The Independent Institute, the Institute for Principle Studies, and Economic Thinking cordially invite homeschooled students and their parents to attend:

UNDERSTANDING TODAY’S ECONOMY
Preview for Homeschoolers from the Challenge of Liberty Summer Seminars

Thursday, June 4, 2009
4:30 – 7:30 p.m.
The Independent Institute
100 Swan Way
Oakland, California
Map and Directions

Seminar fee: $5 per person. Includes pizza dinner.

RSVP: 510-632-1366 or events@independent.org

Preliminary Schedule:

4:30 Introduction: Why Economics Matters More Than Ever
Greg Rehmke, Economic Thinking / E Pluribus Unum Films

5:00 The Auto Industry Bailouts: A Principled Critique
Mike Winther, Institute for Principle Studies

5:30 Would Energy Independence Make America More Secure?
Brian Gothberg, The Independent Institute

6:00 Dinner Break & Informal Discussion

6:30 Ordered Liberty: Insights from Classic Authors
José Yulo, Academy of Art University

7:00 Conclusion: Can Government Be Held Accountable?
Anthony Gregory, The Independent Institute

7:30 Seminar Adjourns

I thought this was too good not to share.  Here is an excerpt from pp. 69-72 of Reflections on the Psalms by C.S. Lewis:

He had in fact been a strict socialist at Oxford.  Everything ought to be run by the State; private enterprise and independent professions were for him the great evil.  He then went away and became a schoolmaster.  After about ten years of that he came to see me.  He said his political views had been wholly reversed.  You never heard a fuller recantation.  He now saw that state interference was fatal.  What had converted him was his experience as a schoolmaster of the Ministry of Education—a set of ignorant meddlers armed with insufferable powers to pester, hamper, and interrupt the work of real, practical teachers who knew the subjects they taught, who knew boys, parents, and all the real conditions of their work.  It makes no difference to the point of the story whether you agree with his view of the Ministry; the important thing is that he held that view.  For the real point of the story, and of his visit, when it came, nearly took my breath away.  Thinking thus, he had come to see whether I had any influence which might help him get a job in the Ministry of Education.

Here is the perfect band-wagoner.  Immediately on the decision ‘This is a revolting tyranny’, follows the question ‘How can I as quickly as possible cease to be one of the victims and become one of the tyrants?’  If I had been able to introduce the young man to someone in the Ministry, I think we may be sure that his manners to that hated ‘meddler’ would have been genial and friendly in the extreme.  Thus someone who had heard his previous invective against the meddling and then witnessed his actual behaviour to the meddler, might possibly (for charity ‘believeth all things’) have concluded that this young man was full of the purest Christianity and loved one he thought a sinner while hating what he thought his sin.

Of course this is an instance of band-wagoning so crude and unabashed as to be farcical.  Not many of us perhaps commit the like.  But there are subtler, more social or intellectual forms of band-wagoning which might deceive us.  Many people have a very strong desire to meet celebrated or ‘important’ people, including those whom they disapprove, to talk or even (anyone may produce a book of reminiscences) to write about.  It is felt to confer distinction if the great, though odious, man recognizes you in the street.  And where such motives are in play it is better still to know him quite well, to be intimate with him.  It would be delightful if he shouted out ‘Hallo Bill’ while you were walking down the Strand with an impressionable country cousin.  I don’t know that the desire it itself a very serious defect.  But I am inclined to think a Christian would be wise to avoid, where he decently can, any meeting with people who are bullies, lascivious, cruel, dishonest, spiteful, and so forth.

“Not because we are ‘too good’ for them.  In a sense because we are not good enough.  We are not good enough to cope with all the temptations, nor clever enough to cope with all the problems, which an evening spent in such society produces.  The temptation is to condone, to connive at; by our words, looks and laughter, to ‘consent’.  The temptation was never greater than now when we are all (and very rightly so afraid of priggery or ‘smugness’.  And of course, even if we do not seek them out, we shall constantly be in such company whether we wish it or not.  This is the real and unavoidable difficulty.

