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

“Taking the Census” by Francis William Edmonds (1854)

“My bill,” US Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) tweeted in June, “will require the U.S. Census Bureau to conduct a new census immediately upon enactment of the bill. In conducting the new census of the U.S. population, it shall require questions determining the citizenship of each individual, and count US citizens only.”

The money shot: “[T]he bill will direct states to immediately begin a redistricting of all U.S. House seats process using only the population of United States citizens.”

Naturally, US president Donald Trump supports the idea.

So does Florida governor Ron DeSantis.

Why? Because Republicans want to rig future  elections by re-drawing — that is, re-gerrymandering — the American political map to benefit themselves.

One problem with the idea: It’s wholly, completely, and unquestionably illegal. According to Article I, Section 2 of the “Supreme Law of the Land,” the US Constitution:

“Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons. The actual Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years.”

The “Indians not taxed” and “all other persons” sections are no longer applicable. Native Americans became US citizens (and started getting taxed) in 1924; “all other persons” meant slaves, and chattel slavery was banned in 1865.

The Constitution requires the census to be conducted once within every ten-year period after 1790. It’s already been conducted for this period. An “interim re-do” would not be a valid census.

The Constitution requires an “actual enumeration” of every person in the country, citizen or not.

The Constitution requires apportionment of US House seats according to THAT “enumeration,” not to a count of citizens.

Constitutionally, MTG’s dumb idea is dead on arrival.

We don’t bother much with the Constitution anymore, though. And why should we? As Lysander Spooner noted in 1870, it either got us where we are now or didn’t prevent us from getting here. So it’s hard to argue with a straight face that it’s worth much.

But let’s roll the clock back to BEFORE the Constitution, to reasons for the American Revolution.

Does “no taxation without representation” ring any bells?

“Imposing taxes on us without our consent” featured in the Declaration of Independence’s list of grievances against King George III.

Non-citizens can’t vote, but the fiction used to justify shaking them down for taxes is that they’re “represented” in Congress  by virtue of being counted for House apportionment in the census.

MTG and friends want to abandon even that farfetched excuse in a ham-handed attempt to cling to political power for just a little longer.

And if it works, it WILL be for just a little bit longer.

They’re playing with fire, and when you do that you eventually get burned.

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