Tag Archives: Hornberger’s Blog

One of the interesting aspects of President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act was the allocation of $80 billion in increased funding for the Internal Revenue Service, one of the most powerful and tyrannical agencies in U.S. history. The money is intended to be used for enhanced tax enforcement, especially through the potential hiring of 87,000 new IRS agents who, to borrow a phrase from the Declaration of Independence, will be further eating out the substance of the...

I fully realize that when it comes to Ukraine, one is supposed to focus exclusively on Russia’s invasion and not on what the Pentagon did to gin up the crisis, a crisis that has gotten us perilously close to a world-destroying nuclear war with Russia.  Nonetheless, the Pentagon’s role in this crisis needs to be emphasized, over and over again, just as the Pentagon’s role in ginning up the Cuban Missile Crisis also needs to be emphasized, over and over again. Yes,...

There are five additional points that have been made about the Alex Jones case that I wish to address, four of which were expressed in emails to me and one of which was expressed in an article published today by Judge Andrew Napolitano. (See part 1 and part 2 of this series here and here.) 1. Some of Jones’s supporters say that the Connecticut trial was a “kangaroo” proceeding because the judge excluded matters that Jones wanted to tell the jury. But it’s important...

Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega New Jersey Congressman Albio Sires is complaining about financial aid that international agencies are providing Nicaragua under what he says is “the pretext of poverty reduction, disaster relief and small business support.” He points to Nicaragua’s dictatorial regime headed by socialist Daniel Ortega as the reason for his complaints.  Sires is right to complain about foreign aid to Nicaragua, but why limit a critique of governmental...

Reminder: Our online conference “End Inflation and at the Fed,” continues this evening at 7 p.m. (Eastern time) with the third talk of our series. Our speaker will be Kevin Dowd, professor of finance and economics at Durham University, much of whose work revolves Austrian and Public Choice economics. The title of his talk is “Central Bank Digital Currencies.” Speaker: Kevin Dowd, professor of economics and finance, Durham UniversityTime: 7 pm – 8 pm Eastern...

As most everyone knows, Republicans have been celebrating the clownish antic of Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis for using hundreds of thousands of Florida taxpayer dollars to ship 50 immigrants from Texas and dump them in Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts. The thuggish act, which appears to include fraudulent representations made to the immigrants, was intended to expose the hypocrisy of rich, liberal residents of Martha’s Vineyard for having sympathy for...

NOTE: Our upcoming online Zoom conference “End Inflation and the Fed” kicks off on next Monday, October 3, at 7 p.m. Eastern Time with Richard Ebeling. Richard teaches economics at the Citadel and is co-host of FFF’s weekly Internet show, the Libertarian Angle. He is former president of The Foundation for Economic Education and former Ludwig von Mises Professor of Economics at Hillsdale College. He is also the author of FFF’s book Monetary Central Planning and the...

Right-wingers are making a big deal out of the decision by people in Martha’s Vineyard not to take into their homes the immigrants that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis shipped to them a few days ago. The right-wingers are saying that feeding the immigrants and caring for them was not sufficient. The people of Martha’s Vineyard, they say, should have taken them into their homes rather than let them be taken and housed at a nearby military base. They’re saying that this...

Several former U.S. defense secretaries and retired generals recently published an open letter about the current political environment in America. The letter stated, among other things: “Military officers swear an oath to support and defend the Constitution, not an oath of fealty to an individual or to an office.” That’s just pure nonsense and self-delusion. Oh, sure, technically it’s true that military officers swear such an oath, but they don’t follow it. Instead,...

While some conservatives are criticizing President Biden for hiring 87,000 new well-armed IRS agents under the guise of fighting inflation, I’ve got a better idea: Let’s just abolish the IRS and, at the same time, end the federal income tax.  The idea is actually not as radical as it sounds. It certainly wouldn’t have sounded radical to Americans who lived here in the United States from 1776 to 1913. For virtually that entire period of time, Americans lived without...