“It’s the opening of a Pandora’s Box,” Donald Trump said on January 9, musing on the possibility of a court rejecting his claim that, as a former president, he must enjoy life-long immunity from criminal prosecution for pretty much anything and everything he did while in office.

“[I]f I wasn’t given immunity, then other presidents that we talked about today, President Obama with the drone strikes, which were really bad. They were mistakes, they were terrible mistakes. You really can’t put a president in that position. … A president has to have immunity.”

Personally, I’d like to see that Pandora’s Box opened in precisely the way Trump mentions.

In 2011, then-president Barack Obama ordered the murder of an American citizen — Anwar al-Awlaki — in Yemen. Whatever his alleged crimes might have been, he hadn’t been charged with, arrested for (or taken in resistance of arrest for), tried for, or convicted of those crimes in the United States. The basis for the murder was a Justice Department memo that wasn’t publicly released until 2014.

Later that year al-Awlaki’s 16-year-old son, Abdulrahman — also an American citizen — died in another Obama-authorized drone strike. When questioned on the matter, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs blamed the victim for having the wrong father.

In 2017,  US Navy SEALs murdered yet a third al-Awlaki — eight-year-old American citizen Nawar, Anwar’s daughter and Abdulrahman’s half-sister — in a raid approved by … hmm … then president Donald Trump.

What’s so outrageous about suggesting that a president who orders American citizens murdered should be held to answer in the same way, and face the same penalties, as a Mafia don who orders a competitor killed, or a regular American who hires a hit-man to murder a spouse?

Over time, American presidents have come to enjoy nearly unlimited power with little likelihood of being held accountable for how they exercise that power, and minimal penalties when they are.

Trump argues that that small likelihood and those minimal penalties should both be reduced to zero.

Don’t get me wrong: I believe that former presidents accused of crimes are entitled to the due process of law they denied Anwar, Abdulrhman, and Nawar al-Awlaki.

But broad  immunity for real crimes isn’t due process of law.  In fact, it DENIES due process of law, and justice in general, to the victims of presidential crimes.

Presidents should be held to a higher, not lower, standard of conduct than those they presume to rule.

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.

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It’s customary for op-ed columns to hang themselves on “news hooks” — the things you’re already reading about that just happened, are happening, or may be about to happen. The closest thing I to a “news hook” I could up with for this piece is that my friend Lloyd Sloan supports the presidential candidacy of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.  So now, if you cared, you know.

You’ve probably heard of RFK Jr. You may not have heard of Lloyd Sloan, who calls himself an “Upper-Left Whig,” and who I call an eccentric libertarian (but I repeat myself), but I really think you SHOULD hear about — and think hard about — his two-question political quiz.

Question #1: Is government too big?

Question #2: Is wealth too unequal?

There are four possible combinations of answers to the two questions, which can be plotted on an up-down, left-right grid, and the positions of the two major parties cover three of the four.

Republicans tend to think government is too big but wealth isn’t too unequal (that’s the “upper right” position).

Democrats tend to think wealth is too unequal but government isn’t too big (the “lower left” position).

But some of each “major party” persuasion answer no to both questions (the “lower right”) position.

Most “third” parties likewise fall into one of those three quadrants.

The “upper left” position — which Sloan dubs the “whig” position — is that yes, government is too big, and yes, wealth is too unequal.

I happen to agree.  Whether RFK Jr. agrees is an interesting question, as is what to do about it, but in this column I’d like to propose that the questions answer each other, and that the affirmative answers to both questions explain the big problem in American politics.

Why is government too big? Because wealth is too unequal. Wealth is power, and the powerful get the government they want at the expense of the rest of us.

Why is wealth too unequal? Because government is too big. It wields sufficient power to redistribute wealth and, contrary to what you may have been led to believe,  it generally does so in an upward rather than downward direction.

While Marxists are wrong about many things, one of their old saws cuts right to the heart of the matter: The state is the executive committee of the ruling class.

That ruling class is defined by its wealth, and the whole point of its rule is to preserve and increase that wealth both through, and as, political power.

What can we do about that, short of abandoning political government altogether (my preferred solution)? I don’t know.

Sloan proposes three starting policy initiatives: Taxing only the rich, freezing government spending, and leaving NATO.

While I’m opposed to taxation, government spending, and foreign military adventurism on principle,, I have to admit that any or all of those proposals would be a start.

We won’t get any of those three from Donald Trump or Joe Biden. So if you envision positive change through voting, consider looking elsewhere.

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

In December, Reuters reports,  India’s “digital rupee” crossed the milestone of more than one million transactions per day. Meanwhile, in early January,  the European Union’s central bank published a rulebook for, and Spain’s central bank  selected “partners” in a pilot/test program for, their own central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). In the US, CBDCs remain at the debate stage.

Governments around the world don’t like “cryptocurrency” very much, but they do like two things about it.

First, they like that Bitcoin, Ether, and other cryptocurrencies have popularized the “next step” of taking money into a completely digital paradigm … not just debit cards linked to bank accounts, in turn linked to theoretical dollars, euros, etc., but doing away with “cash money” (paper bills and metal coins) entirely.

Secondly, they like the idea that the average Joe may assume that CBDCs are just another kind of cryptocurrency, tied to secure/immutable blockchains and with at least some privacy baked into transactions.

To put it as succinctly as possible, no, CBDCs aren’t cryptocurrencies. They’re the digital opposite of cryptocurrencies in important respects. In fact, their main function is to serve as instruments of control over you, your activities, and your finances.

Less succinctly:

If you hold Bitcoin in a “non-custodial wallet” — that is, a wallet that you and no one else holds the cryptographic keys to — your account balance is secure, the transactions you enter into are irreversible, and anyone wanting to know who owns that wallet has to have more than the wallet address to find out. Bitcoin is not inherently anonymous in commerce (if you buy something that has to be delivered with your Bitcoin, for example, SOMEONE will know who you are and where you live), but it’s not immediately transparent to any centralized/authoritative third party.

A CBDC will be operated by a government or government proxy, and every last red cent you receive or spend will be instantly traceable to you … and, more importantly, instantly takeable FROM you.

Suppose, for example, that you’re a mechanic and accept CBDC “dollars” to work on someone’s Corvette. If the government decides that your customer is a drug dealer and resolves to confiscate everything he’s ever touched in an “asset forfeiture” action, the money you received can be instantly seized from your account.

Or suppose you say something in public that the government dislikes and it decides to “freeze your assets” while it investigates you for (to grab a current news hook) “material support of Hamas.” It’s a lot easier to “freeze” CBDC funds — with, pretty much literally, a computer keystroke — than to get hold of the coffee can full of gold Krugerrands you buried at your secret spot in Mark Twain National Forest.

Central banks are not your friends and their CBDC schemes are intended to increase their power over you, not enhance yourability to earn, save, and spend money.  At the political level, register your resistance as best you can. At the financial level, consider moving your finances into areas beyond their control.

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.

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