1/ They smashed babies against trees to save bullets. Starved millions until they ate tree bark. Drove desperate families to cannibalism. This is the reality of socialism.

An insane, dangerous ideology; but our captured education system means today it's celebrated by our youth. 2/ Young Americans hear socialism and think free healthcare and housing in Scandinavia. No wonder polls show they now sympathize with socialism more than capitalism.

This is a direct result of a lost battle: decades of ideological capture and propaganda in our education system.

Even if I had no exposure to funds, I’d oppose taxing carry at a higher rate than cap gains.

I love the current vibe: 100% remove taxes on tips or overtime, and lower taxes of everyday Americans!

But, don’t distort incentives in ways that slow growth. It’s not a “loophole”! 🧵 Populists say that running a fund is not investing your own money, so you should pay short-term gains on carry; they call getting LTCG “a loophole”.

But tax policy is not about rewarding or punishing people, but how the system itself works.

The right question: what leads to the best outcomes for our economy?

1 / Events in Austin, TX, and DC this week are related: we're engaged in a war that will decide the trajectory of our civilization, and NGO's are a major front.

Our governments send hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayer money annually to unaccountable "non-profit" orgs; much of it finds its way to radical activists and political organizers.

Trump is fighting leftist judges over his federal grant freeze, and today, the city of Austin, TX, voted to give more money to notorious leftist NGO's.

What can we do? TO ARMS! Saddle up and stand ready: it's time for the state of Texas to join this battle on the side of the good guys.

Read our latest Cicero blog on how Texas can lead with reforms to pierce the veil on ANY government-funded NGO, and stop activists hiding billions in ideological spending behind grant mazes. #txlege 2 / Federal grant spending exploded 677% since 1991 to $301B - far more than areas such as Veterans Affairs ($220B), Education ($94B), & Transportation ($85B).

Woke activists & bureaucrats are getting rich off your tax dollars. Until now, no recent administration cracked down on this mess.

The Biden Admin, in bed with these interests, didn't want to be watched: they TURNED OFF the IRS portal that analysts use to get data on NGO grants, so we know nothing precise since 2020. But you should hear the stories of what my friends in DC are finding!

1/ US healthcare is a disaster for low-income families. Half of kids on Medicaid skip checkups. Moms fall through the cracks between pregnancy and parenting. Families get left behind. 2/ The solution is not more bureaucracy or more waste. But one big part of the solution is: the house call. Combining innovation with one of medicine’s oldest practices will save thousands of lives — and billions of taxpayer dollars.

1/ My latest Op Ed - Stop Funding the Woke and the Stupid.

Activist courts blocked tests we'd used for 100 years, and Congress gave into unions and made it too hard to fire incompetent people. Bureaucracy grew dumber, slower, and less accountable. Even red states are guilty. 2/ States like Florida are fighting back with banning DEI oaths & defunding some illiberal programs, and @instituteCicero is helping.

We must do more: Tie funding to results. Defund radical ideology in state schools. Stop funding those who hate us. Fix the whole failing system.

1/ States and cities are hiding trillions in debt through accounting tricks that would land private sector CEOs in jail. Time to expose the scandal.

To stop crony leaders from hiding massive debts, the incoming administration might fix our misguided govt accounting standards. 2/ The system enabling the nonsense: GASB, which sets government accounting rules. Unlike strict business standards, GASB lets states:
- Report loans as "revenue"
- Hide most pension debt
- Use asset sales to fake balanced budgets

Thread: I’ve decided to back Donald Trump.

@TheEconomist invited me to explain why.

In short, we have seen both men in office. To me, an entrepreneur who also works on policy around the country, the choice is clear. Biden is incompetent and radical.
economist.com/by-invitation/… Reid wrote that we entrepreneurs should support a “robust legal system” and therefore Trump’s NY conviction.

It’s a false premise. The Bragg trial wasn’t part of a “robust legal system” – it was coordinated political lawfare. We all saw what Bragg promised.

New essay: “Brave Days, Great Days”

During the Blitz, Churchill said: "These are not dark days; these are great days — the greatest days our country has ever lived."

We face a different, strange new kind of war in the USA. But fighting back can make these our great days.

🧵 When Churchill was a schoolboy, he learned and recited all 1200 lines of an English poem called Horatius, about the ancient Roman hero who defended the Republic from invasion.

