In the aftermath of my own encounter with the TSA Thugs, I submitted complaints to “my” representatives: Barbara Lee, Dianne Feinstein, and Barbara Boxer. To paraphrase a favorite poet, I didn’t get no satisfaction, and Dianne Feinstein had the gall to include this line in her emailed response:

As a frequent traveler, I understand the frustrations that can result from the increased security measures.

Really, Dianne, you face the choice of “assuming the position” in a scanning machine with unknown radiation levels, or getting your breasts and pubic area felt by a stranger wearing blue rubber gloves?

It has thus been heartening to see what one hopes is a growing, vocal backlash against these intrusive new backscatter machines and groping “pat downs” instituted by TSA late last year.

Recent notable posts include this by a former Miss USA:

Ms. USA 2003 Susie Castillo is a frequent flyer, but rethinks her travel plans after a recent incident at Dulles airport. Castillo, an actress, says that she was sexually harassed by TSA employees while flying out of the Washington DC-area hub. In this video she explains how she opted out of a body scan machine and, as a result, was humiliated and hassled by a government employee. Has it come to choosing between a dangerous machine or molestation? Castillo discusses her encounter moments later here.

And this vivid description of one man’s triumph over the idiocy that has become the norm in America, “My TSA Encounter:”

I’ve read a fair amount about the controversy surrounding the new TSA policies. I certainly don’t enjoy being treated like a terrorist in my own country, but I’m also not a die-hard constitutional rights advocate. However, for some reason, I was irked. Maybe it was the video of the 3-year old getting molested, maybe it was the sexual assault victim having to cry her way through getting groped, maybe it was the father watching teenage TSA officers joke about his attractive daughter. Whatever it was, this issue didn’t sit right with me. We shouldn’t be required to do this simply to get into our own country.

So, since I had nobody waiting for me at home and no connecting flight to catch, I had some free time. I decided to test my rights.

Read his full story, here.

And Jesse Ventura is suing the TSA, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and TSA Administrator John Pistole, charging that the pat-down to which he was subjected due to his hip replacement surgery:

exposed him to humiliation and degradation through unwanted touching, gripping and rubbing of the intimate areas of his body.

Utah is now following Texas’s lead in proposing legislation that would prohibit TSA pat-downs unless TSA agents have reasonable suspicion.

Let’s hope we see more and more stand up against these petty thugs emboldened by too much power. Send any you are aware of and we’ll keep posting!

In 2011, the state of Illinois public pension was on the brink of disaster, with unfunded liabilities upward of $100 billion. By adjusting the benefits and contributions of current workers, the disaster was averted for those then retired. Those workers of 2011 “did their part” and are still working today, many of them into their 80s and 90s. They knew that it was more important to keep the seniors of 2011 in comfortable retirement so that taxpayers would not be burdened with the false promises of past politicians.

Now the year is 2035 and we look backward for lessons as Social Security is on a similar brink. While there are differences, there are many similarities: politicians promised too much, past generations did not adequately fund those promises, and the number of current workers is not keeping up with the growth in retirees. Even today, the retirement age is only 67 and those seniors vote. Politicians are caught in a bind and so we turn to President Michelle Obama, this nation’s first female president and husband former president Barack Obama, both natives of Illinois. Knowing the “Illinois Lesson” well, President Obama calls on an ordinary American to discuss what he can do. We will call our Everyman “Bob.”

For the cartoon video, click here:

“What About Bob?” (link to Youtube)

Read more:

Edgar K. Browning, “Anatomy of Social Security and Medicare”

“Is Social Security a Good Deal?” (video)

Randy T. Simmons, Beyond Politics: The Roots of Government Failure

Here is Independent Institute Senior Fellow Robert Higgs speaking on “Ethanol Subsidies Have Many Bad Consequences,” from the Mises Circle seminar, “Agricultural Subsidies: Down on the D.C. Farm,” held May 14th in Indianapolis.

[audio:2011_05_14_higgs_indianapolis.mp3]
Download audio file (27:51 minutes)

Please also see the following books:

Plowshares & Pork Barrels: The Political Economy of Agriculture, by E. C. Pasour, Jr., and Randal R. Rucker

Re-Thinking Green: Alternatives to Environmental Bureaucracy, edited by Robert Higgs and Carl P. Close

A Poverty of Reason: Sustainable Development and Economic Growth, by Wilfred Beckerman

Cutting Green Tape: Toxic Pollutants, Environmental Regulation and the Law, edited by Roger E. Meiners and Richard L. Stroup

Here also are related articles:

“Big Ethanol Push in U.S. Is Pork Barrel Boondoggle,” by Ernest C. Pasour, Jr., and Randal R. Rucker (Modesto Bee, July 14, 2007)

“Corny Politics,” by Alvaro Vargas Llosa (Washington Post Writers Group, July 18, 2007)

“The Ethanol Alliance,” by Alvaro Vargas Llosa (Washington Post Writers Group, April 4, 2007)

“Farmers’ Harvest a Bumper Crop of Subsidies,” by William F. Shughart II

Independent Institute Research Director Alex Tabarrok is interviewed by Stephen Dubner of Freakonomics Radio in “To Catch a Fugitive,” on the enormous advantages of private bounty hunting over government police enforcement of bail jumping.

