America at the Brink: When Ideology Pulls the Trigger on Public Health

 

When ideology hijacks public health, children pay the price. Vaccines saved millions. Undermine them, and diseases America buried will rise again—fast, ruthless, and unforgiving.

I have seen what preventable disease looks like up close. It doesn’t argue policy. It doesn’t post opinions. It just spreads. It moves from one coughing kid to another like gossip in a small town. And when it lands, it lands hard. That’s why I don’t play games with this topic. Ideology is a serious danger to America. Not theoretical danger. Not academic danger. Real danger.

Take Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The man hates vaccines like poison and rejects orthodox medicine as if it’s some cartel scheme. Whatever ideology is driving him down that road, it is not neutral. It is not harmless. It is not an intellectual exercise. It is a live wire in the hands of the nation’s top health official. And when you hand a live wire to someone who distrusts the grid, sparks fly. I’m not interested in polishing language. If a Health Secretary weakens confidence in vaccines, people will get sick. That’s not fearmongering. That’s arithmetic. Let me break it down the way the numbers break it down.

Before vaccines, America buried kids at a rate that would shock us today. Around 1900, nearly 18% of children died before age 5. Measles infected 3 to 4 million Americans every year. Between 400 and 500 died annually from that one disease alone. Polio paralyzed more than 15,000 people each year in the early 1950s. Summer meant swimming pools and ice cream for some families. For others, it meant iron lungs and funerals.

Then science stepped in and did what ideology never could: it produced results.

After the measles vaccine arrived in 1963, cases fell by more than 90% within a decade. Deaths dropped by more than 99%. Polio was eliminated from the United States by 1979. From 1994 to 2023, routine childhood vaccines prevented an estimated 508 million illnesses, 32 million hospitalizations, and more than 1.1 million deaths in this country. Let that sink in. 1.1 million children who grew up instead of being lowered into the ground.

That is not a conspiracy. That is a scoreboard.

Now fast-forward. Vaccination rates are slipping in parts of the country. In some communities, kindergarten coverage has dropped below the 95% level needed for strong herd immunity against measles. Once you dip below roughly 90% to 92%, outbreaks stop being rare and start being predictable. In 2023, measles cases in the United States topped 1,200, the highest in decades. That wasn’t bad luck. That was physics. The virus found gaps and ran through them.

And now the top health official in the country questions the very tools that built that wall. You want to talk freedom? Fine. But freedom without facts is just recklessness in a nice suit. I’ve heard the arguments. “Medical freedom.” “Big Pharma.” “Government overreach.” I’m not allergic to skepticism. I’m allergic to pretending that viruses care about your political identity.

Severe vaccine reactions are rare, often fewer than 1 in 1 million doses for many vaccines. Measles, on the other hand, infects up to 90% of unvaccinated people exposed to it. That’s not ideology. That’s basic biology. If I told you there was a 90% chance your house would catch fire without a smoke detector, and you still ripped it off the ceiling because you don’t trust the manufacturer, that’s not bravery. That’s negligence.

When a Health Secretary downplays vaccines, even subtly, it changes behavior. Parents hesitate. Doctors feel political pressure. Exemptions climb. A 5% drop in vaccination coverage in a nation of 330 million means millions more vulnerable people. And infectious diseases love nothing more than a crowd.

Who wins in this scenario? I’ll tell you who doesn’t. The newborn who’s too young to be vaccinated but relies on herd immunity. The kid with leukemia whose immune system can’t handle a measles infection. The elderly grandmother whose body doesn’t bounce back the way it used to. They don’t get to debate ideology. They just take the hit. We’ve seen what happens when vaccination systems falter. In parts of Europe during the 2010s, measles cases surged into the tens of thousands after misinformation campaigns eroded trust. Hospitals filled. Deaths returned. It was a brutal reminder that disease doesn’t stay defeated just because we declared victory once.

Back in 1947, when smallpox appeared in New York City, officials didn’t hold panel discussions about personal narratives. They vaccinated more than 6 million residents in less than 1 month. The outbreak stopped. That’s what decisive public health leadership looks like. Not vibes. Not podcasts. Action.

Now imagine the opposite. Imagine a steady erosion of trust from the top. Imagine CDC guidance reshaped to align with ideology instead of data. Imagine routine immunization rates sliding year after year. Measles eliminated in 2000, then reestablished. Polio imported and spreading in under-vaccinated communities. Schools closing. ERs crowded. Politicians arguing while nurses work double shifts.

I don’t have to stretch my imagination. The cracks are already visible. Here’s the ugly truth: public health is boring when it works. You don’t see the disease that didn’t happen. You don’t mourn the child who never got infected. Success is invisible. Failure is not.

Ideology, on the other hand, is loud. It promises clarity. It offers villains and heroes. It turns complex biology into a morality play. But microbes don’t care about morality. They exploit weakness. They multiply in confusion.

When I look at the historical record, I don’t see a debate. I see a pattern. High vaccination rates equal low disease. Falling vaccination rates equal rising outbreaks. It’s as simple and as brutal as that. So yes, I’ll say it again without dressing it up: ideology in charge of public health is a loaded gun. And when the Health Secretary Kennedy Jr. questions the science behind vaccines, he is pointing that weapon at the most vulnerable Americans. Children. The elderly. The immunocompromised. People who didn’t sign up for a culture war but will pay the price for one.