Here’s an excerpt:

Weak US leadership leads to dangerous outcomes.

The Select Committee on the CCP just released its report on China's involvement in the Fentanyl crisis; it is something of an eye opener.

Key findings are damning; the CCP is actively sponsoring criminal activity.🧵 The report finds that the Chinese Communist Party...

* Directly subsidizes the manufacturing and export of illicit fentanyl materials and other synthetic narcotics through tax rebates. Many of these substances are illegal under the PRC’s own laws and have no known legal use worldwide. Like its export tax rebates for legitimate goods, the CCP’s subsidies of illegal drugs incentivizes international synthetic drug sales from the PRC. The CCP never disclosed this program.

We launched my blog as a newsletter a year ago this week.

Almost 10,000 of you have subscribed since then!

Below are the top 10 essays and podcasts that readers enjoyed. If you haven’t, I hope you’ll subscribe for free.
🧵 1. To Save America, Restore our Frontier

The concept of the frontier is critical in the U.S.

It doesn’t just mean adventure and innovation, but danger — bad ideas and dysfunctional institutions have to be subject to the danger of the frontier.

blog.joelonsdale.com/p/to-save-amer…

Much of US Healthcare is run by cartels and crony rules; pricing is often nonsense!

Often the *cash* price a doctor charges is less than what insurers pay.

At @InstituteCicero we’ve created legislation to let patients save along with their insurer.

It’s called “Right to Save” @InstituteCicero Most Americans have employer-sponsored health insurance.

This system works for many, but premiums are skyrocketing, and there is no incentive for patients to find cheaper care given that they usually pay their insurer — not their provider.

Right to Save creates that incentive.

A few days ago, the Mayor of SF dropped this thread in which she tries to explain why the city has no money.

I thought we should provide a little translation for those of you who can’t follow California politician-speak…

https://twitter.com/LondonBreed/status/1603555951105437697?s=20&t=2dHeM4vusJWIfhTUX76-5Q

“The structure of Downtown has shifted.”

Translation: dozens of businesses have fled downtown SF because their workers are terrified of being assaulted (or worse) by criminals and mentally-ill homeless.

https://twitter.com/LondonBreed/status/1603555952547860480?s=20&t=2dHeM4vusJWIfhTUX76-5Q

Thread: for 2+ years the State Dept. has been bungling the US visa system. The wait time in New Delhi for a tourist visa is >800 days!

Are we supposed to just accept gross government incompetence nowadays?

In tomorrow’s @WSJ I argue that we shouldn’t... wsj.com/articles/the-o… This sloppy, unnecessary, rude, and unaccountable bureaucratic failure is increasingly having serious effects on the economy + American families.

There are millions of US citizens and permanent residents with family in India and elsewhere. Ask them how this is affecting them!

Until you stick colleges and universities themselves with the costs of their failures, nothing meaningful will change. HOW TO MAKE THE UNIVERSITIES PAY

These are policies that can be done *today* at the state level, without Congress or the President.

If any moderate or GOP states are looking for a slam dunk in response to the “debt cancellation” farce, pay attention.

Interesting to see groups still asking countries to "face up to their imperialist past" - there is some terrible history there for sure - but nobody asking countries to face up to rapacious / savage / murderous death-cult tribe past. I'm Jewish, but pre-Christian societies globally were *very often* absolutely brutal, with extremes of torture / rape / violence we can't imagine today.

There was wisdom and human kindness in many of these cultures - but often too a deeper darkness / unspeakable savagery.

“An Afghani interpreter I have come to know well over the years was hung in the streets last night. They melted his DoD ID into his chest. Cut off his arms. And killed his family.

His 10 year old daughter was spared and handed off to leadership.”

(From a note to my friend) … DoD’s pathetic mistakes aside - bureaucrats couldn’t approve our allies’ visas in time & no leader in our Govt was competent to figure it out.

So much to fix. But if this doesn’t call for civil service reform and accountability and an overhaul of Govt, I don’t know what does.

I explained why I left California in the WSJ, but still hope the Golden State gets its act together. My policy group @InstituteCicero has 10 bold proposals to improve how people live in California. housingforcalifornia.org 1/ We can affordably build thousands of miles of new high-tech tunnels, enabling tens of thousands of new homes and saving millions of hours for Bay Area commuters. housingforcalifornia.org/proposals/tunn… @elonmusk