The Other Half of the Flame: Why Data Centers Are About to Get Cooling for Free

  By Staff Writer

The Oracle data centers now being built across the United States will run on 2.8 gigawatts of Bloom Energy solid oxide fuel cells. The first 1.2 gigawatts are already deploying. The numbers are staggering: 60% electrical efficiency, zero combustion, no moving parts, and enough power for over two million American homes generated on site without a single electron drawn from the grid.

But every watt of electricity those fuel cells produce comes with roughly 1.3 watts of high grade heat at 800 degrees Celsius. In the standard American deployment, nearly all of that thermal energy will be vented into the atmosphere while those same data centers burn additional electricity to run compressor chillers keeping the server racks from melting. The same fuel that makes the power could make the cold. The technology has existed for over a century. The rest of the developed world uses it at scale. The United States, once again, is choosing to burn fuel twice.

Absorption chilling is not a prototype. Albert Einstein and his former student Leo Szilard patented a version of it in 1930, a refrigerator with no moving parts driven entirely by a heat source. The technology powered RV refrigerators and hotel minibars for decades. At commercial scale, it is standard infrastructure in hospitals, university campuses, and district cooling plants throughout Japan, South Korea, China, and the Middle East.

The dominant system is the lithium bromide water cycle. Water serves as the refrigerant. Lithium bromide serves as the absorbent. The entire loop runs under vacuum.

In the evaporator, pressure is kept low enough that water boils at roughly 4 degrees Celsius. Liquid water sprayed over the evaporator tubes flashes into vapor, pulling heat from water circulating through those tubes. That chilled water, now around 7 degrees Celsius, gets pumped through fan coil units or radiant panels to cool the building.

The water vapor drifts into the absorber, where a spray of concentrated lithium bromide captures it. Lithium bromide has an aggressive chemical affinity for water molecules. It pulls vapor out of the chamber continuously, maintaining the vacuum that keeps the evaporator boiling. As the vapor dissolves, the solution becomes more dilute and releases heat, which a cooling tower carries away.

The now dilute solution is pumped to the generator. This is where the fuel cell's waste heat enters the picture. The generator boils the water out of the solution, leaving behind concentrated lithium bromide that flows back to the absorber. The water vapor rises to the condenser, returns to liquid, and drains back to the evaporator. The cycle repeats indefinitely.

The only electricity required runs a small solution pump and a cooling tower fan, roughly 5% to 10% of what an equivalent compressor chiller would draw. Everything else runs on heat that would otherwise be dumped into the sky.

Critics will point to the coefficient of performance. A modern electric chiller achieves a COP of 5 to 7, meaning one unit of electricity moves five to seven units of heat. A single effect absorption chiller manages 0.6 to 0.8. A double effect unit, using a second generator stage to capture higher temperature heat, reaches 1.0 to 1.3. On paper, absorption looks like a toy.

On paper, the comparison is a fraud.

The electric chiller's COP ignores where the electricity came from. A combined cycle gas plant runs at roughly 45% efficiency. Transmission losses eat another 5% to 7%. The true system COP from fuel burned to heat moved drops to between 1.5 and 2.5. The absorption chiller's fuel input is zero. It runs on exhaust. Its marginal COP is infinite. The only honest comparison is total system efficiency from fuel input to useful output, and on that metric absorption paired with an SOFC destroys electric compression paired with the grid.

Solid oxide fuel cells produce exhaust at 800 degrees Celsius. Single effect chillers need 80 to 120 degrees. Double effect need 150 to 200 degrees. Triple effect, still rare but commercially available, need 200 to 260 degrees. The SOFC exhaust is hot enough to run all three in sequence. First pass through a triple effect chiller for maximum cooling. Second pass through a single effect unit. Third pass through a hot water heat exchanger for domestic or process use. Only then does whatever residual heat remains get vented. Every stage extracts value from a resource that a conventional power plant would have discarded before the customer ever saw a kilowatt hour.

The combined efficiency, electricity plus heating plus cooling, can exceed 90% from a single fuel input. That is not a laboratory number. That is the operating reality of trigeneration plants across Asia.