My strategic takeaway is not complicated. Defend evidence-based medicine like your family’s future depends on it. Because it does. Hold leaders accountable when they drift from established science. Demand transparency, yes, but also demand competence. Pay attention to local vaccination rates. Support pediatricians and public health workers who are trying to keep the levee intact.

America beat polio. We drove measles to the edge of extinction. We cut childhood mortality dramatically over the last century. We did not do that with slogans. We did it with science, scale, and discipline. If we let ideology run the show now, we won’t just rewrite policy. We’ll rewrite hospital charts. And this time, the ink will be written in fever spikes and ICU admissions.

Viruses don’t negotiate. They don’t compromise. They don’t care who you voted for.

If we forget that, they will remind us.

 

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The Rich Also Cry: Why Congress Is the Most Miserable Job in Washington

 

Congress looks powerful, but it’s a burnout machine—longer hours, shrinking pay, rising threats, vanishing power. The marble glows; the members crumble. Even here, the rich also cry.

Let me kill the fantasy right now. Being a member of Congress is not glamorous. It is not powerful. It is not a velvet-rope club of smooth operators shaping history. It is a grinding, joyless, underpaid, overexposed mess. The cameras shine, but the people inside look worn down.

Don Bacon said it without perfume. He felt “ground down.” Tired of elections every 2 years. Tired of raising $6 million to $7 million every cycle. Tired of 12- to 14-hour days. He is not alone. Sixty lawmakers have already said they are stepping down after the midterms. That is a record this early in an election year. When that many insiders head for the door, it is not coincidence. It is collapse fatigue.

The weekly routine sounds like punishment. A red-eye flight into Washington. You land barely awake and rush into a vote on a bill you have not fully read. Party leaders whip you hard. Fall in line. Do not freelance. Push the button and smile for the cameras. That is not independent judgment. That is factory work. Then comes the degrading part. Fifteen to 25 hours a week in a drab office, dialing donors for cash. A minder sits beside you as you beg. You need millions just to keep your seat. Democracy now runs on call sheets and credit cards. If you cannot fundraise, you cannot legislate. The job title says “Representative.” The job description says “Fundraiser-in-Chief.”

By Thursday night, you are sprinting to the airport. The weekend is not rest. It is parades, town halls, ribbon cuttings, and listening to angry constituents unload. Sunday night you fly back. Repeat. It is a treadmill with no off switch.

You might argue they earn $174,000. That sounds rich. It has not changed in 17 years. Inflation has shredded roughly 33% of its real value. In today’s dollars, members earn about a third less than in 2009. Dozens sleep in their offices to save rent. Imagine that: lawmakers on cots under fluorescent lights in the shadow of the Capitol dome. The rich also cries.

Now look at output. From 2023 to 2025, Congress passed 274 laws. That is fewer than any Congress since the Civil War era. Many were trivial. Renaming post offices. Adjusting minor rules. Big structural reforms? Stuck. Gridlocked. According to Gallup, only 17% of Americans approve of Congress. Seventeen. If Congress were a business, shareholders would fire management.

And here is the darker twist. The job is not just tedious. It is dangerous. Last year the Capitol Police investigated 14,938 threats against members, their families, and staff. That is a 58% jump from 2024. On January 6, 2021, lawmakers hid under desks while rioters stormed the building. In 2022, the then Speaker’s husband was attacked with a hammer. This is not abstract anger. It is violence at the door.

So lawmakers work longer hours, earn less in real terms, pass fewer laws, face more threats, and command less power. That last point matters most. The job looks powerful from the outside. Inside, it feels hollow. Partisanship has eaten the institution alive. Data from DW-NOMINATE shows there is now zero ideological overlap between Republicans and Democrats. Zero. The parties are more distant than at any point in the past 80 years. If you cross the aisle, your own side may try to destroy you in a primary. Loyalty is mandatory. Independence is suicidal.

Julia Brownley, a Democrat from California who is stepping down, said it is the worst it has probably ever been. I believe her. When there is no middle ground, there is no bargaining. When there is no bargaining, there is no lawmaking.

Committees once mattered. Members built expertise, shaped bills, negotiated across party lines. Since the mid-1990s, power has been sucked upward into the offices of the Speaker and the Senate leader. Major priorities get crammed into giant omnibus bills negotiated behind closed doors. Rank-and-file lawmakers vote on thousands of pages they barely had time to scan. A retired member put it bluntly: committee power has been pulled away. If you cannot make your own decisions, what are you doing there?

Hearings have turned into stages. Lawmakers hunt viral moments. A sharp insult. A fiery question. A 30-second clip for social media. Governance has become performance art. C-SPAN meets influencer culture. It is less about solving problems and more about feeding the algorithm. Meanwhile, the machinery is rusting. The House has fewer committee staff than in the 1980s, even though government is larger and more complex. A typical office runs on three or four exhausted young aides. If they are talented, they leave for higher salaries in the private sector. LegiStorm data show near-record staff turnover last year. When expertise leaves, lobbyists step in. Michael Thorning of the Bipartisan Policy Center warned that Congress no longer has the expertise to do its job. That is not an exaggeration. It is a diagnosis.

Andrew Hall of Stanford University argues that this toxic climate scares off moderates. Who runs instead? People who thrive in conflict. Politics becomes blood sport. When calm voices exit and combatants remain, compromise dies. The chamber grows louder and dumber at the same time.

