Somehow, this has yet to sink into the national consciousness.

The precise timing is a projection. The cuts are not. They’re activated automatically following the law: Once the trust fund is empty, Social Security can pay out only what it collects. And the zero hour keeps moving toward us. This year’s trustees report pulled the projection forward a full year. The program has promised to pay out roughly $30 trillion more than it will take in over the next 75 years.

Yet few candidates are talking about this in any serious way. It pays to say nothing. Evidently, lots of legislators believe that the political cost of telling voters the unhappy news today exceeds the cost of letting the cuts occur tomorrow. That’s how we ended up just one term from disaster.

When politicians do raise the issue, they make the fix sound easy. Sens. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) want you to believe that eliminating the cap on payroll taxes would fix the problem. That solution fails on its own terms.

Using data from the Social Security Administration’s own actuaries, my colleague Jack Salmon demonstrates that scrapping the taxable maximum closes only 58% of the gap. National Review’s Ramesh Ponnuru noted last month that it would push the federal marginal rate on top wages to an untenable 49.4%, and overall rates would climb past 60% in high-tax states like California and New York.

The senators aren’t alone in wanting to tax our way out of this problem. In one recent survey, 89% percent of Americans aged 65 and older favored protecting current retirees’ benefits even if doing so requires higher taxes on younger workers.

That position is popular only because it rests on the image of retirees living off nothing but Social Security. That image, partly an artifact of bad data, fails to capture the situation.

In a March 2025 government survey, 24% of seniors reported that Social Security supplies 90% or more of their income. But when Census Bureau researchers matched responses with IRS filings and benefits records, they found that retirees frequently omitted their 401(k) and IRA withdrawals, making the real figure only about 14%. Meanwhile, 58% of retirees draw less than half their income from the program.

The remaining 42% are the retirees that Social Security reform of any kind should protect. They already receive a raw deal under the current formula, which does a much better job of protecting wealthier seniors.

As the Cato Institute’s Romina Boccia and Ivane Nachkebia documented last month, seniors aged 65 to 74 had a median net worth of $410,000 in 2022, compared with only $135,600 for those aged 35 to 44 (who pay a significant share of the taxes). Roughly 34% of Social Security dollars go to filers with adjusted gross incomes above $100,000. Too often, Social Security is less a need-based program than a transfer of wealth from the young and unpropertied to the old and comfortable.

A March 2026 paper from the Committee for a Responsible Budget puts it plainly: Despite facing large deficits, Social Security now pays the wealthiest couples roughly $100,000 in annual benefits, more than five times the poverty threshold for a retired household. “In inflation-adjusted terms,” it adds, “the maximum couple’s benefit has doubled since 1990 and is projected to double again around 2070. By that point, the wealthiest couples will receive $200,000 in combined benefits.”

The best reform is one proposed by Boccia: Return Social Security to a mission of poverty prevention. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that giving new beneficiaries a flat benefit at 125% of the poverty level (roughly $1,660 a month) would erase the entire 75-year deficit while raising benefits for the lowest earners.

Next, index eligibility ages to longevity and allow workers to own compounding assets through personal accounts rather than relying on a political promise that the next generation must be conscripted to keep.

Many people will dislike reading this, I’m sure, and wonder why we can’t just borrow to pay for the benefits. The answer is that between Social Security, Medicare and interest payments, we’re short by $115 trillion over 30 years. The moment Congress commits to that much borrowing, the likelihood of a historic inflation burst increases. Even this painful hike in the price level would not manage to devalue enough debt to save us, since Social Security benefits are indexed to inflation. The obligation would survive; retirees’ bond portfolios and other assets would lose value.

The senators we elect this year will not be able to avoid these decisions. Don’t let them avoid the question, either.

Written by Veronique de Rugy

Official website; http://twitter.com/veroderugy

How could anyone sue an entity he controls and derive a benefit from the amicable resolution of such a lawsuit at the expense of others who are not parties to the lawsuit?

Here is the backstory.

During President Donald Trump’s first term in office, an IRS employee unlawfully released the tax returns of hundreds of thousands of taxpayers, among which was Trump’s. The employee pleaded guilty to this crime and served a lawfully appropriate portion of his five-year sentence.

Trump was furious at the revelation, as anyone would be who reasonably expected federal employees to comply with the laws they are sworn, and legally obliged, to uphold.

All those whose rights have been violated by the criminal acts of a government employee have a cause of action against the government seeking to compensate them for the demonstrable harm the government employee caused them.

Congress and the federal courts have insulated the federal government from liability for the consequences of its ordinary, rational, good-faith enforcement of federal laws — but not from the harm caused by the crimes committed by its employees.

