Nauseating Government Theft

September 15, 2025 by Dan Mitchell @ International Liberty

Politicians do plenty of bad economic policy.

But when do they cross the line to immoral policy?

Hard-core libertarians will argue that just about everything the government does is immoral. I agree with them in many cases because I think it if fundamentally wrong to make life harder for people, especially those at the bottom rungs of the economic ladder.

But I don’t think any of my lefty friends will agree with me that high taxes, excessive red tape, crummy government schools, wasteful spending, or bad monetary policy are immoral.

 

But they might agree that civil asset forfeiture is morally wrong.

Sometimes known as “policing for profit,” this occurs when cops can confiscate and keep your property, merely because they think it may have been connected with criminal activity.

Even if the connection is trivial. Even if a person is never convicted of wrongdoing!

Here are some of the words I’ve used to describe this practice:

• Odious
• Thuggery
• Stealing
• Racket
• Nauseating

In a column for Reason, C.J. Ciaramella shares another grotesque example of asset forfeiture, but one that hopefully will be overturned if the Supreme Court does its job correctly.

Here are some excerpts.

 

Jouppi was convicted of a misdemeanor in 2012 when state troopers searched his plane before takeoff and discovered that a passenger was attempting to bring several cases of beer to a “dry” village where alcohol is prohibited. …But the state wasn’t through with Jouppi. For the past 13 years, prosecutors have sought to seize his Cessna U206D through asset forfeiture, a process which allows police and prosecutors to seize property connected to criminal activity. …the Alaska Supreme Court ruled this April that the forfeiture of Jouppi’s plane was not excessive. … 

The Institute for Justice argues in its petition that this interpretation flies in the face of the historical understanding of the Excessive Fines Clause… 

“This case isn’t just about me or my airplane anymore,” Jouppi said in an Institute for Justice press release. “I’m in my 80s now, and I’ve been fighting this for over a decade because I see it as my duty to ensure that the Bill of Rights actually means something in protecting against government overreach.”

In my “Hopes and Fears” column for 2023, i speculated that Supreme Court might rule against asset forfeiture.

The practice has been narrowed, which is good news. Hopefully this case will give the Justices an opportunity to conclusively rule that governments no longer can engage in “policing for profit.”

P.S. Click here for a clever example of anti-forfeiture humor.

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Another Failure for Keynesian Economics and Interventionist Government

April 11, 2022 by Dan Mitchell @ International Liberty

Keynesian economics is based on the misguided notion that consumption drives the economy.

In reality, high levels of consumption should be viewed an indicator of a strong economy.

The real drivers of economic strength are private investment and private production.

After all, we can’t consume unless we first produce.*

Not everyone agrees with these common-sense observations. The Biden Administration, for instance, claimed the economy would benefit if Congress approved a costly $1.9 trillion “stimulus” plan last year.

Yet we wound up with 4 million fewer jobs than the White House projected. We even wound up with fewer jobs than the Administration estimated if there was no so-called stimulus.

So what did we get for all that money?

Some say we got inflation. In a column for the Hill, Professor Carl Schramm from Syracuse is unimpressed by Biden’s plan. And he’s even less impressed by the left-leaning economists who claimed it is a good idea to increase the burden of government.

Nobel Laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz rounded up another 16 of the 36 living American Nobel Prize economists to declare, in an open letter, that…there was no threat of inflation. …The Nobelists’ letter showed that those signing had bought Team Biden’s novel argument that its enormous expansion of social welfare programs really was just a different form of infrastructure investment, just like roads and bridges. …The laureates seemed to have overlooked that previous COVID benefits had often exceeded what tens of millions of workers regularly earned and that recipients displaced by COVID were never required to look for other work. While the high priests of economic “science” were cheering on higher federal spending, larger deficits and increased taxes, employers were and are continuing to deal with inflation face-to-face. …The Nobelists assured that we would see a robust recovery because of President Biden’s “active government interventions.” Their presumed authority was used to give credence to the president’s continuously twisting storyline on inflation — that it was “transitory,” good for the economy, a “high-class problem,” Putin’s fault for invading Ukraine, and the greed of oil and food companies… Today’s fashionable goals seem to have displaced the no-nonsense pragmatism that has long characterized economics as a discipline. …Don’t expect a mea culpa from Stiglitz or his coauthors any time soon. …They can be wrong, really wrong, and never pay a price.

The New York Post editorialized about Biden’s economic missteps and reached similar conclusions.

