Freedom Daily Archive

Beware Income-Tax Casuistry, Part 3

by Sheldon Richman October 1, 2006

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 In 1895, when the U.S. Supreme Court knocked out an income-tax law in Pollock v. Farmers’ Loan & Trust Co., the champions of income taxation in America suffered a big setback. To reiterate what I said in part two of this series, the Court, contrary to what many ...

A Legacy of Anti-Terrorist Failure in Lebanon

by James Bovard October 1, 2006

The Bush administration is fond of favoring tough measures against terrorists. With the Bush team cheer-leading all the way, Israel reinvaded Lebanon in July in response to Hezbollah’s seizure of two Israeli soldiers. Israel and Hezbollah had been exchanging bombs and missiles for months — actually, years — prior ...

Zoning’s Attack on Liberty and Property

by Bart Frazier October 1, 2006

One of the most coercive tools that public officials have at their disposal is zoning. City councils and county boards throughout the country use zoning regulations to dictate which uses are permitted and which are not on every parcel of land within their jurisdiction. While sometimes well-intentioned, zoning regulations nevertheless ...

Monopolies Versus the Free Market, Part 2

by Gregory Bresiger October 1, 2006

Part 1 | Part 2 Why do some think that successful firms are inherently evil? Why do many antitrust regulators actually believe that any firms that report consistently high profits should be under review by government officials? One part of the regulatory argument is ...

Lies and Myths about Opiates

by Randal Cousins October 1, 2006

Romancing Opiates: Pharmacological Lies and the Addiction Bureaucracy by Theodore Dalrymple (New York: Encounter Books, 2006); 146 pages; $21.95. This is a hugely important book. If it gets sufficient attention, it could be a major landmark in the ongoing campaign to introduce truth into the honesty-challenged issue of recreational drugs. Although written very much from a conservative point of ...

The Federal War on Gold, Part 2

by Jacob G. Hornberger September 1, 2006

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt revolutionized the monetary system of the United States and set the nation on the road of inflationary plunder that has characterized other nations in history. The actions of these two presidents also provide a textbook example for understanding the animosity and antipathy that ...

Beware Income-Tax Casuistry, Part 2

by Sheldon Richman September 1, 2006

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 The United States got its first income tax during the War Between the States, again demonstrating that war harms ordinary people in more ways than militarily. During any war government becomes an especially voracious consumer of the people’s resources and dissent is stifled or suppressed. So it is ...

The Perils of Emergency Power

by James Bovard September 1, 2006

The New York Times reported on June 23 that President Bush invoked the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to justify warrantless searches of Americans and other peoples financial data. According to Treasury Undersecretary Stuart Levey, the U.S. government may have conducted hundreds of thousands of warrantless searches of Americans and others personal financial data. The Bush administration used broad ...

The New Deal and Roosevelt’s Seizure of Gold: A Legacy of Theft and Inflation, Part 2

by William L. Anderson September 1, 2006

Part 1 | Part 2 The monetary system of the United States at the time of the Depression could not sustain inflation very long because the country was on a gold standard. If people sensed that the government was printing too many paper dollars, by law they could redeem those dollars from the government’s store of gold. Moreover, ...

Monopolies versus the Free Market, Part 1

by Gregory Bresiger September 1, 2006

Part 1 | Part 2 Market domination that has been achieved in the private sector through efficiency and consumer satisfaction is a phenomenon of a free-market economy. Even without any competition, such a business can never take customers for granted because of the possibility that new entrants will ...

The Eminent-Domain Origin of Shenandoah National Park

by Bart Frazier September 1, 2006

The establishment of Shenandoah National Park in 1926 is one of the greatest abuses of eminent domain in our country’s history. With the Commonwealth of Virginia condemning the entire area and removing more than 450 families, many by force, the park would eventually encompass 196,000 acres. After people were evicted, Virginia transferred the property to the federal government and ...

A Century of Interventionism and Regime Change

by Anthony Gregory September 1, 2006

Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq by Stephen Kinzer (New York: Times Books, 2006); 400 pages; $27.50. Since September 11, the U.S. government has overthrown the governments of Afghanistan and Iraq. Most Americans appear to think of these actions as defensible in principle ...