As I write this on the morning of Tuesday, August 29, forecasts predict that the storm known as Idalia will make landfall as a Category 3 Hurricane early tomorrow, about 50 miles to the west of my home outside Gainesville, Florida, then come right at me.

Any or all of those elements (when, where, how strong) could suddenly change, but two things almost certainly won’t:

First, within hours of the “all clear” signal, media and politicians will start clamoring for the President of the United States to board Air Force One and fly directly to wherever the devastation is worst and first responders are most overworked, because REASONS.

Secondly, not too long after, the President of the United States will board Air Force One and fly directly to the center of the chaos, because POLITICS.

Runways will be diverted from supply deliveries to accommodate the presidential visit.

Hangars will house Secret Service agents and press pool members instead of specialists arriving to save lives, restore power, etc.

Roadways will be commandeered for the presidential motorcade and police escort instead of cleared for ambulances and other rescue vehicles, trucks full of water and food, etc.

The president will arrive, get his picture taken with his arms around  survivors in front of their wrecked homes, shake a few other politicians’ hands, promise millions or billions in aid, then jet back to DC, after which people will finally get back to handling a bad situation.

None of that is necessary, but it  happens every time.

How much airspace was restricted,  for how long, between Los Angeles and Honolulu last week so that Joe Biden could fly in, glad-hand, mug for the cameras, and fly out? How many tons of badly needed supplies were delayed? How many cops, firefighters, and medics were distracted from helping people in need so a politician could be seen “doing something?”

I’m not a big fan of presidents in general, but I’ll be tempted to vote for the re-election of the next president who sees a large-scale disaster and resists the temptation to visit.

President Biden, after Idalia has her way with my area or some other, please just let us all know how much you care in a short television address, explain why you’re staying out of the way, then go play a round of golf or something. We’ll all be better off for your decision to handle things that way.

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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“The goal of our declaration of economic independence is simple,” according to Ron DeSantis’s presidential campaign website: “We win. They lose.”

By “we,” DeSantis presumably means everyday Americans. But he never really explains who “they” are, other than to reference shadowy “elites” no fewer than five times, and China a whopping 14 times, in his “declaration.”

He claims he will “protect entrepreneurship from central planners” … with vigorous central planning.

He’ll “demand that American companies act in accordance with American interests.” By doing what Boss Ron tells them to do.

He “will not tolerate woke corporations using ESG as an end-run around our constitutional system to impose heavy-handed, left-wing edicts through concentrated private power.”  But at the same time, “there will be no ideological litmus test for getting a loan, establishing a bank account, or running a business. ”

Which is it going to be, Ron? Can those “woke corporations” run their businesses the way they want to, or do they have to pass your ideological litmus tests?

He “will create a fair labor market” — with draconian immigration policies to exclude the vast majority of humanity from that labor market. If that means that American workers can’t get — or afford — many things for lack of willing hands to make them (and because he’ll prevent Chinese companies from selling them), too bad for us.

He reminds me a lot of US Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA).

Like Warren, most of his career has been spent in so-called “public service.” Other than a couple of years in private practice while preparing his first congressional campaign, he’s spent his entire adult life drawing a government paycheck. Public school teacher. Navy attorney. US Attorney. Congressman. Governor.

And, like Warren, when he sees a problem — real, imagined, or manufactured — his automatic response is to propose “solving” that problem by putting him in charge, with sweeping powers to “fix” it by ordering people around.

If there’s a difference between the two, it’s that elitist political careerist Elizabeth Warren doesn’t run around pretending to hate elitist political careerists, while that’s part and parcel of elitist political careerist Ron DeSantis’s schtick.

Fortunately, there’ another similarity between the two. Like Elizabeth Warren, Ron DeSantis looks set to fail in his bid for a major party’s presidential nomination.

That’s a small favor for which I’m duly grateful to the Almighty. Even if it means putting up with his misrule in Florida for another two years.

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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On August 23, the Southern District Court of New York unsealed an indictment accusing two Romans of money laundering.

“Romans” doesn’t refer here to people from Rome. It refers to two guys named “Roman” — Roman Storm of the United States and Roman Semenov of Russia.

And “money laundering” doesn’t refer here to actual money laundering in either the real or metaphorical sense. It refers to developing software that protects people’s privacy, namely a “cryptocurrency tumbler” which allows people to move money around without permission from or — hopefully — the knowledge of government spies.

The software in question is called Tornado Cash.

Unlike some “tumblers,” Tornado Cash is open source (anyone can see the code it runs on) and decentralized (it has no single “owners” or decision-makers and is governed by “smart contracts” and the votes of anyone who holds its “tokens”).

Storm and Semenov face the “money laundering” charges because, the government alleges, people it doesn’t like have used Tornado Cash to avoid US government sanctions, US government taxes, etc.

Programs like Tornado Cash scare the hell out of politicians. The ability to earn and spend money without their permission is an existential threat to their power over you. That kind of thing must be nipped in the bud at all cost. Therefore, selected victims must be made examples of, and Storm and Semenov drew the short straws this time around.

Tornado Cash takes the form of a “Decentralized Autonomous Organization.”

Governments don’t mind organizations, as long as those organization can be carefully monitored, tightly controlled, and harshly punished should they happen to get on any politician’s wrong side in any way at any time.

The “decentralized” and “autonomous” parts make it harder to monitor, control, and punish an organization.

Whether the Tornado Cash DAO is decentralized and autonomous enough to survive the attempts on its life (so to speak) is questionable. Because it’s a for-profit proposition, with token holders still maintaining some control over, and benefiting from, its operations, there may be further weak points.

But for now, the weak point is “who wrote the code?” The government is going after Storm and Semenov because they’re known to have been involved in doing so.

In the future, we’re going to need Decentralized Autonomous Programs, not organizations — anonymously authored, open source software that, once released into the wild, fulfills its functions without further human supervision.

With governments increasingly looking to get into the “Centralized Bank Digital Currency” game, your future options boil down to two:

Government can control every cent you earn, hold, or spend, in every respect, all the time, 24/7/365.

Or government can lose its control over money entirely.

This is an all-or-nothing scenario, folks. It’s one or the other. Choose wisely.

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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