The long term play pairs solid oxide fuel cells with large scale hydrogen production, closing the loop entirely. Bloom Energy manufactures solid oxide electrolyzers that are essentially their fuel cells running in reverse. Feed them electricity and steam and they split water into hydrogen and oxygen at 80% to 90% efficiency, far better than the 60% to 70% achieved by conventional proton exchange membrane electrolyzers.

The architecture is elegant. Colocate an SOEC hydrogen plant with an SOFC power plant. Run the electrolyzer when electricity is cheap or when renewable generation exceeds demand. Store the hydrogen. Run the fuel cells when demand spikes or the sun sets. Same ceramic, same manufacturer, same supply chain, just running in both directions.

Nuclear coupled hydrogen production is the most efficient pathway at scale. Nuclear reactors produce enormous quantities of both steady baseload electricity and high grade waste heat. Both inputs feed solid oxide electrolyzers at their optimal operating temperature without consuming additional energy to reach it. The Department of Energy has funded demonstration projects pairing nuclear plants with SOEC arrays. A single reactor coupled to electrolyzer banks could produce hydrogen sufficient to feed gigawatts of fuel cell capacity, with the fuel cells sited at the point of use to eliminate transmission losses.

When those fuel cells run on pure hydrogen, the only byproduct is steam. When their waste heat runs absorption chillers, the cooling is produced with zero additional emissions. When the electrolyzer is powered by nuclear or excess renewables, the entire chain from primary energy to electricity to cooling runs carbon free. That is the endpoint. The natural gas reforming that currently feeds most SOFC deployments is a bridge, not the destination.

The United States does not do trigeneration. The reasons are the same structural failures that keep residential fuel cells out of American homes while Japan installs its five hundred thousandth Ene Farm unit.

American electricity was kept artificially cheap for decades through a regulatory model that socialized infrastructure costs and externalized environmental damage. When a compressor chiller costs pennies per kilowatt hour to run, the capital premium for an absorption system looks like a bad investment. The utility bill never reflected the true cost of generation, so the efficiency case never closed on paper.

American capital budgeting is pathologically biased toward first cost. An absorption chiller costs more to purchase and install than an equivalent electric chiller. The fact that it pays for itself in three years through avoided electricity costs does not matter when the capital budget is siloed from the operating budget and the two departments answer to different vice presidents with incompatible incentives. This institutional failure is well documented and never corrected.

The American grid was built for centralized generation pushing power outward to passive consumers. Distributed cogeneration does not fit the utility's business model. The utility cannot meter the heat, cannot bill for the heat, and cannot control the heat. Interconnection rules, rate structures, standby charges, and exit fees are all designed to penalize anyone who generates their own power. Capturing the thermal output only deepens the threat to the revenue stream.

The trades have atrophied. Absorption chillers run under vacuum and use lithium bromide, which is corrosive and crystallizes if mishandled. In Japan and Korea, an entire ecosystem of engineers and technicians understands these systems because the technology is standard. In the United States, an HVAC contractor who can rebuild a Trane or Carrier chiller in his sleep will stare blankly at an absorption unit. The knowledge gap raises perceived risk, which inflates installation quotes, which kills projects before they start.

And nobody lobbied for it. Solar has the Solar Energy Industries Association. Wind has the American Clean Power Association. Batteries have the Energy Storage Association. Absorption chilling has no trade group, no lobbyists, no foundation funded white papers, and no presence in the policy conversation. The HVAC industry makes its money on compressor based systems and has no incentive to promote a technology with fewer moving parts, lower service revenue, and a smaller replacement parts pipeline.

The Oracle deal may finally force the conversation that fifty years of engineering logic could not. A 2.8 gigawatt deployment of solid oxide fuel cells is the largest single commitment to on site fuel cell generation in history. The waste heat from that fleet is an energy resource comparable to a midsize power plant in its own right. Data centers spend 30% to 40% of their total electricity budget on cooling. Every watt of that cooling load that shifts from electric compression to absorption is a watt of fuel cell output freed up for compute, a watt not drawn from the grid, and a watt of operating cost eliminated.

The initial 1.2 gigawatts is already deploying. If even a fraction of those installations include absorption chilling, the demonstration effect will be impossible to ignore. The economics will be documented at scale. The supply chain will develop. The knowledge barrier will begin to erode. The financing models will catch up.