Much of this immunity has unleashed extreme violence on its victims — the recent murders of fishermen on the high seas by the Department of Defense unlawfully purporting to engage in domestic law enforcement and the on-street murders of innocents by ICE agents in American cities purporting to enforce immigration laws come to mind.

The government killings of innocent persons are objectively criminal, but due to the Department of (Political) Justice dragging its feet on the revelations of its investigations and excluding state prosecutors and investigators, we await a judicial determination.

In the case of Trump suing the IRS — an entity that he controls, and which is represented by the DOJ that he also controls — we wait no longer.

Earlier this week, the U.S. District Court in Miami excoriated both Trump’s present personal lawyers and his former lawyers who now run the DOJ for engaging in a false cause of action.

What is a false cause of action?

State courts are courts of general jurisdiction. They can hear any matters that in which the litigants have minimum contacts with the state. Many state courts can hear claims under federal law, and all can hear claims under the U.S. Constitution. Some state courts can even render judicial opinions of legislative or executive behavior in the abstract — before and without any complainant alleging harm.

But federal courts are courts of limited jurisdiction. They can only hear cases that arise under the Constitution and federal laws, or where expressly authorized by Congress or where there is diversity of citizenship — meaning, a cause of action between citizens of different states where more than $75,000 is in dispute.

But the trigger for all cases in federal courts is the existence of a case or controversy. The Case or Controversy Clause of the Constitution was insisted upon by James Madison so as to limit the power of federal judges to the resolution of real, genuine disputes; prevent the courts from becoming a super legislature; and prohibit the use of federal courts for collusive litigation wherein both sides secretly seek the same result.

When both sides seek or purport to negotiate for the same result — here the liberty of the plaintiff Donald Trump to file any tax returns he wishes without fear of audit, and the defendant who works for the plaintiff agrees — there is no real case or controversy because there is no adversity, the lawyers involved acted in bad faith, and their agreement to resolve the case is a nullity.

To avoid the Constitution’s case or controversy requirements, Trumps’s lawyers – his personal lawyers who filed the lawsuit against the IRS and his former personal lawyers now running the DOJ — entered into a settlement agreement before the DOJ filed an answer to Trump’s complaint.

Under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, if parties to federal litigation reach an amicable resolution — a settlement — before the defendant files any responsive pleadings, the court has no role to play, except in the case of a manifest injustice.

Trump’s complaint demanded $10 billion in damages from the IRS. His DOJ lawyers agreed to give his personal lawyers a fund of $1.776 billion from the federal Treasury to disburse to Trump’s supporters at Trump’s personal discretion; and his IRS lawyers agreed that neither Donald Trump personally nor his family or closely held corporations could ever be audited by the IRS.

The $1.776 billion was not expressly authorized by Congress. Theoretically, it came from a fund used by the DOJ to settle legitimate — not collusive — litigation in which bona fide, demonstrably provable claims were made or monetary judgments were judicially entered against the federal government.

According to the DOJ, none of the $1.776 billion has been spent and the fund is now dormant.

The federal court to which the case was nominally assigned would have none of this. In a blistering ruling, the court found that there was no case or controversy here because there was no true adversity between the parties. The DOJ lawyers and the IRS lawyers were all seeking to please their boss, who is the plaintiff in the case.

The court found that the lawyers involved in this subterfuge, the lawyers who handled this case and crafted its purported resolution, did not act in good faith. Thus, Trump’s present personal lawyers and his DOJ and IRS lawyers have been referred to their state licensing authorities for disciplinary proceedings.

Lawyers in litigation have a duty of zealous advocacy and unimpeachable loyalty to their clients. They cannot secretly or openly aid their client’s adversary. If they are morally or personally or legally conflicted, they must withdraw from the case.

What about Trump’s legally legitimate claim against the IRS for the criminal revelation of his personal tax returns? Had he sued as a private citizen and asked the court to shelve his case until he leaves office, he’d have had a real claim. Now, that claim is gone.

What a legal mess. Trump effectively sued himself and lost! And he grievously jeopardized the legal careers of those who sought to please him. No Trump pardon can help these lawyers. They are now at the not-so-tender mercies of the state entities that issued their licenses to practice law.

Written by Judge Andrew P. Napolitano

Official website; https://twitter.com/Judgenap

The Baton Rouge rapper, whose legal name is Torrence Hatch, handed over six hundred thousand dollars to a couple of Washington operators who swore up and down they could carry a presidential pardon right to Donald Trump’s desk. The paper never showed up. Now Boosie is fighting to claw back half of what he spent, and according to text messages reviewed by NOTUS, the two men he trusted with that money claimed their firm was effectively bankrupt and could not give it back. Their firm disputes that it ever agreed to refund half of the fee.

Sit with that number a minute. Six hundred thousand. That is more than a whole lot of hardworking folks will see across ten years of honest sweat. He put it on the table because he was staring down a federal gun conviction and did not want to see the inside of a cell.