It was not always this bleak. After Watergate in the 1970s, Congress reformed itself. Lawmakers strengthened committees, expanded oversight, and tried to restore trust. They were miserable enough to change the system. Reform came from shared pain.

Could it happen again? In theory, yes. Committees could regain real authority. Campaign-finance reform could cut the 15 to 25 hours a week spent begging for cash. Salaries could be adjusted modestly to reflect 17 years of inflation. Staff capacity could be rebuilt so members rely less on lobbyists. None of that is radical. All of it requires bipartisan agreement.

And there lies the brick wall. Agreement today looks like betrayal. Each side treats the other as an existential threat. In that climate, reform is fantasy. The job remains a grindhouse.

Being a member of Congress is not sexy. It is the crummiest job in Washington. Longer hours. Lower real pay. More threats. Less power. A shiny title masking a shrinking role. From the outside, the Capitol dome glows. Inside, many lawmakers are asking the same question in private: was this ever worth it?

 

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Tariff King Meets the Constitution: Trump’s Trade War Collides with 1776

 

The Supreme Court said no. Trump said watch me. If one man can impose sweeping tariffs without Congress, 1776 means nothing—and America drifts from republic to rule-by-decree.

I watched the Supreme Court drop the hammer, and it was not subtle. In Learning Resources v Trump, decided on February 20, the justices did not nibble around the edges. They took a battering ram to the president’s tariff wall. Six of nine justices, including Chief Justice John Roberts, ruled that the bulk of President Trump’s tariffs were illegal under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA. That is not a polite disagreement. That is a constitutional smack.

President Trump called the ruling “deeply disappointing.” He said he was “ashamed of certain members of the court.” Then he did what he always does when boxed in. He doubled down. He pledged new trade barriers, new methods, new statutes, stronger authorities. The message was clear: if one door closes, I will kick open another.

But here is the problem. Tariffs are taxes. And taxes, in America, are not a royal hobby.

The Constitution does not stutter on this point. Article I, Section 8 gives Congress the power to “lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises.” Roberts wrote that the framers “gave ‘Congress alone’ the power to impose tariffs during peacetime” and did not vest any part of the taxing power in the executive branch. That is not academic trivia. That is the skeleton of the Republic.

America did not fight the Revolutionary War because tea was expensive. It fought because of who imposed the tea tax. The Stamp Act of 1765 and the Townshend Acts of 1767 were not just revenue measures. They were power plays. Colonists cried “no taxation without representation” because they believed only their elected representatives could tax them. Not King George III. Not even Parliament, where they had no vote. The Boston Tea Party in 1773 was not a caffeine tantrum. It was a constitutional protest.

Now fast forward to 2026. A president asserts that a 1970s emergency statute allows him to bypass Congress and slap tariffs on imports at his discretion. He cites a “public-health crisis” from illegal drugs and “large and persistent” trade deficits as emergencies. That is the hook. IEEPA allows the president to regulate certain economic transactions during a national emergency. But as Roberts wrote, the words “regulate” and “importation” do not magically create an independent power to impose tariffs “on imports from any country, of any product, at any rate, for any amount of time.”

Congress did not hide a delegation of its birthright taxing power inside routine language about regulation. That would be legislative sleight of hand. And the Supreme Court was not buying it.

The economic stakes are not pocket change. According to Yale University’s Budget Lab, striking down the IEEPA levies could cut America’s effective tariff rate by about half. Importers have already paid well over $100bn in these levies, about 0.3% of GDP. That money helped nudge down the federal deficit. If refunds are ordered, as many expect, the government could be writing checks for billions. Justice Brett Kavanaugh warned that figuring out how to return the money would likely be a “mess.” That is the polite version.

Markets reacted with a shrug and a raised eyebrow. Bond yields rose by a few hundredths of a percentage point. The dollar slipped, but not dramatically. The immediate impact is not a crash. It is something worse for business: uncertainty. For the past year, companies have complained that constantly shifting trade policy has made hiring and investment a nightmare. One week it is 10%, the next it is 15%, then a court ruling blows a hole in the plan. You cannot build a factory on vibes.

Trump’s answer to the Court was not retreat. On February 20 he invoked Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 to impose a global 10% tariff on top of existing levies. A day later he raised it to 15%, the maximum that Section 122 permits. That authority lasts up to 150 days. It has never been used before. It requires pointing to “large and serious” balance-of-payments deficits. Translation: more legal wrangling ahead.

If that path falters, there is Section 338 of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930, another dusty provision that has never been invoked. Smoot-Hawley itself is a cautionary tale. Signed by President Herbert Hoover in 1930, it raised tariffs on thousands of goods. Global trade collapsed. Between 1929 and 1934, U.S. exports fell by about 66%. Many economists, including Milton Friedman, later argued that the tariff deepened the Great Depression. When you play with fire, do not act surprised when the house burns.

Trump’s more reliable tools are Section 232 and Section 301. Section 232 allows tariffs on national security grounds. Section 301 targets unfair trade practices. These are already in use and have firmer legal grounding. But they require formal investigations. They move slower. They are not the president’s preferred style of rapid-fire threats and last-minute deals. Brick by brick, he can try to rebuild the tariff wall. But it will not be the same freewheeling construction project.

I have to say it plainly. When a president claims the power to impose broad tariffs without Congress, he is stepping onto the same constitutional fault line that cracked open in 1776. Back then, colonists rejected the idea that a distant authority could tax them without direct representation. Today, the distance is not across an ocean. It is across Pennsylvania Avenue. But the principle is the same.

