Michael Maharrey | The Libertarian Institute

Jerome Powell Is Stealing Your Wealth

by Michael Maharrey | Sep 2, 2020 | Economics, Featured Articles

The Federal Reserve has doubled down on its policy of devaluing your money. During a speech in Jackson Hole last week, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell announced a shift in the central bank’s inflation policy. In the past, the central bank has targeted a 2 percent inflation rate as measured by CPI. Now it will follow a policy of “average inflation targeting.” In effect, the Fed will allow the CPI to run “moderately” over 2 percent “for some time” to balance out periods where it runs under that level. “Many find it counterintuitive that the Fed would want to push up inflation. However,...

The Constitution Is Not Your Friend

by Michael Maharrey | Aug 19, 2020 | Featured Articles

One of the biggest misconceptions I hear about the Constitution is that it was written to “protect our liberty.” It wasn’t. At least not in a direct sense. The confusion likely arises from the words of the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” It’s true that the...

How State Governments Can Fight the Federal Reserve

by Michael Maharrey | Aug 6, 2020 | Economics, Featured Articles

If you want to end unconstitutional, overreaching federal power—end the Fed. It’s the engine that drives the most powerful government in the history of the world. But Congress will never abolish the central bank. It can’t even come up with the will to audit the Fed. So what can we do? Even though state action can’t end the Fed, there are steps states can take that will undermine the Federal Reserve’s monopoly on money. By passing laws that encourage and incentivize the use of gold, silver and cryptocurrency in daily transactions by the general public, state action has the potential to create...

Should Libertarians Work With “Commies” and “Fascists”?

by Michael Maharrey | Aug 2, 2020 | Featured Articles, Libertarianism

Over the last several weeks, we have seen some libertarians participating in Black Live Matters protests against police violence. This has led to criticism. Should libertarians be linking arms with “Marxists” even if they have a common cause? This raises a broader strategy question: should libertarians work with people ideologically opposed to their broader principles if the partnership can lead to an incremental shift toward liberty? For instance, should libertarians work with Black Lives Matter to fight against the growing police state? Or right-wingers to fight gun laws? To me, this is a...

June Was One of the Most Expensive Months On Record

by Michael Maharrey | Jul 16, 2020 | Economics, Featured Articles

The federal budget deficit in the month of June totaled nearly the entire 2019 fiscal year shortfall and would rank sixth largest-ever if it were a yearly deficit. The June deficit came in at $864.1 billion dollars, according to the latest Treasury Department report. To put that into perspective, here are the biggest annual budget deficits in U.S. history. 2009 – $1.413 trillion (G.W. Bush/Obama) 2011 – $1.300 trillion (Obama) 2010 – $1.294 trillion (Obama) 2012 – $1.077 trillion (Obama) 2019 – $984 billion (Trump) June 2020 – $864 billion (Trump) When the calendar year deficit for 2019 came...

ICE Forms Nexus of Federal, State, Local, and Private Surveillance of Americans

by Michael Maharrey | Jul 9, 2020 | Featured Articles

When it comes to the rapidly growing national surveillance state, federal agencies such as the NSA and FBI get most of the attention. But in fact, state and local law enforcement agencies, and increasingly private third-parties, make federal surveillance possible. A careful look at Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facial recognition surveillance reveals just how intertwined federal, state, local and third-party spying has become. I’ve been arguing for years that the federal government encourages and funds surveillance technology at the state and local levels across the U.S.,...

Qualified Immunity: An Invention of Judicial Activism

by Michael Maharrey | Jun 15, 2020 | Criminal Justice, Featured Articles

Qualified immunity is a legal doctrine that shields cops from liability for actions taken in the line of duty unless they violate rights “clearly established” by existing judicial precedent. No statute exists granting qualified immunity. It evolved over time based on a series of Supreme Court cases. In practice, qualified immunity makes it extremely difficult to prosecute police officers for using excessive force or committing other acts of misconduct. As Supreme Court Justice Byron White wrote in the 1986 case Malley v. Briggs, qualified immunity protects “all but the plainly incompetent or...

The Present and Future Cost of Spending

by Michael Maharrey | Jun 10, 2020 | Economics, Featured Articles

Welcome to your future. Your government is spending it right now. And your children’s and grandchildren’s future to boot. The U.S. Treasury projected that it would borrow $2.99 trillion in the second quarter fo this year. The Trump administration also plans to borrow another $677 billion in the July-September quarter, bringing the total fiscal 2020 debt to $4.48 trillion. To put it into some perspective, before the pandemic, the CBO projected that the federal deficit would come in at just over $1 trillion in fiscal 2020. The government is set to borrow nearly three times that in just three...