[audio:2011_05_26_bounty_hunters.mp3]
Download audio file (20:14 minutes)

Here also is a transcript of the interview.

Please also see the following books from Dr. Tabarrok:

Judge and Jury: American Tort Law on Trial, authored with Eric Helland

Changing the Guard: Private Prisons and the Control of Crime

Entrepreneurial Economics: Bright Ideas from the Dismal Science

The Voluntary City: Choice, Community, and Civil Society, edited with David Beito and Peter Gordon

Here also are key related articles by him:

“The Bounty Hunter’s Pursuit of Justice” (Wilson Quarterly, January 2011)

“The Rise, Fall, and Rise Again of Privateers” (The Independent Review, Spring 2007)

“Bring on the Bounty Hunters”

It seems like only yesterday that a power-hungry president and administration, bent on starting preventive wars, shredding due process rights, stripping detainees of habeas corpus, and asserting executive supremacy in almost everything was trying to push the Patriot Act through an executive-friendly Senate and complacent House of Representatives. Members of his party were using procedural tricks to ram the bill through without the full deliberation it deserved. Leaders of the president’s party marginalized those who stood up in protest. Of course, this first happened in October 2001, but it has been happening all over again, although now the president is a Democrat and not a Republican.

Congress is on the verge of extending the Patriot Act for another few years. Most Republicans have always supported doing so, although President Obama wanted a longer extension than even they proposed.

Conditions for California prisoners are so bad that the Supreme Court has ruled that the overcrowding amounts to unconstitutional “needless suffering and death” (it almost goes without saying that the conservative justices dissented). California is supposed to release 38,000 to 46,000 prisoners.

Unfortunately, Matthew Cate, head of California Corrections, indicates that the Brown administration intends to obey the order, but not by reducing the prison population. The LA Times reports:

Cate said the administration hopes to reduce the number of prison inmates without setting any criminals free.

“Our goal is to not release inmates at all,” he said, adding that much of the prisoner reduction in the governor’s plan would come from sending parole violators and non-violent offenders to county jails instead of state prisons.

This shell game might follow the letter of the Court’s order, but it would seem that now would be a great time to reflect on the institution of prison in a slightly more fundamental way. Putting a bunch of offenders in county cages instead of state cages is hardly a real solution. And now is a great chance to save a ton of tax money on the whole corrections system, but this will require some boldness on the part of the Brown government.

Brown has proposed, even before the ruling, that non-violent drug offenders be kept in jails rather than prisons. But why not just release them outright? They have committed no violence against anyone’s person or property. They have not actually violated anyone’s rights. They do not belong in a cage in any free society, which the United States and California purport to be. If these thousands of offenders were not clogging up the jails, the overcrowding and financial problems would both be ameliorated to a degree.

There are other people who do not belong in prison or jail: Those who violate gun control laws, another victimless crime. Violators of prostitution laws should also be released. And many property criminals would probably be better dealt with through restitution, arbitration and mediation than incarceration.

Proposals like this seem radical, but a Supreme Court ruling is a perfect excuse for the governor to do something significant. Gutting the prison state and effectively ending the wars on victimless crimes are consistent with civilized morality, but would also save billions every year.

Some will protest that Brown could simply not get away with this. There would be far too much opposition, especially from the political right. Well, how about a compromise? He can offer deep spending cuts, large reductions in pensions for state officials, and tax relief so as to outflank his conservative opposition. Brown is far from a libertarian, but he has an iconoclastic streak to him, and demonstrated surprising bursts of fiscal conservatism after the similarly ironic profligacy of the Reagan years. If he takes on the left’s special interests, perhaps he can have more political capital to do away with the right’s as well. The Supreme Court order is a great chance for Brown to emerge as the boldest and least establishment governor of California in many years—not too hard a task—if only he has the will and courage to do it.

