"California paid in a lot more [to the federal government] than it got back — $83 billion in total. So did Washington state and much of the Northeast. Most red states were in the reverse position, getting much more from DC than they paid in return."

Putin’s rise to power 25 years ago was not only the beginning of the end for a free Russia - it was also completely avoidable.

In my first ever Substack piece, I reflect on what brought us to this recent somber anniversary.

open.substack.com/pub/grantthi...

Bravo, @anntelnaes.bsky.social.

I guess the new slogan for the Washington Post ought to be:

“Newspapers die in cowardice.”

anntelnaes.substack.com/p/why-im-qui...

Amazon has denied a leave of absence to an Alabama woman who was struck by the New Orleans attacker’s truck and shot in the foot during the attack. She worried she won’t have a job to return to when she recovers. www.nola.com/news/crime_p...

This suggestion by Mark Cuban caught my eye; might work, certainly worth floating, but I think insufficiently cynical. Opposition to phasing out coal isn't about jobs; it isn't even, mostly, about profits. It's a front in the culture war. 1/

Israel may cease to be a democracy in the second Trump term—as Trump pal Netanyahu has Trump’s support, knows Trump doesn’t care about democracy, and knows he’d have to face a pending domestic trial if he left office.

This move against Israel’s NYT is forbidding; it presages a slide into autocracy.

To financial types suddenly suspecting that the leopards may eat THEIR faces, may I say: I don't feel your pain