Once a few high profile data center deployments prove the trigeneration case, the same logic cascades to hospitals that need power, steam, and chilled water around the clock. To hotels with predictable thermal and electrical loads. To food processors that need electricity, process steam, and refrigeration simultaneously. To cold storage warehouses. To district energy systems serving entire commercial districts. To the residential market, where a home fuel cell producing electricity, hot water, and air conditioning from a single gas connection makes the solar plus battery model look like the half measure it has always been.

The pieces are all on the table. Solid oxide fuel cells generating electricity at 60% efficiency around the clock with no moving parts. Solid oxide electrolyzers producing hydrogen at 80% to 90% efficiency, ideally coupled to nuclear baseload. Absorption chillers converting waste heat into cooling with almost no electricity consumption. Heat exchangers capturing what remains for hot water and space heating.

The combined system takes a single fuel input and produces electricity, heating, and cooling at over 90% total efficiency. On natural gas, emissions drop by two thirds compared to grid power plus separate heating and cooling. On hydrogen produced from nuclear coupled electrolysis, emissions drop to zero. The technology exists. It is deployed at gigawatt scale. It is manufactured in the United States. The only thing missing is the political will to point it at anything other than server racks.

Sources:

Einstein Szilard absorption refrigerator patent 1930 no moving parts

1498397056931467000-01781541 patentimages.storage.googleapis.com

US1781541A - Refrigeration - Google Patents patents.google.com

1475987278364626743-01781541 patentimages.storage.googleapis.com

Lithium bromide absorption chiller how it works cycle explained

Module 10: Absorption refrigeration - CIBSE Journal cibsejournal.com

ITP Industrial Distributed Energy: A Guide to Developing Air-Cooled LiBr Absorption for Combined Heat and Power Applications energy.gov

BROAD U.S.A. Absorption Chiller Principle and Configuration Webinar 2021 broadusa.com

Absorption chiller COP single effect double effect triple effect temperature

THERMODYNAMIC ANALYSIS OF A GAS ijirset.comTriple-effect absorption chiller cycle: A step beyond double-effect cycles osti.gov

TRIPLE-EFFECT ABSORPTION CHILLER CYCLE osti.gov

Bloom Energy solid oxide electrolyzer SOEC hydrogen production efficiency

Bloom Electrolyzer_Datasheet_Nov23 bloomenergy.comAn Efficient Electrolyzer for Clean Hydrogen bloomenergy.com

Bloom Energy Demonstrates Hydrogen Production with the ... bloomenergy.com

The Damage Done: How Lobbying Hollowed Out American Government

By Staff

The lobbying industry does not merely influence policy. It has replaced representative government with a pay to play system that extracts wealth from the public and funnels it to the organized few.

Lobbying is not a bug in American democracy. It is the operating system. The damage runs deeper than most citizens understand, touching every aspect of governance from the local zoning board to the halls of Congress. And the damage compounds yearly as the revolving door spins faster and the money grows larger.

The most fundamental corruption is also the least visible. When complex legislation moves through a state legislature or Congress, the elected officials do not write it. They cannot. They lack the expertise, the staff, and the time. So they outsource the drafting to the very industries the legislation is supposed to regulate.

A telecommunications bill is written by telecom lobbyists. A banking reform package is drafted by bank lawyers. An environmental regulation is shaped by the polluters it would constrain. The legislator introduces the bill, holds a press conference, and takes credit. But the text was supplied by the people who stand to gain or lose billions depending on where a comma falls.

The result is legislation that appears to address a problem while carefully preserving the practices that cause it. The loopholes are not accidents. They are the whole point.

Federal agencies are staffed at the top by industry executives who serve a few years, make regulatory decisions favorable to their former and future employers, then return to industry with a massive pay increase. The pattern is so consistent across agencies that it cannot be called coincidence.

Senior staffers on congressional committees leave to lobby the same committees they once staffed. They walk into their old offices, meet with their former colleagues, and negotiate provisions in bills they once helped draft from the other side. The relationships are the same. Only the paycheck has changed, and it has multiplied several times over.

