Rodrigo de Mendoza

First of 8 boys 1 girl. Husband. Father of three boys. Architect. Artist. Triathlete. Motorcycle accident and coma for a month survivor.

[Rodrigo de Mendoza @grassdunes]

Las Formas de mi Luz: 1+1=1 https://t.co/9DvHL3WdMq

The day of our memorable wedding @cmschweitzer
We will be inseparable souls even after our deaths.

[Rodrigo de Mendoza @grassdunes]

It’s undoubtedly true to anyone with a basic understanding of economic incentives.

[Handre @Handre]

The welfare cliff does not trap poor families by accident.

Congress engineered a benefits system where earning one additional dollar can trigger simultaneous cuts to Medicaid, SNAP, housing vouchers, and childcare subsidies, collapsing your effective income by $5 or more. The government built a cage, and somehow we call it a safety net.

Take a single mother in Houston. She earns $22,000 annually and qualifies for $35,000 in combined federal and state benefits. She gets a raise to $25,000. That $3,000 in new wages costs her $18,000 in benefits. Her employer rewarded her productivity; the state punished her for it. No rational actor climbs that wall.

This is price control, but applied to human ambition. Every welfare threshold functions as a marginal tax rate that would make a Scandinavian bureaucrat jealous, often exceeding 80 or even 100 percent on the next dollar earned. This disincentive is the system's core mechanism.

Dependency concentrates political power. Families tethered to benefit rolls vote to protect those rolls, and the politicians who administer the programs vote to expand them. The cliff self-perpetuates. Free market economists have traced this perverse incentive structure for decades, but the administrative state expands regardless, because a bureaucracy that manages poverty also survives by it.

Genuine exit from poverty requires accumulating capital, building skills, and taking calculated risks. The welfare cliff taxes all three.

[Rodrigo de Mendoza @grassdunes]

Unfortunately most high school textbooks teach the war story so millions of students continue to believe the government could fix what it created

[Handre @Handre]

Seventy million people died in World War II, and the U.S. government spent the next seventy years claiming the war cured the Great Depression. This is one of the most successful lies in modern economic history.

GDP rose sharply between 1941 and 1945. Unemployment nearly vanished. The textbooks call this recovery. What they omit is that GDP figures counted government military spending as production. Building a Sherman tank that explodes in France raises GDP. It does not raise your living standard. Henry Hazlitt identified the real test of any economic policy: the unseen. Full employment in munitions plants is visible. The butter, the cars, the housing, the civilian goods that never existed because capital and labor went to ordnance instead: these are invisible.

Rationing, price controls, and conscription masked the underlying misery. Workers had paychecks they could not spend on anything real. That is suppressed consumption at gunpoint, not prosperity.

The Depression itself sprang from Federal Reserve credit expansion in the 1920s, then Hoover's refusal to let prices clear, then Roosevelt's systematic war on investment through the National Industrial Recovery Act, the Agricultural Adjustment Act, and punishing tax rates that reached 94 cents on the dollar by 1944. War didn't remove those structural errors, but buried them under emergency powers.

The genuine postwar recovery came in 1946 and 1947, when Truman (reluctantly, under pressure) slashed federal spending by +-40 percent. Prices adjusted. Veterans rejoined a labor market that could actually absorb them. Capital reallocated toward things people voluntarily chose to buy. Economists who predicted postwar collapse were wrong, because the state briefly stepped back and let markets function.

[Thomas Sowell Daily @DailySowell]

“I had just as much opportunity to play basketball as Michael Jordan had. But equal opportunity was not nearly enough to create equal outcomes.”

— Thomas Sowell

[Rodrigo de Mendoza @grassdunes]

JFK'S ADDRESS BEFORE THE UNITED NATIONS GENERAL ASSEMBLY (SEPTEMBER 25, ... https://t.co/QQJKzOpApK via @YouTube

[Rodrigo de Mendoza @grassdunes]

More than 50 years after Watergate, the Justice Department is reaching back into history to consider whether Richard Nixon was treated unfairly https://t.co/b4c1tPO3P3 via @WSJ

[Rodrigo de Mendoza @grassdunes]

Bien dicho Marco

[Whiplash437 @MrWhiplash_]