Some will argue that Congress has delegated broad trade authority over decades. That is true in part. Statutes like Section 232 and Section 301 reflect that delegation. But delegation is not abdication. The Court’s message in Learning Resources v Trump was that IEEPA is not a blank check for peacetime tariffs. Emergencies cannot become a magic word that erases Article I.

There is irony here. Over the first year of Trump’s second term, the Supreme Court often avoided direct confrontation with him. On the so-called shadow docket, he scored wins on issues from presidential hiring and firing to immigration and a ban on transgender soldiers. But when the justices heard this case on their regular docket, with full briefing and oral argument, the gloves came off.

Another case looms involving Lisa Cook, a governor at the Federal Reserve. Trump has tried to remove her, raising concerns about the independence of the central bank. If a president can stack the Fed at will, monetary policy becomes political currency. Now add unilateral tariff power to that mix. That is not strong leadership. That is concentrated power.

I am not naïve. Trade deficits are real. Illegal drugs are real. China’s trade practices are real. The frustration is real. But frustration does not rewrite the Constitution. The framers did not design a system based on vibes or urgency. They designed it to slow things down, to force debate, to require Congress to own the taxes it imposes.

If Trump wants the highest tariff rates in more than half a century, he can go to Congress and make the case. Tariffs are taxes after all. Let elected representatives vote. Let them explain to voters why prices might rise. Let them defend the numbers.

Because that is what 1776 was about. It was not about cheaper tea. It was about who gets to tax free people.

Right now, the immediate economic impact is more uncertainty. The long-term impact depends on how far the president pushes, and how firmly the Court pushes back. But one lesson is already clear. In America, no matter how loud the press conference, no matter how urgent the emergency, the power to tax does not belong to a king.

And if we forget that, then all the fireworks of July are just noise.

 

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Gen Z and the Gospel of the Gun: Inside America’s Growing Assassination Culture

 

The shooters are getting younger, the rhetoric is getting hotter, and political violence is no longer a nightmare—it’s a pattern. When grievance meets ideology and calls itself justice, bullets follow—and America is inching toward normalizing assassination.

At 1.30am, a 21-year-old illustrator named Austin Tucker Martin drove through the gates of Mar-a-Lago like a man chasing a ghost. He had a shotgun. He had a fuel can. He did not have a plan that made sense. President Trump was 1,000 miles away in Washington, hosting the National Governors Association dinner at the White House. The target wasn’t even home. That detail alone tells me something. This wasn’t a professional hit. This was theater. Dark, delusional theater.

Law enforcement says Martin entered the compound as another car exited. Once inside, he placed the fuel can on the ground and appeared to aim his shotgun at it. When Secret Service agents and a Palm Beach sheriff’s deputy ordered him to drop the weapon, he refused. They fired. He died there, in the humid Florida dark, before dawn broke over the Atlantic.

I’m going to say this, even as motive remains officially unknown: this smells like the growing assassination culture among parts of Gen Z. And what do I mean by that? I mean you take a grievance, you bolt it to an intractable ideology, and then you polish it with moral absolutism until it gleams like righteousness. Suddenly violence feels holy. Suddenly killing feels like cleansing.

We have to be careful. I know the buzzwords. Recency bias. Availability heuristic. We just saw something like this, so we assume this is that. Fine. I get it. I’m not saying every young man with a social media account is a ticking bomb. I’m saying the pattern is getting harder to ignore. Martin was 21. Thomas Crooks, who tried to assassinate Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania during the 2024 campaign, was 20. Crooks was killed by Secret Service agents after firing shots that wounded Trump. Two young men. Two attempts. Both dead before their stories could be fully told.

Zoom out. In nearly 250 years of American history, 4 presidents have been assassinated while in office: Abraham Lincoln in 1865, James A. Garfield in 1881, William McKinley in 1901, and John F. Kennedy in 1963. The country has had 47 presidents. Assassinations are rare. Attempts are also rare when you stretch them across centuries.

But what happens when 3 attempts or plots cluster around a single presidency and campaign cycle? Butler. The golf club in West Palm Beach. Now Mar-a-Lago. Whether Trump was present or not, the symbolism is obvious. The threat matrix is not theoretical anymore. It is active.

And here’s what gnaws at me: the age curve. According to FBI data and research compiled by the U.S. Secret Service’s National Threat Assessment Center, most lone-actor attackers in targeted violence cases are male, often under 35. In school shooting data analyzed by the K-12 School Shooting Database, many perpetrators fall between 14 and 18. In broader mass shooting analyses by the Violence Project, the average age is around 33, but there has been a visible stream of younger offenders in high-profile cases over the past decade.

I’m not playing statistician games. I’m telling you what the trend feels like on the street. The shooters are getting younger. The fuse is getting shorter.

Martin lived more than 10 hours away in North Carolina, in a quiet region known more for golf courses than gunfire. His website showcased pen drawings of local courses like Pine Needles and Mid Pines. That detail matters. He wasn’t some cartel assassin. He was an artist. His sister died in a car crash at age 21 in 2023. That kind of loss can hollow a person out. Grief, untreated and stewing, becomes gasoline. But grief alone doesn’t drive someone through security gates with a shotgun and a fuel can. Something else has to enter the bloodstream. Rage. Ideology. A sense that the world is corrupt and only you see the truth. That’s the patina of moral absolutism. It tells a young man, “You are not a criminal. You are a crusader.” It tells him that laws are chains and violence is liberation. It tells him that history will vindicate him.

