WendyMcElroy.com

The GMan blog site for January 24 has a long post about the TSA from which I excerpt the following passage:

Civil libertarians on both sides of the aisle should be appalled at an unauthorized use to which TSA is putting their screening: Identifying petty criminals--using one search method to achieve a secret goal. This is strictly forbidden in other government branches. In the FBI, if I had a warrant to wiretap an individual on a terrorism matter and picked-up evidence of a non-terrorism-related crime, I could not, without FBI Headquarters and a judge’s approval, use that as evidence in a criminal case. But TSA is using its screening devices to carve out a niche business. According to congress, TSA began to seek out petty criminals without congressional approval. TSA have arrested more than 1,000 people on drug charges and other non-airline security-related offenses to date.

The report goes on to state that the virtual strip search screening machines are a failure in that they cannot detect the type of explosives used by the “underwear bomber” or even a pistol used as a TSA’s own real-world test of the machines. Yet TSA has spent approximately $60 billion since 2002 and now has over 65,000 employees, more than the Department of State, more than the Department of Energy, more than the Department of Labor, more than the Department of Education, more than the Department of Housing and Urban Development---combined. TSA has become, according to the report, “an enormous, inflexible and distracted bureaucracy more concerned with……consolidating power.”

Each time the TSA is publically called to account for their actions, they fight back with fear-based press releases which usually begin with “At a time like this….” Or “Al Qaeda is planning—at this moment …..” The tactic, of course, is to throw the spotlight off the fact that their policies are doing nothing to make America safer “at a time like this.” Sometimes doing the wrong thing is just as bad as doing nothing.

The TSA unions are now fighting against any reduction in staff, such as by implementation of more efficient protocols, hiring of contractors, or less draconian screening. It is simply not in their best interest for screening to get quicker or easier because that would require fewer screeners. The chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, John Mica (R-FL) scolded; “It is time for TSA to refocus its mission based on risk and develop common sense security protocols.”

I think Mike "Mish" Shedlock has the right take on the "Unbelievable Stress of Making 'Only' $200,000 After Taxes". I can't fathom how Andrew Schiff, quoted in Bloomberg, could be so far out of touch with how most people live:


But top marks for obtuseness go not to Schiff, but to this guy:


Well, true enough. I can imagine the stress of "I just lost my job," and "I haven't worked for a year," and "I don't know how we can feed the kids," and "I'm living out of my car." But I really can't imagine the stress of "I have to pull my kids out of their $32,000-a-year private school."

However, I am not entirely without sympathy, and in one respect I can feel Schiff's pain. When we first moved to our present house, it, too, had no dishwasher. That's how I know that there are such things as countertop dishwashers that don't need installation -- you just plug it into the wall, and connect it to your kitchen sink. (We acquired instead a similar but larger "portable" dishwasher, that rolled out of the way when not in use, slightly used at a very good price.)

So there, Andrew, I hope that helps your plight somewhat. Perhaps you can take up a collection among your friends for the 250 bucks it will cost.

Update: To be fair, Schiff says that his remarks were distorted by selective quotation, and that the reporter completely omitted Schiff's statement that "I am happy and grateful for all that I have and that I know I have huge advantages over most people."

QUIETLY, QUIETLY, THE REVOLUTION ARRIVES
by Wendy McElroy

The Revolution is rapping on my door. And, in response, I garden.

I live down a gravel road on a 40 acre farm in Canada...and the Revolution still finds me. It is everywhere. Blogs. Forums. Twitter. Conversations overheard in the grocery store. The rebellion against governments is all-present even though the most important front may not be obvious to some. The deepest Revolution in North America is the quiet and largely invisible withdrawal of people from dependency on 'the system' into self-sufficiency.

By “dependency” I do not mean people who receive tax-funded entitlements such as welfare. I mean people who work hard, pay their own bills and are now so disillusioned with 'the system' that they no longer trust government data like inflation, government promises like social security, government 'services' like the public schools. And least of all, they trust politicians.

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A few days ago I posted a bibliography on the nature and development of classical liberalism here. This is an addendum to that list. A master list that integrates both is located here.

