ABC Evening News last week did a segment on the Virginia hills where I was raised. When I lived there, it was a Beef Cattle Research Station. Now it is a Smithsonian Conservation Center saving cuddly animals from extinction. The first part of the ABC video has a few snippets of the beautiful landscape. This […]
In last Thursday’s Wall Street Journal piece, I listed a few peculiar AmeriCorps projects, including this one: “Members of a Nevada AmeriCorps program busy themselves these days by encouraging local residents to drink tap water and watch out for bears (‘bear awareness’).” But, after seeing this great Non Sequitor cartoon by Wiley Miller, maybe I […]
In response to my Wall Street Journal piece yesterday, some folks have asked if I was ever in AmeriCorps. No, but I did have a cameo in one of their Mississippi programs. When I was investigating AmeriCorps in 1999, I traveled to the Mississippi Delta Here’s the excerpt from Public Policy Hooligan: **** In lieu […]
Wall Street Journal The Reality of Feel-Good Government After nearly 20 years and billions of taxpayer dollars, AmeriCorps has little to show. By JAMES BOVARD The government-supported service organization AmeriCorps got a boost from President Obama in April, when he announced a new program to “connect more professional scientists and engineers to young students who might […]
My piece from the Foundation for Economic Education‘s Freeman, January 2004 “The more information government gathers on people, the more power it will have over them. The more power it has to monitor their peaceful activities, the more intimidated Americans will become.” Federal Surveillance: The Threat to Americans’ Security More Information Equals More Power JANUARY […]
The Foundation for Economic Education reposted this as a “timely classic” last week. A few highlights: *In recent years, IRS agents have been indoctrinated to see taxpayers as a class enemy. *The only Americans who have legal rights, in the IRS’s eyes, are those who can afford to hire lawyers and topnotch accountants to fight […]
American Conservative editor Dan McCarthy, in a University Bookman roundup of summer reading, made this comment: I’ve kicked off the summer with James Bovard’s memoir, Public-Policy Hooligan. The Iowa-born, Virginia-reared libertarian hellraiser recounts his youth in Front Royal and Blacksburg as he grows from “a protein pill-popping weightlifting champion into a library-addicted philosophy devotee.” Bovard […]
