On February 4, 2013, NBC News obtained a confidential Justice Department white paper detailing the Obama administration’s legal justification for the targeted killing of American citizens abroad. The leak called attention to a discernible shift in the “War on Terror” and how America wages it. The U.S. government has yet to disclose the number of drone strikes launched, the number of people killed, and the full scope of collateral damage. How does the U.S. government determine who is a legitimate...
Apr 22, 2013•1 hr 34 min
In At the Brink , economist John Lott argues that the Obama administration’s policies are destroying what has been a health care system that has been the envy of the world. Furthermore, Obama inherited a severe recession, but the spectacular “stimulus” spending with which Obama launched his presidency not only has failed to help the economy—it has poisoned it, slowing the recovery. His positions on regulations and taxes have also harmed the economy. But the Obama administration’s legacy isn’t ju...
Apr 19, 2013•1 hr 8 min
Is it possible to reduce the risk of protectionist influence in health, safety, and environmental regulation? Should international law prohibit domestic regulations that unnecessarily inhibit trade? A new Cato Policy Analysis says the answer is "yes" and calls on policymakers and activists to be more cautious of domestic industry influence. Our distinguished panel will discuss the political origins of regulatory protectionism and consider how the United States might keep its laws and regulations...
Apr 18, 2013•1 hr 24 min
Is the United States moving toward legal equality between gay and straight couples? What does the U.S. Constitution have to say about the question? And should the Republican Party, long committed to opposing marriage equality, rethink its position? This panel will examine these questions as well as the shifting politics of support for marriage equality after several state initiatives passed in the 2012 elections. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information....
Apr 12, 2013•49 min
When Calvin Coolidge became president in 1923, the top personal income tax rate was 77 percent. The national debt had risen from $1.5 billion in 1916 to $33 billion in 1919 — in large part due to America’s entry into World War I. Together with his treasury secretary, Andrew Mellon, Coolidge cut the top personal income tax rate to 24 percent and dramatically reduced government spending. The economy expanded along with tax revenue, and that allowed the national debt to fall to $16 billion by 1929....
Apr 11, 2013•1 hr 21 min
In Juche Strong , director Rob Montz examines the propaganda apparatus that exists in North Korea, the underlying Juche philosophy of national “self-reliance” that fuels it, and the pivotal role it plays in the continued existence of the secretive country. Montz argues that a collective sense of purpose instilled by cradle-to-grave propaganda has been key to sustaining the country, and has created a quasi-religious fervor around the Kim dynasty that persists even as North Koreans suffer under th...
Apr 11, 2013•39 min
The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010 was intended to “promote the financial stability of the United States by improving accountability and transparency in the financial system, to end ‘too big to fail,’ to protect the American taxpayer by ending bailouts, to protect consumers from abusive financial services practices, and for other purposes.” The law is extraordinarily complex, requiring almost a dozen federal agencies to complete 398 rulemaking requirements, plu...
Apr 09, 2013•32 min
The December 2001 Bonn Agreement proclaimed the international community’s determination to “end the tragic conflict in Afghanistan and promote national reconciliation, lasting peace, stability and respect for human rights in the country.” Over a decade later, while access to health care and education has improved, the central government in Kabul remains corrupt and incapable of exerting control over its territory, the Afghan security forces are rife with criminality and internal divisions, and t...
Apr 05, 2013•1 hr 34 min
The Great Deformation is a searing look at Washington's fiscal crisis. It counters conventional wisdom with an 80-year revisionist history of how the American state — especially the Federal Reserve — has fallen prey to the politics of crony capitalism and the ideologies of fiscal stimulus, monetary central planning, and financial bailouts. David Stockman points a finger at Franklin Roosevelt, who fathered crony capitalism; Richard Nixon, who destroyed fiscal discipline and the gold-backed dollar...
Apr 03, 2013•1 hr 3 min
The United States government practices surprisingly comprehensive surveillance of air travel, amassing data about the comings and goings of all Americans who fly. By April 2, the Transportation Security Administration will either have begun a public comment process on its policy of putting travelers through imaging machines that can see under their clothes, or it will be in clear violation of a D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling requiring it to do so. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for...