President Joe Biden loves to blame our sky-high inflation on corporate greed and Vladimir Putin. But a new study from the San Francisco Fed shows it was Biden himself who put America on this grim trajectory. …other advanced economies…haven’t seen anything like the soaring prices now punishing workers across America. Which means that the spike is due to something US-specific, rather than global prevailing conditions. That policy, was, of course, Biden’s signature economic “achievement.” …The damage it did has been massive. …inflation…to 7%… Put in concrete terms, a recent Bloomberg calculation translates this to an added $433 per month in household expenses for 2022. And historic producer price inflation, a shocking 10%, guarantees even more pain ahead.

For what it’s worth, I don’t fully agree with Professor Schramm or the New York Post.

They are basically asserting that Biden’s wasteful spending is responsible for today’s grim inflation numbers.

I definitely don’t like Biden’s spending agenda, but I agree with Milton Friedman that it is more accurate to say that inflation is a monetary phenomenon.

In other words, the Federal Reserve deserves to be blamed.

The bottom line is that Keynesian monetary policy produces inflation and rising prices while Keynesian fiscal policy produces more wasteful spending and higher levels of debt.

I’ll close with a couple of caveats.

• First, Friedman also points out that there’s “a long and variable lag” in monetary policy. So it is not easy to predict how quickly (or how severely) Keynesian monetary policy will produce rising prices.
• Second, Keynesian deficit spending can lead to Keynesian monetary policy if a central bank feels pressure to help finance deficit spending by buying government bonds (think Argentina).

*Under specific circumstances, Keynesian policy can cause a short-term boost in consumption. For instance, a government can borrow lots of money from overseas lenders and use that money to finance more consumption of things made in places such as China. The net result of that policy, however, is that American indebtedness increases without any increase in national income.

P.S. You can read the letter from the pro-Keynesian economists by clicking here. And you can read a letter signed by sensible economists (including me) by clicking here.

P.P.S. Keynesianism is a myth with a history of failure in the real world. 

• It didn’t work for Hoover.
• It didn’t work for Roosevelt.
• It didn’t work for Japan.
• It didn’t work for Europe.
• It didn’t work for Obama.

It’s also worth pointing out that Keynesians have been consistently wrong with predicting economic damage during periods of spending restraint.

 

• They were wrong about growth after World War II (and would have been wrong, if they were around at the time, about growth when Harding slashed spending in the early 1920s).
• They were wrong about Thatcher in the 1980s.
• They were wrong about Reagan in the 1980s.
• They were wrong about Canada in the 1990s.
• They were wrong after the sequester in 2013.
• They were wrong about unemployment benefits in 2020.

Call me crazy, but I sense a pattern. Maybe, just maybe, Keynesian economics is wrong.

 

Family asks Florida high court to lift bird ban on their private property

By William Patrick  /   November 22, 2016  /   News  /   31 Comments @ Florida Watchdog

 

A Florida family is looking to the state Supreme Court to resolve a decades-old property rights dispute that’s gone to the birds — literally.

In 1970, Tom and Molly Beyer purchased a 9-acre island in the Florida Keys for $70,000. The property was intended to be a legacy investment for the couple’s children. Despite development zoning, local officials eventually blocked the Beyers from building on it through a series of land use restrictions.

First, they could only develop one home per acre. Then, one home per 10 acres. Finally, Monroe County officials designated the vacant investment property a bird rookery, effectively banning all future development.

“This case is about an uncompensated property grab — literally, an unconstitutional island grab,” said Mark Miller, managing attorney for the Pacific Legal Foundation’s Florida-based Atlantic Center.

“The island has been seized from the Beyers in all but name,” he said.

The couple passed away during the past twenty years of legal battles to reclaim the use of their land, and their children have since taken up the family cause. They’ve enlisted the help of the the nonprofit public interest law firm that specializes in property rights and a “balanced approach to environmental regulations,” according to its website.

Miller filed an opening brief with the Florida Supreme Court earlier this month to appeal the Third District Court of Appeal’s previous ruling, which sided with the city of Marathon against the Beyers.
The high court asked to hear the challenge but has yet to officially take up the case.

The Third District held that the city met its constitutional obligations to offer “just compensation” for the land through a local Rate of Growth Ordinance (ROGO) program. Under the scheme, points are awarded toward the purchase of development permits in city approved areas.

A trial court beneath the Third District also approved the compensation gesture as satisfying the Fifth Amendment’s Takings Clause that prohibits the government from taking private property without payment.

In 2005, a city land official known as the Beneficial Use Special Master awarded the Beyers 16 ROGO points after denying their initial appeal to lift the bird rookery designation.