We shall hear vile stories told as funny; not merely licentious stories but (to me far more serious and less noticed) stories which the teller could not be telling unless he was betraying someone’s confidence.  We shall hear infamous detractions of the absent, often disguised as pity or humour.  Things we hold sacred will be mocked.  Cruelty will be slyly advocated by the assumption that its only opposite is ‘sentimentality’.  The very presuppositions of any good life—all disinterested motives, all heroism, all genuine forgiveness—will be, not explicitly denied (for then the matter could be discussed), but assumed to be phantasmal, idiotic, believed in only by children.”

Cross-posted at the Mises Blog.

Mario Vargas Llosa, Peruvian novelist and father of Senior Fellow Alvaro Vargas Llosa, was also detained upon his arrival today at the Caracas International Airport.  Venezuelan customs authorities withheld his passport and held him for nearly two hours after his flight landed.  Vargas Llosa and his wife are on their way to their hotel after refusing a police escort.  They plan to attend the same CEDICE forum as Senior Fellow Alvaro Vargas Llosa.

On the evening of May 25, Independent Institute Senior Fellow Alvaro Vargas Llosa was detained for questioning for almost three hours by Venezuelan authorities following his arrival at the Caracas International Airport.

Since the officers in charge of his custody forgot to take away his cell phone, he was able to answer a call from Globovisión, a Venezuelan television network opposed to Chavez´s regime, which broadcast the conversation live. Alvaro believes that call was key to his release since it rapidly spread the news of his detention through media outlets worldwide, placing pressure on the ruling dictatorship.

Alvaro traveled to Caracas to attend a forum on freedom and democracy organized by the Center for the Dissemination of Economic Knowledge (CEDICE), a Caracas-based free-market think tank. He is scheduled to speak at an event commemorating the organization’s 25th anniversary, along with other distinguished lecturers including Alex Chafuen, Manuel Ayau Cordón, Enrique Ghersi, Jorge Castañeda, Guy Sorman and his own father Mario Vargas Llosa.

In a radio interview, Alvaro told how without any explanations the police withheld his passport and took him to a room reserved for smugglers, where they interrogated him and among others things asked him to identify his “accomplices”. He also anticipated that his father Mario will surely undergo similar treatment when he arrives in Caracas on Wednesday.

Before his release, authorities warned him that as a foreign visitor he’s prohibited from “making political statements” during his visit to Venezuela. This morning, Alvaro told a journalist in Buenos Aires that he was only “smuggling” ideas on liberty and free markets and that he will continue criticizing President Hugo Chávez as usual, even though those actions could result in his deportation from the country.

“As a citizen of Peru, a country which was also liberated by Simón Bolivar,  I have the right to defend my ideas,” added Alvaro.

As a Floridian, I’m looking at California’s budget mess with some amazement.  The state’s 2009-10 budget is $111 billion, up 6% from the prior year, and $25 billion more than the year’s projected revenues of $86 billion.  The budget’s expenditures are 29% greater than projected revenues!  Yes, times are tough, we’re in a recession and all that, but during tough times shouldn’t we tighten our belts?  Instead, California’s expenditures are growing at a fairly good clip, and 29% larger than revenues.  This strikes me as crazy, and I’m happy to be saying this from Florida rather than California.

Things are tough in Florida too.  In 2006-07 the state’s budget was $73.9 billion, but with the collapse in the real estate market, the recession, and the associated decline in tourism, revenues have fallen just like in California.  The difference is, our state legislature has cut expenditures to match the decline in revenues, and Florida’s 2009-10 budget is $66.5 billion, a cut of more than 10% from its high a few years ago.  And, the budget is balanced.

Florida’s legislature balanced the budget pretty much without raising taxes.  There were a few “revenue enhancers” here and there—most significantly, a $1 per pack increase in cigarette taxes—but by and large the state held the line on taxes.  Florida’s 6% sales tax rate (lower than California’s 8.25% rate) remained unchanged, and Florida never has had a personal income tax.  Pretty much the way things went were, revenues fell, and the legislature cut expenditures to match the reduction in revenues.  That’s fiscal responsibility.