Appleby, Joyce, Capitalism and a New Social Order: The Republican Vision of the 1790s ([1984], New York University Press, 1984).
Atack, Jeremy and Larry Neal, The Origins and Developments of Financial Markets and Institutions: From the Seventeenth Century to the Present (2009).
Barbour, Violet, Capitalism in Amsterdam in the 17th Century (University of Michigan, 1966).
Black, Antony, Council and Commune: The Conciliar Movement and the Council of Basel (Burns and Oates, 1979).
Blumenthal, Uta-Renate, The Investiture Controversy: Church and Monarchy from the Ninth to the Twelfth Century University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988).
Bonney, Richard (ed.), Economic Systems and State Finance ([1995], Oxford University Press, 2002).
Bonney, Richard (ed.), The Rise of the Fiscal State in Europe, c. 1200-1815 ([1999], Oxford University Press, 2004).
Bordo, Michael D. and Forrest Capie (Eds.), Monetary Regimes in Transition (Cambridge University Press, 1993).
Bordo, Michael D and Roberto Cortés-Conde, Transferring Wealth and Power from the Old to the New World: Monetary and Fiscal Institutions in the 17th through the 19th Centuries (Cambridge University Press, 2001).
Buchanan, James M., ‘La scienza delle finanze’: The Italian Tradition in Fiscal Theory,” in Fiscal Theory & Political Economy: Selected Essays (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1960).
Cardoso, José Luís and Pedro Lains (Eds.), Paying for the Liberal State: The Rise of Public Finance in Nineteenth-Century Europe (Cambridge University Press, 2010).
Carson, Clayborne, In Struggle: SNCC and the Black awakening of the 1960s (Harvard University Press, ([1981], Harvard University Press, 1995).
Carruthers, Bruce G., City of Capital: Politics and Markets in the English Financial Revolution (Princeton University Press, 1996).
Christakis, Nicholas A. and James H. Fowler, Connected: How Your Friends' Friends' Affect Everything You Feel, Think and Do (Back Bay Press, 2009).
Cobban, Alan B., The Medieval Universities: Their Development and Organization (Methuen & Co., 1975).
Colbourne, Trevor, The Lamp of Experience: Whig History and the Intellectual Origins of the American Revolution ([1965]), Liberty Fund, 1998).
Collins, James B., Fiscal Limits of Absolutism: Direct Taxation in Early Seventeenth-Century France (University of California Press, 1988).
De Roover, Raymond, The Rise and Decline of the Medici Bank, 1397-1494 ([1963], Beard Books, 1999).
De Roover, Raymond, Money, Banking and Credit in Medieval Bruges: Italian Merchant Bankers, Lombards and Money Changers: A Study in the Origins of Banking: The Emergence of International Business, 1200-1800 ([1948], Routledge, 2000).
Dickinson, H.T., Liberty and Property: Political Ideology in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Holmes & Meier, 1979).
Dickson, P.G.M., The Financial Revolution in England: A Study in the Development of Public Credit, 1688-1756 (Macmillan, 1967).
Edling, Max M., A Revolution in Favor of Government: Origins of the U.S. Constitution and the Making of the American State (Oxford University Press, 2003).
Ferguson, Niall, The Cash Nexus: Money and Power in the Modern World, 1700-2000 (Basic Books, 2001).
Fuller, Lon L., The Principles of Social Order ([1981], Hart Publishing, 2002).
Gittings, John, The Glorious Art of Peace: From the Iliad to Iraq (Oxford University Press, [April 15] 2012).
Goetzmann, William and K. Geert Rouwenhorst (Eds.), The Origins of Value: The Financial Innovations the Created Modern Capital Markets (Oxford University Press, 2005).
Halliday, Paul D. Habeas Corpus: From England to Empire (Harvard University Press, 2010).
Hayek, F.A., The Counter-Revolution of Science ([1955], Liberty Fund, 1980).
Hayek, F.A., Individualism and Economic Order ([1948], University of Chicago Press, 1996).
Hayek, F.A., Studies in Philosophy, Politics and Economics ([1967], Touchstone Press, 1969).
Hintze Otto, The Historical Essays of Otto Hintze ([1975], Oxford University Press, 1989).
Hobson, J.A., Richard Cobden: The International Man ([1919], Cornell University Press, 2009).
Horwitz, Morton J., The Transformation of American Law, 1780-1860 (Harvard University Press, 1979).
Horwitz, Morton H., The Transformation of American Law, 1870-1960 (Oxford University Press, 1992).
Irwin, Douglas A., Against the Tide: An Intellectual History of Free Trade (Princeton University Press, 1997).
Jacobs, Jane, The Economy of Cities (Vintage, 1970).
Jacobs, JaneMSystems of Survival: A Dialogue on the Moral Foundations of Commerce and Politics (Vintage, 1994).
Kelley, Robert, The Transatlantic Persuasion: The Liberal-Democratic Mind in the Age of Gladstone ([1969], Transaction Books, 1990).
Kennedy, Paul, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000 (Random House, 1989).
