Joe Biden and Donald Trump are both old men. We already knew that.

Neither’s brain can be honestly characterized as hitting on all the key cognitive cylinders. We already knew that.

They’re both compulsive liars. We already knew that.

Did listening to the two geezers argue about their golf handicaps in CNN’s June 27 “presidential debate” tell us anything we didn’t already know about them? Nah.

On the particular night in question, Biden came off as more dazed/confused and Trump as more fever-dreamy/hallucinatory but in any given week we can expect each of them to display characteristics of both mental status sets.

They’re both decrepit. They’re both deranged. They’re both demented. They’re both dishonest. Neither adds up (or seems to have ever previously added up) to much beyond the sum of those characteristics.

Even if  someone, anyone, could plausibly be “qualified” to “serve” as President of the United States, neither of these two would come close to making the list. If sanity, competence, and morals were the criteria, we’d be safer picking a random name from the Elizabeth Arkham Asylum for the Criminally Insane’s patient roster than choosing between Joe Biden and Donald Trump.

Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on how one looks at it, we don’t have to worry about “qualifications” — because it’s impossible for anyone to be “qualified.”

If you don’t believe me, maybe you’ll believe Abraham Lincoln: “No man is good enough to govern another man without that other’s consent.”

In 2020, only about 47% of Americans voted for president of the United States.

About 90 million  weren’t allowed to vote. How can they have been said to have “consented” to be ruled by the winner?

Another 82 million chose not to vote. How can they be said to have “consented” to be ruled by the winner?

As for the 158.5 million Americans who DID vote, they hardly displayed unanimity. Can those who voted for Donald Trump, Jo Jorgensen, Howie Hawkins, et al. really be said to have “consented” to be ruled by Joe Biden?

Biden only knocked down 51.31% of votes actually cast … and because so many Americans chose not to vote or were forbidden to vote, fewer than one in four Americans could plausibly be said to have “consented” to his rule.

This time around, instead of arguing over which incompetent liar should rule us, let’s start thinking about how to do away with a system that allows anyone to rule us at all.

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

As a former mayor of Portage, Indiana, James Snyder will forever remain known for three things:

First, steering $1.1 million in city business to Great Lakes Peterbilt for the purchase of five garbage trucks in 2013.

Second, receiving a $13,000 “consulting fee” from Great Lakes Peterbilt in 2014.

Third, getting the Supreme Court to pretend the “consulting fee” wasn’t a bribe.

The extent of Snyder’s “consulting” appears to have been showing up at Great Lakes Peterbilt and telling its owners “I need money.” Dealership employees denied any “consulting” ever took place, nor could Snyder produce any contracts, invoices, or work product to back his “consulting” claim when federal investigators started sniffing around. The dealership’s controller testified that the money was a reward for “an inside track.” Snyder stood convicted of violating 18 U.S. Code §666 — “theft or bribery concerning programs receiving Federal funds.”

On June 26, the US Supreme Court reversed Snyder’s conviction.

In a bizarre majority opinion authored by associate justice Brett Kavanaugh, the court held that payment for “consulting” that never happened wasn’t a “bribe” in violation of §666, but a mere “gratuity” not covered by said statute.

Let’s have a look at that statute. It applies to:

“Whoever … being an agent of an organization, or of a State, local, or Indian tribal government, or any agency thereof …. corruptly solicits or demands for the benefit of any person, or accepts or agrees to accept, anything of value from any person, intending to be influenced or rewarded in connection with any business, transaction, or series of transactions of such organization, government, or agency involving any thing of value of $5,000 or more.”

Snyder secured $1.1 million in business for Great Lakes Peterbilt.

Then Snyder “solicited” a “reward” and tried to cover it up with false “consulting fee” claims.

Seems like an airtight case … but the majority opinion uses worries about the absence of a set of bright lines to distinguish “innocuous” or “obviously benign” gratuities from “criminal” gratuities  to justify overturning Snyder’s conviction.

Writing in dissent, associate justice Ketanji Brown Jackson notes that “§666 was not designed to apply to teachers accepting fruit baskets, soccer coaches getting gift cards, or newspaper delivery  guys who get a tip at Christmas. … We know this because, beyond requiring acceptance of a reward, §666 weaves together multiple other elements (that the Government must prove beyond a reasonable doubt), which collectively do the nuanced work of sifting illegal gratuities from inoffensive ones.”

Why the perverse majority ruling? Your guess is as good as mine, but my guess is:

After getting caught accepting millions of dollars worth of bribes … er, “gratuities” … and “forgetting” to disclose them, certain among the justices would like to get the most lenient possible precedents in place versus their own potential future comeuppance.

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

When, in the course of human events, it becomes obvious to all that the current American political system bears little if any resemblance to the values put forward in the 13 colonies’ July 4, 1776 Declaration of Independence, it’s time to consider doing away with “Independence Day” as a positive commemoration.

But not, I hold, worthy of cancellation as a holiday altogether.

The Declaration still has some pretty good bones to base a holiday on, and who doesn’t love a day off work for grilling out and playing with explosives?

Instead of celebrating the Big Lie that we live under a government which exists to “secure” our rights to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” we’d do well to instead turn our attention to a Festivus-style “airing of the grievances.”

The Declaration is chock-full of such grievances. It includes no fewer than 27 of them, many at least as relevant to today’s “independent” America as they were to Britain’s American colonies.

Let’s try just three of those grievances on for size.

“He [King George III] has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither …”

Sound familiar? No, America isn’t “full” — it enjoys a lower population density than Manhattan-like urbs such as Afghanistan and Yemen. Yet the US government has imposed a 100-mile wide “constitution-free” zone along the borders to facilitate its abuctions, cagings, and deportations of immigrants.

“He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.”

The federal government currently employs 2.95 million Americans — half a million more than the entire population of the 13 colonies in 1776. Most of them, most of the time, are up to no good.

“He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies, without the consent of our legislatures. He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to the civil power.”

The last time the US was legally at war was 1945 … but for some reason the US government keeps more than two million persons under arms, scattered across more than 300 military bases domestically and another thousand or more abroad. All at your expense, of course.

As to the “civil power,” politicians who don’t bow, scrape, and scurry to shovel money and power at the armed forces on demand are rare as hens teeth and ineffectual when they do turn up.

But wait — there’s more! Give the Declaration of Independence a read sometime and ask yourself whether it’s really produced results superior to the situations it decries.

Let’s move Festivus from December 23 to July 4, re-air the Declaration’s grievances … and do something about them.

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