This is not a few bad actors. This is the career path. The government job is the investment. The lobbying job is the return.

A member of Congress has a handful of staffers covering an entire industry worth hundreds of billions of dollars. That industry deploys hundreds of lobbyists, each with deep expertise, polished presentations, and cherry picked data. The member hears one side of every issue because only one side can afford to be in the room.

The think tanks producing "independent" research are funded by the same industries. The academic studies are commissioned by the same corporations. The patient advocacy groups are astroturf operations with industry money behind them. When a legislator asks for the facts, they receive an avalanche of material produced by people with a financial stake in the outcome. The public interest has no comparable infrastructure.

Members of Congress spend roughly thirty hours a week fundraising. That is time not spent reading legislation, meeting with constituents, or conducting oversight. The parties demand it. The campaign committees demand it. The system turns legislators into full time beggars and part time lawmakers.

Every hour on the phone with a donor is an hour the lobbyist's client owns. The donor may not ask for anything specific during the call. They do not need to. The legislator knows who signs the checks and governs accordingly. The implicit threat of funding a primary challenger is enough to shape behavior. The explicit threat is rarely necessary.

At the county and municipal level, the damage is cruder but equally destructive. Developers secure property tax abatements by promising jobs that never materialize. The new development consumes public services while contributing nothing to fund them. Existing residents pay the difference through higher taxes and degraded services.

Contractors who fund commissioner campaigns receive no bid contracts. Zoning variances are granted to connected applicants and denied to everyone else. The public hearing is theater. The decision was made at a lunch the public was not invited to.

The cumulative damage is not just financial. It is political. When citizens understand that their representative listens to donors and lobbyists rather than constituents, they stop participating. Turnout falls. Cynicism rises. The people who remain engaged are the ones who benefit from the system. The spiral continues.

A government that serves the organized few rather than the diffuse many eventually loses the consent of the governed. That is not a theoretical concern. It is the current condition.

The single most effective reform is also the simplest to explain. If campaigns are publicly funded, the lobbyist's primary weapon disappears overnight. They cannot threaten to pull funding that does not exist.

Every candidate who meets a threshold of small dollar donors or petition signatures receives the same allocation. No private contributions. No PAC money. No dark money. No corporate treasuries. Debates are mandatory and publicly organized. The person with the best ideas and the ability to connect with voters has a shot against the person with the best donor Rolodex.

This has worked in other countries. It has worked in several states and municipalities. It fails to pass federally because the current system benefits sitting incumbents, who would have to vote against their own advantage to enact it. That is the electoral problem the movement must solve.

The current approach of short waiting periods is a joke. A two year ban means two years of "consulting" before formally joining the firm. A five year ban means five years. The only serious solution is permanent.

Serve in Congress, as a senior staffer, or as a political appointee, and you never work for an industry you regulated or legislated over. No consulting. No board seats. No speaking fees. No exceptions. Violation is a felony with prison time. The former employer is jointly liable.

This would fundamentally change who seeks government service. The people who view public office as an investment in future lobbying income would disappear. The people who actually want to govern would remain.

The current lobbying disclosure regime is a disgrace. Lobbyists file vague quarterly reports that are rarely audited and almost never enforced. The public cannot know who is meeting with whom about what until months after decisions are made, if ever.

Replace it with a system where every meeting between any government official and any outside advocate is logged within twenty four hours. Attendees, subject matter, outcome sought. Every draft of every bill shows exactly who submitted which language, tracked publicly. Every former official's post government employment is disclosed with compensation. Every campaign contribution traces back to an actual human being, not a shell company or dark money vehicle.

Sunlight does not solve everything. But the current darkness enables everything.

It should be illegal for any company bidding on or holding a government contract to contribute to the campaigns of the officials who award and oversee those contracts. This is not complicated. If you take taxpayer money, you forfeit the right to fund the people allocating it.

This applies at every level. The defense contractor cannot fund the Armed Services Committee chair. The road builder cannot fund the county commissioner. The IT vendor cannot fund the agency head. Violation disqualifies the company from current and future contracts.

