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The Libertarian Review June 1979

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The Libertarian Review June 1979 THE LIBERTARIAN REVIEW June 1979 $1.25 There are half a million men and women in Ddspowedul~ prisons around the world for the simple crime of disagreeing with their governments. &eepdsonen From South Africa to the Soviet Union, canIieIp from Brazil to Korea, authoritarian regimes persist ~ in the barbarian practice of jailing, often torturing, of c:onsc:leace aU their citizens not for anything they've done, but Ihe-..Id. for what they believe. These prisoners of conscience have only one hope - that someone outside will care about what is happening to them. Amnesty International has helped free over 14,000 political prisoners by marshaling world public opinion through international letter-writing campaigns. Your pen can become a l'0werful weapon against repression, injustice and Inhumanity. Join with us today in this important effort. Because if we do not help today's victims, who will help us if we become tomorrow's? Amnesty International 3618 Sacramento San Francisco, 94118 (415) 563-3733 2112 Broadway New Yo'rk, N. Y. 10023 (212) 787-8906 o I would like to join Amnesty International in helping to free prisoners of conscience. Enclosed are my dues offifteen dollars. o Please send me more information. D Enclosed is my contribution of $ _ to help you in your efforts. name Pre~red by Public Media Center, San Franc'sco. address city state ,zip (Dues and donations are tax-deductible) THE LIBERTARIAN FEATURES REVIEW Winning the Sweepstakes, 28 June 1979 Beating the Taxtnan by Marshall E. Schwartz Volume 8, No.5 By the time Frank McNulty was released from federal prison last St. Patrick's Day weekend, he had served more than five years for refusal to pay his income taxes. But he still hasn't paid them. And his prison experiences, along Howard with some talks he had with fellow inmate Karl Bray, have had a strong influence on his feelings about Jarvis: Mad government. as Hell Warding Offthe 33 at 76 Great Unwashed An LR Interview by William D. Burt The man who gave us The western director of the National Taxpayers Union Proposition 13 holds forth takes a close look at the campaign being orchestrated by on why he's now trying to Congress, the White House and the traditional spending cut the federal income tax lobbies to abort the idea of a constitutional convention to by 25 percent and the Cali­ balance the federal budget. fornia income tax in half, and why he just might sup­ port the Libertarian Party candidate for the Presidency in 1980. DEPARTMENTS Page ... 22 The Libertarian Editorials 4 Running on Empty; Mrs. Thatcher, U.S. Foreign Policy, and the Dollar; The Nine Old Men and the Loony Bin Editor: Roy A. Childs, Jr. Executive Editor::JeffRiggenbach 10 Art Director: Melanie Price Opening Shots Senior Editor: by Bill Birmingham Joan Kennedy Taylor Associate Editors: 12 Walter E. Grinder Letters to the Editors Leonard P. Liggio Contributing Editors: The Public Trough 18 Murray N. Rothbard Energy Politics Bruce R. Bartlett Bill Birmingham by Bruce Bartlett Milton Mueller Marshall E. Schwartz The Movetnent 20 David Brudnoy Editorial Assistant: by Milton Mueller Victoria Varga Administrative Assistant: Books and the Arts 38 Pat Pope JeffRiggenbach on R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr.'s Public Graphics Consultant: Nuisances Andy Saunders John Hospers on Vladimir Bukovsky's To Build a Castle: The Libertarian Review (ISSN My Life as a Dissenter 0364-0302) is published monthly Jack Shafer on Anthony Burgess's 1985 by Libertarian Review, Inc. Edito­ David Brudnoy on Woody Allen's Manhattan rial and business offices, 1620 Montgomery Street, San Fran­ cisco, CA 94111. © 1979 by Liber­ tarian Review Inc. All rights re­ served. Opinions expressed in bylined articles do not necessarily reflect the views of the editors or publisher. The Libertarian Review Subscriptions: Single copy, $1.25; 12 issues (one year), $15; two years, welcomes queries from authors $25; three years, $35. Address Change: Write new address, city, state but does notencourage submission. and zip code on sheet of plain paper, attach mailing label from recent of unsolicited manuscripts and issue ofLR, and send to Circulation Department, Libertarian Review, assumes no responsibility for them P.O. Box 28877, San Diego, CA 92128. Second class postage paid at San unless accompanied by SASE. Francisco and additional offices. been carefully crafted over a period of decades-by the government itself, anxious THE as always to gain control over a key and increasingly important "command post" of the economy, to wit, en­ ergy. The public dialogue on LIBERTARIAN these important issues has become so corrupted by false assumptions that it is necessary to challenge them across the