Free Republic

Taft unveils $2.3B tax-hike proposal Some Republicans stunned by governor's plan By William Hershey Columbus Bureau COLUMBUS | Gov. Bob Taft on Thursday outlined a plan to raise taxes by nearly $2.3 billion during two years as part of a sweeping reform package that would affect every major state tax and the municipal income tax system. Tax Commissioner Tom Zaino, who joined Taft at a news conference to unveil the plan, called it a "rebirth" of the state tax code. The plan prompted comparisons to the enactment of the state income tax in 1971 under Gov. John J. Gilligan and...

Behind the Headlines by Justin RaimondoAntiwar.com April 8, 2002 WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA POSTREL?Post-9/11: Who speaks for libertarianism – the Old Right or the Neocon Clones? A note from the author: I apologize, in advance, for the sheer length of this column, but since it addresses the sell-out of basic libertarian principles by people and institutions who purport to speak in its name, I thought it important to address these questions thoroughly, with extensive quotations from those I name. Too bad, in attacking Antiwar.com, these pathetic losers didn't do the same – but then what can one expect from craven...

Jerry Taylor believes he can change the minds of conservative climate skeptics. After all, he helped plant the doubts for many in the first place. He’s president of the Niskanen Center, a libertarian-leaning Washington, DC, think tank he founded in 2014. He and his colleagues there are trying to build support for the passage of an aggressive federal carbon tax, through discussions with Washington insiders, with a particular focus on Republican legislators and their staff. Lesson one: Pick the right targets Political scientists consistently find that mass opinion doesn’t drive the policy debate, so much as the other way around....

Richard Epstein contrasts two recent actions by the Trump Administration — the imposition of tariffs on steel and aluminum, and the blocking of a foreign company’s attempts to take over an American tech firm — to demonstrate when national security concerns justify restrictions on trade ... and when they don’t.

The pro-mass immigration billionaires Charles and David Koch, known informally as the “Koch brothers,” have committed to opposing President Trump’s popular plan to reduce legal immigration levels to raise the wages and quality of life for America’s working and middle class.

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. A 9-year-old girl unwittingly ate, and handed out to other classmates, THC-laced candy, school officials said. The girl brought the candies to school last Thursday and said she could not see...The student who brought them to school did not know they were medicinal...

Conservative news outlets have been vocal in their skepticism toward colleges and universities while the liberal media has remained complicit in their overall approval. Now, as a more progressive generation of millennials finds itself increasingly unemployed or underemployed, it seems as though the left might be turning against academia. Last week, the Atlantic, one of the Left’s longest-enduring supporters, published a blistering critique of today’s college system from a tenured George Mason University professor. In the article, Bryan Caplan, a libertarian-leaning professor, decries higher education as “wasteful” and “irrelevant.” Caplan brilliantly points out what employers have known for years. “[D]espite...

Libertarianism.org, a project from the Cato Institute, claimed “Islamic teachings are consistent [with] many libertarian principles, such as tolerance, property rights & individualism” in a tweet on Tuesday. In the post linked in the tweet, Libertarianism.org also praised Ibn Khaldun as a libertarian hero, describing him as “the most consistent of the many free-market economists in Islamic history,” despite the fact that Khaldun promoted slavery. “Therefore, the Negro nation are, as a rule, submissive to slavery, because [Negroes] have little [that is essentially] human and have attributes that are quite similar to those of dumb animals, as we have stated,”...

Augustus Invictus, a former Libertarian Party candidate for U.S. Senate from Orlando most famous for saying he sacrificed a goat and drank its blood, had an important role in the white nationalist “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville on Saturday. Invictus, 34, was listed as a featured marcher for the Saturday event, which was roundly condemned after marchers carried Nazi flags, performed Hitler salutes and chanted white supremacist and anti-Semitic sayings while carrying torches. He could not be reached for comment Monday. Invictus lost the 2016 Libertarian primary for U.S. Senate in Florida to Paul Stanton, but not before state...

What do you do when you realize you may be too conservative to be a libertarian? Austin Petersen, best known for running for the Libertarian Party presidential nomination in 2016, is giving the Republican Party a try. Advocating “pro-life and pro-Constitution” values, Petersen is challenging incumbent Sen. Claire McCaskill in Missouri for the 2018 midterm elections. His decision came after thousands of phone calls reaching out directly to his supporters, who overwhelmingly urged him to run as a Republican, Petersen explained on Wednesday’s “Pat & Stu.” “I decided to take their advice because they’re the ones who are putting all...