Lane, Frederic C., Profits from Power: Readings in Protection Rent and Violence-Controlling Enterprises (State University of New York Press, 1979).
Lopez, Robert Sabatini (Ed.), The Dawn of Modern Banking Yale University Press, 1979).
Maitland, Frederic William, Township and Borough ([1898], Nabu Press, 2010).
Ma Debin and Jan van Zandan (Eds.), Law and Long-Term Economic Change: A Eurasian Perspective (Stanford University Press, 2011).
McKendrick, Neil and John Brewer and J.H. Plumb, > Birth of a Consumer Society: The Commercialization of Eighteenth-Century Englanddiana university Press, 1982).
Menger, Carl, "On the Origin of Money," in Economic Journal, Vol. 2, 1892. Can be found online at www.monadnock.net/menger/money.html
Mises, Ludwig von, "Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth, [1920]" in Alec Nove and D.M. Nuti (Eds.), Socialist Economics (Penguin Books, 1972).
Mises, Ludwig von, Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis ([1922] Liberty Fund, 1981).
Mises, Ludwig von, Nation, State, and Economy: Contributions to the Politic and History of Our Time ([1919], New York University Press, 1983).
Mitterauer, Michael, Why Europe? : The Medieval Origins of its Special Path (University of Chicago Press, 2010).
Moore, Barrington, Jr., Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World ([1966], Beacon Press, 1993).
Musgrave, Richard A. and Alan T Peacock, Classics in the Theory of Public Finance ([1958], St. Martin's Press, 1994).
Neal, Larry, The Rise of Finance Capitalism: International Capital Markets in the Age of Reason (Cambridge University Press, 1993).
Ogilvie, Sheilagh, Institutions and European Trade: Merchant Guilds, 1000-1800 (Cambridge University Press, 2011).
Ogilvie, Sheilagh, State Corporatism and Proto-Industry: The Württemberg Black Forest. 1580-1797 (Cambridge University Press, 1997).
Pincus, Steve, 1688: The First Modern Revolution (Yale University Press, 2009).
Pollock, Frederic and Frederic William Maitland, The History of English Law: In Two Volumes ([1895], Liberty Fund, 2010).
Prest, John, Politics in the Age of Cobden (Macmillan, 1977).
Reynolds, Henry, The Law of the Land [Challenges the Legal and Moral Assumptions Underlying the European Occupation of Australia], (Penguin Books, 1987)
Roberts, Adam and Timothy Garton Ash, Civil Resistance & Power Politics: The Experience of Non-Violent Action from Gandhi to the Present (Oxford University Press, 2009).
Rothbard, Murray N., Left and Right: The Prospects for Liberty ([1965], Cato Institute, 1979).
Sally, Razeen, Classical Liberalism and International Economic Order: Studies in Theory and Intellectual History ([1998], Routledge, 2001).
Scott, James C., Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (Yale University Press, 1998).
Scott, James C., The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia (Yale University Press, 2009).
Sharp, Gene, The Politics of Nonviolent Action: Part One, Power and Struggle (Porter Sargent Publisher, 1973).
Sharp, Gene, The Politics of Nonviolent Action: Part Two, The Methods of Nonviolent Action (Porter Sargent Publishers, 1973).
Sharp, Gene, The Politics of Nonviolent Action: Part Three, The Dynamics of Nonviolent Action (Porter Sargent, 1985).
Shell, G. Richard, Make the Rules or Your Rivals Will (Crown Publishing, 2004).
Simon, Julian L., The Ultimate Resource (Princeton University Press, 1983).
Simon, Julian L., The Ultimate Resource 2 Princeton University Press, 1998).
Simon, Julian L., The Economic Consequences of Immigration ([1989] University of Michigan Press, 1999).
Skocpol, Theda, States & Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia and China (Cambridge University Press, 1979).
Smith, Vera C., The Rationale of Central Banking and the Free Banking Alternative ({1936], Liberty Fund, 1990).
Sonenscher, Michael, Before the Deluge: Public Debt, Inequality, and the Intellectual Origins of the French Revolution (Princeton University Press, 2007).
Supple, Barry, The Royal Exchange Assurance: A History of British Insurance, 1720-1970 (Cambridge University Press, 1970).
Tierney, Brian, The Crisis of Church and State, 1050-1300 ([1964], University of Toronto, 1999).
Tilly, Charles, Coercion, Capital, and European States: AD 990-1992 ([1990], Wiley-Blackwell, 1992).
Vincent, John, The Formation of the British Liberal Party (Charles Scribner's Sons, 1966).
Wagner, Richard E., Fiscal Sociology and the Theory of Public Finance: An Exploratory Essay (Edward Elgar, 2007).
Webber, Carolyn and Aaron Wildavsky, A History of Taxation and Expenditure in the Western World (Simon & Schuster, 1986).
Welch, Cheryl B., Liberty and Utility: The French Idéologues and the Transformation of Liberalism (Columbia University Press, 1984).

