“The congressional town hall is becoming an endangered species,” Kate Santaliz writes at Axios. As the Congress goes into its late summer recess,  only 11 of its 535  members show such events on their August schedules.

Coming less than three months before all 435 members of the House and 35 members of the Senate are up for election or re-election, the recess seems like a fortuitous, perhaps even urgent, time for the candidates to seek face time with voters. But they don’t wanna. Why?

Part of it, I suspect, has to do with technology.

Social media keeps politicians in seemingly closer touch with their constituents, or at least their biggest supporters and detractors, than “town halls” could back in their heyday.

It’s become cheaper and easier to produce and widely distribute campaign ads of both “short commercial” and “long faux-news coverage” types than ever before.

Some politicians, including “my” “representative,” even do “town halls” by phone. They’re able to carefully curate both the audience (by only robocalling the people they want to reach) and the questions they have to answer (you record your question and staff selects it for inclusion or exclusion).

The purpose of political events these days isn’t so much retail public engagement as it is the production of sound bites for campaign use that’s more controlled and enjoys more reach than a huddle with a few citizens at a high school auditorium.

But the main reason for real, physical, local “town hall aversion” is the possibility of embarrassing confrontations with the angry sector of the public in question. And there’s ALWAYS an angry sector of the public, no matter which party the politician in question affiliates with or what policy positions that politician takes.

We’ve all seen it on TV. In fact, it’s generally the only part of a “town hall” event we ever DO see on TV outside of actual campaign ads.

Not the congresscritter getting applause for a new bridge in the district or a program that provides prosthetics to amputee cats or whatever.

Rather, the congresscritter getting an embarrassing question, on a controversial position or act, from one of THOSE people, followed by boos from the crowd, sometimes followed in turn by unfriendly physical interactions and/or the politician fleeing in terror.

A picture may be worth a thousand words, but that kind of thing can be worth many thousands of votes … for the poor, bedraggled, harassed politician’s opponent.

The same technology that’s more effective than town halls for positive “outreach” is also more effective for negative “outreach” — getting an opponent’s public discomfiture in front of many eyeballs.

So you can see why “town halls” are quickly becoming, as software people like to say, “deprecated.”

And, honestly, I think it’s a good thing for the public as well.

I grew up in an age when the “town hall” and “candidate forum” were just as carefully orchestrated, but far more effectively than now.

I attended many such events, and was even occasionally one of THOSE people. I once caught a US Senator into an outright lie, and another time flustered a US Representative into giving two wildly inconsistent answers to the same question, with press present.

Alas, Twitter and YouTube didn’t exist back then. Heck, camcorders were high-price-tag items back then. Now they do exist, and one misstep can tank a politician’s whole hoped-for results if someone presses “record” or “go live” at the right … wrong? … moment.

High technology combined with uncontrolled public interaction unmasks politics for what it is — a bunch of crooks lying TO you to get power OVER you. No wonder they’re running away from that.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

Turning Point USA’s Andrew Kolvet got people talking with an early August tweet in which he relates a student activist’s take on the “affordability” issue. “A burrito,” the student told him, “shouldn’t cost $20.”

On the putative political “right,” responses range between two endpoints.

At one end, various “burrito index” projects demonstrate that it’s difficult, if not impossible, to find a $20 burrito in America unless it’s delivered or from a  restaurant with a big-name chef that charges $200 a plate for things cooked with weird “reductions” and served covered in even weirder “aolis,” if you can even get a reservation without first showing your Oscar trophy or mega-millions net worth to establish cred.

At the other end, soon-to-be-former Texas congressman Dan Crenshaw’s “stop whining, get a job, eat Ramen like the rest of us did in college, on a budget with 4 roommates” tweet.

Before going further down the $20 burrito rabbit hole, I think it’s important to let Kolvet rescue himself from the notion that he’s a $20 burrito complaint radical himself.  He ratchets the situation down to the more obvious real problem:

“Yeah, a lot of this is a hangover from Covid and Biden-era inflation,” he writes, because of course a Republican will always shift as much blame as possible to a Democrat, “but the lived experience is the same: It just feels like basic things cost too much.”

