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Document:LP News Number 21 (July-August 1974): Difference between revisions
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Document:LP News Number 21 (July-August 1974) (view source)
Revision as of 18:42, 1 December 2022
, 1 December 2022→Ford’s Policies Threaten Liberty by Bill Evers
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As a final matter, since the President can launch nuclear war, many libertarians are concerned with Ford's record on wartime policies that mean that violence or the threat of violence will be directed against noncombatants. Ford was in the forefront of those urging aerial bombardment of North Vietnam, including urban areas, even before such bombing became official U.S. policy. | As a final matter, since the President can launch nuclear war, many libertarians are concerned with Ford's record on wartime policies that mean that violence or the threat of violence will be directed against noncombatants. Ford was in the forefront of those urging aerial bombardment of North Vietnam, including urban areas, even before such bombing became official U.S. policy. | ||
=Legal Gold, No-Knock Victories= | |||
by [[Scott Royce]] | |||
Strangely enough, there is some good news from Congress which can be reported. First, it has passed (as a rider to the International Development Association authorization, unfortunately) legislation allowing private citizens to own gold as of Dec. 31, 1974. The IDA bill also contained a useful provision instructing the U.S. governor there to vote against loans to nations developing nuclear explosive devices unless those nations were signatories to the non-proliferation treaty. Second, both houses of Congress have now passed legislation to repeal the federal "no-knock" law. Sen. Ervin, leading the fight for repeal in the Senate, noted that "We ought not to sacrifice on the altar of doubt and fear ... what is the proud boast of our law that every man's home is his castle." He continued: "The Bill of Rights applies to everyone, even drug peddlers. If our standard is going to be that if a constitutional guarantee serves to protect criminals we are going to be free to disregard it, then we are in trouble." | |||
With Ervin and Sen. Charles Percy, R-Ill., leading the charge, the Senate overcame opposition from the likes of Sen. Roman Hruska, R-Nebr., and voted, 64-31, to repeal the federal and D.C. statutes. The House repeal motion, accepted by voice vote during routine debate, only repealed the federal law, however. the difference will have to be ironed out in conference, but it is safe to predict that the federal "no-knock" law passed during the GOP's crime-hysteria period in 1970 looks dead at last. | |||
The Senate has twice firmly resisted attempts to invoke cloture (limit debate) on the bill to create a Consumer Protection Agency, a piece of legislation that columnist James Jackson Kilpatrick calls the worst of the year. The bill -would create a vast new bureaucracy to harass businessmen before other federal agencies and in the courts. The House has already passed a similar bill, and only a filibuster led by Sens. Ervin, William Scott, R-Va., and James Allen, D-Ala., is protecting us from this new bureaucratic monster. | |||
On July 30 the House killed 221-181 on a motion by Rep. Chalmers Wylie, R-Ohio, the conference report on a bill to provide massive amounts of funds for urban mass transit subsidies. The bill would have authorized $800 million for fiscal 1975 alone to states and localities. | |||
Turning to the negative side of things, the House gave the country a real example of the cause of inflation when it passed a concurrent resolution on July 31 calling for a six month study of the subject by the Joint Economic Committee. More taxpayers' money down the drain ... | |||
Also on the spending front, a number of Senators have recently been attempting to trim appropriations to various government agencies. Little progress has been made, however. For instance, one such motion by Sen. Bob Dole, R-Kan., a leader in the f1ght, failed by 42-56 to cut back the Treasury-Postal Service appropriation by roughly 3.3%. GOP votes split 24 for the move and a depressing 16 against it. A motion by Dole the next day to cut 3% from the Public Works-AEC Appropriation did little better. | |||
But the worst news of all is passage, after only two days debate, of a "campaign reform" measure by the House. Blatantly unconstitutional, the bill calls for public financing for presidential contests, sets ridiculously low spending limits for Congressional races, and severely limits the size of contributions. | |||
On public financing, however, the bill is better than the version passed several months ago by the Senate. That bill calls for public financing of Congressional races, too, a proposal that was rejected in the House by a decent margin. Only 51 Members had the guts and principle to go on record as being against final passage of this pseudo-reform measure. Our best hope is that hard-line proponents of full public financing in the Senate will not be willing to make concessions to the House in conference on questions like Congressional financing. Unless one side compromises substantially, the campaign bill may still be killed. Write your Congressman and urge him t | |||