Here is how it went sideways, according to the reporting from NOTUS. Late last September, Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman, running a shop called JM Burkman and Associates, pitched Boosie hard. He told reporters they talked like they had the president on speed dial. They dropped big names, waved around their so-called connections, and made the man believe a clean slate was practically already signed. On New Year’s Eve, one of them texted that Trump had it “in hand and is ready to sign.” A day later, on New Year’s Day, Boosie’s lawyer got a call saying the deed was done. Trump had supposedly signed the pardon. Time to celebrate.

Except it was not done. When his people checked with the court and the prosecutors, there was nothing. According to Boosie’s lawyer, a White House aide later said officials had not seen a pardon application for him at all. A White House official also told NOTUS that the clemency team had never heard from Wohl or Burkman and warned that their involvement could hurt an applicant’s chances. Boosie’s lawyer later filed a separate application directly with the White House, which acknowledged receiving it and said it was under review.

The kicker is that Boosie avoided additional prison time anyway. A federal judge sentenced him in January to 10 days of time served, three years of supervised release, 300 hours of community service and a $50,000 fine, no thanks to the men he paid. So all that money bought him disputed promises, a pardon that never appeared and a refund fight he is still trying to settle.

Now, before I go further, let me back up for the young folks who never had to think about any of this.

A pardon is an act of mercy from the president. When a man is convicted of a federal crime, the president has the power to forgive the offense, relieve federal punishment and remove certain legal disabilities caused by the conviction. It does not declare the person innocent or erase the conviction from his criminal record. That power sits right there in the Constitution, Article Two, Section Two. The framers borrowed the idea from old England, where kings called it the prerogative of mercy, a custom that goes back more than a thousand years to the seventh century. Alexander Hamilton is the one who argued for putting it in the hands of one man, the president, so somebody could soften the law when justice and cold rules pulled in different directions.

This is not new, and it is not small. George Washington himself used it in 1795 to pardon two men convicted of treason following the Whiskey Rebellion. Gerald Ford used it in 1974 on Richard Nixon, and that decision was so unpopular it may have helped cost Ford the next election. Jimmy Carter granted unconditional pardons to people who violated the Selective Service Act during the Vietnam era, though his action did not cover military deserters. Ronald Reagan forgave the Yankees owner George Steinbrenner. Bill Clinton, on his very last day in the White House, forgave his own brother Roger along with a fugitive financier named Marc Rich, and folks are still arguing about that one to this day. And Barack Obama leaned on the power more than almost anybody, granting 1,715 commutations and 212 pardons. Many of those commutations went to ordinary people buried under harsh federal drug sentences who never had a famous name or a lobbyist working the phones for them. He also commuted the sentence of Chelsea Manning, the soldier who leaked government files. Different presidents, different reasons, but every one of them shows the same thing.

So the office of mercy has a long, heavy history, some of it noble, plenty of it ugly. Presidents have used it to heal a divided nation and they have used it to take care of friends. That is the honest truth of it.

And yes, this president has handed out relief to famous men in the music world. Lil Wayne got a full pardon in Trump’s final days back in 2021. NBA YoungBoy got one in 2025 after federal firearms convictions. It is easy to see how Boosie might have looked at those cases and figured he was next in line if he just spent enough. That right there is where his thinking went crooked.

Because here is the part I want every rich and famous person reading this to burn into memory. Fame and money solve a certain kind of problem. When you have a hit record and a bank account, there is always a manager, a fixer, a lawyer, or an accountant who can make trouble disappear. You throw money at it, and it goes away. That is the world these stars live in, and it teaches them a dangerous lesson: that everything, including a man’s freedom, is for sale to whoever writes the biggest check.

Washington does not run on that arithmetic. Not the honest part of it, anyway. A grant of mercy from the president is not a product on a shelf. It is a personal decision by one man, filtered through a process that no lobbyist can force. You cannot buy it any more than you can buy the sunrise. What you can buy, if you are not careful, is a couple of slick talkers who noticed you were scared and cashed in on it.

And look at who Boosie handed his trust to. These two are not statesmen. They are political operators who pleaded guilty in Ohio over an illegal robocall campaign that targeted Black voters. They later agreed to pay up to $1.25 million in a New York settlement, while the Federal Communications Commission imposed a separate fine of more than $5 million. Let that sink in. A Black man from Louisiana paid six figures to the very same characters who had already been convicted over a scheme targeting Black folks at the ballot box. If that is not a warning wrapped inside a warning, I do not know what is.

Even one of Trump’s own loud supporters, Laura Loomer, told him plain when he tagged her online. She said you cannot pay for this, and she asked who told him that is how it works. Boosie, to his credit, thanked her for the honesty. But by then the money was already gone.

