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The last letter we have in Thomas Jefferson’s handwriting is an RSVP, dated June 24, 1826. It is a response to an invitation from the mayor of Washington, D.C., to attend a celebration of the 50th anniversary of American Independence. Jefferson was too ill to attend. In fact he would die, as if American destiny had decreed it, on the day for which the celebration was scheduled: July 4, 1826, fifty years to the day after the adoption of the Declaration of Independence by the Continental Congress.

In his letter, sent from Monticello, Jefferson reflected on the meaning of the Declaration, whose language he had famously crafted. He showed that his revolutionary spirit had not dimmed.

He called the Declaration “an instrument pregnant with our own, and the fate of the world”:

The scientific reality is that sea level rise and increased storm damage will make heavily populated parts of Australia uninhabitable, and the economic reality is that houses in those areas will be uninsurable.

It is impossible to get insurance against likely events.

The only reason an insurance company will insure your car is they know it is unlikely that you will crash it. That’s why no matter how much you are willing to pay, the company won’t insure your car if you have an accident while drink driving.

Put simply, insurance is a gamble, and your premium is determined by the odds of a payout and the size of the catastrophe.

When you insure your house, you are betting that something bad is going to happen and the insurance company is betting that it won’t.

At the end of the year if you do not crash your car or burn your house down you will probably feel good about your choices, but not nearly as good as your insurer who got a few thousand dollars from you in exchange for your peace of mind.

But insurance companies don’t make risky bets. They know that there is only about a one in 600 chance you will have a house fire, which is precisely why they are happy to bet you won’t.

But see what happens if you try ringing them to insure your car against hail damage after hail has been forecast. Hint, no chance.

Insurers don’t make big bets either.

The Wrap with Amy Remeikis

Earlier this week, 2025 clocked up its 183rd day.

Most of eastern Australia would have been keeping one eye on the weather report, given the ‘rain bomb’, while others were reeling from the news an alleged child sex offender had been working at Melbourne child care centres.

Like every day, millions of Australians would have been lost in the life changing and mundane, and many wouldn’t have noted the date at all.

But July 2 mattered. At least for those focused on the battle we have to save the planet and life as we (sort of) know it.

From July 2, we are now closer to 2050 than we are to the Year 2000.

It’s just eight more federal elections away (presuming we continue to have three year terms).

That gives us 293 months to try and keep global warming to just 1.5 degrees.

The global average temperature increase last year was 1.6 degrees.

Spikes happen, and a single year isn’t enough to say it’s done.  But we are trending the wrong way.

For decades, the foreign policy elite in both parties insisted that America’s greatness has more to do with Damascus than Detroit, or Baghdad than Bozeman. It was a bipartisan delusion—driven by ideology, divorced from consequence, and devastating to the American people.

Against the wisdom of the ancients and our own founders, we went abroad “in search of monsters to destroy.” But our foreign exploits proved fruitless, producing little but fallen soldiers and toppled regimes, soon replaced by even more dangerous ones. Worse still, the sands of faraway deserts blinded us to the sand that our own house stood on.

Now is the time to rebuild—to restore our republic and usher in a new American golden age. But first, we must face the truth.

Neoconservative foreign policy, once mistaken as a legitimate branch of the conservative movement, has proven to be one of the most destructive ideological projects of the last half-century. With its soaring rhetoric and shallow roots, it promised that endless war could birth endless peace, that liberal democracy could be exported like grain, and that remaking the world was more urgent than restoring our own nation.

That misjudgment has cost this nation dearly. In blood. In treasure. In trust. 

Pat Buchanan foresaw this disaster decades ago. He warned:

In the past week, decisions in Salem and Washington DC have driven a stake through the heart of the $2.1 billion plan to widen a mile-and-a-half stretch of I-5 near downtown Portland.

The metaphor for this project is quickly changing from “driving stakes” to mark the start of construction, to driving a stake through the heart of speculative financial plans ODOT has spun.

The American Mind’s ‘Editorial Roundtable’ podcast is a weekly conversation with Ryan Williams, Spencer Klavan, and Mike Sabo devoted to uncovering the ideas and principles that drive American political life. Stream here or download from your favorite podcast host.

New York, New Left | The Roundtable Ep. 274

On this episode of Dollars & Sense, substitute Greg (Matt Grudnoff) and Elinor discuss the 91 millionaires who paid zero tax, the grim reality driving the gender pay gap, and why negative gearing is back on trend (but still making housing less affordable).

This discussion was recorded on Thursday 3 July 2025 and things may have changed since recording.

Host: Matt Grudnoff, Senior Economist, the Australia Institute // @mattgrudnoff

Host: Elinor Johnston-Leek, Senior Content Producer, the Australia Institute // @elinorjohnstonleek

Show notes:

Capital gains for the rich and persistent gender pay gaps: what we can learn from the ATO’s annual tax statistics by Greg Jericho, Guardian Australia (July 2025)

Wealth inequality by asset types. What’s driving wealth inequality? by Matt Grudnoff, the Australia Institute (February 2025)

The deterioration of the Tasmanian budget means that net debt is expected to reach $10 billion by 2027-28.

However, two simple measures at the Commonwealth level could raise an additional $303 million a year in revenue for the Tasmanian government, or $1.5 billion in total over the 5 years to 2030.

These changes are:

• Renegotiating Western Australia’s GST deal, which was struck under the Scott Morrison government, and gives WA a much higher share of total GST.
• Broadening the GST to include private school fees and private health insurance.

Independent Economist Saul Eslake estimates that for the five years to 2030, the average annual cost of the WA GST deal is around $4.1 billion a year, and says changes to the GST carve-up deal are not working as intended.

“A government that truly believed in equity, and was committed to prudent and responsible budget outcomes, would scrap this appalling piece of public policy,” wrote Saul Eslake in The Conversation.

“And an Opposition that was sincere in its claims to stand for fiscal responsibility would support any move by the government to do so.”

If that $4.1 billion was distributed to other jurisdictions on existing GST revenue shares, the Tasmanian government would receive around $154 million a year in additional revenue.

Over the period to 2030, close to an additional $770 million could be generated.

Despite the complaints of conservatives, it was not in disloyal subversion or terrorism against the American state that the American university lost its soul. Nor, despite the strictures of leftist radicals, did academia sully itself by colluding with government warmongers. In fact, the purpose of the modern university, since it was created in Berlin by Wilhelm von Humboldt and transplanted to America, has always been to serve the nation, not least by helping to produce and celebrate a national culture. As an institution of higher learning, the university has a duty to seek truth and knowledge in all its varied domains. But when we think about the university as citizens, we should think fundamentally of the duties of the American university to the state that privileges it and to the country which supports it.

In that respect, from 1775 to 1989 the American university had a pretty good war record. 

This interview is also available on podcast platforms and Rumble.

Zohran Mamdani’s emphatic victory in the New York City Democratic mayoral primary has shaken the core of American politics. A self-described democratic socialist, Mamdani ran a campaign centered around affordability as well as relentless denunciation of the genocide in Gaza. Mamdani drew the ire of Zionists, right-wingers and the billionaire class not only in New York City but across the country, including calls for his deportation by Congressman Andy Ogles and subsequent slander by President Donald Trump.

On this episode of Follow the Money, Bill Browne joins Ebony Bennett discuss the extraordinary scale of Labor’s victory in the May federal election, what the devastating result might mean for the Coalition, and why a large crossbench in federal parliament could be here to stay.

Guest: Bill Browne, Director of Democracy & Accountability, the Australia Institute // @browne90

Host: Ebony Bennett, Deputy Director, the Australia Institute // @ebonybennett

Show notes:

Major parties have never relied more on preferences, the Australia Institute (June 2025)

For major party leaders, the Greens, independents and minor parties are the closest threat, the Australia Institute (June 2025)

When: 5 August, 1:00-2:30 pm

Where: Room 341, Social Sciences Building (A02), University of Sydney

Speaker: Dr Ilias Alami