Stark Realities with Brian McGlinchey | The Libertarian Institute

‘Recycling’ Makes Plastic Pollution Worse

by Stark Realities with Brian McGlinchey | Feb 10, 2025 | Featured Articles

If you’re like many people, you’ve always thought a numbered-triangle symbol on the bottom of a plastic container tells you it’s recyclable—giving you peace of mind that when you toss it into a blue bin, it will be turned into something else. That’s not true. Those symbols are Resin Identification Codes (RICs). Numbered 1 through 7, they only identify the kind of plastic an item is made of. Far from giving a sweeping assurance that RIC-stamped items are recyclable, the symbol frequently indicates a particular item absolutely cannot be recycled. Reluctant to burden citizens with figuring out...

It’s Still Police Misconduct, Even on January 6

by Stark Realities with Brian McGlinchey | Jan 9, 2025 | Criminal Justice, Featured Articles

Contrary to exaggerated, partisan rhetoric that frames the January 6, 2021 Capitol Hill riot as a “deadly insurrection,” the truth is that only one homicide occurred that day. The victim, an unarmed Trump supporter, was shot and killed by a police officer with a history of irresponsible handling of firearms, who opted against a nonlethal response to an act of trespassing, and who fired his weapon in the absence of any imminent threat of death or serious injury to himself or others in his vicinity. U.S. Capitol Police (USCP) Lieutenant Michael Byrd’s killing of Ashli Babbitt came just six...

Legal Plunder: Indiana Police Prey On Packages Transiting Huge FedEx Hub

by Stark Realities with Brian McGlinchey | Dec 6, 2024 | Criminal Justice, Featured Articles

From a federal government operating far beyond the bounds of the Constitution to law enforcement agencies routinely entering private property without warrants, tyranny takes many forms in the United States. However, few are as shocking to the sensibilities as civil asset forfeiture, the controversial practice that empowers police to seize money, cars, trucks, houses or anything else they merely accuse of having a link to criminal activity—regardless of whether the property owner is charged with a crime. Civil asset forfeiture is an affront to anyone who’s sincerely committed to the American...

FEMA Still Paying $9,000 For COVID Funerals, Billions On Pandemic Payouts

by Stark Realities with Brian McGlinchey | Oct 16, 2024 | Featured Articles

As the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) carries out widely-criticized responses to Hurricanes Helene and Milton, officials say the agency’s Disaster Recovery Fund is incapable of handling a third major storm. While some are circulating false accusations that disaster funds have been diverted to immigrants or poured into the proxy war in Ukraine, a review of the agency’s 2024 outlays reveals a different, ongoing drain on FEMA’s coffers: Long after the end of the declared COVID-19 emergency, FEMA is still pumping out billions of dollars to pay for pandemic expenses— icluding, believe...

A Small U.S. Agency Is Victimizing Millions of Innocent Foreigners…

by Stark Realities with Brian McGlinchey | Aug 29, 2024 | Featured Articles

As tourists complete their strolls to the White House from the east along Pennsylvania Avenue, they pass a relatively unremarkable, columned office building that overlooks Lafayette Square—oblivious that, behind its walls, bureaucrats are quietly inflicting poverty, illness and death on innumerable innocents around the world. The Freedman’s Bank Building doesn’t house CIA or Department of Defense officials, but rather the U.S. Treasury’s little-known Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). Instead of orchestrating airstrikes or insurgencies, these bureaucrats impose mass suffering via...

The Civil War Didn’t ‘Settle’ The Question Of State Secession

by Stark Realities with Brian McGlinchey | Aug 7, 2024 | Featured Articles, History, Politics

Secessionist inclinations are on the rise in the United States, and are sure to intensify after Nov. 5 regardless of which party prevails. When that happens, you can expect the accompanying discourse will be peppered with assertions that states have no right to secede, with many declaring the question was “settled” by the Civil War. The embedded contention that legal and moral questions are rightly and permanently settled by the outcome of a mass-murder contest is absurd on its face. However, the notion is so widely and casually embraced that it invites an emphatic response. It also serves...

A Tiebreaker? Electoral College Rules Could Bring On Constitutional Crisis

by Stark Realities with Brian McGlinchey | Jun 25, 2024 | Featured Articles, Politics

While many Americans know that an Electoral College tie sends presidential and vice presidential elections into the House of Representatives and Senate, few realize there’s a constitutional crisis lurking in the incomplete rules for resolving such draws. In 2024, scrutiny of these hidden dangers is more than a mere academic exercise, as there are plausible scenarios by which Joe Biden and Donald Trump could end up with 269 electoral votes apiece. One, for example, centers on Trump winning Nevada, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, and Biden winning Georgia, North Carolina and Arizona. In...

George Washington Warned Against A ‘Passionate Attachment’ To Israel

by Stark Realities with Brian McGlinchey | May 14, 2024 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

As war rages in Gaza, the intensifying debate over the U.S.-Israel relationship spotlights a glaring political paradox: Those Americans who view George Washington with deepest reverence—that is, would-be “conservatives”—are often the ones who most zealously violate the central tenet of his foreign policy philosophy. Specifically, their fierce devotion to the State of Israel defies Washington’s admonition against “passionate attachments” to other countries—attachments that, he said, inevitably lead America “astray from its duty and its interest.” That’s not to say that excessive advocacy for...