I do not write this to laugh at the man. I have some sympathy for anybody scared of losing his freedom, reaching for any hand that promises to pull him out. That fear is real, and men with money are targets precisely because they can pay. The predators know a frightened rich man is the easiest mark alive.

The lesson is bigger than one rapper and one bad contract. It is this. When you step out of the recording booth and into the halls of government, the rules you grew up with do not apply anymore. The people who whisper that they have the president’s ear are usually selling you a door that does not open. Real access is not something a stranger can hand you for a fee, and any grown man who tells you otherwise is measuring you for a con.

Boosie may survive this pardon mess, but his legal troubles are not finished. He avoided additional prison time in January and returned to performing, but federal authorities are now seeking to revoke his supervised release over allegations that he violated its conditions in May. That matter has not been resolved. Whatever happens next, six hundred thousand dollars remains a hard way to learn that some doors in this country do not have a price tag. They have a lock, and the key is not for sale.

Staff Writer; L.L. McKenna

Politics explained through the lens of justice and equity. Offering perspective that informs, challenges, and empowers.

One can contact this brother at; LLMcKenna@ThyBlackMan.com.

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Staff Writer; Karl Brown

Let me be careful here, because this is a subject that invites cruelty, and cruelty is not my aim. When I speak of men chasing the appearance of wealth ahead of its substance, I am not describing a failure of character. Instruction is what failed. Somewhere along the way we stopped handing down the quiet arithmetic that turns a modest income into a secure life, and in its place the culture installed a louder and far more expensive teaching. Whatever he can display, it now says, is the measure of him.

Consider the pressure some young Black men feel to spend money on being seen. A vehicle that announces him before he speaks. Garments that carry another man’s name across the chest. Jewelry, weekend excursions, long nights in rooms designed to make ordinary people feel briefly important. None of this is evil in itself. Fine things have pleased me in my own time, and no shame came with it. Desire is not the trouble. Sequence is. We have convinced ourselves that looking prosperous and being prosperous are the same condition, when in truth they are often opposites wearing the same coat.

Stability, by its nature, resists display. Undramatic is what it is. Its home is a savings account no one photographs and a retirement plan no one admires at a party. You see it in the capacity to absorb a broken transmission, a hospital bill, a stretch of weeks without work, and to do so without the whole life coming apart. These are the real marks of arrival, and precisely because they cannot be worn or driven, they are too easily overlooked in a culture built around visible success. No applause greets the settled obligation. No admiration follows the emergency fund. So the man who builds these things quietly gets passed over, while the man who leases the illusion is celebrated.

My father comes to mind often, a man not wealthy by any measure the world respects. For the better part of two decades he wore one good coat, cleaned and repaired until it carried a dignity all its own. Saving came hard, and still he managed it, without ceremony, month after month, year after year. Prosperous he never looked. Yet he died owning his home outright and left something behind for the children of his children. His life proved a principle the culture no longer bothers to teach. Wealth is what you keep and pass forward, not what you flash and forfeit.

Set that against the daily instruction our Black men now receive. The device in every pocket delivers an endless procession of other people apparently winning. One trip financed rather than earned. Something bought on credit and posted as though it were paid. Ease performed for an audience of strangers. Beneath it the message never changes. Show this, or you do not count. So a young Black man hungry to matter goes and acquires the proof, often on borrowed money at punishing terms, and mistakes the transaction for progress. Nothing has been built. What got rented was a feeling, and the rent comes due with interest.

What grieves me most is how much talent sits behind these choices. Many of these men are diligent and capable. The drive is plainly there. What they lack is an older voice willing to tell them the truth without contempt in it. Grasp the difference between being broke and being financially fragile. Being broke can be temporary. Financial fragility can become a pattern when a man repeatedly chooses the visible over the durable every time the choice presents itself. Money in the pocket alone does not cure that condition. Meanwhile a man of modest means who understands the purpose of a dollar is already on his way to building something real.

I would be dishonest if I ignored where some of this hunger comes from. Our fathers and grandfathers were denied the front door of establishments that took their money at the back. Followed through stores, doubted at counters, they were made to feel like intruders in a country they helped to build. Out of that wound grows a powerful need to be seen as someone who belongs, to answer old insults with visible proof of worth. That same impulse lives in my own chest. Yet answering the world’s contempt by decorating ourselves for its approval hands our peace right back to the very people who withheld it. Those ancestors did not endure what they endured so their sons could seek permission to feel valuable. Part of the freedom they purchased for us is the freedom to stop performing for anyone at all.

If we must use the language of the moment, then let me say plainly that stability is the genuine achievement. A man who owns his time owns the only thing that cannot be repossessed. Picture the one who can decline extra hours because his affairs are in order, who can bury a parent without a predatory loan, who can promise his family the roof will hold and mean it. That man commands a wealth no ornament can imitate. He simply does not advertise well, and in a world addicted to advertisement, his quiet sufficiency goes unseen.

Here, then, is the counsel I would offer if the young brothers chasing the look would grant an old man a few minutes of patience. Become unremarkable first. Build the thing that earns no applause. Move money into places your own hand cannot easily reach. Buy the sensible vehicle and drive it long past the point of fashion. Live beneath your means on purpose, and watch what it does to a man’s posture when the first of the month no longer frightens him. Once the foundation has set and hardened, go acquire your fine things if you still desire them. You may find the craving has quieted, because the peace you were pursuing was never inside the object. It lived, all along, in the security the object was only imitating.

None of this is written to shame anyone. I put it down because I have stood at too many services for men who left behind more debt than legacy. We have survived too much history to keep dying encumbered while appearing enriched. Our people made something out of nothing more than once. Surely we can make something lasting out of something, if only we quiet the noise long enough to hear what has always mattered most.

Look prosperous later. Become stable now. One of those is a costume. The other is a life.

Staff Writer; Lee Walker

This brother is a fitness trainer with 12 years of experience, focused on building strength, clarity, and real health within the Black community. Through his writing, Mr. Walker hopes to uplift younger Black men and men in general through honest conversations about fitness, financial pressure, fatherhood, discipline, mental wellness, and the importance of brotherhood.

Have questions? Reach me at LeeW@ThyBlackMan.com.

The fireworks have dimmed, and the Fourth-of-You-Lie sales are waning. In this country, we commemorate through commerce and celebrate through retail activity, so even though we are just a few days into July, back-to-school signs are already shouting from store windows and websites.

Who is going back to school, and under what circumstances?

As with every milestone in this country, inequality roars. Some students will return to school with new laptops, quiet rooms, family-paid tuition, and networks that cushion every stumble. Others will return carrying debt, doubt, family obligations, food insecurity, transportation challenges, and the accumulated disadvantages of underfunded schools and under-resourced communities.

The back-to-school season is marketed as a fresh start. For too many students, it is also a reminder that opportunity in America has always been rationed.

That is why Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) still matter. Indeed, that is why HBCUs remain the vanguard.

The vanguard is not always the largest part of the army. It is the front edge. It moves first. It absorbs blows. It clears the path. By that definition, HBCUs have always been the vanguard. They were built because this country’s higher education system excluded Black people by law, custom, violence, and contempt. Their founding question was not, “How do we reproduce privilege?” Their founding question was, “How do we cultivate genius where America has refused to see it?”

That question remains urgent.

HBCUs enroll only a fraction of Black college students, but their impact is outsized. In 2022, HBCUs enrolled about 9 percent of Black college students, yet they produced 16 percent of the bachelor’s degrees earned by Black students in 2021–22. UNCF reports that HBCUs generate $16.5 billion in annual economic impact, support more than 136,000 jobs, and that the 2021 HBCU graduating class is projected to earn $146 billion over their lifetimes.

These are not sentimental institutions. They are economic engines, leadership factories, and community anchors.

Still, HBCUs are too often asked to do transformative work with transactional support.

That contradiction is especially sharp now, as federal student loan policy shifts under the feet of students and families. The Biden-era SAVE plan — Saving on a Valuable Education — was designed to make repayment less punishing by tying payments to income and family size, reducing monthly payments for many borrowers, limiting runaway interest, and creating a shorter forgiveness path for some small-balance borrowers. Now SAVE has ended, and millions of borrowers have been told to move into other repayment plans.

The change lands first on borrowers already in repayment, but current students are not untouched. Undergraduates will face a narrower repayment landscape when they leave school. Families will confront new Parent PLUS limits. Graduate and professional students will face new borrowing caps just as advanced credentials remain expensive and often necessary. Graduate PLUS loans, which previously allowed many graduate students to borrow up to the cost of attendance, are being phased out for new borrowers. Grad PLUS was the backstop many students used when tuition and living costs exceeded unsubsidized loan limits.

These numbers are not abstractions. They determine who can become a nurse practitioner, a physical therapist, a psychologist, a professor, a public health leader, a lawyer, a dentist, a physician, or a minister. They determine who can move from the first degree to the next rung. They determine whether talent is nurtured or stranded.

For Black students, the stakes are higher because the debt burden is heavier. Black students are more likely to borrow for college, more likely to borrow more, and more likely to struggle in repayment because the racial wealth gap follows them from home to campus and from campus to workplace. A loan policy that may look race-neutral on paper can still deepen racial inequality in practice.

That is the context in which HBCUs do their work. They educate students through inequality, against inequality, and beyond inequality. They do not merely polish privilege. They cultivate possibility. They take seriously the students America too often treats as afterthoughts, and they turn potential into leadership.

