Welcome to the Heartland’s podcasts. This week, listen to a 
discussion on how to defend freedom in our personal and economic lives. Click the links below to listen, and subscribe on iTunes so you get the latest podcasts as soon as they are produced. (Search for “Heartland Institute” in the iTunes store.)
ON EDUCATION: With wickedly funny, deeply poignant prose, Providence College Professor Anthony Esolen‘s new book dissects how current approaches to education and parenting squash children’s imaginations and cheapen childhood. Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child discusses forming a child’s mind and heart to wonder at the world around him. “Imaginative children are by nature difficult to herd,” he says. “Schools are built for a certain kind of efficiency and anonymity; they look like factories, and serve many of the same functions.” Esolen both explains why and discusses what to do about it. Listen here.
ON TECHNOLOGY: Author and consultant Larry Downes discusses the spectrum crunch, as well as Federal Communications Commission opposition to legislative efforts to alleviate it by conducting auctions. Listen here.
ON ENVIRONMENT: Emergency medical physician Dr. John Dale Dunn explains how EPA is misrepresenting data regarding lives allegedly saved through regulation.
Listen here.
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In his State of the Union Address tonight, President Barack Obama endorsed the findings in a book The Heartland Institute will be featuring at our next “Author Series” event on Feb. 1 in Chicago: Throw Them All Out by Peter Schweizer of the Hoover Institution.
Said the president last night:
Send me a bill that bans insider trading by Members of Congress, and I will sign it tomorrow. Let’s limit any elected official from owning stocks in industries they impact. Let’s make sure people who bundle campaign contributions for Congress can’t lobby Congress, and vice versa — an idea that has bipartisan support, at least outside of Washington.
Yes. Outside of Washington, but definitely not inside. (The applause in the chamber after that suggestion by the president was pretty tepid — on both sides of the aisle.)
The details of that insidious nexus of entirely legal crony capitalism and the personal profit by powerful members of Congress is exactly what Schweizer of the Hoover Institution outlines in his book — which was recently featured by 60 Minutes on CBS.
If you’re in the Chicago area, and want to meet the man who wrote the book that put the words above in the president’s State of the Union Address, register here to attend our luncheon book event and lecture.
Space is limited, so act soon! Watch the 60 Minutes feature on Schweizer and his book below the fold. You really shouldn’t miss it — the video, or Heartland’s book luncheon.
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Happy 2012 and welcome to the Heartland’s podcasts. This week, listen to a discussion on Obamacare’s interim final rules and regulations. Click the links below to listen, and subscribe on iTunes so you get the latest podcasts as soon as they are produced. (Search for “Heartland Institute” in the iTunes store.)
ON EDUCATION: The current media and government scrutiny of for-profit higher education’s weaknesses often ignores the potential for these institutions to innovate beyond their current startup stages, says Ben Wildavsky, a senior fellow for the Kauffman Foundation. He has recently released a report of in-depth interviews he held with those leading such firms, outlining their experiences in traditional and for-profit higher education and comparing the two. Listen here.
ON TECHNOLOGY: In this week’s podcast, Randolph J. May, president, The Free State Foundation, discusses his newly published collection of essays, which call for free-market reforms of U.S. communications policy. Listen here.
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In the midst of state budgetary turmoil, it is not surprising that legislators are turning to unconstitutional regulatory measures in the pursuit of a few extra tax dollars. Arkansas, Connecticut, Colorado, North Carolina, and Rhode Island are among those states that have attempted to force Amazon.com to collect taxes on Internet sales. The tax has become a reality in Illinois, with Gov. Quinn’s signing of the “Mainstreet Fairness Act.” The online retailer has challenged and resisted these attempts at taxation, shutting down its affiliates program in the aforementioned states in retaliation.
Justifying the selective elimination its affiliates, Amazon points to the economic losses that are starting to add up as a result of these regulations. In a letter sent to its affiliates in Arkansas and Connecticut on June 10 2011, the company asserted that the increased regulatory efforts are the work of “big box retailers” hoping to harm the competition:
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(NOTE: Paul Fisher, a member of The Heartland Institute’s Board of Directors, is co-author of this piece.)
The story about the failure of Enron by Phil Rosenthal that appeared in the Chicago Tribune on December 4, 2011 missed out on several interesting points in law and economics.
First and foremost, Jeffrey Skilling and Ken Lay were convicted of wire fraud even though they had no personal gain from the fraud. The Supreme Court later unanimously found the “honest services” version of fraud was too vague and ruled only bribes and kickbacks are illegal.
