Last week police footage went viral of an incident that happened at New Jersey beach. In the video, a 20-year-old woman, Emily Weinman, was punched in the head several times by a police officer while being arrested. The officer’s justification was that Weinman was resisting arrest. Should an officer really need to strike a small woman that is of no real threat? The situation arose from an apparent minor in possession charge, which makes one wonder if escalation and physical force were really required. Those that religiously defend police will tell you that incidents like these are...
Cato
The Story of Gold and Bitcoin: Bulls Make Money and Pigs Get Slaughtered
There is nothing wrong with being a bull in the stock market or a bear for that matter either. Nothing at all in fact. It's about seeing the trend and getting aligned with it. But being a pig in a finanical market will eventually lead one to the slaughterhouse. It's funny because when I started out trading in the 1990's the saying "bulls make money and pigs get slaughtered" was a really common phrase I would see on the internet stock trading message boards. And now no one says it. Today it seems like everyone wants to believe that the thing to do is throw all of your money into ETF's and...
The Right to Record and Police Accountability
The New York Police Department’s Civilian Complaint Review Board (CCRB) reported that over a three-year period, NYPD officers threatened, blocked, and otherwise tried to prevent individuals from recording them in public in the performance of their duties. Almost 100 of the 346 allegations made between 2014 and 2016 were substantiated by the board, not counting the many cases that may not have been reported. To be fair, there are many thousands of contacts between police and individuals that happen in New York City. Although there is no way to know how many of those interactions are...
5/24/17 Ted Galen Carpenter from the Cato Institute discusses Russia, the West, and the Bosnian conflict
Ted Galen Carpenter from the Cato Institute is interviewed on the Bosnian conflict and the deterioration of Western relations with Russia. United States government interference with a potential peace deal that was being formulated to end the conflict is also detailed. The final border lines and how the Dayton Accords ultimately ended up displacing more people than the civil war did is also discussed, as is the history of Western Russian relations and the dangerous new cold war that has already set it with the Russian Federation. Check out my Patreon page...
Cato VP: Ron Paul Represented a “Hideous Corruption of Libertarian Ideas”
Today’s Tom Woods Letter, which all the influential people receive every weekday. Be one of them. “Ron Paul’s xenophobia was a hideous corruption of libertarian ideas.” What kind of person says something so detached from reality? Why, Brink Lindsey, Vice President of research at the Cato Institute. (Before I go on, let’s dispense with this objection: “Woods, you purist, why are you attacking fellow libertarians?” There are many possible answers to that question. But my response is: before you criticize me for defending Ron Paul, please forward me the letter of outrage you sent to Brink...
4/19/17 Gene Healy on the weak legal justification for Trump’s ‘drive-by Tomahawking’ in Syria
Gene Healy, a vice president at the Cato Institute, discusses the media's strained constitutional justification for Trump's "limited military activity" in Syria; and why the 1973 War Powers Resolution doesn't give the president a free pass to initiate offensive military strikes without congressional approval, contrary to popular opinion.
4/17/17 Ted Galen Carpenter on Trump’s schoolyard strategy for dealing with North Korea
Ted Galen Carpenter, senior fellow for defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute, discusses Trump's strategy of pressuring Kim Jong-un by leveraging China's influence; how the Trump administration's middle-school mentality on North Korea makes for a disastrous foreign policy; and why the US's peacekeeping/regional hegemony role in Asia isn't nearly as essential as some commentators think.
3/6/17 Doug Bandow gives advice to Trump on North Korea and Russia policy
Doug Bandow, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, discusses what a responsible North Korea policy would look like after successive US administrations have failed to gain anything from isolating the regime and eschewing diplomacy; and why we should look to Europe for clues about Russia's so-called threatening intentions - if France and Germany aren't furiously expanding their military budgets, why should the US?
2/1/17 Alex Nowrasteh on whether Trump’s temporary ban of immigrants from certain countries really helps US national security
Alex Nowrasteh, an immigration policy analyst at the Cato Institute's Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity, discusses his guide to Trump's executive order limiting migration for people from a list of countries supposedly at risk of exporting terrorists to the US; the overly-broad definition of "terrorism-related crimes" used by Jeff Sessions and others to justify the visa ban; and how ill-defined executive orders like this create capricious and arbitrary government. Correction: the story about an Iraqi woman dying due to Trump's travel ban was...
State Governments as Victims
This was a news headline in the Wall Street Journal yesterday: “States’ Revenue Shortfalls Exacerbate Budget Crunch.” The article said that, “Faced with weak revenue, sluggish growth and possible federal funding cuts, many governors and state lawmakers face a tough budget season.” That made me laugh. “States as victims” is a common storyline in the mainstream media anytime that state budgets are not growing gangbusters. States need to balance their general fund budgets each year, and so it is true that state policymakers must be more responsible that the spend-and-borrow politicians in...
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