“If you vote for me,” Donald Trump told Libertarians at their national convention last May, “on day one, I will commute the sentence of Ross Ulbricht.”

Some of us believed him. Some didn’t. Some of us were willing to vote for him over that one issue. Some weren’t.

While it’s POSSIBLE that a few stray Libertarian votes put Trump over the top in what was actually a pretty close election, it seems unlikely. So that’s a promise Trump could plausibly kick out of just by saying he doesn’t think Libertarians held up their end of the deal.

More to the point, nobody expects politicians to keep promises, especially when those politicians will never have to seek election again.

That’s especially true of Trump, who doesn’t carefully curate his promises so as to keep them from conflicting with each other. At the same time he was promising to commute Ulbricht’s sentence, he was also promising to ask Congress to enact a federal death penalty law for drug dealers. Ulbricht was convicted of, among other things, distributing and conspiring to distribute narcotics, i.e. being a drug dealer.

So, don’t put a second mortgage on your home to make a big prediction market bet on the commutation actually happening.

But it COULD happen, and it SHOULD happen, and it happening would be a good thing for Ross Ulbricht, for his family, for his friends, and for America.

While Ulbricht was convicted “of” and “on” several charges, what he was actually convicted “for” was:

Running a web site that saved lives.

That web site, Silk Road, was the first major “darknet” market. It allowed its users to buy and sell things, including but not limited to drugs, anonymously and without government approval or permission. Its review system made it possible for drug buyers to identify differentiate reliable, honest drug sellers from unreliable, dishonest drug sellers.

In other words, due to Ross Ulbricht’s entreprenurial bent, fewer people got sick or died from overly strong heroin cut with fentanyl, fake MDMA (“Ecstasy”) compounded from N-Ethylpentylone and/or other far more dangerous chemicals, etc.

For the crimes of serving customers and saving lives, Ross Ulbricht was sentenced — after a farce of a kangaroo court “trial” — to life in federal prison without the possibility of parole.

Yes, he deserves a commutation.

He also deserves a pardon, an apology, a Presidential Medal of Freedom, and lavish financial compensation for his years in stir.

Whether he gets any of those things will, as of Monday, be up to a guy who’s indicated he plans to do at least one of them.

Hopefully Trump will deliver. If he does, he will, like Ulbricht himself, be owed the thanks of a grateful nation.

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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Here we go again: On January 14, the US Food and Drug Administration announced its latest rule proposal in the War on Nicotine.

Under the rule (which faces a 240-day public comment period before implementation, if the incoming Trump administration doesn’t withdraw it), cigarette makers would have to reduce the amount of nicotine in cigarettes.

The FDA promotes the rule as a way of making it easier for smokers to quit, and of making cigarettes less initially addictive going forward.

The actual result, as with some previous FDA stunts, will more likely be an increase in lung cancer, emphysema, and COPD among smokers.

As a 40-year smoker who’s now been “clean” for nearly two years but who still uses non-tobacco nicotine pouches (which, along with vaping devices/liquids, the FDA seized the power  to regulate by “deeming” them to be “tobacco”) after previous unsuccessful attempts to quit, I’m aware of certain truths

First, in order to quit smoking, one has to get REALLY motivated to quit smoking.

Second, a lower level of nicotine in a single cigarette won’t increase the desire or ability to quit or probably even decrease the likelihood of the initial addiction. The psychological component of smoking — force of habit and the the depressing absence of that thing in your hand — is the big deal, which is why nicotine patches, etc. don’t seem to help that much (I used Chantix, which DID help).

Third, while nicotine does come with some negative effects like increased heart rates and higher blood pressure, it’s far from the worst component of tobacco. It’s not a carcinogen and it doesn’t damage the lungs.

Less nicotine in a cigarette means smokers who are not already highly motivated to quit (including new smokers not yet “addicted”) will probably just smoke MORE cigarettes.

Which means they’ll MORE likely end up with one or more of the maladies associated with the “tars,” rather than with the nicotine, in tobacco.

In other words, the new FDA rule, if implemented, will likely have a negative, not positive, effect on “public health.”

As a commenter (“JdL”) on a site I publish suggests, suppose the FDA proposed to combat obesity by mandating calorie reductions in all food — perhaps by requiring that all food consist of 50% inert filler. Sure, some people who were REALLY motivated to lose weight would do so. And others would just eat more (some people would HAVE to eat more just to maintain weight), possibly harming themselves in the process.

The FDA produces terrible results even when it tries to do its actual job (approving/banning drugs and foods), and we’d do a lot better just letting the insurance industry use a UL-like system to advise us.

When the FDA receives more power from Congress (or just seizes that power through “administrative rule-making”), the results tend to get even worse … because the real incentives for government agencies tend toward expanding their own powers and increasing their own budgets, not toward “serving the public” on health or any other subject.

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

Well, here we are: After a long presidential campaign full of warnings from each “major” party campaign about the horrible things the other “major” party’s candidate would do to us if elected, Inauguration Day approaches.

On January 20, Donald Trump begins his second (non-consecutive) term as president of the United States.

Within days — possibly within hours — we’ll start finding out how accurate his opponents’ warnings were, and whether or not he really intends to keep his own campaign promises.

To some degree, the warnings and the promises are identical. For example, Trump would say he promises, and his opponents would say he threatens, to launch mass abductions, cagings, and deportations of immigrants.

In other cases, the promises keep changing, often in contradictory ways that leave us just guessing at what he intends to do, especially vis a vis foreign policy.

Some of his supporters expect Trump, based on his own statements, to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine and put Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu on a leash in Gaza.

Others among his supporters expect, again based on his own statements, to double down on US support for Ukraine and/or Israel.

What do I expect? Plenty in general, but nothing in particular other than the usual theatrics from Trump, from “both sides of the aisle” in Congress, and from the media.

I expect, in a word (er, acronym), BOHICA.

That’s an old bit of military slang for the predictable recurrence of negative events: “Bend Over, Here It Comes Again.”

Popular perceptions of Trump tend toward the superlative.

To his supporters, he’s a fearless, iconoclastic, possibly even divinely ordained, leader figure, disrupting the establishment to Make America Great Again.

To his opponents, he’s a whiny, self-dealing criminal in terms of personality, literally Hitler reincarnate and possibly even the Antichrist in terms of politics.

In my opinion, he’s just another politician, albeit one with a flair for the dramatic and a firm grasp of what H.L. Mencken called “the whole aim of practical politics …. to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.”

Every president, without exception, finds ways to be worse than the previous one. Some presidents also find ways to be better than their predecessors.

All presidents function within a system that’s resistant to change, but tends to drift toward increased presidential power to screw up all our lives.

Trump doesn’t look like an exception to those two rules —  but he’s better than most politicians at inspiring panic among both supporters and opponents.

That’s a job qualification. Panic is what politicians WANT from you. It’s the hook in your lip. Don’t be a fish.

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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