Having led an HBCU, I know both the miracle, the math, and the myth. At Bennett College, I saw daily what HBCUs do with too little: stretch dollars, nurture brilliance, hold students close, and insist that Black women’s futures were worth fighting for. I know the devotion of faculty, the exhaustion of administrators, the anxiety of families, and the constant scramble for resources. I also know this: HBCUs cannot be praised in February and underfunded in July. They cannot be applauded at commencements and ignored in appropriations. They cannot be celebrated as cultural treasures while their students are left to navigate a debt system that punishes aspiration.

The country loves the symbolism of back-to-school season. New backpacks. New notebooks. New slogans. But the real question is not what is on sale, it’s what is at stake.

If HBCUs are the vanguard, then the question is not whether they have earned our admiration. They have. The question is whether they will receive the investment, protection, and respect that their record demands.

Back to school should not mean back to debt, back to rationed opportunity, or back to the same old inequalities dressed up in fresh retail packaging. It should mean back to possibility. Back to purpose. Back to institutions that have carried us when the broader society would not.

HBCUs are still carrying us. The question is whether public policy will finally carry its share.

Nearly 700 years old, the series of fresco paintings includes a depiction of a bustling city that illustrates the effects of good government, as well as representations of the decay that results from arbitrary and unjust rulers. The visual treatise on political economy holds important lessons for us today.

Lorenzetti’s city isn’t thriving because its government is energetic or ambitious. It’s thriving because a wise government knows its place.

The people creating its wealth aren’t politicians. They’re merchants opening shops, artisans practicing their crafts, builders raising new homes, farmers bringing goods to market, families walking safely through the streets and a couple getting married. Prosperity comes from their voluntary cooperation. The government appears as the guardian of the rules that make prosperity possible: justice, security, predictable laws and limits on arbitrary power.

That distinction is everything. America did not become the richest nation in history because Washington, D.C., was exceptionally good at directing the economy. It thrived because its institutions largely prevented Washington from interfering. The rule of law and constitutional limits have allowed millions of individuals to make sound decisions that no central authority could possibly coordinate.

Lorenzetti understood that institutions shape incentives, and incentives shape civilization. When political institutions protect a people’s liberty, property and contract rights, they will invest, innovate, trade, build and cooperate. When institutions become vehicles for arbitrary power, society reorganizes itself around politics instead of production, and everything decays.

That’s why the most troubling trend in American politics today isn’t just how remarkably bloated the government has become. It’s that both major political parties are now comfortable using their power to direct private economic life, and they seem unbothered by whether this undermines the rule of law.

Federal spending and debt continue their relentless rise because politicians prioritize today’s voters over future generations. They support industrial policy to prop up their favorite industries. The Trump administration is taking equity stakes in companies like Intel and USA Rare Earth, with some members enriching themselves in the process.

Meanwhile, many Democrats champion taxes on held wealth and unrealized capital gains, challenging the principle that property exists independently of political permission. Genuine socialists who aspire to subordinate property rights and voluntary exchange to political power are now winning elections.

Today, Democrats and Republicans share an understanding that the government should actively allocate resources, direct investment and determine economic outcomes, which can translate to votes, campaign contributions or other benefits.

That’s a shift Lorenzetti’s frescos implicitly warned against. The danger is not poorly executed government; it’s that society’s rules eventually begin to break down. Businesses learn that political influence matters as much or more than serving customers. Investors devote increasing attention to Washington rather than to innovation. Entrepreneurs spend more time competing for subsidies than for customers. Citizens become clients of the state instead of participants in a free society. Political discretion displaces voluntary cooperation.

This transformation rarely arrives dramatically. It instead comes one exception at a time: one bailout, one industrial policy, one new entitlement, one emergency spending bill, another emergency bill that no one feels any need to repay, one “golden share,” one creative tax hike. Together, these changes reshape the relationship between citizen and state.

Lorenzetti’s companion depiction of a bad government is often interpreted as a portrait of tyranny. Justice lies bound at the feet of a horned, demonic ruler, her scales broken and cords cut. Around them, the city decays: Buildings crumble, the streets are empty of commerce, stores are looted, and the only workshop still doing business belongs to the armorer. Soldiers seize a woman — a dark reflection of the happy bride processing through the city on the opposite wall — while a man lies slain at her feet.

Similarly, in one painting of the countryside, the figure of Security, guaranteed by law and not by whim, flies above cultivated fields. In another, Fear hovers over villages burning and barren ground. Same land, same people, different institutions.

But tyranny isn’t simply oppression. It’s the condition under which political power, no longer constrained by enduring principles, becomes society’s organizing force. That’s where bad becomes worse. High taxes become levies meant to punish and confiscate. Regulating industries becomes the locking down of an economy. Constraints on speech become censorship and book burning.