People complained, of course, but the loudest complaints were from people who worked for the government, or special interests who wanted some particular program funded.  You didn’t hear ordinary Floridians saying they wanted their state government to spend more.  I’m giving our state legislature a lot of credit for holding the line on taxes and spending within their means.  I don’t see that kind of fiscal responsibility at the national level, or at the local level (in Florida, local governments are all scheming for ways to raise more revenue and increase their spending).  And, looking all the way across the country, I don’t see it in California.

I watched with interest (actually, morbid curiosity would be more descriptive) last week as Californians voted down the state’s proposed solution to the budget crisis.  I would have voted against the state’s plan too.  Now I’ll be interested (I mean, morbidly curious) to see what California’s legislature has up their sleeve as Plan B.  Fortunately, Florida’s political leadership shows more responsibility.  Sacramento is 2,700 miles from Tallahassee, and I confess I don’t follow California news that closely.  But I really don’t understand how California’s political leadership can put the state in that much fiscal peril and still remain in office.

In the flurry of the last several days we now know Obama is planning to maintain indefinite detention powers, even going further than Bush was willing to do openly. He is also perpetuating a slightly tweaked version of the Bush military commissions and is being harshly criticized by a U.S. district judge over his broad use of “state secrets” to prevent alleged victims of the government’s warrantless spying program to see relevant evidence.

Our very own Alvaro Vargas Llosa, on his way to a conference on democracy and free enterprise in Venezuela, was detained by its authorities for two hours. Thankfully, his call to the media made them back off for now. The Buenos Aires Herald reports that his passport was withheld as he was detained and continues:

Álvaro, son of the novelist Mario Vargas Llosa, said that after being released he was told he “didn’t had the right to make any political comments, that I’m only a foreigner, but as a Peruvian citizen, a country that was also freed by Simón Bolivar, I don’t think I have less rights than others of Bolivar’s supporters to defend my ideas.”

The heroic Alvaro intends to do just as he planned, and proceed to speak on behalf of liberty at this conference, despite the dictatorship’s intimidation. The people in Venezuela, and throughout Latin America, need to hear the universal message championing free enterprise and the rule of law, which Vargas Llosa, one of the premier experts on political economy in the region, has tirelessly shown is the one true path to social peace and prosperity there.

Update: The TV station that broadcast Alvaro’s call has apparently already been facing government intimidation. Bold of them to broadcast it anyway.

The Secretary of Education came through town the other day, touting the Obama administration’s competition for states to receive federal funds, and teachers aren’t too happy about it.

[Secretary] Duncan said the few states that win the competition—he wouldn’t say how many that could be—will have to show that they are innovative and that their creative efforts succeed in helping low-performing students succeed.

Among Duncan’s suggestions for California to have a chance in the competition was to track teachers’ performance and tie their pay to it. Predictably, Linda Plack, executive vice president of San Francisco’s teachers union, thinks the idea outrageous: “Gather data so you can decide who the good teachers are? Wrong!”

I wonder how they feel about their endorsement of Obama now?

In an article in the May 22nd issue of The Wall Street Journal, Bjørn Lomborg (former Director, Environmental Assessment Institute, Copenhagen) correctly discusses the climate-industrial complex, in which many top firms in the U.S. and elsewhere stand to greatly benefit financially from the gigantic wealth-transfer and cartelization schemes being pushed by Al Gore and the global-warming lobby. This environmental corporatism is akin to the military-industrial complex that our Senior Fellow Robert Higgs has so well documented (see here, here, and here). As Lomborg notes:

Naturally, many CEOs are genuinely concerned about global warming. But many of the most vocal stand to profit from carbon regulations. The term used by economists for their behavior is “rent-seeking.”

