The Libertarian Almanac - May

April 30, 7:24 PMDallas Libertarian ExaminerGarry Reed

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Featuring stuff about this month of particular interest to libertarians and freedom-minded folks in general.

The Fully Informed Jury Association (FIJA) is a nonprofit org dedicated to educating all Americans herded into jury duty about the fact that they absolutely have the right to refuse to convict a fellow citizen whose only "crime" was engaging in some activity that harmed no one.

In fact, as a juror you don't have to convict anyone for anything if you think the law is stupid or doesn't apply to the case at hand or the punishment is onerous or for any other reason your conscience dictates.

Doesn't matter that the judge thinks the courtroom is his personal fiefdom and jurors are his personal peasants or the prosecutor wants another belt notch for his mayoral campaign or a cop is willing to lie in the witness box for the back-pat of throwing one more nonviolent rules-breaker into a cage.

The "jury of your peers" is one more of those checks and balances the American nation builders built into our nation as a check against the power abusers. There are times that it's your patriotic, legal, moral and just plain decent right to refuse to help the judicial system continue to subsidize the prison industry by incarcerating us at a greater per capita rate than any other country in the so-called civilized world.

Not only can you educate yourself about jury rights by visiting the FIJA website but for a nominal outlay you can obtain a nifty Freedom Calendar whose pages inform you of all sorts of historical events, like these: 

FIJA: teaching you what you really should do as a juror,
not what the judge orders you to do. (courtesy FIJA)

May 7 – Lusitania sunk in 1915. You remember that, don't you? 

May 10 – First transcontinental railroad - 1869. More on that later. 

May 14 – Lewis & Clark Expedition began in 1804, leading directly to the discovery of Sacajawea. Look that one up in your kid's history book, or just gaze at one of the golden dollar coins lying around your house. (For some reason the US Mint calls this a "golden coin," not a "gold coin." Wonder why.) 

May 23 – Ben Franklin, America's greatest Renaissance Man (scientist, inventor, statesman, printer, philosopher, musician, economist) invented bifocal specs, 1785. 

May 25 – Memorial Day – much more on that in another article. 

Now about that train business. 

The transcontinental railroad railroaded American taxpayers. 

A few months after becoming president the former railroad lobbyist "Honest Abe" Lincoln rammed through "emergency" legislation to create the Union Pacific Railroad with money looted from the public treasury. 

He made sure the bill gave himself the power to "fix the point of commencement." In other words, choose the Eastern terminus. The point he chose was a spot in Council Bluffs, Iowa, still known today as "Lincoln’s Hill," on a plot of land he himself owned. 

What an amazing coincidence. Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world...

If, as some have said, the transcontinental railroad was one of America's greatest engineering feats of the 19th century it was also one of the greatest feats of public plundering.

All of Lincoln's cronies got rich off the railroad boondoggle.

One Republican congressman's vote was bought with a block of Union Pacific stock. An iron-maker demanded and got a clause in the law requiring that all iron used in the building of the railroad would be American manufactured. A politically connected shovel manufacturer supported the bill after he was promised shovel contracts. 

So what does this have to do with the Fully Informed Jury Association? 

It's just a longwinded (and historically educational) way of prompting FIJA to take a closer look at their nifty Freedom Calendar and expunge the anti-freedom factoids from it. 

Maybe the 2010 calendar will drop Lincoln's disgraceful transcontinental railroad in favor of another line built by a true American hero. Quoting from Lincoln biographer Thomas J. DiLorenzo, " From an economic perspective it was completely unnecessary for government to subsidize a transcontinental railroad. Entrepreneur James J. Hill proved this by building the enormously successful Great Northern Railroad without a dime of government subsidy and no land grants."

 The entry for May, in fact, might read:

 May 29 – James J. Hill, America's greatest free market railroad "Empire Builder" died, St. Paul MN – 1916.

 The jury is definitely in on Hill.