By contrast, Andrew Fastow, then chief financial officer of Enron, established the off-book entities where much of Enron’s debt was parked. To be legal the off-balance-sheet special-purpose entities were supposed to be independent of Enron. But Fastow did not let this happen. Indeed, he siphoned off tens of millions of dollars to his personal account by virtue of being an officer of both the partnerships and Enron. He was the prosecution’s best witness against Skilling and Lay. But here Fastow’s story was mixed.
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Last week in the New York Times, economist Paul Krugman called for higher taxes than the Clinton era, citing how increased revenues need to be in the picture and not just spending cuts.
Krugman writes:
The long-run budget outlook has darkened, which means that some hard choices must be made. Why should those choices only involve spending cuts?
Some conservatives would respond by saying the outlook has darkened because of spending. Intuitively increased revenue would just encourage inefficient government. But let’s give Krugman the benefit of the doubt by accepting his point that a combination of increased revenue and lower expenditure will yield a more expedient strategy to lower the deficit.
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Awwww ...
Heartland friend Matt Welch of Reason — with whom we held a book event with Nick Gillespie a while back (listen to their lively presentation here) — has a stark and snarky message for the Occupy Wall Street whiners: Grow up.
Matt’s prompt: This incessantly whiny essay in Salon. Shorter version of that essay: I’m a recent college grad who “played by the rules,” but … my student loan is too big. Government should give me free college education — and a well-paying job for my Transgendered Caribbean Poets/Social Justice degree. And that guy’s house is underwater. He got suckered, so his mortgage should be forgiven. Oh … and the guys on Wall Street made a killing, at (apparently) my expense. You suck, and “I’m the 99 percent.”
Welch’s response:
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(Originally published at ClassicalPrinciples.com)
Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain has done Republicans and the nation a great service by proposing major changes in the Byzantine way the US collects its revenue. Cain maintains that his so-called “999” plan restructures the nation’s tax system in a way that significantly boosts real growth. He also claims his program is revenue neutral. This means it is designed to replace the revenues generated by the current tax system.
Restructuring the US tax system along the lines proposed by Mr. Cain has the potential to promote explosive growth. However, there can be serious problems with tax proposals that claim to be revenue neutral. One potential flaw is a tendency to assume individuals will behave the same way regardless of the tax system. If this were true, there would be no reason to change the current system.
The main reason to change the tax structure is to remove impediments to growth. If the new structure succeeds in doing so, it can improve economic activity and raise both incomes and revenues.
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The recent “occupation” of Wall Street has shed light on what is becoming an unfortunate phenomenon in American society; the purposeless protest, the destructive demonstration, movements that serve only to draw attention to an issue without proposing any real degree of reform.
We saw it when unions occupied the Wisconsin capitol building, during the 2001 and 2003 Free Trade Area of the Americas protests in Canada and Miami, the G-20 protest in Montreal in October 2000 and the World Trade Organization protests in Seattle in 1999. Disaffected individuals are turning to increasingly violent, disruptive and thoroughly useless means of effecting change (presumably their goal).
Some seem aware of their lack of direction and, not surprisingly, seem to embrace it. Reuters quotes Jeremy Moss, a 41 Bronx native and mental health counselor who lived in Seattle during the WTO riots and feels the Wall Street protests are different, admitting,
“There’s a lot of naive idealism happening, what’s wrong with that?”
As Bill Buckley would say, “Idealism is fine, but as it approaches reality the cost becomes prohibitive”. Naïve idealism is fine, but it has no business blocking traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge.
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Previously on this blog, I sang the praises of the NBC sitcom Parks & Recreation. Why did I do this? To highlight the fact that one of the show’s best features is a character named Ron Swanson — who is a smart, unabashed and hilarious libertarian character … who also introduced the Pyramid of Greatness to the pop culture.
Swanson’s staunch libertarianism is sprinkled throughout the series — and he’s a hero of the show, not a heel of all the jokes (as you would expect from Hollywood.) A great example is the episode that featured Swanson’s “Pyramid of Greatness.” But the best explanation of Swanson’s libertarian philosophy — smartly presented, for a sitcom — is in the episode “Road Trip” from Season 3.
Ron Swanson, a local government manager who hates government, explains to a 4th grade girl the incompetence (and perils) of government. By eating her lunch, an exposing her to John Locke, Swanson (Ron … please), has planted the seed of liberty in a skull full of mush the government education complex.
Here is the complete transcript of Ron’s interaction with the girl — and later, the girl’s mom … who is aghast that Ron filled her head with such thoughts. (At the bottom of the transcript is a video someone took by filming his TV during the scenes. It’s very low quality, but at least it’s on the record). We begin:
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discussion on how to defend freedom in our personal and economic lives. Click the links below to listen, and subscribe on iTunes so you get the latest podcasts as soon as they are produced. (Search for “Heartland Institute” in the iTunes store.)
