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YAF and Ron Paul

There has been a lot of buzz about Ron Paul recently being kicked off the Young Americans for Freedom's national advisory board. Chris Preble, Cato's director of foreign policy studies, explains what that move says about the conservative movement. Despite the motivations behind YAF's decision, Preble notes that such an event highlights the split between so-called conservatives, as many move toward a more limited, constitutionally and fiscally restrained government of strategic prudence and away from a more neo-conservative persuasion.

What's Obama Got to Hide?

The White House is concealing data and the measurement techniques used for the current budget and its associated projections. And the numbers that the Office of Management and Budget has provided seem dubious. The Cato Institute's Jagadeesh Gokhale notes that current accounting "fails to reflect future obligations that today's taxes create -- resulting in potentially imprudent fiscal policies." Gokhale and David Schoenbrod, of the American Enterprise Institute, have developed analytical tools to conduct an independent analysis. However, the data remain behind the Administration's lock and key. Gokhale says it is in the "public's interest" to determine if "proposed budget reforms could reduce the fiscal imbalance and whether they would be fair to future generations." However, President Obama appears content to back away from the "adult conversation" he called for.

What's Wrong in the Middle East? They're Miserable.

What could be the reasons behind the rampant uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa? Johns Hopkins professor and Cato Institute senior fellow Steve Hanke explains that the answer is simple: they're miserable. Using the international Misery Index, Hanke demonstrates that free markets are what drive countries out of misery, and the countries dominating the front pages these days fall at the bottom of those rankings. To put things in perspective, Hanke also looks at the U.S., noting that "the misery index should be a sobering reminder (to Obama) that free markets, not big government, generate prosperity." While there is currently extreme international unrest, "with dramatic reforms, private enterprise will flourish; jobs will be generated; and corruption will plunge, as will (countries') misery indexes."

FEATURED ARTICLES

ObamaCare Can't Be Fixed, And Now Is the Time to Dismantle It

While ObamaCare isn't set to take full effect until 2014, the parts that were rolled out early have already had a negative impact on the economy and Americans' personal finances and lives. "Yet today's cost increases and other dislocations will look like the good old days compared with what Americans will suffer when - if - they allow ObamaCare to take full effect," says Michael Cannon, Director of Health Policy Studies at the Cato Institute. The preliminary implementation of ObamaCare has already formed special interests of beneficiaries whose interest it is to preserve the new system to keep receiving special payouts. If unopposed, these special interests will expand further when more benefits go out in the years after 2014, cementing dependency on and advocacy for the new laws continuation. Therefore, Cannon calls for firm-headed resolve in pressing for removal of the legislation while Americans remain strongly opposed to it and before millions are influenced by heaps of subsidies. Amid his analysis, Cannon explains that "the iron is hot," and the time for constructive and responsible change is now.

Young Libertarians Point Way to Freedom's Future

The International Students For Liberty Conference was the largest gathering of liberty-oriented students perhaps ever assembled. Cato vice president Gene Healy was in attendance, and writes that what he saw suggests that "the future of the limited government movement will be libertarian, not conservative." The potential reason for this shift in focus is due to it being driven by a young crowd, one that has a different approach to politics than earlier generations - without a need for foreign entanglements and with a share of government debt far above that of their parents. Giving teeth to the sentiment that the limited government movement can and will actually be advanced by today's youth, Healy notes that "the students at the SFL conference were extraordinarily well-read, highly motivated - and shockingly normal."

How the War on Drugs is Destroying Black America

John McWhorter, writing in the quarterly Cato's Letter, argues that the only way to purge race-based resentment from the social fabric of America and enable the ranks of would-be drug dealers to become contributing members of society is to end the War on Drugs. "What will turn black America around for good is the elimination of a policy that prevents too many people from doing their best," explains McWhorter. He goes on to lay out a narrative of what a Drug War-free America would look like for future progress. If we truly want to start building the future, McWhorter lays out a timeline for ending the War on Drugs: yesterday. His remarks are also available in podcast form.

Is India an Economic Superpower in the Making?

Cato senior fellow Doug Bandow reflects on the potential rise of India as a global economic power. He contrasts India with China, explaining that they are the greatest success stories in demonstrating that "globalization has been an extraordinary force for good." Bandow explains that conflicting policies and conditions in India point to very different potential outcomes for the world's second most populated country. Building off its foundation of political democracy, India possesses strong indicators of growth, but the country's success has allowed a class of bureaucratic, political elites to arrest much control. Bandow optimistically concludes with the opinion that, "If New Delhi systematically reformed its policies, India could consistently outgrow and eventually overtake China."

POLICY STUDIES

Are the Feds Hijacking Local Governance?

"The federal government has a large and growing presence in state and local policy activities," reports Cato's Director of Tax Policy Studies Chris Edwards in a recent Cato Tax and Budget Bulletin. This involvement allows the federal government to dictate terms to the states by dangling aid to entice compliance. This micromanagement via federal aid undermines freedom. The feds don't know local issues and can't manage effectively, and state governments are handicapped due to the threat of lost funds if they deviate from federal mandates. Edwards notes that these politically-popular and yet fiscally and democratically irresponsible aid-to-state programs have expanded by 43% over the past decade, now numbering 1,122 various programs. Due to numerous problems that Edwards presents in the three-page study, he claims that, "The federal aid system should be scaled back and ultimately abolished."

Free Trade: Could Congress be Moving in the Right Direction?

The 112th Congress begins its term amid renewed optimism about prospects for U.S. trade liberalization. Big labor's stranglehold over the congressional trade agenda was broken with the election in November. For instance, the U.S. government finally appears willing to end its disgraceful ban on Mexican trucks. And in his State of the Union address, President Obama implored Congress to pass the trade agreement with South Korea as soon as possible, and articulated his commitment to bringing two other pending bilateral agreements, as well as the Transpacific Partnership negotiations and the Doha Round, to successful conclusions.

NEW BOOKS

The False Promise of Green Energy

By Andrew P. Morriss, William T. Bogart, Roger E. Meiners, and Andrew D. Dorchak

This new work offers an outstanding, nearly unprecedented evaluation of claims by green energy and green jobs proponents that we can improve the economy and the environment, almost risk free, by spending billions of dollars on what are ultimately false promises.

Schools for Misrule: Legal Academia and an Overlawyered America

By Walter Olson

Many of our current national leaders emerged from the rarefied air of the nation's top law schools. The ideas taught there in one generation often shape national policy in the next. The trouble is our elite law schools keep churning out ideas that are catastrophically bad for America. Schools for Misrule, a new book from Cato scholar Walter Olson, reveals how our nation's law schools have become a hatchery of bad ideas, many of which confer power and status on the schools' graduates and faculty, as law comes to pervade more areas of life.

March, 2011

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