On August 7, the Gainesville, Florida city commission voted to make three pedestrian crosswalks less visible, and the pedestrians using them less safe, under threat of funding cuts from Florida’s “Department of Government Efficiency.”

Why does Florida DOGE want to put Gainesville residents at higher risk of injury or death?

If you have to ask why, the answer is usually “money,” and saving money sounds like a reasonable focus for a “government efficiency” project. But that’s not the case here. The costs of painting the crosswalks were borne by a local non-profit. The costs of making the crosswalks less safe will be borne by the taxpayers Florida DOGE supposedly works for.

The real answer is “politics.”

The bright colors in question are the “rainbow” colors associated with the LGBTQ movement, and the local non-profit is the Pride Community Center of North Central Florida.

The Florida GOP’s approach to keeping its based mobilized often consists of currying various kinds of moral panic.

This is just a little opportunistic sprinkle of “OMG TEH QUEERZ ARE HIDING UNDER YOUR BED RIGHT NOW!!!” into the currently more popular “OMG TEH IMMIGRANTZ ARE HIDING UNDER YOUR BED RIGHT NOW!!!” potpourri.

In reluctantly giving in to the state’s demand, the city commission also voted to rename a local street for the late Terry Fleming, a local hero of the LGBTQ community and founder of Pride Community Center. Presumably THAT won’t run counter to the Florida Department of Transportation’s June 30 memo, cited in DOGE’s demand, falsely claiming that highly visible crosswalks jeopardize driver and pedestrian safety.

As of 2023, according to a column by John Henderson in the Gainesville Sun, the city had experienced more than 800 pedestrian and bicyclist injuries in the preceding six years and an average of seven deaths per year. Anecdotally, that problem seems worse around the University of Florida campus, especially at the beginning of school years when thousands of students come to an unfamiliar town and try to navigate unfamiliar streets.

I’m neither especially a fan nor detractor of, specifically, “LGBTQ art” in the public square, but brightly colored crosswalks seem like a cheap and practical way of attracting pedestrians to the right places to cross streets, while also making those crossings more visible to approaching drivers.

I think this might be one of those rare cases where a government program could make things BETTER. My proposal:

Invite local community organizations (not just LGBTQ — all charities, churches, arts programs, etc. welcome) to “adopt a crosswalk” for visibility enhancement with bright color patterns, just like they can now “adopt a street or highway” stretch for periodic cleanup. They pay for the paint and the city’s labor costs. No distracting text, just a little marker next to the crosswalk acknowledging sponsorship.

That would require FDOT and DOGE to get out of the way, and trying to get politics-driven government agencies out of the way is always an uphill fight, but one worth having.

Fewer dead people seems a lot more more important than owning the libs.

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 3, NORAD scrambled fighter jets to intercept a civilian aircraft that entered a “Temporary Flight Restriction” zone in New Jersey. What was this very special, very sensitive zone? A golf club. Why was it so special and so sensitive? US president Donald Trump was enjoying a round of golf there.

The day before that, the US Army Corps of Engineers increased the outflow of Little Caesar Lake into Ohio’s Miami River at the request of the Secret Service. Why? Vice-president JD Vance went kayaking on the river and a higher water level was required “support safe navigation of US Secret Service personnel.”

Or maybe not. An anonymous source, The Guardian reports, says the real purpose was to create “ideal kayaking conditions” for the Very Special Important Politician.

At this point, I should mention that I’m only picking on Trump and Vance because they happen to be in office. This kind of thing is far from new … but it got old a long time ago.

In 1992, a woman I didn’t know then, but have now been married to for 25 years, was eating with friends at a hotel restaurant when the Secret Service barged in and demanded that everyone leave. Then-president George H.W. Bush was on his way to that hotel, and The Little People needed to get out of his way.

Over the 12 years I lived in St. Louis, I lost count of the times that air and ground traffic were disrupted for hours at a time because apparently it’s unthinkable for the hoi polloi  to use runways, roads or sidewalks during (or for hours before) a big-name politician wants to fly in on a special plane and proceed by motorcade (without regard to the publicly posted speed limits, of course) to wherever he or she happens to want to go.

America treats its politicians like the kid in that old Seinfeld episode, “The Bubble Boy” — isolated and coddled lest contact with regular human beings harm them.

The rest of us apparently exist only to provide these power-mongers with votes, and occasionally with audiences carefully curated for high levels of adoration and applause. Outside those contexts, we’re to be neither seen nor heard.

Okay, that’s not completely true. We also fork over $3 billion per year for the Secret Service, $800 million for the Capitol Police Department, and heaven only knows how much for military air cover, etc., to ensure that Very Special Important People never experience  discomfort  due to  unintentional contact with us mere mortals. They definitely want to hear from us, or at least our employers’ payroll departments.

To which I retort: MOOPS! (If you know, you know.)

Don’t fall for the fiction that these pampered pols “work for you.”

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 — unless he chickens out — US president Donald Trump will impose a 50% tariff on American buyers of Brazilian coffee.

Brazilian coffee isn’t the only coffee Americans  find themselves paying exorbitant taxes on. Vietnamese, Indonesian, Indian, Colombian, Nicaraguan, and European Union-produced coffee just got hit with tariffs (paid by American consumers) ranging from 18% to 32% as well.

Brazil, however, accounts for 45% of US coffee imports, and 99% of the coffee we drink is imported (outside of Hawaii, American soil/climate are apparently not very hospitable to coffee cultivation).

How much coffee comes to the US from Brazil? About eight million 60-kilogram (132 pound) bags per year. Americans drink 179 billion cups of coffee per year, 491 million cups per day.

That’s about to get a LOT more expensive, whether you go in for fru-fru bespoke beverages prepared by expert baristas at your favorite shop, or just fire up your drip, “k-cup,” or espresso machine at home.

“DON’T MESS WITH PEOPLE’S COFFEE” strikes me as one of the most basic rules implicit in the maintenance of civil society, but apparently Trump didn’t get the memo.

What’s his political and legal rationale for the huge tax increases on American coffee drinkers?

Politically, he’s announced himself annoyed at the Brazilian regime’s prosecution of its previous president for allegedly trying to put over a coup and remain in office despite being defeated in an election. Sounds kind of familiar, doesn’t it?

Legally, he cites an imagined presidential power to impose new taxes any time he decides there’s an “emergency.” No such power is mentioned anywhere in the US Constitution — a document which, in fact, reserves the power to tax exclusively to Congress — but he doesn’t seem inclined toward self-doubt on the matter (or any other matter).

The negative effects on your wallet won’t remain limited to the tariff rate itself, either. There’s also the effect on global demand/supply, an effect that will likely linger long after the tariff is repealed.

The Chinese regime, Reuters reports, just licensed 183 Brazilian coffee companies to sell their wares in that very large market. American coffee drinkers’ loss is Chinese coffee drinkers’ gain. And absent a massive increase in supply, that likely sustained increase in demand  for Brazilian beans presages higher US prices even after Trump’s trade war insanity ends.

Wake up and smell the (expensive) coffee:

Tariffs are onerous taxes — on you.

They’re damaging economic sanctions — on you.

There’s nothing “America First” about them.

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