People v. State

Portland police Lt. Robert King said.

The official demonization of “anarchists” by State propagandizers continues on apace, in this instance by an agent of an “agency”-without-principals which intends to violently evict Occupy protesters from Portland parks this weekend. Meanwhile, a real-life “anarch” (leader of leaderlessness), Wendy McElroy, explores, at the Daily Anarchist, what an anarchist system of justice might look like, and in reply to a comment on her post writes:

(more…)

(The title of this post is borrowed from the Wobblies.)

A comment by Ryan from Absurd Results on this post about the Georgist “Single Tax” and Thomas Jefferson’s “Ward System” gave me the opportunity to once again formulate, summarize, and clarify my political wish list. Ryan wrote:

As for Georgism, I have to admit, I find it intriguing—even more so when combined with Jefferson’s ward system. Actually, I think the ward system (which sounds a lot like Michael Rozeff’s panarchy) would be essential for a single tax regime, for it would more likely keep closed the door to statism by making the wards compete for citizens.

(more…)

Forget 9-9-9. Here’s a Simple Plan: 1

H/T LVTFan, who contrasted Cain with George here. And I made the same contrast here. It’s good to see that George hasn’t been entirely forgotten.

Ann Althouse posts a righteous takedown of Herman Cain and his so-called 9-9-9 tax plan here.

There has never been a saner and simpler proposal for tax reform than the “single tax” on the unimproved value of land proposed by Henry George. The honest progressive and the honest capitalist alike would find in it, if they looked, a facilitator of their respective instincts. Most importantly, in stark contrast to the abomination that is “our” politician-created tax “code,” the “single tax” has its sure foundation in Justice, as illuminated by, among others, Thomas Paine.

Combine the “single tax” with Thomas Jefferson’s “ward system” and you have my political philosophy in a nutshell.

The local news story on our very own “Occupy Wall Street” protest last Saturday in South Bend included a photo of two protesters, one holding a sign saying “Tax the Bankers” and the other holding a sign saying “Tax the Wealth.” Here’s my take on that, from this comment on a post at a relatively new group blog by academics titled “Bleeding Heart Libertarians”:

(more…)

I’ve been reading Clarence Darrow: Attorney for the Damned (2011), by John A. Farrell. Here’s a couple excerpts from the first few chapters which particularly spoke to me.

From Chapter 2 (“Chicago”):

George Schilling was a prominent trade unionist when he encountered Darrow at a gathering of freethinkers. The other speakers had gone too far in mocking the ministry of Jesus Christ, and Darrow “jumped in, and with a ten-minute speech defended the carpenter’s son of Judea with such a sympathetic, persuasive voice that I fell in love with him,” Schilling recalled. “We became fast friends.”

(more…)

Thus wrote Justice Robert Jackson almost 70 years ago, as quoted in a NYT op-ed by Kent Greenfield which points out that “Constitution Day is probably unconstitutional.”

What is it that I find admirable and worthy of emulation in the Great Law of Peace of the Iroquois Confederacy? Pretty much the same things I find admirable and worthy of emulation in Aldous Huxley’s vision of a just society:

(more…)

The First Leftist:

The first Leftists were a group of newly elected representatives to the National Constituent Assembly at the beginning of the French Revolution in 1789. They were labeled “Leftists” merely because they happened to sit on the left side in the French Assembly.

The legislators who sat on the right side were referred to as the Party of the Right, or Rightists. The Rightists or “reactionaries” stood for a highly centralized national government, special laws and privileges for unions and various other groups and classes, government economic monopolies in various necessities of life, and a continuation of government controls over prices, production, and distribution.

. . .

(more…)

In his post about the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., titled Because We’re All In It Together, Jeff Gamso quotes an excerpt from John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, in which Tom Joad is talking with his mother:

(more…)

Darrow is not as high on my list of all-time favorite people as he is on that of other criminal defense attorneys, but I thought they might not have seen these essays by him and find them of interest:

How to Abolish Unfair Taxation (1913)

The Land Belongs to the People (1916)

The lead article for a virtual symposium on “Land Tenure and Anarchic Common Law” being conducted by the Center for a Stateless Society begins:

There would likely be a range of legal regimes—commercial and non-commercial, religious and secular—in a stateless society. Some would be largely territorial, while others would serve people in different regions. The rules enforced by a given regime would presumably emerge from multiple sources: from the decisions of arbitrators, from the judgments of religious and other authorities accepted by participants in the regime, and from the specific contractual agreements made by regime participants. (For instance: property owners cooperating to arrange for road maintenance and other shared needs might also agree to frame their property claims in ways designed to formalize the rules governing the recognition of the transfer and abandonment of each other’s claims.) Whatever their sources, a wide variety of land tenure rules could in principle be implemented by these regimes. Disputes among anarchists about the form such rules ought to take have often focused on the differences between what can, for simplicity’s sake, be labeled occupancy-and-use and Lockean positions.        (more…)