History rarely does.

Let’s not pretend this is a one-party problem. Political violence has splashed across the spectrum. Charlie Kirk, a right-wing polemicist, was killed while debating students in Utah. Melissa Hortman, a senior Democrat, was assassinated in her home. John Hoffman and his wife Yvette were shot and seriously injured. Josh Shapiro survived an arson attack on the governor’s mansion in Harrisburg. The fever is bipartisan.

But the age profile keeps poking through. A man in his 20s. A kid barely old enough to rent a car. Raised on algorithmic outrage. Marinated in social media feeds that reward extremity and punish nuance.

When Scott Bessent said the “venom” has been normalized, he was making a political point. Fine. Politicians always do. But strip away the spin and one thing remains true: the rhetoric has become radioactive. Words like “existential threat” are thrown around like confetti. If you tell a generation that the other side is not just wrong but evil, not just mistaken but monstrous, some unstable mind will eventually decide monsters must be destroyed. And here’s the irony. The same generation that talks endlessly about mental health is drowning in untreated despair. CDC data shows that suicide rates among people aged 10 to 14 increased by nearly 50 percent between 2007 and 2018. Among young adults aged 20 to 24, rates have also climbed in recent years. That doesn’t make someone violent. But it tells me something is cracking beneath the surface.

An assassination culture doesn’t begin with a gun. It begins with a story. A story that says you are the hero, the system is rotten, and violence is the shortcut to meaning. For a lonely 21-year-old at 1.30am, that story can feel intoxicating.

We still don’t know Martin’s motive. We don’t know what was in his head as he aimed that shotgun near a fuel can. Was it a suicide-by-cop scenario? A delusional plot? A symbolic act? The FBI will dig. They will analyze devices, messages, browsing history. They will map contacts. That’s their job.

My job, as I see it, is to call a spade a spade. The clustering of young male attackers around high-profile political targets is not random noise. It reflects a cultural shift. The internet has flattened the distance between grievance and action. In 1963, Lee Harvey Oswald needed a rifle and a plan. In 2026, a disaffected 21-year-old needs a grievance, a smartphone, and a weekend.

We like to think of assassination as a relic of the 19th century. A pistol in a theater. A revolver at a train station. But the tools change. The psychology remains. Take a grievance. Add ideology. Coat it in moral purity. Pull the trigger.

I don’t say this to demonize an entire generation. Most Gen Z kids are hustling, studying, working, caring for siblings, building startups, drawing golf courses. But a small slice is drifting toward something darker. And when that slice picks up a gun, the consequences echo. We can dismiss this as isolated madness. We can blame only one party. We can pretend the threat matrix isn’t escalating. Or we can admit that something in our culture is feeding young men a steady diet of rage and purpose wrapped in violence.

Four presidents have been assassinated in nearly 250 years. That rarity is part of what makes America resilient. But when attempted attacks cluster, when the suspects are barely out of adolescence, when the ideology feels like gasoline waiting for a spark, I pay attention.

Because once assassination becomes a language of politics, even at the margins, it doesn’t stay at the margins for long. And when the young start speaking that language, the future gets very loud, very fast.

 

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The “Robin Hood” Tax Campaign: Why Raiding the Rich Will Bankrupt America’s Future

 

Politicians promise painless cash from billionaires, but history screams otherwise—raid the rich today, wreck the economy tomorrow, and watch deficits grow teeth. In plain terms, taxing the rich won’t rescue America’s sinking budgets—it will choke growth, scare off innovators, and leave the middle class holding the bill when the Robin Hood fantasy collapses.

I have heard the pitch before. “Tax the rich. They can afford it.” It rolls off the tongue like a moral anthem. New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani wants a 2% levy on incomes above $1m. California’s Governor Gavin Newsom is flirting with a 5% “one-time” wealth tax on billionaires. In Europe, the drumbeat is louder. France debates wealth taxes. Britain’s left wing circles the same idea. The story is simple: budgets are bleeding, debts are rising, voters are exhausted after the inflation surge of the early 2020s, so let the top 1% foot the bill.

It sounds noble. It sounds fair. It sounds like Robin Hood. But I have learned something from history. Good intentions do not always make good economics. When politicians promise painless money, I check my wallet.

Let’s start with cold numbers. In the United States, the top 1% earn about 20% of national income and already pay nearly 33% of federal income taxes. That is not a rounding error. That is a third of the bill. The idea that high earners are lounging tax-free is mostly fantasy. America already runs one of the most progressive tax systems in the developed world. Since 1990, the government has offset much of the rise in pre-tax inequality through higher taxes on top earners and expanded spending, especially in health care. Redistribution has grown, not shrunk.

Yet politicians still say, “They can pay more.”

But there is a math problem no slogan can fix. There are simply not enough billionaires to fund a modern welfare state. California’s proposed wealth tax would raise about 2% of the state’s annual output. Mamdani’s proposal would bring in roughly 0.25% of output per year. That is loose change compared to pension obligations, Medicaid spending, defense budgets, and interest on debt. Even closing the notorious “step-up in basis” loophole on capital gains at death would likely raise less than 0.1% of GDP annually. That reform may be justified. It may be fair. But it will not rescue a broken budget.

You cannot fund a $6 trillion federal government by chasing a few hundred billionaires with a clipboard.