A new NBER paper finds that, before the financial crisis, the more a financial institution engaged in lobbying, the riskier its loan portfolio and the worse its performance during and after the crisis. The idea that bank regulation creates moral hazard is so well-known, almost trite, that hardly anyone talks about it any more. But let’s not forget moral hazard, along with the Fed’s easy money policy, as a prime determinant of the crisis. Here’s the paper:

A Fistful of Dollars: Lobbying and the Financial Crisis
Deniz Igan, Prachi Mishra, Thierry Tressel
NBER Working Paper No. 17076, May 2011

Has lobbying by financial institutions contributed to the financial crisis? This paper uses detailed information on financial institutions’ lobbying and mortgage lending activities to answer this question. We find that lobbying was associated with more risk-taking during 2000-07 and with worse outcomes in 2008. In particular, lenders lobbying more intensively on issues related to mortgage lending and securitization (i) originated mortgages with higher loan-to-income ratios, (ii) securitized a faster growing proportion of their loans, and (iii) had faster growing originations of mortgages. Moreover, delinquency rates in 2008 were higher in areas where lobbying lenders’ mortgage lending grew faster. These lenders also experienced negative abnormal stock returns during the rescue of Bear Stearns and the collapse of Lehman Brothers, but positive abnormal returns when the bailout was announced. Finally, we find a higher bailout probability for lobbying lenders. These findings suggest that lending by politically active lenders played a role in accumulation of risks and thus contributed to the financial crisis.

This summer, the Independent Institute is excited to host “The Challenge of Liberty”, two student seminar programs, one geared toward college students and the other for high school students. The high school session runs from June 20 to 24 at our offices in Oakland and the college program will be held at a Bay Area campus from August 1 to 5.

The faculty will comprise Gregory Rehmke, the director of the Seminar program, along with James Ahiakpor (California State University), Carl Close (Independent Institute), Fred Foldvary (Santa Clara University), Matthew Holian (San Jose State University), Michael Winther (Institute for Principle Studies) and José Yulo (Academy of Art University). I will also be lecturing. The high school session will further feature Emily Skarbek, director of the Independent Institute’s Center on Entrepreneurial Innovation and professor at San Jose State, and the college session will feature for the first time none other than Robert Higgs of the Independent Institute and The Independent Review.

Each program amounts to a concise and thorough survey course in the ethical and economic principles of a free society. Topics covered include natural rights and natural law, free markets and prosperity, public goods, “market failure” and “government failure,” property rights, monopoly and competition, money and banking, health care, environmental issues, and much more. College students will also learn further about the Austrian School of economics, law and order without statism, the political economy of war and its effects on economic and civil liberties. Students and parents, be sure not to miss this great opportunity by enrolling today!

Last week I wrote about the publicity — mostly negative — that Florida State University was receiving as a result of accepting a grant from the C.G. Koch Foundation to fund positions in the economics department.  I know a lot about the issue, because I am a professor of economics at Florida State.

The publicity has kept up.  Every day I’ve been getting e-mails from people near and far, some from people I know, some from people I’ve never met, passing along a link or offering an opinion.  The story has been covered in the New York Times and Businessweek, among other outlets. I admit to being somewhat entertained by all the publicity, which is easy for me because unlike my Dean or university president, I have not been in the direct line of fire in these attacks on my department and university.

In what I wrote last week I was just trying to state the facts as I saw them, as someone with more knowledge about the deal than most people who offered their opinions.  I didn’t pass judgment.  I tried to present objective facts, and let readers decide.

Like millions of families this month, we attended a commencement ceremony this past weekend, at Mills College, a liberal arts college for women in California. Mills was founded as the Young Ladies’ Seminary, and a few years later was bought by missionaries Cyrus and Susan Mills, who relocated it to Oakland and directed its educational emphasis to the training of young ladies as missionaries. Saturday’s ceremony was notable, therefore, for the complete and total absence of any mention of God.

The gods of today’s “progressive” education were regularly invoked throughout the ceremony, however, including those at the top of the pantheon, “Social Justice” and “Diversity.”

Predictably, the graduate student representative’s presentation culminated by her quoting the high priest of progressivism, FDR.

Immediately following that address, an honorary degree was conferred on a lively lady of 89, whose Japanese ancestry had resulted in her being forcibly removed from Mills in 1943 and interred in a “War Relocation Camp,” together with her family and neighbors, until she was able to later attend college on the East Coast and pursue a career in nursing. The great sorrow of her long life had been having her hope of being—in her words—a “Mills Girl” dashed, and receiving the honorary degree clearly meant a great deal to her.

While she made mention in her talk of her internment and shattered dreams having resulted from “Executive Order 9066,” no one seemed to make the connection between the Executive issuing that order—FDR—with the Great One quoted not five minutes prior.

Which makes Bob Higgs’s recent presentation at Francisco Marroquín University in Guatemala even more refreshing: “Societies flourish when they permit a million flowers to bloom, each in its own time, and its own way.” See video, here. (Bob’s English-language presentation begins at 2:50)