Fact check: Yes, that’s true.

I did a little “burrito index” type checking in my own neck of the woods, and the most expensive burrito I could find cost $16.95.

The “El Dueno,” on offer at my favorite local Tex-Mex place, Los Avina in Archer, Florida, is “stuffed with steak strips, topped with white cheese dip, sautéed onions, bell peppers, grilled chicken and shrimp,” and is served with a side of rice (all diners get “bottomless” chips and salsa there, too). With a drink, call it $20 plus tip for a full meal, of which the incredibly robust burrito is only part.

So yeah, the “$20 burrito” complaint is wildly overblown.

But back to “the lived experience.” Yes, things cost more than they used to. That’s always the case, but it’s been MORE the case over the last few years. While there are various reasons for that, the biggest one is taxes, and the most pernicious, if not always the largest annual, tax is inflation.

People tend to think of inflation as just another word for “price increases,” and mainstream media use of the word encourages that.

But, as the late economist Milton Friedman explained, “inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon.”

To unpack that a little: Inflation occurs when there’s more “money” chasing after the same amount of goods, and that’s caused when “money” is created by a central authority (the Federal Reserve) which can just magically create more any time its partner (the US government) wants to borrow  a bunch.

In theory, the Fed tries to keep inflation at an annual rate of about 2%. In 2026, it’s running at about 3.5%, after hitting a high of 8% in 2022.

When a restaurant’s costs — ingredients, rent, electricity, labor, etc. — go up by 2% or 8%, its prices are going to go up as well. The restaurateur isn’t going to lose money for the privilege of serving you the El Dueno, and who can blame him?

If inflation is at “only” 2%, you’re paying $1 in taxes for every $50 you spend from savings, above and beyond income taxes, sales taxes, etc. Inflation is as real as those other taxes, just not as immediately obvious.

The Burrito Liberation Front’s mission is to  stop the Fed from creating, and the government from borrowing, so much money.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

On August 6, the US Senate’s Agriculture Committee rejected the latest version of the federal government’s quinquennial “farm bill.” I say “quinquennial” because Congress normally passes this legislation every five years, but it’s still operating on the 2018 version and has been arguing on a new version since 2023.

The major hang-up this year seems to be over a Republican plan that would require state governments kick in for the cost of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, aka “food stamps”). Democrats want a two-year delay on that requirement (most Americans don’t understand that SNAP is a welfare program for farmers, which is why it goes in the farm bill; feeding poor people is just a better-sounding excuse).

There’s also a set-to over the idea of “year-round E15,” under which gasoline with 15% ethanol could be sold year-round instead of only during certain months. That would mean bigger subsidies for corn farmers to produce stuff that isn’t food, pollutes the air, ruins older engines, and makes newer engines more expensive.

The “farm bill” concept is 93 years old, and it’s as bad an idea now, when only 1% of Americans work in agriculture, as it was in 1933’s first round of New Deal legislation, back when that number was 25%.

We keep getting better at producing more food with less labor, but apparently buried deep within the US Constitution there’s an amendment obligating American taxpayers and consumers to ensure that anyone whose great-grandfather wore overalls and drove a tractor gets to make a living and have a career doing the same thing. I can’t find it, but it must be in there somewhere, right? Otherwise, why does Congress spend more than $70 billion a year to make it so?

I don’t hate farmers — I come from a farming family and grew up on a farm myself — but I do think that some tough love would do them good. Not just moral good, material good.

Taxpayer subsidies won’t change the fact that even as American consumers pay more for food, American farmers earn less for growing that food. The whole idea behind the “farm bill” — that politicians in Washington are, or ever could be — better than free markets at deciding what gets grown and sold — is nonsense.

Instead of a “farm bill” every five years, why not try five years of free trade?

For nearly a decade, US presidents (of both parties) have screwed American farmers out of access to foreign markets by putting tariffs on foreign crops coming in, triggering “retaliation.” US agricultural exports to China fell from $38 billion in 2022 to $8 billion in 2025. The US now runs a “trade deficit” in agriculture, importing more than it exports.

Ditch the “farm bill,” end the tariffs … and let’s eat.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY