cleaning up

After a dozen years living in Charlottesville (where I still own a home, but no longer occupy it), I had to be stuck up here in Pennsylvania when the Mises Institute finally does a conference in my adopted hometown.

But welcome to the 21st Century, people!

I was able to listen to the lectures on live audio streams. (There was a video stream, also, but the sound was better on the audio stream, and why would you want to watch a person standing at a podium for an hour?) I like to listen.

Charles Adams, the world's leading tax historian, was going to be the star scholar at the conference, but a back injury earlier this week prevented him from attending. As a result, Lew Rockwell asked Tom DiLorenzo -- who, it seems, was already giving 2 out of 7 talks -- to put together a last-minute presentation of "Taxes in American History".

So DiLorenzo opened the conference last night, opened this morning ("Lincoln's Tariff War"), and also gave the last talk ("Rothbard's Economics of Taxation: Where the Mainstream Went Wrong") which ended just a few minutes ago. He must be exhausted.

One of the things I love about the internet media streams is that I get to eavesdrop while the mic is on before and after people are in lecture mode. Pick up little tidbits probably not meant for public consumption.

This evening, after the last talk, someone was taking charge and telling people to clear their stuff out of the auditorium, but first he gave the usual rundown of thanks to all the people who made this possible, etc. He started by saying, "Thanks Tom, for getting us started and for cleaning up."

To which DiLorenzo said, "I'm not cleaning this up!"

I'm still laughing.