🚨🚨 MARCO RUBIO JUST DROPPED A BOMB 🚨🚨
He stood in front of the entire world and said what almost NO ONE has the guts to say:
“We in America have NO INTEREST in being polite and orderly caretakers of the West’s managed decline!”
Read that again.
America is DONE accepting slow suicide.
DONE smiling while the West is dismantled.
DONE being the polite undertaker of our own civilization.
Marco didn’t whisper it.
He declared war on managed decline.
This is the line in the sand.
This is the moment.
DEFEND THE WEST. AT ALL COSTS.
The soft days are over.
The caretakers have been fired.
🔥🔥🔥 RETWEET IF YOU’RE DONE ACCEPTING DECLINE 🔥🔥🔥

[Vivid.🇮🇱 @VividProwess]

BREAKING: The IDF has released a full list of 170 “journalists” in Gaza who were actually terrorists belonging to Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and other terrorist organizations.

They lied about Israel killing “journalists.”

This MUST go viral.

[Rodrigo de Mendoza @grassdunes]

@Rainmaker1973 “Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear.”
~Mark Twain

[Rodrigo de Mendoza @grassdunes]

https://t.co/YZAiWm5lnW

[Rodrigo de Mendoza @grassdunes]

@VoLSubstack As much as I like his thoughts and perspective, I think the mechanism exists in the way of elections.

[Rodrigo de Mendoza @grassdunes]

The best part is this can be emulated in any country if there is the political will and courage. Unfortunately most people view and understanding of economics is driven by envy.

[Rothmus 🏴 @Rothmus]

Argentina’s monthly inflation went from 25.5% in Milei’s first month to 1.7% in August 2026.

As expected when government stops printing pesos to cover the deficit.

Fiscal surplus first, then prices stop sprinting.

The “experts” who called this “austerity theater” now have 33 months of INDEC data to explain away.

[Gad Saad @GadSaad]

This will lead to Islamophobia.

[Darío Madrid @Dario_Madrid_F]

Castro del Río, 1936: los cuatro sacerdotes de una misma parroquia, fusilados en dos meses https://t.co/lIz9u5A2pT

[DogeDesigner @cb_doge]

An honest documentary about Elon Musk would have shown the man:

• Who is working to return astronauts to the Moon and establish a permanent lunar base.

• Who is working to take humans to Mars and make humanity a multiplanetary species.

• Who is bringing broadband internet to underserved villages, schools, hospitals and isolated communities worldwide.

• Who has deployed thousands of satellite internet kits to reconnect first responders, hospitals and emergency services after disasters.

• Who is moving the world toward cleaner energy while advancing FSD to reduce accidents and protect lives.

• Who helped bring astronauts safely home after their eight-day mission became a 286-day stay in space.

• Whose companies employ more than 150,000 people and support over 500,000 indirect jobs.

• Whose companies have paid billions in salaries, created trillions in value for shareholders and helped thousands of employees become millionaires through company stock.

• Who is giving paralyzed people new independence by allowing them to control computers and robotic arms using their thoughts.

• Who is working on mind-controlled wheelchairs and devices that could help paralyzed people feed and care for themselves.

• Who is helping restore communication for people with ALS, stroke and other severe speech impairments.

• Who is working on technology that aims to restore sight for people who lost it and give vision to those born blind.

That man is Elon Musk.

Leaving all of this out makes it a hit piece, not a documentary.

[Rodrigo de Mendoza @grassdunes]

Well said

[Brother Rachid الأخ رشيد @BrotherRasheed]

WHY SAUDI ARABIA STILL CANNOT HAVE A CHURCH

Why can Saudi Arabia build mosques across the world, while Christians in Saudi Arabia still cannot build a public church?

The answer goes back to Muhammad himself.

Muhammad said:

“I have been commanded to fight the people until they testify that there is no god but Allah and that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah…” Sahih al-Bukhari

He wanted the Jews and Christians to accept his claim to prophethood. According to another hadith, Muhammad said:

“Had only ten Jews believed in me, all the Jews would definitely have believed me.”

Sahih al-Bukhari

But the Jewish tribes of Medina did not collectively accept him. Conflict followed: Banu Qaynuqa and Banu Nadir were expelled, while the men of Banu Qurayza were killed after their surrender and judgment.

Eventually Muhammad declared:

“I will surely expel the Jews and Christians from the Arabian Peninsula until I leave none but Muslims.” Sahih Muslim

Another Hadith puts it even clearer:

“Two religions shall not coexist in the Arabian Peninsula.” Muwatta Malik

This was not left as rhetoric.

The second caliph, Umar ibn al-Khattab, carried out expulsions. Sahih al-Bukhari explicitly reports that Umar expelled the Jews and Christians from the Hijaz, including the Jews who had remained at Khaybar under an arrangement made during Muhammad’s lifetime.

Sahih al-Bukhari

The Qur’an itself established religious exclusion from Islam’s holiest sanctuary:

“Indeed, the polytheists are unclean, so let them not approach al-Masjid al-Haram after this…” Qur’an 9:28

And the very next verse commands Muslims to fight unbelievers, including “those who were given the Scripture,” until they pay the jizya. Qur’an 9:29

This is the historical and religious background to a reality that survives into the modern Saudi state: Christians may live and work in Saudi Arabia, but public non-Muslim houses of worship remain extraordinarily restricted. Foreign Christians, including Asian workers, Western expatriates and Egyptian Copts, have historically worshipped privately rather than in ordinary, publicly recognized churches.

Saudi converts to Christianity face an even more difficult reality and generally cannot openly establish Saudi churches.

Meanwhile, Saudi money has financed mosques abroad, where Muslims benefit from religious freedoms unavailable on the same terms to Christians in Saudi Arabia.

One standard abroad. Another at home.

And even after the enormous modernization campaign under Mohammed bin Salman, with concerts, international celebrities, football stars, tourism and massive entertainment projects, this ancient religious boundary remains remarkably difficult to cross.

Saudi Arabia can bring the world’s entertainers to Riyadh.

But building a normal public church remains another matter entirely.

My criticism is not only directed at Saudi Arabia.

Western and other governments should ask why their Muslim citizens can build mosques and openly preach their religion at home while their Christian citizens working in Saudi Arabia cannot enjoy equivalent freedom of public worship there.

International pressure has pushed Saudi Arabia toward reforms in other areas. Religious freedom deserves the same attention.

If Saudi Arabia wants to present itself as a modern country open to the world, opening its doors should also mean opening them to churches and places of worship for other religions.

Religious freedom cannot mean: mosques for us in your country, but no churches for you in ours.

[Rodrigo de Mendoza @grassdunes]

Sad or hilarious? Perhaps tragic

[End Wokeness @EndWokeness]

Feminists… until they enter the doorway of a mosque:

[Rodrigo de Mendoza @grassdunes]

As a European I am ashamed of what Europe is becoming

[Isaac @isaacrrr7]

ÚLTIMA HORA: El primer ministro de Eslovenia alza la voz y arremete contra la República Islámica por las ejecuciones masivas de iraníes.

Fue el único líder de la UE que mencionó los asesinatos que se han producido en Irán.

[Rodrigo de Mendoza @grassdunes]

Keep doing this Nick.

[War Correspondent @warDaniel47]

🚨 HOLY CRAP. Nick Shirley DECIMATES Gavin Newsom 🔥

“The governor of California is an ENEMY to the people of California. He’s literally working to support the fraudsters!”

“He COULD be working to expose the fraud.”

“How STUPID do you have to be to say ‘let’s go after the guy exposing the fraud, let’s not go after the fraudsters?’”

“That is what he’s doing. Why don’t you say ‘Hey Nick, great video - how can we help?’”

“These tax dollars don’t say right or left on them, Republican or Democrat. Each tax dollar is a dollar for the American people.”

“And when they go and steal these dollars from us, they are not robbing liberals or Democrats, they are robbing everyone.”

“Then the governor gets mad at the person exposing the fraud? How crazy do you have to be to think that logic?!” @nickshirleyy

Mic drop.

H/t @TVNewsNow

[Masih Alinejad @AlinejadMasih]

One minute. That is all it takes to listen to this beautiful voice. One minute to become her voice.

Parastoo Ahmadi, one of Iran's most beloved singers, has reportedly been sentenced to 74 lashes simply for singing. Her musicians and production team face the same punishment. In the 21st century, a woman will be lashed on her body because she dared to sing.

I want to scream. I want to shout in the street and sing loud and tell everyone: this government is killing innocent people, executing them, lashing them. This is not a normal government.

So I am calling on every famous singer, every big name, every artist with a stage and a microphone: be Parastoo's voice. Sing for her until she can sing again.

#ParastooAhmadi