That’s why institutions matter. A constitutional government’s purpose is not to directly produce prosperity. It’s to prevent political power from suffocating the countless acts of creativity, exchange, investment and cooperation through which free people produce prosperity themselves.

America’s greatness has never rested on the brilliance of its politicians. It rests on institutions that leave enough room for people to flourish. The lesson from Siena is that we must restore and preserve what keeps political power in check. Without it, the government does not merely redistribute wealth; it coarsens and corrupts the character of the people, leading to its destruction.

Written by Veronique de Rugy

Official website; http://twitter.com/veroderugy

Trump told the press gaggle his administration just might sell NATO member and reliable U.S. ally Turkey the F-35 Lightning II stealth fighter.

This is not an arcane dispute. It wasn’t arcane in 2019 when Trump Administration 1, after a lot of thought, politically sanctioned Turkey. The U.S. denied Turkey the right to buy the F-35 and its support systems, even though Turkish pilots were in the U.S. flight testing the aircraft.

Turkey was a member of the F-35 development consortium. A Turkish company manufactured an F-35 part. The vindictive Erdogan was Turkey’s president in 2019, and he took the sanctions as a personal affront.

The decision was a diplomatic and economic punch in his face.

And he deserved it, for Erdogan and his government committed what the Trump administration regarded as a grievous error in judgment.

In 2019, over bitter U.S. and other European NATO state objections, Erdogan’s government decided to purchase the Russian-made S-400 surface-to-air missile system.

The F-35 is touted as a “networking” weapon — a weapon and sensor-carrying platform that can integrate with scores of other manned and unmanned platforms. It can provide guidance and targeting data to weapons fired by other planes and ships.

For example, in stealth mode, an F-35 can detect targets and relay the information to non-stealthy U.S. and allied aircraft. In fall of 2018, U.S. Marines discovered the sensors on their F-35B vertical takeoff jets could locate ground targets, by day and night and in all weather. The Marines linked F-35Bs with their M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System. HIMARS is an Army-developed weapon that fires long-range, precision-guided rockets.

The F-35 is a stealthy forward observer for 21st-century weapons.

When engaged in combat training or combat operations, all NATO military aircraft fly within an air control network that integrates with ground-based air defense weapons. These, and other communication networks, scan and share more than air and space data. They can share targeting data, intelligence, friendly locations and friendly flight routes.

The Russian S-400 missile system is also a network — the missiles link to radars and electronic support equipment.

NATO military leaders concluded that if Turkey plugged the S-400 into NATO’s air defense network, the entire S-400 system could act as a digital spy. Moscow might tap other communications and sensor networks. An S-400 with an embedded chip the Turks failed to find and remove could in real time relay to Moscow the location of every NATO aircraft in the air.

So why did Turkey buy the S-400? In 2019 I blamed Erdogan’s ego. Since the curious anti-Erdogan coup of July 2016, Sultan Recep (Erdogan’s derisive nickname) has systematically repressed political opponents. He also pursued an ornery foreign policy often at odds with western NATO allies.

However, after acquiring the S-400 in 2020, Turkey all but sidelined the system. In 2024 Turkey decided not to use the S-400 in its “Steel Dome” defense network.

Combat operations have exposed S-400 flaws. Ukraine has successfully attacked Russian S-400 sites. Ukraine reported its drones destroyed one on July 6. Israeli F-35s erased S-400 sites in Syria and Iran. Apparently, U.S. F-35s and B-2s easily evade Iranian S-400s.

Trump on his own cannot lift the F-35 restrictions — Congress gets a say. NATO internal squabbles continue, with Trump scolding NATO members for failing to pay their fair share and failing to support the U.S. war to destroy Iran’s nuclear weapons program.

For 47 years, Turkey has had the insane ayatollahs on its border. The U.S. has done Turkey a huge favor. The Trump administration has indicated Turkey has provided significant support in the Iran war. Were F-35s part of the deal? In December 2025, U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Tom Barrack said the S-400 dispute with Turkey was “nearing resolution.”

The deal may link to another deal. I suspect Erdogan has concluded Russia cannot defeat Ukraine — which amounts to a Russian loss. If so, Trump will want Erdogan to personally deliver that message to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Written by Austin Bay

Official website; https://twitter.com/draustinbay

They can look instead to the World Cup, where the performance of the U.S. Men’s National Team is renewing the patriotic pride and national solidarity of a free people — led by players whose diversity and citizenship stand against the anti-immigrant bigotry of the current regime.

At a time when Trump and his xenophobic henchman Stephen Miller shriek incessantly about immigrants “poisoning” the nation — and just vowed to continue their unconstitutional crusade against birthright citizenship — the USMNT is a living testament to true American values.

