Jim Bovard | The Libertarian Institute

On Tax Day, Never Forget IRS Culture Bingo

by Jim Bovard | Apr 15, 2025 | Criminal Justice, Featured Articles

On Tax Day, politicians and mainstream media will hector Americans to be grateful for the opportunity to pay their taxes. The Internal Revenue Service website touts a moth-eaten quote from a dead Supreme Court Justice: “Taxes are what we pay for civilized society.” But recent history is the best antidote to groveling in gratitude to the federal agency that commandeers a lion’s share of your income. The smiley face IRS should have been banished forever after revelations in the years before the 9/11 attacks. Former IRS district chief David Patnoe observed in 1998, “More tax is collected by...

A Vaccine Reckoning Under Trump?

by Jim Bovard | Mar 31, 2025 | Featured Articles

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. forced Peter Marks, the Food and Drug Administration’s top vaccine official, to resign on Friday. Good Washingtonians were horrified, especially since Marks had played a key role in enabling federal dictates during the COVID pandemic. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) responded to Marks’ exit enthusiastically: Last year I held a hearing exposing COVID vaccine malfeasance led by Peter Marks at the FDA. Instead of verifying safety and efficacy of the shots, Marks swept things under the rug and became a cheerleader for the jab. Yesterday Peter...

The ‘Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’ Is Anything But…

by Jim Bovard | Mar 17, 2025 | Featured Articles

One of President Donald Trump’s most popular reforms is his executive order abolishing federal Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) dictates and their efforts to “socially engineer race and gender into every aspect of public and private life.” Trump’s order outraged progressives and sparked a torrent of legal challenges. Can Trump end a half century of federal tyrannizing of private employment policies? DEI’s absurdities are the end game of perpetual power grabs and and bureaucratic conniving. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has been at the forefront of concocting race...

No Donald Trump, America Was Not ‘Always Free’

by Jim Bovard | Mar 10, 2025 | Featured Articles, Politics

In his State of the Union address last week, President Donald Trump promised that Americans “will always be free.” That throwaway line assured another round of applause from his Republican devotees on Capitol Hill. But will other Americans be as gullible or servile as members of Congress? Americans are indoctrinated in government schools to presume that our national DNA practically guarantees we will always be free. But few follies are more perilous than presuming that individual rights are safe in perpetuity. None of the arguments on why liberty is inevitable can explain why it is becoming...

Trump Should End All Foreign Aid: My Interview with Georgian TV

by Jim Bovard | Feb 20, 2025 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

Will President Donald Trump end America’s corrupt foreign aid program and democracy promotion con games? Levan Akhalaia, a reporter with Georgian Public Broadcasting, and I had a lively conversation on that topic last week. Mr. Akhalaia has shown a lot of courage condemning brutal police attacks on protestors in recent times. Below is a rough translation of the Georgian language article on our discussion, which can be read here. Here is a link to a Spotify audio version of the discussion with my voice dubbed into Georgian. And here is a link to a translation via Edge, reposted below with...

Forty Years Bashing the National Endowment for Democracy

by Jim Bovard | Feb 4, 2025 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

On Sunday, Elon Musk posted on X: Those who know, please reply to this post listing all the evil things that NED has done. It’s a long list. https://t.co/8smJsP5Hji — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 2, 2025 After that merciless arm-twisting, I have no choice but to recap my National Endowment for Democracy bashes going back to shortly after it was launched in 1983. In a November 29, 1985 piece in the Oakland Tribune, I hailed NED as "one of the newest, most prestigious boondoggles on the Potomac." But there were plenty of scoffers early on: “NED has been called many things—an International...

Trump Freezes Foreign Aid Frauds

by Jim Bovard | Jan 29, 2025 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

The Donald Trump administration suspended top officials at the U.S. Agency for International Development earlier this week. The move, labeled a “Monday afternoon massacre,” was spurred by allegations that top USAID officials were circumventing President Trump’s ninety day freeze on foreign aid disbursements. Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY) howled on Twitter that “Trump decimating USAID’s leadership without cause is all harm & no benefit for our national security.” But the sordid record of failed aid programs doesn’t support his caterwauling. Foreign aid has long been the incarnation of...

My Best Biden Bashes

by Jim Bovard | Jan 21, 2025 | Featured Articles, Politics

Joe Biden’s presidency ended yesterday. Would it be ungracious to whack him as he was exiting the White House? Nah—Biden has been vilifying libertarians and anyone who didn’t kowtow to his commands for too many years. Plus, he is working on a memoir, so he is fair game. Here are some of my favorite lines on Biden’s four years of pratfalls: “Biden has gotten lost on stage so many times that WAZE should create a special app for Joe to navigate his next steps.” (Future of Freedom Foundation, November 2023) "Biden is desperate because his credibility on COVID is waning faster than a Pfizer...