And then comes the second problem, the one politicians whisper about but rarely shout: economic damage. In New York, the top combined federal, state, and local tax rate already reaches 52%. Add another levy and what do you signal? That success is suspect. That risk is punishable. That innovation is a public utility.

Research backs this up. Studies show that a 1 percentage-point increase in income tax reduces the probability of filing a patent in the next 3 years by 0.6 percentage points. That may sound small, but innovation is fragile. Economists estimate that innovators capture only about 2% of the total value they create. Society captures the rest. So when you discourage entrepreneurial effort, you do not just hurt a millionaire. You shrink the pie for everyone.

Politicians wave this away. “Bankers will still show up.” Maybe. But growth is not built only on bankers. It is built on risk-takers who decide whether to launch a company in San Francisco or Singapore, whether to scale up in Austin or Dublin. Capital is mobile. Talent is mobile. Taxes are not.

Now let me talk about fairness, because that is the emotional engine of this crusade. Mamdani and Newsom lean hard on that word. Fairness. They frame wealth taxes as moral corrections. But fairness is not the same as envy. A fair system respects property rights. It is predictable. It allows people to reap the rewards of risk. If a wealth tax feels like an arbitrary seizure, trust erodes. Once trust erodes, capital flees quietly, then loudly.

History is my witness. Look at Russia after 1917. The Bolsheviks believed they were building a just society. Private property was abolished. Wealth was seized in the name of equality. What followed was economic collapse, forced collectivization, and famine. By the early 1930s, millions had died during the Holodomor in Ukraine. Central planning suffocated incentives. Innovation stalled. The Soviet Union eventually limped along for decades, but it never matched the productivity of market economies. It collapsed in 1991 under the weight of its own inefficiency. The road to that failure was paved with promises of fairness.

Before someone says, “We are not proposing communism,” I know that. But the lesson stands. When the state starts treating private wealth as a bottomless ATM, it drifts toward control, not growth. When you punish the farmer for growing more corn, do not be shocked when the harvest shrinks.

Now consider America’s own moral crusade: Prohibition. In 1920, the 18th Amendment banned alcohol. Reformers believed they were saving families, reducing crime, uplifting society. Instead, the policy created a black market worth billions in today’s dollars. Organized crime exploded. Al Capone built an empire in Chicago. Federal tax revenues from alcohol vanished during a period when the government still needed funds. By 1933, the 21st Amendment repealed Prohibition. The experiment failed because it ignored economic incentives. People wanted alcohol. Suppliers found ways to provide it. Good intentions collapsed under real-world behavior.

The Robin Hood tax campaign risks repeating that pattern. Politicians want easy money without asking the broad middle class to sacrifice. Voters, still scarred by inflation spikes in 2021 and 2022, resist broad-based taxes. So leaders reach for the least politically costly target: the rich. It feels painless. It polls well. But it is fiscally shallow and economically risky.

Europe shows the truth. Countries with large welfare states rely heavily on consumption taxes. Value-added taxes in nations like France and Germany hover around 20%. Everyone pays. That is how they fund generous benefits. America, by contrast, maintains a lower overall tax burden and a more progressive structure. If we want European-style spending, we would need European-style broad-based taxes. Pretending that billionaires alone can fund it is fantasy.

And there is a political cost. When only a small minority pays the bill, the majority loses incentive to question spending. Polls show voters rarely consider the economic side effects of tax hikes. If I believe someone else will pay, why restrain my appetite for new programs? But when everyone has skin in the game, debates become serious. Trade-offs become visible. Democracy becomes disciplined.

I can already hear the counterargument: “So do nothing?” No. Close loopholes. Simplify the code. Demand efficiency. Cut waste. But do not pretend that raiding the top 1% will erase decades of fiscal mismanagement. That is theater, not reform.

The Robin Hood model is seductive because it avoids hard conversations. It says we can spend more, tax only a few, and escape consequences. But economics is not a fairy tale. Budgets are arithmetic. Incentives matter. Growth matters. Trust matters. When Mamdani or Newsom promise that the levy is “one-time,” I raise an eyebrow. Governments rarely surrender new revenue streams. Once the door is open, it rarely closes. Today 5%. Tomorrow another “temporary” fix. I have seen this movie before. The sequel is never cheaper.

I am not defending greed. I am defending realism. If we want sustainable budgets, we must reform spending and broaden the tax base honestly. If we want growth, we must protect incentives. If we want fairness, we must define it carefully, not emotionally.

Robin Hood may win cheers in the village square. But in a modern economy, arrows do not balance books. They just pierce confidence. And once confidence bleeds out, no tax rate can revive it.

 

This article stands on its own, but some readers may also enjoy the titles in my “Brief Book Series”. Read it here on Google Play: Brief Book Series.

 

 

The Supreme Court Stops President Trump's Tariff Storm… For Now

 

The Supreme Court just clipped President  Trump’s tariff trigger finger—but the trade war isn’t dead. It’s wounded, angry, and hunting for a legal backdoor.

I watched the Supreme Court pull the emergency brake on President Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs, and I could almost hear the gears grind in Washington. This was not a polite tap on the wrist. It was a 6-3 ruling that cut straight through the heart of Trump’s tariff economics. The justices said it plain and cold: the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) of 1977 does not authorize the President to impose tariffs. Chief Justice John Roberts reminded us that the framers “did not vest any part of the taxing power in the Executive Branch.” That line hit like a gavel slam in a silent courtroom.

Let’s be honest. This was David versus Goliath. A small wine importer, VOS Selections, went toe to toe with the White House. Alongside firms like Learning Resources Inc., they challenged the administration’s use of IEEPA. The law was built for sanctions against rogue states like Iran and North Korea. It talks about regulating financial transactions. It does not whisper the word tariff. Not once. Yet the administration treated it like a blank check.

If the Court had blinked, we would be living in a different country today. Imagine any president—Republican or Democrat—declaring a vague “emergency” and slapping tariffs at will. During oral arguments, the hypothetical was raised of a Democratic administration declaring a climate emergency and imposing steep tariffs on imported electric vehicles or diesel trucks. One person. One declaration. Billions in taxes overnight. That is not trade policy. That is executive taxation by decree. Give a man a hammer, and every problem looks like a nail.

Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs were broad and chaotic. They were announced with the swagger of a man who believed the presidency carried a tariff wand. Markets swung. Businesses scrambled. Over the past year, tens of billions of dollars in tariff revenue flowed in. Now the legal foundation for those levies is gone. The Court made it clear that when Congress delegates tariff powers, it does so in explicit terms and under strict limits. IEEPA was not one of those terms.

This ruling reins in Trump’s tariff economics model because that model leaned heavily on speed and shock. The power was in the unpredictability. Declare an emergency. Impose a tariff. Force a negotiation. Cut a deal. Move on. It was high-stakes poker played with the global economy. But the Court just removed a wild card from the deck.

History tells me why this matters. In 1930, Congress passed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act. Average U.S. tariffs on dutiable imports rose to nearly 60%. Other countries retaliated. Global trade collapsed by roughly 66% between 1929 and 1934. Economists still argue about the scale of the damage, but few deny that protectionism deepened the Great Depression. After World War II, lawmakers tried to avoid that spiral. They built a system that favored negotiated reductions in trade barriers, from the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) in 1947 to the creation of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1995.

Over time, Congress delegated more authority to presidents. The theory was simple. Legislators are close to local industries and pressure groups. They feel the heat from steelworkers in Ohio and farmers in Iowa. Presidents, in theory, take a broader view. They see consumers, exporters, and the geopolitical chessboard. So Congress passed laws like the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 and the Trade Act of 1974, giving presidents tools such as Section 232 and Section 301. It assumed the White House would act as the adult in the room.

That assumption now looks shaky. Trump used Section 301 during his first term to impose tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of Chinese goods. At the height of that trade war, tariffs covered more than $360 billion in imports from China. Studies by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York estimated that the tariffs cost the average American household around $800 per year due to higher prices. The administration argued that China’s unfair trade practices justified the move. Critics said consumers were footing the bill.

Then came the second term and the IEEPA gambit. It was bolder. Faster. Less tethered to specific findings about unfair trade or national security. Just declare an emergency and go. The Court’s ruling slams that door shut. No more free-floating tariff power under IEEPA. No more emergency-as-excuse for broad import taxes.

But here is where the story gets complicated. I am not popping champagne just yet. The president still has other tools. Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 allows tariffs of up to 15% for up to 150 days to address balance-of-payments problems. Section 232 of the 1962 Act allows tariffs on national security grounds. That is how we got tariffs on steel and aluminum. Section 301 can still target countries deemed to engage in unfair trade practices. These laws require investigations, reports, and findings. They are slower. They throw sand in the gears. But they are real.

So yes, the Court has reined Trump in. But it has not disarmed him.

The difference now is credibility. Before, a tweet or a press conference could rattle markets because the legal path was quick and direct. Now, any new tariff wall must be built brick by brick under existing statutes. Agencies must conduct investigations. Findings must be issued. There is paperwork. There are timelines. The element of sudden shock is weaker. When threats require process, they lose some bite.

The deeper issue is constitutional. Article I of the Constitution gives Congress the power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises. Tariffs are taxes. Roberts reminded us of that basic truth. If the Court had ruled the other way, it would have rewritten the balance of power between Congress and the presidency. One emergency declaration could have opened the door to unlimited tariff authority. That would have been a quiet revolution.

I see irony here. Trump built his brand on strength, leverage, and deal-making. He treated tariffs as bargaining chips. But the Supreme Court has now told him that leverage must sit within statutory boundaries. You cannot just say “emergency” and move the markets. The Constitution is not a suggestion box. Still, I do not underestimate the resilience of tariff economics. The administration can pivot. It can lean harder on Section 301 investigations. It can expand Section 232 findings to new sectors like semiconductors or critical minerals. It can use Section 122 for temporary across-the-board measures. Each path is narrower, more technical, more exposed to judicial review. Yet the threat remains.

The broader lesson is uncomfortable. Congress gave presidents wide discretion over trade because it trusted them to be wise stewards. That trust now looks naïve. If cooler heads ever return to Capitol Hill, lawmakers might rethink how much power they have ceded. They could impose stricter time limits, require congressional approval for certain tariffs, or tighten definitions of “national security” and “emergency.” But any reform would likely need presidential signature. And what president volunteers to shrink his own power?

For now, I give credit where it is due. The Supreme Court drew a line. It told the executive branch that taxation by emergency decree is not the American way. That matters. It protects not just importers like VOS Selections, but the structure of our government.

Trump’s tariff economics has taken a hit. The leash is on. But the dog is still in the yard, pacing, watching the fence for weak spots. And in Washington, as I have learned, fences are only as strong as the will to defend them.

