“A progressive who stays home on Election Day — or backs Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Cornel West, or No Labels,” reads the tag line on James Risen’s latest column at The Intercept, “is voting for Donald Trump.”

Well, no.

A progressive (or anyone else) who doesn’t vote isn’t voting for Donald Trump or for any other candidate.

A progressive (or anyone else) who backs Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Cornel West, or No Labels is voting for Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Cornel West, or the No Labels candidate (if there is one), not for Donald Trump.

Risen’s column is part of America’s quadrennial narcissism-by-proxy guilt trip: Your vote is all about him and the candidate he wants to win (Joe Biden).

You owe him that vote, by gum. Casting it your way instead of his way is “stealing” it from his chosen candidate.

If you don’t do as he says, you’re no smarter than (and could suffer the same fate as) German Communist Party leader Ernst Thalmann, who ended up getting shot at Buchenwald because he wouldn’t abandon his own party to stop Hitler.

Yeah, Risen goes THERE.

Don’t fall for it.

You don’t owe your vote to Joe Biden, Donald Trump, RFK Jr., Cornel West, or anyone else. Least of all do you owe it to James Risen.

Your vote is yours to cast for the candidate you most support, or against the candidate you most oppose, or for no candidate at all.

Even if it was true, as Risen insists, that only Biden or Trump “can win” — it isn’t, since America’s millions of voters are all free to make different choices — you’re not morally obligated to disgrace yourself by going along with the crowd and supporting either of the major parties’ corrupt, addled warmongers.

If past results and current polling are at all predictive, Donald Trump will carry my state (Florida) by several percentage points this coming November.

Even if he doesn’t, the chance of my vote deciding the outcome, and thus the disposition of the state’s electoral votes, are nowhere as good as my chance of winning a big Powerball jackpot.

Why should I bother voting at all? Maybe I shouldn’t. But if I do vote, how can I increase the value of my vote where my own goals are concerned?

The only thing my vote is good for, if anything at all, is “sending a message.” I’m not interested in “sending the message” that I support Joe Biden or Donald Trump, since I don’t support Joe Biden nor Donald Trump.

If I see a pro-freedom, pro-peace candidate on my ballot this November, I’ll vote for that candidate. If I don’t, I’ll write in my own name or just not cast a vote for president. There’s more, and better, “message value” in that, and I won’t feel like I need to take a shower and scrub with a wire brush afterward.

Either way, regardless of the election’s outcome, I won’t let James Risen guilt-trip me over it. Neither should you.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) 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 January 6, Canada’s  CTV ran a story on package theft in Montreal West, a Quebecois suburb. “Porch piracy” — grabbing parcels left at doors by delivery services — isn’t just a Canadian problem, of course. It’s become endemic in prosperous western societies, particularly in densely populated areas with front doors located at convenient dashing distance from streets and sidewalks.

What perked ears around the world in this particularly story, however, was a cautionary note from Quebec’s provincial police, telling victims not to post doorbell camera images or video of porch piracy to social media.

“You cannot post the images yourself,” said police communications officer Lt. Benoit Richard, “because you have to remember, in Canada, we have a presumption of innocence and posting that picture could be a violation of private life.”

But is going onto other people’s porches and stealing their stuff really a “private” activity?

And does recording (and, if one chooses, sharing) what happens on one’s own property, or on “public” property visible from one’s own property, violate anyone’s reasonable expectation of privacy?

I’d answer “no” to both questions, and I suspect you would as well.

Furthermore, presumption of innocence is a concept for judges and jurors in court proceedings, not a ban on people collecting and sharing information that might later be used to challenge the presumption.

For the sake of argument, however, let’s accept the claim that running off the sidewalk, climbing the stairs of your porch, grabbing the box from Amazon with a new pair of shoes you ordered as a birthday present for your mother-in-law inside, and running away is, all else being equal, a “private” activity which you’re not entitled to record or publicly comment on.

It seems to me that all else needs to be made explicitly unequal … and there’s an app for that — “terms of service,” so to speak.

Some enterprising entrepreneur should sell little plaques for  prominent display at front gates or on porch rails:

NOTICE: ENTERING THIS PROPERTY CONSTITUTES A WAIVER OF ALL RIGHTS, INCLUDING PERSONAL PRIVACY RIGHTS, WITH RESPECT TO PHOTOGRAPHS, VIDEO RECORDINGS, OR AUDIO RECORDINGS ESTABLISHING THEFT, PROPERTY DAMAGE, OR OTHER CRIMINAL ACTIVITY.

Maybe a shorter version would work, but you get the picture (see what I did there?), as will any would-be thief.

If such plaques make their way to market at a reasonable price, I’ll certainly order one. And display it, if it doesn’t get stolen first.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) 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

The US Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Financial Times reports, “is proposing to cap overdraft fees at as low as $3, potentially saving consumers billions of dollars a year and stepping up US President Joe Biden’s war on so-called junk fees ahead of the 2024 election.”

The simple version, for those unfamiliar with overdraft fees:

You have $100 in your bank account. You write a check or swipe your debit card for a purchase coming to $101. Instead of bouncing the check or declining the debit transaction, the bank covers the overage (bringing your account balance to $-1) and charges you an additional fee (putting your account even more into negative territory). Later, when you deposit your $500 paycheck, your account balance goes up not by $500, but by $500 minus that dollar overdraft and the fee.

The “problem” of overdraft fees (which can indeed be onerous — the Indiana Business Journal says they averaged $26.61, and could go as high as $39, last year) has always had two simple, easy, and long-used solutions.

The first such solution is for customers to not attempt to spend more  money than they have in their accounts.

The second is for banks to decline overdraft transactions.

In fact, many if not most banks already offer “no overdraft checking accounts” which inform the customer up front that overdraft transactions WILL be declined.

An even simpler explanation of overdrafts: They’re instant loans from your bank, and the fees are service and interest charges on those loans.

Don’t want to pay those service and interest charges? Don’t borrow the money. If you don’t trust yourself to not borrow the money, open an account that won’t LET you borrow the money. “Problem” solved.

Sometimes it’s hard to tell whether the CFPB’s mission is to actively and intentionally make life harder for poor people (as with its war on “payday loan” operations), or whether that’s just a side effect of good-hearted but idiotic and unnecessary ideas. Even though I oppose giving the CFPB any power whatsoever or even allowing it to exist at all, I’m going to generously start from the latter premise here.

Some people occasionally see a need to overdraft their accounts. Maybe rent comes due on the first of the month, but a paycheck isn’t going to hit until the third of the month, and an unexpected emergency room bill put the customer in a cash crunch situation.

Capping overdraft fees may seem helpful, but will actually result in more banks simply not allowing overdrafts at all — in the rent hypothetical described above, likely costing the customer more  due to late fees owed the landlord.

The cap proposal won’t “protect consumers.” It’s about pretending to protect them for political gain, but working to their actual detriment.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) 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