Political Digest for September 9

A few quick hits about things that caught my eye this week

A Bitcoin medallion resting on a wallet. cryptowallet.com/

Here’s a few things I thought may be of interest to the liberty-minded to end the week: the Biden administration’s attack on cryptocurrency; the Census Bureau boosts Democrats; it’s OK not to mourn the Queen’s death; the U.S. government invades a Colorado man’s property, builds a waste treatment plant, and pays him nothing; missing workers; most Americans believe Biden’s speech was intended to incite conflict among Americans; and the government’s new definition of “vaccine.”

A black dot indicates that I will be writing more comprehensively about the topic:

• Cryptocurrency, and it’s just like I thought.

This week the Biden administration released a report, “Climate and Energy Implications of Crypto-Assets in the United States.” To sum up, the Biden administration sees cryptocurrency as a threat to its climate change agenda and the report advises that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Department of Energy (DOE), and other federal agencies “work” with the crypto industry and others to develop “effective, evidence-based environmental performance standards,” such as “very low energy intensities, low water usage, low noise generation, clean energy usage by operators,” and others. If the industry fails to meet those standards, well, too bad for you, the report states:

Should these measures prove ineffective at reducing impacts, the Administration should explore executive actions, and Congress might consider legislation, to limit or eliminate the use of high energy intensity consensus mechanisms for crypto-asset mining.

In other words …

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