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My intrepid Mercatus Center colleague, Veronique de Rugy, rightly criticizes familiar debates and discussions about the debt ceiling [2].

Also from Vero is this just criticism of the GOP’s plans to keep government spending under some semblance of restraint [3]. A slice:

All that said, while limiting discretionary spending is a good start, fiscal sustainability requires that Congress also cut the mandatory side of the budget. Indeed, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid — not defense or education — are still the chief drivers of our future debt, just as they have been in the past. Along with the interest the Treasury must pay on the debt, these three programs will be responsible for 86% of federal spending between 2008 and 2032, says [Brian] Riedl. In other words, no level of discretionary spending cuts will ever be enough to control the upcoming debt explosion.

David Henderson exposes the fallacies that infect a recent statement made by Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin [4].

Art Carden applauds the accountability enforced by the market [5].

Reason‘s Peter Suderman reports good news: “The courts are rejecting Biden’s antitrust crusade.” [6]

Fraser Myers accurately accuses St. Greta of Stockholm of being an enemy of the working class [7].

Brendan O’Neill debunks the nonsensical assertions that Californians are now being punished for sinning against Mother Nature [8]. Here’s his opening paragraph:

There’s always been an irony in the haughtiness of America’s coastal elites. These people look down on Middle Americans and their cranky beliefs – they ‘cling’ to religion, as Obama infamously said – and yet they themselves hold far wackier views. They think there’s a hundred genders. That racism is the original sin of the United States that will never be washed away. That whites must engage in the self-mortification of checking their privilege. And that climate change is Mother Nature’s punishment of mankind for his hubristic industrial antics. That last one is positively pre-modern. It makes the other religions in the US look perfectly sane.

Robby Soave explains how the CDC become “the speech police.” [9] A slice:

Indeed, the U.S. public’s understanding of COVID-19—its virality, how to prevent its spread, and even where it comes from—was largely controlled by Fauci and bureaucrats like him, to a greater degree than most people realize. The federal government shaped the rules of online discussion in unprecedented and unnerving ways.

This has become much more obvious over the past few months, following Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter. Musk granted several independent journalists access to internal messages between the government and the platform’s moderators, which demonstrate concerted efforts by various federal agencies—including the FBI, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and even the White House—to convince Twitter to restrict speech. These disclosures, which have become known as the Twitter Files, are eye-opening.

But Twitter was hardly the only object of federal pressure. According to a trove of confidential documents obtained by Reason, health advisers at the CDC had significant input on pandemic-era social media policies at Facebook as well. They were consulted frequently, at times daily. They were actively involved in the affairs of content moderators, providing constant and ever-evolving guidance. They requested frequent updates about which topics were trending on the platforms, and they recommended what kinds of content should be deemed false or misleading. “Here are two issues we are seeing a great deal of misinfo on that we wanted to flag for you all,” reads one note from a CDC official. Another email with sample Facebook posts attached begins: “BOLO for a small but growing area of misinfo.”

Here’s more from Robby Soave on the same disturbing matter [10].

One of the most authoritarian covidians will soon leave office [11].

Matthew Crawford talks with Freddie Sayers about “the perpetual state of emergency.” [12]

Jay Bhattacharya tweets [13]:

If the evidence on the efficacy of masking to stop covid spread were strong, no mandate would be necessary. The evidence would be persuasive on its own. The reason why the @CDCgov wants the power to mandate is _because_ the evidence is weak.

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