Miller says the points, or credits, aren’t a “tangible payment,” and don’t come close to a fair arrangement.

“At best, they amount to guesswork about possible development at some undetermined time in some unidentified place,” he said.

According to the brief, evidence presented during the Special Master proceeding showed that the rookery reclassification had diminished the value of the property by 98.7 percent.

What’s more, the family has been required to pay taxes on the property since its purchase.

“Although the city is oh-so-generously allowing the family to continue paying taxes on their island property, and to retain all the liabilities that come with property ownership, bureaucrats have commandeered the actual use of it for purposes of their own choosing,” Miller said.

If the state Supreme Court decides not to take up the case, Miller said he’s prepared to go all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court if necessary. His firm is representing the Beyer family at no charge.

 

Click here to LEARN HOW TO STEAL OUR STUFF!
 

William Patrick is Watchdog.org’s Florida reporter. His work has been featured on Fox News and the Drudge Report, among other national sites. He’s also been cited and reposted by numerous statewide news organizations.  wpatrick@watchdog.org
 

Is Iceland’s Present, America’s Future

By Constitution.com

By Ron Paul From the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity

During the 2008 economic crisis, Iceland’s government froze offshore accounts held by foreign investors in that country’s currency, the krona. Recently, the government of Iceland announced it would unfreeze the accounts if the account holders paid a voluntary “departure tax,” which could be as high as 58 percent. Investors who choose not to pay the departure tax would have their investment “segregated” into special funds that only invest in CDs issued by Iceland’s central bank. These CDs are expected to only provide a rate of return of at most 0.5 percent a year. So investors in offshore accounts can thus choose between having their money directly seized via the departure tax or indirectly seized via the inflation tax.

Iceland’s freezing of offshore krona accounts was part of a “stabilization and recovery” program implemented under the guidance of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which also provided Iceland with a $1 billion loan. So US taxpayers not only helped the IMF bail out Iceland’s government, they may have helped the IMF advise Iceland on how best to steal property from American investors!

The IMF’s role in Iceland’s seizure of the property of foreign investors shows the hypocrisy of IMF officials, who recently expressed concerns about the increasing support for protectionism supposedly exemplified by the Brexit vote. However, freezing of assets held by foreign investors is a particularly harmful form of protectionism, while Brexit was more about rejecting the European Union’s bureaucracy than rejecting free trade. Perhaps what the IMF and its supporters are really worried about is losing their power to use taxpayers’ money to force other countries to adopt IMF bureaucrats’ favored economic policies.

Iceland is not the only government to turn to a departure tax to raise revenue. Just last year, in order to raise revenue for federal transportation programs, Congress gave the IRS the power to revoke the passport of any American accused of owing more than $50,000 in back taxes.

As an increasingly desperate Congress looks for new ways to squeeze money out of the American people to fund the welfare-warfare state, it is likely that more Americans will have their liberties limited because the IRS accuses them of not paying their fair share of taxes. It also is likely that the Federal Reserve will follow the example of its counterpart in Iceland and devalue the holdings of anyone who dares to resist the IRS’s demands.

Those hoping that the presidential election will result in real changes are bound to be disappointed. While Donald Trump seems to appreciate how current Fed policies help the incumbent administration while harming the people, he does not appear to understand that the problem is not with certain Fed policies, but with the Fed’s very existence. While Mr. Trump does support tax cuts, he also supports increasing government spending on infrastructure at home, militarism abroad, protectionism, and an economic cold war with China.

Hillary Clinton has actually said it is inappropriate for candidates to criticize the Fed. Sectary Clinton has also called for massive increases in government spending and taxes. Hillary Clinton may be more hawkish than Donald Trump, since Mr. Trump has rejected Secretary Clinton’s calls for a new cold war with Russia.

Instead of looking to politicians to save us, those of us who understand the dangers of our current course must continue to spread the ideas of liberty among our fellow citizens. Politicians will only change course when a critical mass of people stops falling for the war party’s propaganda, stops demanding entitlements, and starts demanding liberty.

Compassion, Thy Name is Theft

by Tom DeWeese

I am fed up to my burning ears with Cart Blanc castigation of Conservatives! The other day I accidentally landed on MSNBC just in time to hear a discussion about Conservatives and their lack of compassion for the fate of the poor.

Said the spokeswoman, with great authority, “Conservatives always talk about the family and about spending time with your kids. And they say all you have to do is pull yourself up by your boot straps to get ahead.” Then with great disdain she said, “These Conservatives have no understanding that when you’re trying to just survive you don’t have the luxury of spending time with your kids! That’s a REPUBLICAN concept for the privileged,” she finished with an air of great indignation at the very thought of it!