The insult is that gubernatorial debates in Virginia are little more than smaller versions of the carefully packaged affairs we’ve all witnessed at the national level. What people watch for and what the press and political junkies delight in are those “gotcha” moments that make for great copy and easy attack lines. But let’s indulge Gillespie on his demand for many debates and ignore his own ducking and dodging on the issue in the waning months of the Republican primary. Let’s have 10 debates. Or 19, as the Roanoke Times has suggested. But let’s also insist on a couple of...

Student also had her LinkedIn profile posted, called racist. Jessica Murphy, a 20-year-old student at the University of Wisconsin Green Bay, recently published a column that represented the culmination of months’ worth of work and research, including a dozen public records act requests to the University of Wisconsin system. Her target? Biased classes offered through the public university system that indoctrinate rather than teach, and “degrade capitalism, praise Marxism and encourage a ‘social justice warrior’ ideology,” she wrote in her piece, headlined “Top Five Wasteful Classes in the UW System.” Published Monday by the MacIver Institute, a Wisconsin-based think tank...

Bill would create 500,000 new visas, include path to citizenship, and be open to current aliens A bill introduced this month by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) would increase foreign guest workers by up to 500,000 a year and offer a back-door amnesty for illegal immigrants. The legislation, the State Sponsored Visa Pilot Program Act of 2017, has attracted support from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the libertarian-oriented Cato Institute. “We pretty strongly oppose it. It’s an indefinite renewable visa. In our eyes, that’s a permanent worker.” The bill would represent a massive increase in the number of non-immigrant visas...

It has become very clear in recent weeks that the Libertarian Party Leadership just can’t keep their feet out of their mouths…and like it that way. This should come as no surprise coming from the same party who quotes the Satanic Temple Tenents during A Christian Holy week, sells their principles in a pay to play scheme, or announces that abortion is a non-issue to a party which is clearly divided in the issue. In the latest incident, Libertarian Party Vice Chairman Arvin Vohra had the following to say regarding troops and veterans. "A common excuse to join the military,...

Former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson, the two-time Libertarian Party presidential candidate, says he’s lost faith in the electoral process and vowed never to run again. He will now focus all his efforts on legalizing marijuana. Govs. Johnson and Weld became the first ticket of any party to feature two governors since the 1948 presidential election and ended up receiving nearly 4.5 million votes nationally, far more than his 2012 popular vote total. While still not a viable electoral force, the 2016 presidential election marked the Libertarian Party’s most successful presidential run to date and the most successful third-party candidacy...

Rock and politics… what hath Charlie Daniels wrought?While the whining lyrics of Elton John, Green Day, Sting and Bruce Springsteen dominate the charts when it comes to political songs making their way to the charts, there have been more than a few that managed to work their way into the hearts of conservitarians everywhere.While most of the tunes on this list are openly and unashamedly jingoistic, a few have managed over time and circumstances to easily fall into the small government and/or flat-out nationalistic leanings of many Rock fans.In no particular order;

Two vastly different pictures of Sweden are being painted by opposing forces in the American media. The leaders of the Sweden Democrats (the Swedish version of France’s National Front) wrote a rather dire op-ed in The Wall Street Journal proclaiming President Donald Trump is absolutely right when it comes to his claims of immigrant chaos in the country.

One of the most basic tenets of libertarianism is the construction of barriers, borders and boundaries. These boundaries are usually invisible, but they could just as easily be manifested into something physical. To protect individual liberty, libertarians believe in placing constitutional limits on the government's power and reach. Figuratively, libertarians believe in building barriers around individuals to protect them from physical coercion, violence and various other external elements. Some libertarians would argue that they're building barriers around the government – but the outcome and intent are still the same: individual freedom. In most cases, to protect one individual from another,...

Tea Party founder and conservative billionaire Charles Koch has attacked Donald Trump's controversial travel ban, branding it as 'authoritarian'. Koch said he will oppose the billionaire president if and when he deviates from a commitment to 'free and open societies'. Commenting on the travel ban controversy, he said: '[The] travel ban is the wrong approach and will likely be counterproductive.'

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) will oppose the Republican budget resolution designed to begin the process of unwinding the Affordable Care Act, making him possibly the only member of the majority to break ranks. In a speech scheduled for later Wednesday, he will criticize the resolution for assuming $9 trillion in additional debt over the next 10 years.