Under the motto “One Nation, One Team,” their roster is one of the most diverse in the world. The 26 players on the World Cup squad are not just interracial, with 12 Black and three Latino players, but include six born overseas to military families, and a dozen with immigrant roots in eight other countries around the globe.

Team USA, like the nation it represents, features an extraordinary global array of languages and cultures, with players who learned the sport in their home country like Gio Reyna, raised in suburban New York, and team captain Christian Pulisic, who grew up in Hershey, Pennsylvania, and Malik Tillman, who spent his boyhood in Bavaria on a German youth team.

And then there is the instructive case of Folarin Balogun, born by accident in Brooklyn when his Nigerian mother, on her way back to England, was told by airline officials that her pregnancy was too advanced for her to fly safely.

Like so many of his teammates, the hugely talented Balogun chose to join the USMNT and feels a special responsibility in doing so. Having scored three goals for Team USA before he got a red card in last week’s victory over Bosnia-Herzegovina, he has said, “To represent the United States means a lot. I just hope I can bring that prestige and winning mentality over into soccer.”

While American fans thrill to the play of Balogun and his teammates, lovers of the beautiful game flocking to our shores have found an America starkly different from what Trump’s vulgarity and rancor led them to expect. Or what the dimwits at the Department of Homeland Security try to convey when they post ultranationalist “OUR SOIL” memes on social media ahead of World Cup matches.

No, people from all over the world are discovering a generous and inclusive kind of American greatness — not in the blustering and domineering Trump style but in the beautiful welcome extended to the global visitors and their teams, from sea to shining sea. It could be seen in the boisterous hospitality encountered by the Scots in Boston, where they emptied the taverns of beer, or the joyous crowds who greeted the Japanese in Nashville.

But perhaps the most poignant example is the Algerians who found themselves in Lawrence, Kansas, a heartland city that welcomed a team from a nation that Trump himself had once stigmatized. The residents of Lawrence embraced Team Algeria with astonishing enthusiasm and grace.

Indeed, it was the Kansans who expressed sincere thanks for a moment on the world stage brought by the visiting Algerians. “We’re very grateful to Algeria,” said one Lawrence resident as the team departed for a match in Canada. “We’ve loved getting to know your country, and we wish you all the best.” During their final group-stage match against Austria, the Algerians unfurled a big banner behind their goal: “Thank You Lawrence.”

That is the America of our better angels, the city on a hill we have longed to become in our highest aspirations, the nation of ideas and ideals that the crooks and criminals now ruling us have aimed to suppress. The joy and the honor brought by this World Cup tournament will be remembered long after Trump’s ludicrous “Freedom 250” is mercifully forgotten.

Written by Joe Conason

Official website; https://twitter.com/JoeConason

This strategy is commonly known as “driving for dollars.” It involves looking for properties that may need repairs or appear to have been neglected. Common signs include overgrown landscaping, damaged roofs, boarded windows, accumulated mail, faded paint, or homes that have clearly been vacant for some time.

Driving for dollars became an important part of how I built Kernvestors and eventually completed more than 100 home flips.

Bakersfield was an ideal place to learn this business. The city contains a wide variety of neighborhoods, property ages, and housing styles. Some homes only need cosmetic improvements, while others require substantial repairs to plumbing, electrical systems, roofing, foundations, or interiors.

Taft also presented opportunities, although it required a different approach. It is a smaller community, so understanding local prices and renovation costs was especially important. In a smaller market, spending too much on improvements can quickly make a project financially unsuccessful.

The goal was never simply to locate the most distressed-looking house. The real work involved determining whether a property could be purchased at a fair price, repaired correctly, and resold at a price supported by nearby comparable sales.

Over time, driving through Bakersfield and Taft taught me how to recognize construction problems, estimate renovation costs, and understand the differences between neighborhoods. It also taught me patience. Many properties I identified were not immediately available for sale. Sometimes months or even years passed before an owner was ready to have a conversation.

Homeowners often face complicated situations. Some inherit properties they do not want to maintain. Others own rentals with difficult tenants, deferred repairs, unpaid utilities, or years of accumulated belongings. Some simply want to Sell your house Fast in Bakersfield without preparing it for a traditional listing.

As the company grew, people also began finding us while searching for Home buyers in Bakersfield or a Company that buys houses in Bakersfield. However, the foundation of the business remained simple: understand the property, communicate honestly, and avoid making promises that cannot be kept.

The same lessons can apply in other Central California markets. Someone researching how to Sell your Your house Fast Santa Maria may be dealing with many of the same concerns, including repairs, inherited property, moving expenses, or an uncertain closing schedule. Home Buyers on Santa Maria

Written by Joy Gebarah

Joy Gebarah

Miramar Real Estate

661-777-7774

Joy@gebarah.com