Well, as I listened (and it wasn’t long because I have a very weak stomach) my mind was racing, thinking of all the details of reality she had apparently missed.

First, if government would stop dragging people down by their wallets, then those poor victims might just be able to pull themselves up by the boot straps.

For example, liberals viciously attack employers as greedy for not paying their workers enough as they demand that government enforce a higher minimum wage. “People can’t be expected to live on such low wages,” they scream in their compassion for the poor!

However, if employees actually received 100% of the paycheck the employers provide, then most workers could live quire well on their wages. Instead, before the employer can actually write the pay check and hand it to the employee, the government has already taken 35% to 50%. On top of that, the employer also has to match the employee’s social security tax payment. That’s part of the employee expense. Heartless, cruel Conservatives oppose this liberal compassion.

Today, falling gas prices are finally giving consumers a small break for their pocket book. The extra $15 to $25 saved on a fill up as the nation recovers from the crush of the $4.00 per gallon costs of just a year ago, can help buy food, school supplies, maybe even a movie night where families can spend time together.

Not happy to allow people to actually find a useful purpose for their own money, compassionate Liberals are rushing to pressure state legislatures and city councils to increase gas taxes to put those savings into government pockets instead, so bankrupt governments can continue to pay for all of the massive spending programs. Heartless, cruel Conservatives oppose this liberal compassion.

Healthcare for all has become the latest cause of compassion for the poor. It’s actually kind of funny to think about how the compassionate Liberals condemn the healthcare industry for being too expensive and that too many Americans are without healthcare. In their compassion for the poor, they give us Obamacare to assure “equitable” coverage for all. Yet, it is the lower middle class of the nation that suffers most from this mandate. Soon they will be forced into the ranks of the desperate poor.

First, a quick study of history will show that healthcare is so expensive precisely because of government intervention into the industry. It started with former President Lyndon Johnson and his “Great Society” program which created Medicare. Again, a government program sold under the excuse of compassion. The result was the creation of mega insurance companies and government sanctioned healthcare monopolies and healthcare costs skyrocketed, out of reach of average Americans, forcing even more government intervention and richer insurance companies. Before the invasion of government into healthcare, America had a first class system that featured family doctors and even home visits for reasonable costs.

Now, under the Affordable Care Act, people who couldn’t afford insurance in the first place are mandated to buy even more expensive insurance or face fines from the government. Businesses, especially small employers, are being devastated by the mandate that they must provide coverage for employees. This has forced the employers to do without employees they would normally have hired and desperately need. In addition, they have been forced to cut back on hours for those who are already working. Who is more affected by this destruction of jobs than the poor? Heartless, cruel Conservatives oppose this liberal compassion.

Illegal immigration is invading our nation. Thousands of people are ignoring our laws and rushing across our border. Most admit that they are coming for the specific purpose of grabbing free money, housing, food, healthcare and education. Some of the more dangerous ones are coming to do us harm. We are told that this invasion helps our nation by providing workers who will do work no American will do. Tell that to the out of work Americans, especially young Blacks. Incredibly, as a result of this invasion, schools are becoming over crowded; hospital emergency rooms over-burdened; and Social Security funds are seriously in danger of collapsing. How does that help the poor of our own country? Heartless, cruel, Conservatives oppose this liberal compassion.

Why are so many in America today reduced to mere survival? Because of the wholesale theft of nearly every hard earned dollar most can manage to earn. Government edict has caused it to be thrown into a massive mixing bowl of Socialist wealth redistribution in the name of compassion. Yet these programs rob people of their ability or even an incentive to “pull themselves up by their boot straps.”

How can they even think of finding ways to change their lives? In fact, the system is designed to assure they don’t even think that way. Back in 1980, as Ronald Reagan was running for President, he often told the story of a woman who unfortunately found herself on welfare. Yet, even with the meager amount of cash she received from the government she managed to put a little tiny bit of money in a saving account, just in case some unexpected need were to arise. When the government found out that she had this saving account, they immediately confiscated it and then removed her from the welfare rolls. Where was the compassion them for a lady just trying to survive?

Just remember, it’s the heartless, cruel Conservatives who oppose such liberal compassion. You bet I do!

Tom DeWeese is one of the nation’s leading advocates of individual liberty, free enterprise, private property rights, personal privacy, back-to-basics education and American sovereignty and independence. Subscribe to his monthly report at: http://deweesereport.com

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