The professional political class exists because politics is a career. It should not be. Twelve years total across both chambers of Congress. No exceptions. No post service government pensions. No special access or privileges after leaving office.

The job should attract people who want to govern for a period and return to their communities, not people planning a forty year run followed by a K Street retirement. The relationships that make lobbying work require time to build. Term limits deny them that time.

Rules without enforcement are press releases. Every jurisdiction that passes reform should establish citizen audit bodies with real power. Subpoena authority. A budget for forensic accounting. The ability to trigger public hearings automatically upon findings.

Do not rely on prosecutors who may be reluctant to pursue politically connected violators. Do not rely on ethics commissions staffed by the same people they are supposed to oversee. Give citizens the tools to enforce the rules themselves and let political pressure do the rest.

State legislatures routinely strip counties of authority when they pass reform that threatens donor interests. The countermove is coordination. If one county passes reform alone, it gets crushed. If a dozen counties pass identical measures simultaneously, preemption becomes a political crisis for state legislators who must publicly defend why they are protecting corruption against the expressed will of their own constituents.

The same logic applies upward. If one state passes reform, federal preemption or industry flight is a risk. If a bloc of states acts together, the dynamic changes. Coordination is not just helpful. It is the only defense against the whack a mole counterattack that always follows local reform.

The Primary Weapon

None of this passes through a legislature that benefits from the current system. The only path is electoral. Primaries in safe districts are decided by small numbers of voters. A single issue reform movement that can deliver a committed bloc of primary voters can unseat entrenched incumbents.

The message is simple: vote against reform, face a primary. Win a few seats this way and the rest recalculate. Legislators are not brave. They respond to visible, organized threats to their job security. If they believe their seat is safe, they will never vote for reform. If they believe a challenger is coming who will hang their lobbyist ties around their neck, principles suddenly emerge.

The lobbying industry has spent decades making itself indispensable to the legislative process. It has made itself the only source of expertise, the only source of funding, and the only career path for the people who serve. Dismantling it requires cutting all three links simultaneously.

The money link. The expertise link. The career link.

Public financing cuts the money. Real time transparency breaks the information monopoly. Lifetime revolving door bans close the career path. Each reform reinforces the others. None works alone.

The industry is counting on citizens believing nothing can be done. The only thing that proves them right is if no one tries.

Sources:

Campaign finance data is publicly available through the Federal Election Commission website and OpenSecrets, which tracks money in politics, lobbying expenditures, and revolving door employment.

Revolving door documentation is compiled by organizations like Public Citizen and the Project On Government Oversight, which maintain databases of former officials who moved into industry roles.

State level preemption conflicts are tracked by groups like the Local Solutions Support Center, which documents instances of state legislatures overriding local ordinances.

Property tax abatement reporting varies by jurisdiction, but organizations like Good Jobs First maintain databases of corporate subsidy deals including abatements, with analyses of job creation compliance.

Academic work on regulatory capture goes back to George Stigler's economic theory of regulation and has been expanded by scholars examining specific agencies and industries.

Republican Party, Election Commission Sued Over Selective Ballot Access

A lawsuit has been filed against the South Carolina Republican Party (SCGOP) and the state Election Commission for allegedly unfairly disqualifying a candidate, Danny Ford, from the U. S. Senate ballot. The case raises concerns about the party's enforcement of its new candidate eligibility rules.

1. Background of the Lawsuit:

Danny Ford, a Republican candidate who previously ran for secretary of agriculture, was recently excluded from the Senate ballot after filing to replace Lindsey Graham, who passed away.

SCGOP officials claimed Ford did not meet their qualifications for candidacy.

2. Controversial Rule Enforcement:

Ford argues that the party's enforcement of a new rule limiting ballot access to those who voted in at least two of the last three statewide Republican primaries is being applied inconsistently.

While Ford was disqualified, Darline Graham Nordone, Lindsey Graham's sister, was allowed on the ballot despite having a similar voting history that seemingly disqualified her.

3. Legal Action and Temporary Order:

Ford’s lawsuit, represented by S.C. Senator Brad Hutto, claims the SCGOP’s actions violate both state and federal laws.

A judge issued a temporary restraining order to prevent Ford's name from being removed from the ballot, citing the risk of irreparable harm to Ford.