Apr 02, 2013•1 hr 18 min
The Obama administration’s recent large-scale legislative initiatives, The Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (Dodd-Frank) and the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, have a significant theme in common. Both acts rely on unelected and unsupervised bodies to oversee and enact new laws — a trend that threatens both our political and our economic liberties. Our panelists will discuss the constitutionality of creating these new "super-legislative" bodies – the Consumer Financial ...
Apr 01, 2013•1 hr 4 min
Is the United States moving toward legal equality between gay and straight couples? What does the U.S. Constitution have to say about the question? And should the Republican Party, long committed to opposing gay marriage, rethink its position? Two of the nation’s best-known advocates on the issue — Evan Wolfson, widely seen as the master strategist behind the movement for same-sex marriage, and Ken Mehlman, a key figure in Republican rethinking of the issue, will be joined by Ilya Shapiro, who h...
Mar 27, 2013•1 hr 13 min
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Mar 21, 2013•1 hr 8 min
What impact has immigration had on the U.S. economy over these last few decades? How will immigration reform change the economy for native-born Americans? With few exceptions, immigrants expand the size of the economic pie by creating businesses and expanding the scope and quantity of economic production—with mostly positive affects on Americans. To understand this complex phenomenon, different types of immigrants—those who are higher skilled and those who are lower skilled—and their various imp...
Mar 21, 2013•59 min
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Mar 20, 2013•1 hr 30 min
Cuba’s Castro dictatorship has clung to power for more than five decades. As the regime ages and the outside sources of finance that buttress it are put in jeopardy, a new generation of Cubans is using the Internet to dissent against the pervasive lack of freedom and opportunity in their country. Prominent Cuban dissident writers Yoani Sanchez and Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo — recently given permission to travel outside Cuba — will describe life in current-day Cuba, the activities of the island’s di...
Mar 19, 2013•1 hr 6 min
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Mar 18, 2013•1 hr 32 min
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Mar 15, 2013•1 hr 23 min
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Mar 14, 2013•1 hr 25 min
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Mar 14, 2013•1 hr 27 min
In the wake of the financial crisis, commentators have suggested a transaction tax (Tobin tax) on financial markets. The potential consequences of such a tax could be hazardous to the financial markets affected, as well as to the economy. Professor Wang, in a recent Cato paper, reviewed the relevant theoretical and empirical literature and applied these findings to estimate the possible impact of a transaction tax on U.S. futures market activity as well as its utility as a potential source of ta...
Mar 13, 2013•1 hr 2 min
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Mar 12, 2013•1 hr 21 min
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Mar 11, 2013•1 hr 33 min
The basis for EPA’s increasingly expensive regulation of greenhouse gases is their “Finding of Endangerment” from carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. With regard to the climate of the United States, it is largely based on one document, called “Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States,”, published by the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP). Patrick J. Michaels, director of the Center for the Study of Science at the Cato Institute, recently completed a landmark document i...
Mar 07, 2013•36 min
With immigration reform once again on Congress’s near horizon, many proposals take as a given that there should be “internal enforcement” of immigration law through federal background checks on all workers. But the E-Verify system and proposals for a national E-Verify mandate are shot through with complications and challenges. Costs to businesses and workers will mount. Citizens, both natural-born and naturalized, will have to appeal to the federal government for the right to work. And identity ...
Mar 01, 2013•41 min
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Feb 27, 2013•1 hr 33 min
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Feb 19, 2013•1 hr 23 min
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Feb 15, 2013•45 min
The euro crisis has exposed deep structural flaws in the functioning of the common currency and put pressure on the cohesion of the European Union as a whole. Stagnant growth, and rising unemployment and public dissatisfaction are threatening to undermine the European project. Conventional wisdom holds that deeper political integration is needed in order to preserve and strengthen the European Union. However, an increasing number of analysts argue that current problems in Europe are symptoms of ...
Feb 08, 2013•1 hr 28 min
Richard Gamble's book, In Search of the City on a Hill: the Making and Unmaking of an American Myth , helps make sense of exceptionalism's evolution. Gamble traces the “city on a hill” metaphor, from Puritan leader John Winthrop, who took it from the gospels, to its reincarnation in the 20th century as an explicitly political idea at the heart of foreign policy debates. Historians Walter McDougall, the author of Promised Land , Crusader State: The American Encounter with the World since 1776 , a...
Feb 07, 2013•1 hr 28 min
