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.

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“Attorney General James Uthmeier is putting the Roman Catholic Church on notice,” the Orlando Sentinel reports. “[I]f church officials take taxpayer funded vouchers for their schools, they should accept vaccine exemptions for students, too.”

The “school choice” movement in the US supports tax-funded “vouchers,” targeted tax credits, and “charter” schools, on the theory that giving parents more options on where, how, and by whom their children are taught isn’t just a good thing, but a thing that government ought to be, and can legitimately be, involved in.

Unfortunately, the real effect of that kind of “school choice” is to turn all the available options into carbon copies of the “public” school system it supposedly helps parents and students escape.

According to the Sentinel article, half a million Florida students use the state-issued, taxpayer-funded vouchers to exercise “school choice,” including nearly 83,000 of Florida’s 94,000 Catholic school attendees.

So far as I can tell, Uthmeier has never publicly declared a formal religious affiliation, although he cites generic “Christianity” as underpinning America’s Constitution and system of government.

The country’s founders disagreed, stating clearly in 1797’s Treaty of Tripoli that “the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion.”

Beyond his basic advocacy of Christianity, though, Uthmeier apparently considers his opinion on Catholic religious requirements more authoritative than the opinion of, um, the Catholic Church and the institutions it operates. Per the Sentinel piece, “Uthmeier, citing the Catholic Catechism, Pope Leo and scripture, argued Catholic doctrine does not allow its schools to reject vaccine exemptions for religious reasons.”

I’m neither a Catholic myself, nor well-educated in Catholic doctrine, and have no opinion on what that doctrine might imply about vaccination, but what we have here is not really a religious disagreement. It’s just Uthmeier announcing that, since the government pays the piper (with its subjects’ money), the government calls the tune.

Nor is the problem solely about religious schools. Any school that accepts taxpayer money finds strings attached to that money. We’ve already seen that happen with “private” college and university education.

When the GI Bill, Pell Grants, and government-guaranteed student loans started funding students at those “private” institutions, various government requirements on everything from accreditation to curriculum to race and sex discrimination came with those students and that money. The result: In terms of learning (as opposed to name, prestige, etc.), there’s probably little difference between attending most “private”  versus “public” colleges or universities.

As soon as any activity starts getting its FUNDING through politics, its OPERATIONS become subject to the same politics.

For decades, the closest you could get to avoiding that problem was to homeschool, and even then government often stuck its nose into your choices. Now several states have added homeschooling to their “school choice” funding options … as long as the homeschoolers follow a government-approved schedule, use government-approved curricula, and administer government-approved tests.

While Uthmeier’s vaccine diktat inflames “separation of church and state” arguments, its only real solution is “separation of SCHOOL and state.”

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.

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“On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution.” On July 29, Dr. Anthony Fauci said that 111 times in response to questions from members of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Subcommittee.

“What day of the week is it today?”

“On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution.”

“What color tie are you wearing?”

“On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution.”

And so on, and so forth.

I’m no Fauci fan, but I don’t blame him one bit for refusing to answer questions. His pardon from then-president Joe Biden for all actions taken between 2014 and 2025 wouldn’t cover any accusation of lying to Congress now, and his enemies in the Senate clearly have it in for him.

“What color tie are you wearing?”

“Navy blue with white spots.”

“LIAR! It’s midnight blue with off-white dots! You’re going to jail!”

American political conflict really has become that petty, and it’s a shame … because Fauci has a lot to answer for. Witch hunt tactics aside, US Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) performed a valuable public service by releasing excerpts from Fauci’s diaries.

I’ve been browsing those excerpts for a couple of days now; they run to several hundred pages so I haven’t had time to do a thorough beginning-to-end read.

They unmask (pun entirely intended) Fauci as a not very likable bureaucrat, flattered by attention and susceptible to that flattery, constantly butthurt by any attack on or even public disagreement with his pronouncements, and laser-focused not on “public health” as such nearly so much as on maintaining his position and reputation as America’s top “public health authority.”

That’s obvious from any number of issues the excerpts cover, but I’ve already mentioned masks, so let’s go there.

On March 8, 2020, Dr. Fauci offered sound, scientifically supported advice on masks in an interview with CBS’s 60 Minutes:

“There’s no reason to be walking around with a mask. When you’re in the middle of an outbreak, wearing a mask might make people feel a little bit better and it might even block a droplet, but it’s not providing the perfect protection that people think that it is. And, often, there are unintended consequences — people keep fiddling with the mask and they keep touching their face.”

That advice remains sound and scientifically supported to this day … but within weeks, possibly days, Fauci’s political instincts had him second-guessing himself. In an April 15 email, Fauci relents: “Walk out of the streets and people are wearing them anyway. We should be on board with them.”

More than just “on board,” Fauci became an avid mask evangelist and active mask scold. At least partially as a result of his efforts, the US, state, and local governments spent billions on masks and legally mandated their wear.

For many fearful and gullible individuals, the masks became  quasi-religious garments, signifiers of faith in St. Fauci.

What the masks didn’t do was prevent transmission of COVID-19.

How many Americans died from the virus after believing — because Fauci said so — that putting pieces of cloth over their faces would keep them safe?

Biden’s pardon protects him from criminal penalties for past misdeeds and the Fifth Amendment protects him from further incriminating himself by talking to Congress … but how about a class action lawsuit seeking damages in the amount Americans spent on the useless but mandated masks he abandoned science to shill for? Any lawyers out there who’d like a percentage?

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.

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