4. Upcoming Hearing:

A hearing regarding the lawsuit is set for August 3, 2026, where further arguments will be presented.

5. Allegations of Bias:

The lawsuit highlights allegations that the SCGOP, under the leadership of Drew McKissick, is favoring certain candidates while excluding others, raising concerns about fairness and integrity in the electoral process.

Danny Ford's legal challenge against the SCGOP underscores significant issues regarding candidate eligibility and fair election practices. The outcome of the upcoming hearing could impact the future of candidate selection within the party and the broader electoral landscape in South Carolina. 

https://www.fitsnews.com/2026/07/30/republican-party-election-commission-sued-over-selective-ballot-access/

A Modest Proposal To Tackle Government Fraud

Government fraud is a significant issue, with stories emerging regularly about its prevalence and the lack of effective solutions. The federal government spends $1.2 trillion annually on more than 200 programs administered by state agencies, with minimal anti-fraud measures in place.

1. Prevalence of Fraud: Fraud in government programs is widespread. A report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) highlights that only five out of twenty major programs have effective anti-fraud detection measures.

2. Programs at Risk: Many critical programs, such as Medicaid, food stamps, and education grants, lack proper fraud prevention systems. Only partial measures exist in ten of these programs.

3. Legislation Gap: Legislation requiring reports on fraud prevention measures lapsed in 2020, contributing to ongoing fraud risks. Audits from 2020 to 2024 revealed severe fraud issues in 18 of the 20 major programs reviewed.

4. Current Efforts: The current administration has initiated actions to address these issues, withholding funds from states like California and Minnesota over fraud concerns. Additionally, the government has established an Anti-Fraud Task Force.

5. Congressional Action Needed: There is a need for Congress to reinstate fraud reporting requirements to better understand and manage fraud risks. This could improve accountability within federal agencies.

6. Radical Proposal: One proposed solution to combat fraud involves stopping the flow of taxpayer money to state agencies altogether. This would mean taxpayers wouldn't send their money to Washington only to have it returned through various state programs, reducing opportunities for fraud.

7. Potential Benefits: Eliminating this funding pipeline could lower federal taxes significantly and force states to rely on their taxation for funding benefit programs, thereby increasing accountability for how state funds are managed.

8. Political Hesitation: Such a drastic change is unlikely to be proposed by politicians, as it could threaten their interests and the existing system that potentially benefits them.

Despite ongoing reports from the GAO and the establishment of task forces, the issue of government fraud remains largely unaddressed. The report suggests significant reform is needed, emphasizing that without strong measures or fundamental changes to how funds are managed, fraud will likely persist. The current tactics seem insufficient to eradicate the underlying problems linked to government spending and accountability. 

https://issuesinsights.com/2026/07/31/a-modest-proposal-to-tackle-government-fraud/

The Clarity Act Is the Trojan Horse

In "The Clarity Act Is the Trojan Horse," David Stockman critiques the proposed Clarity Act (Digital Asset Market Clarity Act of 2025), arguing that it threatens to undermine the potential benefits of blockchain technology by imposing a regulatory framework that favors established financial players over innovation and decentralization.

Bitcoin and Stablecoins

Bitcoin and similar cryptocurrencies are viewed as speculative assets rather than real money, lacking intrinsic value, earnings, or cash flows.

Stablecoins like Tether are compared to historical national bank notes, as they are over-collateralized primarily by U.S. Treasury securities, functioning as a distribution channel for Treasury debt.

The Innovation of Blockchain

Blockchain technology offers significant improvements for banking and brokering functions, such as custody, transaction costs, and settlement efficiency.

It allows for self-custody, reducing counterparty risks associated with traditional intermediaries.

The Clarity Act

The Clarity Act introduces a dual regulatory regime supported by the SEC and CFTC, which aims to promote compliance but ultimately creates higher entry barriers for new entrants.

Key provisions include registration requirements, disclosure mandates, and maturity certifications that favor larger, established firms, thus limiting competition.

Regulatory Capture

The legislation is seen as a classic case of "industry capture," designed to benefit major crypto companies like Coinbase and Ripple at the expense of smaller innovators.

Politicians supporting the Act represent a mix of interests, supposedly aimed at protecting the public but primarily serving established players.

Compliance Burden

Fixed costs associated with compliance (legal, reporting, etc.) particularly disadvantage smaller companies and innovative projects that lack the resources to comply.

The Act channels activities towards registered intermediaries rather than encouraging peer-to-peer transactions and self-custody.

Impacts on Innovation

The Clarity Act is poised to slow down innovation in blockchain and DeFi (Decentralized Finance) by freezing definitions and classifications in a rapidly changing environment.

Stringent regulations may drive projects offshore or make them opaque to avoid scrutiny.

Misguided Objectives

Although the Act is presented as a means of protecting investors, Stockman argues it creates a false sense of security and does not address underlying issues like fraud effectively.

Instead, historical legal frameworks and market reputation provide sufficient safeguards against fraud without heavy-handed regulations.

Market Dynamics

Stockman emphasizes that marketplace competition and transparency offered by blockchain technology inherently provide the protection needed against bad actors.

Regulatory measures could inadvertently push genuine innovation into gray areas or established players who can afford compliance.

The Clarity Act risks hindering the benefits of blockchain technology by imposing old regulatory models on new technologies designed to enhance transparency, efficiency, and competition in finance.

The author calls for a free-market approach where existing laws adequately address fraud and property rights without creating unnecessary bureaucratic layers that stifle innovation.

David Stockman’s critique of the Clarity Act presents a detailed examination of how the law, while aiming for clarity and regulation in the digital asset market, could ultimately jeopardize significant technological advancements in blockchain. By promoting compliance-heavy structures, it might favor traditional financial institutions over fostering a genuinely innovative and decentralized financial ecosystem. 

https://brownstone.org/articles/the-clarity-act-is-the-trojan-horse/

Maine Democrat Troy Jackson, Longtime Partner Are Second Cousins with 2 Children

Troy Jackson, a Democratic nominee for the U. S. Senate from Maine, is facing scrutiny regarding his personal life and financial disclosures. Reports reveal that he and his long-time partner, Lana Pelletier, are second cousins with whom he shares two children.

Relationship Background: Jackson and Pelletier are second cousins and have two children together, sharing a set of great-grandparents.They are residents of Allagash, Maine, and have not legally married; Maine does not recognize common-law marriages.

Financial Disclosure Concerns: Due to their unmarried status, it is unclear if Jackson will be required to include Pelletier’s finances in his Senate disclosure reports, which typically cover the candidate's spouse's financials.

Pending Disclosures: As of this week, Jackson has not filed his Senate financial disclosure or requested an extension.He previously faced tax issues and was reported to have paid $4,600 in late state income taxes last year.

Political Context: Jackson won the Democratic nomination recently, succeeding Graham Platner, who exited the race due to a sexual assault allegation.He has also been criticized for past behavior towards women lawmakers.

As Jackson prepares for his Senate run against Republican Susan Collins, his relationship and financial disclosures will likely be significant points of discussion in the campaign. 

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2026/07/30/report-maine-democrat-troy-jackson-longtime-partner-are-second-cousins-with-2-children/

Wheat Prices March Higher As Intensifying Black Sea Fighting Fuels Food Security Fears

Wheat prices are rising due to recent attacks on Ukraine's Black Sea ports by Russia. These strikes have raised fears about food supply disruptions and potential inflation.

Russian fire has targeted dry-cargo ships, affecting grain exports from Ukraine, a critical agricultural area.

Notable incidents include damage to a ship at Pivdennyi port and two other vessels near Odesa.

Ukraine also retaliated by attacking Russian shipping infrastructure.

The UN has warned that these escalations threaten global food security, potentially increasing costs for food and energy, particularly impacting developing countries.

Wheat futures rose by 3.9%, and the Bloomberg Agriculture Spot Index is at a three-year high due to concerns over the conflict.

The ongoing turmoil in the Black Sea is significantly impacting global agricultural markets, leading to higher wheat prices and heightened fears of future food inflation. 

https://www.zerohedge.com/commodities/wheat-prices-march-higher-intensifying-black-sea-fighting-fuels-food-security-fears