From WorldNetDaily: Afghans: Quran-burning soldiers to face trial

From Wall Street Journal Online: Wisconsin Supreme Court votes to close more discussions to public. [Note: Great. Just what we do not need. More secret courts, less transparency. They should be putting this stuff online instead, in full view for public dissemination.]

From Reuters: Tobacco health labels unconstitutional: U.S. judge. [note: Wow! Commerical speech is rarely granted broad protection under the First Amendment. This is a wonderful ruling.]

From the Huffington Post: Water Pipe Study: United States Needs $1 Trillion For Drinking Water Lines Over Next 25 Years

From AlterNet: Ayn Rand Worshippers Should Face Facts: Blue States Are the Providers, Red States Are the Parasites. There's only one way to demonstrate who America's producers and parasites really are. It's time to go Galt.

VAWA HURTS ABUSED WOMEN
by Wendy McElroy

The Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) that is up for renewal epitomizes a ruinous trend. Tax-funded ideologues produce highly biased studies and conclusions; bills based on skewed data become law; then the lies are forced into the framework of society and into people's lives.

VAWA has lied successfully for 17 years because it combines semi-truths with full-blown intimidation. Its basic semi-truth is that domestic violence hurts women. The actual truth is that women and men become victims of domestic violence at roughly the same rate. But politically-correct feminism must dismiss the massive evidence of men's equal victimization because the reality does not fit their rigid worldview of men as perpetrators, women as casualties. Instead PC feminists respond by manufacturing a loud hysteria around women and violence, for example by expanding the definition of rape to include drunken women who are deemed incapable of consent. Somehow I doubt drunken men will also be viewed as rape victims.

The incessant selling of women as the victims and men as the perps serves many purposes.

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From Newser: GOP Grumbles as GM Spends $500M on Bonuses

From the BBC: French Frontrunner Wants 75% Tax on Millionaires [Note: A global war on the rich is being declared.]

From Reason: Ayn Rand Was an Illegal Immigrant. According to today's anti-immigration Republicans, the Russian-born novelist should have returned to Soviet tyranny.

From CounterPunch: A Corporate Coup D'Etat on Campus. CounterPunch goes after the Kochs.

From the Richmond Time Dispatch: Obamacare: Contract Killer. [Excerpt: Just when you think everything that can be said about Obamacare's constitutionality has been said, along comes another legal brief that makes a new point.] Hat tip to Strike the Root.

From Spiked: Obama is out-Bushing Bush, and no one minds. That Obama has received so little flak over police spying on Muslims suggests Democrats can get away with far more than Republicans.

From the Freeman Online: Global Warming Is about Social Science Too.

Walter Grinder writes and sends the following link to an article in Slate entitled "Liberals, Don’t Homeschool Your Kids. Why teaching children at home violates progressive values." He writes,

And the attack against parents' rights goes on and on and on. This drumbeat for herding parents' kids into what our old friend Harry Hoiles and his dad called government schooling never ceases. It is all flim-flam. In the name of diversity they demand that all kids be dragooned into government schools, where all the true diversity is pounded out of them. There is one collectivist mold into which all students, over their twelve year sentence, must be fitted, and that mold is one determined by the so-called liberal vision.

The same goes on daily in the halls of ivy. This war on parents and their children goes on under the cover of the need to instill human values. The life's research programme of another of our old friends, Steve Macedo typifies the higher-education drumbeat. Steve, as you probably know, is now the head of Princeton's University Center for Human Values [Are there any other kind of values?] where he and his like-minded friends largely determine the scope and nature of the nation's agenda on matters from education to so-called civic rights in private institutions. To my mind they are even worse than the 'nudge' folks at the University of Chicago.

