Articles written by Thomas Knapp
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This is the most important presidential election since the last one
Every four years without fail (and usually a little earlier in each quadrennial cycle), both “major” American political parties wind up and toss the same slow, fat pitch across the public’s...
Yes, the COVID-19 panic does call for drastic measures
As an old saying goes, it's not the fall that kills you, it's the sudden stop at the end. The world's politicians are innovating on the fly (pun intended) by trying to combine the fall – the...
A proposal for real coronavirus "stimulus"
On March 12, the New York Federal Reserve announced a $1.5 trillion injection of money into the U.S. financial system. Three days later, it cut its benchmark interest rate to zero and announced it...
The politics of panic are far deadlier than the coronavirus
U.S. President Donald Trump "Has a Problem as the Coronavirus Threatens the US," assert the authors of a New York Times analysis: "His Credibility." In the tagline and elsewhere in the article, the...
Iraq: America's Other "Longest War"
As the calendar prepared to flip from 2019 to 2020, protesters stormed the US embassy in Baghdad. As I write this, the action -- a response to US airstrikes in Iraq and Syria which killed at least 25...
Jedi mind tricks: Amazon versus the Pentagon and Trump
Amazon is one of the largest companies in the world, boasting revenues of more than $230 billion last year. But last month the company sued the US Department of Defense over a paltry potential $10 bil...
Thankful in 2019
A political writer's annual Thanksgiving column can be easy to write, or incredibly difficult to put together. It can also be inspiring or banal. The two are probably connected. It's always a difficul...
Voters say they want a third party. They should vote accordingly.
According to an October Rasmussen poll, 38% of likely voters say they intend to vote for "someone other than President Trump or the Democratic presidential nominee" in the 2020 U.S. presidential...
Holiday consumerism: Who decides what "nobody really needs?"
"Wasting resources, capital and income on stuff nobody really needs," Charles Hugh Smith wrote in 2017, "is a monumental disaster on multiple fronts. Rather than establish incentives to conserve and i...
"The Grid" is the problem, not the solution
On Oct. 9, Pacific Gas & Electric began shutting down power to about 750,000 customers (affecting as many as 2 million people) in California. The company claims the shutdowns are necessary to reduce...
Politicians: A necessary demystification
Politicians are people with jobs and with bosses. On its face that seems like a relatively uncontroversial statement, but I'm always surprised at how much time people spend looking for high principle...
Human sacrifice: a grand old American political tradition
On July 25, U.S. Attorney General William Barr ordered the Federal Bureau of Prisons to update its execution protocol and schedule five executions starting this December. Whether you support the...
Photo ID is obsolete and unnecessary. Facial recognition technology makes it dangerous.
In mid-May, San Francisco became the first American city to ban the use of facial recognition surveillance technology by its police department and other city agencies. That's a wise and ethical...
The "solution" to flag-burning is simpler than a constitutional amendment
On June 14 -- "Flag Day" in the United States -- US Senator Steve Daines (R-MT) and U.S. Representative Steve Womack (R-AR) proposed a constitutional amendment: "The Congress shall have power to...
Facebook isn't a "monopoly" - let's not make it into one
Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes, adding his voice to calls to "break up" the social media giant, calls it a "powerful monopoly, eclipsing all of its rivals and erasing competition." In recent years,...
Social media regulation: speak of the devil and in walks Zuck
In a recent column on the mating dance between Big Government and Big Tech, I noted that "Big Tech wants to be regulated by Big Governments because regulation makes it more difficult and expensive...
A preference for peace
I'm not ashamed to admit it: I'm a peacenik. I think war is a bad thing. I've seen it up close and personal as an infantryman, and I'd like to see less of it, preferably none at all, either up close...
Trump goes postal. But in a good way.
On Oct. 17, president Donald Trump announced plans to withdraw the United States from the Universal Postal Union, a 144-year-old international agreement which coordinates postal policies between 192...
JUUL Heist: addicts sue company for providing their fix
Nitasha Tiku of Wired reports on three lawsuits against JUUL Labs, makers of the JUUL e-cigarette device. The unifying complaint, in brief, is that nicotine is addictive, that the users are addicted,...
A proposal: Cut the Court
Well, here we go again. On June 27, U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy announced his retirement, effective July 31. Cue crisis, as defined by President John F. Kennedy's inaccurate...
North Korea: Pelosi versus Peace
Which is worse: The specter of nuclear war, or giving U.S. president Donald Trump credit for a significant diplomatic accomplishment? In her official statement on Trump’s Singapore summit with North...
Trump the politician: anti-abortion vs. anti-immigration
In early June, Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission (“the gay wedding cake case”) soaked up most of the Supreme Court decision media limelight, even though (or perhaps...
Net neutrality for thee, but not for we
“Net Neutrality” is back in the news. On May 16, the U.S. Senate voted 52-47 to undo the Federal Communication Commission’s undoing of the previous FCC’s doing of ... yes, it’s complicated....
