On September 13, the Biden administration announced a “Notice of Proposed Rulemaking” to “protect American consumers, workers, and businesses by addressing the significant increased abuse of the de minimis exemption.”

That’s a pretty bland way of saying that Biden and Friends are opening up a new front in the US government’s war on your ability to find and purchase the things you want at a price you find attractive.

The current targets of opportunity in that war: Chinese e-commerce outfits like Temu and Shein, which use the “de minimis exemption” to ship goods directly to American consumers at low prices.

Under the de minimis exemption, items worth less than $800 aren’t subject to the tariffs Donald Trump and Joe Biden have increasingly leaned on over the last few years as a way of rewarding  American business donors and organized labor supporters at your expense.

How things used to work: A US importer would order, say, $10,000 worth of, say, motorcycle helmets. They’d arrive in a big shipping container and if the tariff was 10%, the importer’s cost (passed on to retail customers, of course) now became $11,000 — and the customers’ cost came to that higher price plus the wholesalers’ and retailers’ markups.

How it works now: You find a motorcycle helmet you like online, priced with no tariff and fewer “middleman” markups. You click. You pay. It arrives. It’s not as quick as going to a local shop or ordering from Amazon, but it’s usually MUCH cheaper.

American customers love paying less for what they want or need.

American producers, wholesalers, and labor unions hate that you’re able to pay less for something you want or need … because they’re not getting their cut.

Domestic retailers, meanwhile, are increasingly eyeing the whole thing as a new supply chain streamlining opportunity. With so much commerce taking place online now, why not just drop-ship individual items directly from China to consumers instead of paying tariffs on bulk purchases that then require additional shipping and take up expensive shelf space until they’re bought  with the assistance of paid store staff?

Biden’s hoping Big Business and Big Labor will notice he’s ripping you off for their benefit and support Democrats in November. He’s also hoping voters won’t notice their lighter wallets.

Don’t buy Biden’s malarkey about “national security,” fentanyl, and “protecting” you from “abuse.” This is about paying political allies off with your hard-earned money, and that’s all it’s about.

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 best form of organization, Samuel Edward Konkin wrote in  1980’s New Libertarian Manifesto, “is a Libertarian Alliance in which you steer the members from political activity (where they have blindly gone seeking relief from oppression) and focus on education, publicity, recruitment and perhaps some anti-political campaigning (i.e. ‘Vote For Nobody,’ ‘None of the Above,’ ‘Boycott the Ballot,’ ‘Don’t Vote, It Only Encourages Them!’  etc.) to publicize the libertarian alternative.”

But wait, replied Murray Rothbard: “Suppose we were slaves in the Old South, and that for some reason, each plantation had a system where the slaves were allowed to choose every four years between two alternative masters. Would it be evil, and sanctioning slavery, to participate in such a choice? Suppose one master was a monster who systematically tortured all the slaves, while the other one was kindly, enforced almost no work rules, freed one slave a year, or whatever. It would seem to me not only not aggression to vote for the kinder master but idiotic if we failed to do so.”

SEK3: Poppycock! “Can you imagine slaves on a plantation sitting around voting for masters and spending their energy on campaigning and candidates when they could be heading for the ‘underground railway?'”

That debate — can voting be an effective activity in pursuit of liberty? Is it even morally acceptable? — outlived Rothbard and Konkin, continuing among libertarians to this day.

Thomas Paine thought “it would be strange indeed if so celestial article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated,” but it’s just not on offer in the electoral marketplace. We may never get it, and if we do get it, we won’t get it by voting for it.

On the other hand, history irrefutably demonstrates that most people will indeed “[sit] around voting for masters and spending their energy on campaigning and candidates” rather than risk the overseer’s whip by attempting to flee the state’s plantation.

Voting’s not really good for much if freedom is the criterion, and not even especially effective at lightening our burdens — we’re each more likely to win the lottery than to cast the deciding vote in any sizable election.

But that doesn’t make voting immoral.

Voting is the expression of a preference among limited options within a political system shaped and constrained by force.

The system is immoral.

The options within that system are usually mostly immoral (though voting against a new tax might not be).

Your preferences from among those options may be immoral too.

But stating your preferences (even between equally immoral options) is not, as such, immoral. It’s just … speech!

If I hold a gun to your head and a knife to your throat and ask you how you want to die, the immorality is mine for forcing that choice on you, not yours for choosing.

Vote, Or don’t. Your call. I support your right to express your preferences (and maybe “send a message” with a third party vote), or remain silent. But either way, don’t fantasize that you’re really accomplishing much.

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

Ryan Wesley Routh “believed the rhetoric of Biden and Harris, and he acted on it,” Donald Trump said in a Fox News interview after Routh was caught apparently lying in wait for, and with ill intentions toward, the former president.  “Their rhetoric is causing me to be shot at …”

Well, no, for two reasons.

The less important reason is that neither Biden nor Harris have ever publicly incited the murder of opposing domestic political candidates and have, in fact, inveighed against Trump’s would-be assassins.

Even if you don’t believe Biden and Harris possess strong moral fiber, that still makes sense. Our masters find the idea of being hunted by mere serfs horrifying, and that horror expresses as a protective attitude even toward their opponents within the ruling class. Cabin-dwelling “patriot” bumpkins and dirty hippie street protesters? Fair game! But touch not the elite! They don’t want to let THAT genie out of the bottle.

The more important reason is that words have neither eyes to look through a scope with nor fingers to squeeze a trigger with. That takes a person with the freedom/agency to make decisions.

While actual incitement — as opposed to mean tweets or snarky references — might rise to the level of plausible conspiratorial involvement, an assassination attempt requires overt acts — acquiring a weapon, learning to use it, seeking out or lying in wait for the target, aiming the weapon, firing it.

So far as we know, Joe Biden didn’t play straw buyer to procure a weapon for Routh, nor did Harris give the man a lift in her limo, dropping him off near Trump’s golf course, nor have either of them ever spoken with or directly to him.

All this blather about “civility” and “lowering the temperature” and Person A’s political speechification somehow making Person A responsible for Person B’s actions, even if Person A doesn’t know Person B from Adam is just that: Blather.

Sticks and stones may break our bones, but words can’t, for the most part, buy a gun for someone else or force that someone else to aim and fire it.

We’re all responsible for our own actions. If we let ourselves become obsessed with or deranged by political rhetoric such that we engage in counter-productive violence (hint: If Routh  or Thomas Matthew Crooks had succeeded in killing Trump, the MAGA cult would have become stronger, not weaker), that’s on us.

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