You will want to familiarize yourself with Steve's two major books and for his current research you will want to consult his papers at SSRN. Here is the information on his books:

Macedo, Stephen J., Diversity and Distrust: Civic Education in a Multicultural Democracy (Harvard University Press, 2003).

Macedo, Stephen J., Liberal Virtues: Citizenship, Virtue, and Community in Liberal Constitutionalism (Oxford University Press, 1990).

Steve followed in the footsteps of Amy Gutmann not only as head of the University Center for Human Values, but also as one of the leading advocates of so-called liberal educational values in the nation's schools. Her thoughts on the matter are best summed up in her following book: Gutmann, Amy, Democratic Education (Princeton University, 1999).

Know thine enemy.

Eric S. Raymond has a wonderful post -- manifesto? declamation? -- on his blog, written as "An open letter to Chris Dodd". Though I am not one of the engineers who keeps the Internet running, I fully share his attitude:


Read the whole thing.

From the New York Times: Blurred Line Between Espionage and Truth. Obama using Espionage Act to 'silence and prosecute federal workers'.

From the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: Kodak moves to end health coverage for retirees 65 and older. [Note: Expect this to become a trend.]

From Electronic Freedom Frontier: How to Remove Your Google Search History Before Google's New Privacy Policy Takes Effect.

From BlackListed News: Tokyo Based Hedge Fund AIJ May Have Lost/Stolen All Customer Pension Fund Money

From Reason: The Myth of the Greater Good by Sheldon Richman.

I just heard this on CNN, and also found it on their web coverage of the reported assassination attempt on Vladimir Putin:


As opposed to civilian-grade land mines? Who writes this nonsense?

From the Trib: Wyoming House advances doomsday bill. Legislation to launch a study into what Wyoming should do in the event of a complete economic or political collapse in the United States

The Weekly Standard: Chart: 'America’s Per Capita Government Debt Worse Than Greece'

From Washington Examiner: Green company gets $390M subsidies, lays off 125. But is still handing out big pay raises to company executives.

From the Philadelphia Inquirer: PhillyDeals: Capitalism working for makers of libertarian film. [Excerpt:"We're close on breaking even" on Part One, and most of the way to raising $25 million for the next part of a planned trilogy version of Ayn Rand's libertarian fantasy novel Atlas Shrugged, says John Aglialoro...]

From FOX News: Police, Border Patrol, other agencies looking to expand drone use at home

From the Huffington Post:5 Reasons You Should Never Agree to a Police Search (Even if You Have Nothing to Hide)

Rick McKee's Truth in Oscars; Slowpoke on Pundit Retraining; David Fitzsimmon's Vote for Santorum; R.J. Matson's Bless Me Father...; and, Jim Day's Public Sector Unions. A hat tip to Charles Curley for the following Non Sequitur cartoons: Heaven and Libertarian Ice Fishing.

And this from CBS News: Adorable video of a sleeping hummingbird "snoring"

From the New York Times: The Geography of Government Benefits. An interactive map of government hand-outs to various states.

From CNN: The latest legislative tool: Satire. [Excerpt: Consider a sample of legislative work since the start of 2012: Alaska Rep. Kyle Johansen, R-Alaska, proposed the federal government take over New York’s Central Park and make it a development-free wilderness area as a way to blast back at those he says are in the way of drilling the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Wyoming legislators followed up with a bill in support of Alaska's measure.]

From WorldNetDaily: CDC accused of skewing its stats. Government 'manipulated and cherry picked data to make raw milk look dangerous'

From FOX News: High court to deliberate on whether rights groups can sue companies for atrocities.

From CNN: The U.S. should never be burning books [Note: interesting commentary on the burning of Korans in Afghanistan.]

What but Oliver! can do "Fakegate" justice? As I reported Tuesday, Dr. Peter Gleick has confessed to phishing documents from the Heartland Institute. It now transpires that he started his phishing campaign on the same day he turned down an offer from the Heartland Institute to speak at their annual dinner. Some have conjectured that he took offense at the offer. And I should note for the record that to date he has neither confirmed, nor denied, authoring the infamous "faked memo". A man of such complexity and ambiguity...reminds me of Fagin contemplating his future.

(Unfortunately, there's no way to write this song without many inside jokes, so do consult the footnotes if you're new to this scandal.)



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