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 […]
Here’s my 2006 review of the James Risen book that ignited the first uproar about the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretapping. I noted: James Risen’s revelations on pervasive National Security Agency warrantless spying on Americans shred the final pretenses to legality of the Bush administration. Now the debate is simply whether, as Bush and his supporters […]
The Pennsylvania Libertarian Party had a rowdy convention yesterday in Harrisburg. Here’s a few photos from the event: Great beard, great smile: Bad Quaker Ben Stone: Two of the best freedom hellraisers anywhere – Jim Babb and Ken Krawchuck