board, and this will be done next month in EDITORIALS the pages of LR, in a special section devoted to "Energy and American Foreign Pol­ icy." Until then, let us get a gacious to begin looking for "windfall profits"-always few facts straightened out. Running on another habitable planet) to asking for more and more This scapegoating of the its ruinous energy policy, power. The dreary litany is oil companies by the Carter etnpty crafted by an Energy Czar always the same. And so is administration is a cheap who apparently delights in the scapegoat1 from one trick and Americans ought AS THE WEEKS mutilating the American administration to the next: not to fall for it. Oil com­ and months go by it economy, the programs and the oil companies. The pany profits are not as­ policies of this administra­ American people suspect, tonishingly high; they are in is becoming more tion are those of a band of even as they are sitting in the the middle range of most and more difficult to pirates,. a blight and a curse. gas lines, that th~ energy corporations: return on evade the fact that The latest outrage perpe­ crisis is a hoax, a fraud. But total assets has been hover­ trated by the Carter admin­ they are swallowing the line ing at around 6 percent for there is an idiot in the istration is familar by now about the oil companies the past two years, return on White House, run­ to all Americans: they hear being behind the whole sales at 4.8 percent,'and ning amok and about it on their car radios thing: oil companies making return on stockholders as they sit in line waiting for "windfall profits," yet equity at 12.9 percent. stomping on the gasoline. They hear a thin, ever-greedy for more. On Three tricks are being used American people, reedy voice prating about both counts, they are by Carter & Co. to muddy the alleged "greed" ofthe oil wrong: .there is an energy the issue: they are gasping mouthing bromides, companies, about sacrifice, crisis, a very real crisis; and about the percentage in­ cliches and bilge, rationing, shortages and far from being a hoax, it has crease in profits over last scapegoating first one group and then another, all in the name of ... well, nothing in particular. Those who think that this administra­ tion is all style and no substance should look again. There is substance, almost all of it evil. From its insidious foreign. pol­ icy, crafted by the vulture Brzezinski (whose fulminations about the "projec­ tion of power" 4 should cause the sa- THE LIBERTARIAN REVIEW year (which often ranges panies do not owe it to any­ panies, either. The main panies something by decontrol­ from forty to more than a one to deliver oil and problem with the major oil ling domestic oil prices. In hundred percent), they are gasoline on terms set down companies is not only their truth, current law removes ignoring absolute dollar by this government. The craven cowardice in the face price controls completely in amounts of profit, and they people working and invest­ of public scapegoating, but 1981 and does not require a are comparing only first new tax as a quid pro quo. But ing in them are not slaves to their willingness to use gov­ by skillfully playing on the quarter earnings. All of be ordered about by offi­ ernment power to their own vision of billions of dollars these are demagogic and cious bureaucrats. They advantage and profit when­ pouring into the pockets of oil confusing. The fact is that have rights: the right to ever it suits them, paying no barons, the President has the first quarter earnings of invest in the production of attention to the fact that this created a political constituency the oil companies in 1975 energy, and to sell the result­ simply erodes their legiti­ for a new oil tax. While Senator came during a depressed ing oil, gasoline and natural macy, year after year. The Kennedy lays down a smoke period, and were not repre­ Igas to whomever chooses to energy industry in this coun­ screen of sham uproar over sentative of the total earn­ buy it, at any freely agreed try is completely dominated "vast new profits" being turned ings for the year; the first upon price. Everything else by the State, and this is not over to big oil, temporary (and quarter of 1979, by con­ is simply a sideshow put on soon to expire) price controls always something which has are being replaced with a per­ trast, reflect an upswing in to distract people's attention been foisted upon the indus­ manent tax. economic activity. But even from the fact that every day try against its will, to put it The permanent tax has a strik­ if the profits earned by the we move farther and farther mildly. Oil companies have ing feature. It applies to future companies do show a away from a free economy been willing to use eminent oil yet to be discovered and marked increase over 1979, in this country.
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