 

If you’re looking for something different to read, some of the titles in my “Brief Book Series” is available on Google Play Books. You can also read them here on Google Play: Brief Book Series.

 

Red vs. Blue Since 1776: America Was Born Arguing

 

The red-blue war didn’t start on cable news—it began in 1776, and without parties to channel rage into votes, America could implode. Hence, political parties aren’t America’s disease—they’re its shock absorbers, forged in revolution and tested by civil war. Remove them, and the system shatters.

If anyone thinks the political war between Democrats and Republicans began with social media hashtags or prime-time cable news, I have to laugh. America has been fighting with itself since the ink dried on July 4, 1776. America did not inherit unity. The country inherited liberty. And liberty is loud.

The moment the colonies broke from King George III, they removed a single source of authority. But nature hates a vacuum. Power rushed into the open, and men who had just stood shoulder to shoulder against Britain began circling each other. That tension did not wait for the 21st century. It arrived with the Constitution.

In 1787, when the Constitution was drafted in Philadelphia, the fight began in full view. Federalists like Alexander Hamilton and James Madison pushed for a strong central government. Anti-Federalists warned that such power would become a new monarchy in disguise. Newspapers became weapons. Pamphlets flew like arrows. Madison, writing in Federalist No. 10, admitted what many hoped to avoid: factions (known as ‘political parties’ today) were inevitable. Liberty itself breeds division. You can silence disagreement only by silencing freedom. That was not an option. So the Constitution would “control the effects” of faction rather than erase its causes. From day one, the system assumed conflict.

The ink was barely dry before that conflict turned personal. Inside George Washington’s cabinet, Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson clashed like heavyweight fighters in powdered wigs. Hamilton wanted a national bank, federal control of state debts, and a muscular central authority. Jefferson feared that same authority would crush the states. Their rivalry birthed the first party system—Federalists and Democratic-Republicans. The Founders had warned against parties, yet they formed them almost instantly. Why? Because power without opposition is temptation in human form.

By 1798, the tension snapped. President John Adams, a Federalist, signed the Alien and Sedition Acts. Criticize the government too harshly and you could land in jail. Jefferson’s allies fired back with the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions, arguing states could resist unconstitutional laws. The election of 1800 followed, bitter and chaotic. Thomas Jefferson defeated Adams, and for the first time in modern history, power transferred peacefully between rival factions. That moment was not polite. It was revolutionary. The system survived its own anger.

The decades rolled forward, but the argument never slept. In 1832, South Carolina declared it could nullify federal tariffs it disliked. Vice President John C. Calhoun sided with the state. President Andrew Jackson threatened force. The nation teetered. Congress brokered compromise. Once again, party conflict did not destroy the republic. It tested it.

Then came slavery, the deepest wound. By 1860, nearly 4 million enslaved Black Americans lived mostly in the South. The Democratic Party split between Northern and Southern factions. The Republican Party rose in the 1850s to oppose the expansion of slavery. Abraham Lincoln won the presidency in 1860 with about 40% of the popular vote in a four-way race. Southern states seceded. The Civil War erupted in 1861 and raged until 1865, killing about 700,000 Americans. That was not partisan theater. That was blood.

Yet even during that war, elections continued. Lincoln faced reelection in 1864 while cannons roared. Ballots were cast in camps and cities. Democracy did not shut down. It endured. That fact alone should silence anyone who thinks today’s divisions are unprecedented.

After the war, the tension shifted but did not vanish. The election of 1876 between Rutherford B. Hayes and Samuel J. Tilden ended in dispute. Tilden won the popular vote by about 250,000 ballots. An electoral commission awarded Hayes a 185–184 victory. The Compromise of 1877 ended Reconstruction and withdrew federal troops from the South. It was controversial. It angered millions. But it prevented renewed civil war. The republic staggered forward.

Fast-forward to 2000. George W. Bush and Al Gore battled over Florida. The margin was 537 votes. The Supreme Court decided Bush v. Gore. Half the nation felt robbed. Yet Gore conceded. Power transferred peacefully. In 2020, turnout reached about 66% of eligible voters, the highest in over 100 years. Legal challenges erupted. Courts ruled. Institutions held.

This pattern is not accidental. It is structural. Madison eventually admitted that “different interests and parties arise out of the nature of things.” He started as a critic of factions and ended as their reluctant architect. He understood a truth that still stings: disagreement is the price of freedom.

Americans claim they despise political parties. Polls often show trust in them hovering below 30%. Yet every president after Washington has belonged to one. Congress organizes itself through them. Voters mobilize through them. Parties channel ambition, anger, and ideology into elections instead of street battles. They are not clean. They are not noble. But they are necessary.

Where there is liberty, there will be disagreement. Where there is disagreement, there will be organization. And where there is organization, there will be parties. That was true in 1787. It was true in 1860. It is true now. America was not designed to avoid conflict. It was designed to survive it. The red-versus-blue clash is not a glitch. It is the sound of a free society arguing with itself. The miracle is not that we fight. The miracle is that, for more than 200 years, we have mostly fought with ballots, courts, and words instead of muskets.

The political wars did not start yesterday. They started at the birth of the nation. And as long as Americans remain free, the argument will go on—not as proof of collapse, but as proof that liberty is alive and unapologetically loud.

 

If you’re looking for something different to read, some of the titles in my “Brief Book Series” is available on Google Play Books. You can also read them here on Google Play: Brief Book Series.