The world’s largest wind-turbine manufacturer, Copenhagen Climate Council member Vestas, urges governments to invest heavily in the wind market. It sponsors CNN’s “Climate in Peril” segment, increasing support for policies that would increase Vestas’s earnings. A fellow council member, Mr. Gore’s green investment firm Generation Investment Management, warns of a significant risk to the U.S. economy unless a price is quickly placed on carbon.

Even companies that are not heavily engaged in green business stand to gain. European energy companies made tens of billions of euros in the first years of the European Trading System when they received free carbon emission allocations.

American electricity utility Duke Energy, a member of the Copenhagen Climate Council, has long promoted a U.S. cap-and-trade scheme. Yet the company bitterly opposed the Warner-Lieberman bill in the U.S. Senate that would have created such a scheme because it did not include European-style handouts to coal companies. The Waxman-Markey bill in the House of Representatives promises to bring back the free lunch.

U.S. companies and interest groups involved with climate change hired 2,430 lobbyists just last year, up 300% from five years ago. Fifty of the biggest U.S. electric utilities—including Duke—spent $51 million on lobbyists in just six months.

Many have forgotten that it was no less than Enron that was the biggest backer of the Kyoto Protocol for the simple reason that as a major natural gas producer, Enron stood to make billions of dollars from a system of mandated emission credits.

The cozy corporate-climate relationship was pioneered by Enron, which bought up renewable energy companies and credit-trading outfits while boasting of its relationship with green interest groups. When the Kyoto Protocol was signed, an internal memo was sent within Enron that stated, “If implemented, [the Kyoto Protocol] will do more to promote Enron’s business than almost any other regulatory business.”

In addition to Duke Energy, among the firms pushing for mandatory controls on carbon dioxide emissions are General Electric, Shell, British Petroleum, Ford, ConocoPhillips, Dow Chemical, DuPont, Alcoa, American Electric Power, Caterpillar, John Deere, Johnson & Johnson, PepsiCo, PNM, Siemens, Xerox, IBM, PG&E, News Corp., PricewaterhouseCoopers, and Nike.

Yet, this obvious interest-group component of the stampede to adopt extremely costly (and pointless, as Lomborg himself has shown) regulations of such non-pollutants as carbon dioxide appears to matter little in the major media or among most environmental groups. Indeed, there is no outcry! While true-believing climate alarmists have sought to smear and dismiss legitimate, scientific questions raised by scholars and organizations that receive funding from businesses opposed to climate controls, claiming that they are simply stooges for corporate interests, pro-alarmist groups supported by firms having an obvious interest in the adoption of climate statism are somehow enlightened, objective, incisive, and reliable. Why the double standard? The answer is that the climate alarmist view has far more to do with power politics, the shallowness of “elite” culture, and the fact that global warming is largely about environmental religion, not science.

Meanwhile, the Copenhagen Climate Council’s upcoming World Business Summit on Climate Change in Copenhagen is stacked with proponents of climate catastrophe with Mr. Gore as keynote speaker and media sponsors including MSNBC, National Geographic, the New York Times Company, and Berlingske Tidende. And next week, the Heartland Institute’s Third International Conference on Climate Change will be held in Washington, D.C., featuring two dozen climate skeptics and co-sponsored by forty skeptic groups. So, how do you believe the two events will be reported?

Schwarzenegger and legislative leaders, mostly Democrats, hoped all their budget proposals would win voter approval at yesterday’s special election. But “Propositions 1A through 1E, the measures directly pertaining to the budget, all lost by huge margins.”

Even more encouraging, “Only Proposition 1F, which denies pay increases to state elected officials when the state is running a deficit — such raises rarely happen anyway — won easily.”

Given the continued determination of California politicians to spend like mad, and considering the general political culture, there is a long way to go toward true fiscal solvency, but the message, even in this relatively small and symbolic defeat of the establishment, is pretty clear: Leave us alone; we’re being taxed enough; stop passing off more of your same nonsense as if it were going to solve anything. If someone needs to sacrifice any more than they are, it’s you, the political class.