State lawmakers of both houses have just voted overwhelmingly to exempt physical gold, silver, platinum, and palladium coins and bullion from the Mississippi state sales tax, sending the bill to Governor Tate Reeves (R) for his signature.
Is the main problem with the US healthcare system that hospitals have gotten too large since the 1990s? That seems to be the remarkable conclusion of two of the nation’s most distinguished health-policy analysts, David Dranove and Lawton R. Burns. Dranove is an economist and Walter J. McNerney Distinguished Professor of Health Industry Management at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. Burns is a sociologist and James Joo-Jin Kim professor of health care management at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
18. Babbitt Is Back
Is Babbittry alive and well in twenty-first-century America?
19. YouTube Attempts to Silence the Mises Institute
YouTube, the dominant video platform owned by Google, decided yesterday to remove a Mises Institute video. This decision apparently lasts for all eternity, cannot be appealed to an actual human, and comes with this friendly admonition: “Because it’s the first time, this is just a warning. If it happens again, your channel will get a strike and you won’t be able to do things like upload, post, or live stream for 1 week.”
15. Getting Liberalism Wrong
Yoram Hazony, author of The Virtue of Nationalism and one leader of a new “national conservatism” project, recently wrote an important and compelling article for Quillette titled “The Challenge of Marxism.” Hazony says out loud what few Western intellectuals will admit, namely that liberalism is not holding and has not triumphed in 2020 America and Europe. We have not reached the end of history.
Our criticism lies not with Hazony’s thesis, but with his particular conception of what liberalism is, what it has become, and what it should be.
Pandemic Government
16. The Absurdity of Covid “Cases”
Today’s headlines announced Donald and Melania Trump “tested positive” for covid-19. Another claims nineteen thousand Amazon workers “got” covid-19 on the job. Both of these pseudostories are sure to ignite another absurd media frenzy.
As always, the story keeps changing: Remember ventilators, flatten the curve, the next two weeks are crucial, etc.? Remember Nancy Pelosi in Chinatown back in February, urging everyone to visit? Remember Fauci dismissing masks as useless? Why should we believe anything the political/media complex tells us now?
17. Unmask America
We have had nearly eight months of life and liberty stolen from us by politicians and their hysteria-promoting accomplices in media. How much more will we accept?
Enough is enough. It is time to stop wearing masks, or at the very least to eliminate mask mandates in all settings.
This is especially urgent for children in schools and universities, who suffer the effects of masks for long hours each day despite being at exceedingly low risk for death or serious illness from covid.
14. Notre Dame and What Was Lost
Yesterday’s terrible fire at the Notre-Dame Cathedral reminds us how quickly centuries of accumulated “cultural capital” can be destroyed. Oak timbers dating from the 1200s in the roof and spire were lost forever; some priceless stained glass windows appear to have suffered damage. As the saying goes, France is the heart of the West, Paris is the heart of France, and Notre Dame is the heart of Paris—and as such the sight of the iconic church ablaze makes an uneasy if simplistic metaphor for the decline of the West.
