and her Federal Reserve. The Fed was keeping interest rates low because they were “more political than Hillary Clinton,” Trump repeated while stumping for votes.

Unfortunately President Trump has a different opinion. Yellen is no longer “toast,” and he wants to keep interest rates low. A monetary policy that puts Wall Street, not America, first.

A new report from the US Treasury Department shows that growth in federal receipts has fallen to the lowest level seen in 80 months, with the 12-month average falling 1.3 percent from March 2016 to March 2017. 

The last time federal receipts fell as far was during July of 2010 when they dropped 2.4 percent from July of the previous year. More importantly, the last time receipts fell this much, while in a downward trend, was in July 2008 shortly before the financial crisis. 

If the US has as tolerant a society as it advertises, then why did the mainstream media attack North Carolinians so viciously when they voted to keep traditional bathrooms? And why do bakers go to jail for refusing to crown a wedding cake with two men? Doesn’t diversity and tolerance require, well, diversity and tolerance?

JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon and Minneapolis Fed’s Neel Kashkari recently had a bit of a clash over the health of US banks, with Kashkari rebutting Dimon’s claim that there’s no longer a risk of taxpayers having to bailout banks in a financial crisis. Bloomberg summarizes:

As Ryan McMaken, among others, noted this week President Donald Trump has seemed to pivot his attention away from his economic legislative agenda and more toward foreign policy matters. Given the legislative frustrations over Obamacare repeal, and his Goldman-led Treasury’s insistence on the sort of revenue-neutral tax reform that may have a hard time getting through a Republican Congress, Trump defenders could place most of the blame for this strategic shift to the political realities of Congress.

In the wake of the United Airlines debacle — in which the airline had airport police assault one of its own customers — customers have begun to ask why there doesn’t seem to be more competition for United to contend with. They ask: would United treat its customers so poorly if they had more competition? 

Maybe not.