Austin voters, in a referendum last month, rejected a measure to overturn local regulations of so-called “ride-sharing” services. Although the main backing for the regulations was the legacy taxicab monopolies (which resented having to compete with even proprietary monopolies like Uber and Lyft), the result of leaving them in place has been to promote the…

(CW: This article will include discussions of rape and sexual assault) On January 18th, 2015, Brock Turner was discovered on top of an unconscious woman. The woman had her underwear removed and her dress pulled up and Brock was making sexual advances on her. Brock had been discovered by two students at Stanford, where Turner…

Right-libertarians are routinely awful on economic issues, acting as though big business were — in Ayn Rand’s famous phrase — “a persecuted minority.” But leave it to someone at the Cato Institute to write a column attacking corporate welfare on the grounds that it victimizes the recipients! That’s literally the title: “Corporate Welfare Harms Corporations”…

On May 28th a tragic incident happened at the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden where a 3 year old boy managed to get into an enclosure with a gorilla named Harambe. Although the boy wasn’t seriously injured the zoo keepers felt it necessary to shoot and kill Harambe for the safety of the child. Some…

Every Memorial Day and Veterans’ Day, Americans are subjected to endless reruns of an “inspirational” (cringingly stupid) poem by Charles Province, written in 1970: “The Soldier.” “It is the Soldier, not the minister, who has given us freedom of religion.” The poem restates the same basic principle in regard to a series of other freedoms: …

As a libertarian anarchist, I will most likely vote to leave the EU on June 23rd. The EU, with its supranational corporatism and affirmation of legislation writ-large, goes against my fundamental principles, that of popular litigiousness expressed through common law and a belief in freed markets and radical decentralism. However, none of these principles are…

In Virginia a middle school student named Ryan Turk was arrested and then suspended from school for allegedly stealing a $0.65 carton of milk. Officials claim that the student tried to conceal the carton of milk and are also charging him with larceny. This charge could impinge Turk’s record which could also lead to further…

The next President of the United States will be one of the worst. If September 11th was a gunshot that allowed the Bush Administration to take off sprinting, the Obama administration grabbed the baton and charged forward even faster. No one spends years pursuing political power only to walk into the Oval Office and suddenly…

As the War on Terror wages on and the threat of ISIS seems to constantly loom over us, threatening our very safety at every turn according to most mainstream news sources, Americans are left wondering how we are to fight this very real monster that the U.S. government helped to create. While some folks toe…

Habitual apologists for agribusiness like Reason‘s Ron Bailey gushingly cite studies that show glyphosate, the “active ingredient” in Roundup, is unlikely to cause cancer in the concentrations that appear in supermarket produce. But as it turns out, the focus on glyphosate may actually have been a distraction. There’s evidence (“New Evidence About the Dangers of…

In the UK the “Lord Chancellor” and Secretary of State for Justice Michael Gove wants to be remembered for his efforts to reform prisons. Writing in The Telegraph, Gove says “The emphasis of our penal system must be on more effective rehabilitation, because our current approach is costing us all dear. At present, nearly half…

Amtrak is in legal trouble. The rail service provider has long enjoyed an anomalous legal status as a for-profit corporation created by the U.S. government. But in 2008, the Passenger Rail Investment and Improvement Act, or PRIIA, heightened that anomaly by giving Amtrak a say in crafting and imposing the regulations that the entire U.S….

Recently more than 15,000 teachers with the Detroit Federation of Teachers (DFT) did not show up for work, instead calling in sick and effectively shutting down 94 of the Detroit district’s 97 schools and leaving over 45,000 students on an unexpected holiday for two whole days. This mass sick-out was called for in an email…

There’s an old saying that when you see a turtle on top of a fencepost, you know it didn’t get up there on its own. In the official capitalist ideology — especially the version that prevails in neoliberal America — great wealth is seen as the reward for superior entrepreneurship, foresight and personal drive. As…

A recent article in Kentucky’s leading paper, The Lexington Herald Leader, discusses the down-fall of coal in the Bluegrass state. The statistics reported are alarming. Overall, the industry is at a 118-year low as more than 50% of coal jobs have disappeared over the past few years. In a region laden with poverty the hits…

On April 4, 2015 in North Charlton, North Carolina a black man named Walter Scott was shot by a white police officer named Michael Slager. Slager alleged that he pulled over Scott for a traffic violation, Scott resisted arrest and took his taser. At this point Slager decided to take action; he shot at Scott…

Good old Knoxville, Tennessee — this scruffy little town that I love — will host the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), a dismal bureaucracy, on May 26, 2016. BLM is heading to the vibrant, plush Tennessee Theatre in the heart of downtown to take comments on how “public” lands are utilized for coal mining. Specifically, strip mining…

On May 10 West Virginia will hold its presidential primary. Contenders Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have all visited the state looking for working class votes. All three contenders have a vision for the future of West Virginia’s economy. Republican Trump wants to bring back “Clean Coal” and protect industry jobs. Democratic candidates…

Ordinarily the word “housing” means a person’s shelter, lodging or place of dwelling. But shortened to “housin” it refers to, according to Urban Dictionary, a show of dominance or authority. And when it comes to the dispute between Airbnb and the Berlin government, it’s clear Airbnb isn’t housin’ anything. The Guardian recently reported that new…

What a sick world we live in where Joseph Buddenberg and Nicole Kissane, two individuals so passionate about the lives of the earth’s most vulnerable, must fight for their own lives for having the courage to act on their compassion. But in a world where justice has become a scarce commodity, should we be surprised…