Next Round

Our guest this week is Hoover Institution senior fellow and UCLA professor Dr. Lee Ohanian. He and host senior fellow Dr. Wayne Winegarden discuss California's growing outmigration problem and its contributing factors including unaffordable housing, the high cost of living, homelessness and other problems plaguing California.

Bill Smith of the Pioneer Institute in Massachusetts joins Wayne and Tim to discuss his important new book "Rationing Medicine", which focuses on an obscure economic concept called QALYs – or quality adjusted life years. Government bureaucrats in Europe use QALYs to deny access to life saving medications for patients. Some in the U.S. are pushing for the adoption of QALYs as a way to address high prescription drug costs. Learn how QALYs would jeopardize health care innovation and harm patients.

The Biden Administration has just revived the Obama-era Clean Power Plan, which is another costly green mandate on the production of electricity in the U.S. Buckeye Institute Vice President of Policy Rea Hederman Jr. joins us to discuss their new report showing how much more Californians and Ohioans could pay for electricity if the plan takes effect, and how it would subject the rest of the country to the type of green energy mandates that Californians have been struggling to afford for years.

PRI fellow in agriculture policy Pam Lewison joins us for a discussion of how this year's record rainfall has been both a blessing and a major challenge for California's farmers. She also discusses federal and state policy debates and pending legal rulings that could significantly impact state water policy and California agriculture.

PRI Senior Fellow in Tech and Innovation Bartlett Cleland joins Next Round for a discussion on the hot debates in Washington and Sacramento on tech policy. Bartlett and Tim discuss what federal policymakers should do on TikTok and ChatGPT. They also explore the just-announced regulations to implement California's upcoming privacy law and state legislation aimed at protecting minors online.

Our guest on this week's podcast is Kevin Hassett, the 29th Chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisers under President Trump. Dr. Hassett was the speaker at a recent PRI dinner in Palo Alto. He is Distinguished Visiting Fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution and the author of several books, including The Drift: Stopping America's Slide to Socialism (Regnery Publishing, 2021). He served as the Chair in American Politics and Culture and Director of Research for Domestic Policy at the American Enterprise Institute, and Senior Economist at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System.

Our podcast guest this week is Sally Pipes, PRI president and Thomas W. Smith Fellow in Health Care. Sally discusses two health care bills that are wending their way through the legislature. Senate bill 770 is a new bill sponsored by Senator Scott Wiener – a more incremental approach to single-payer. The other bill, sponsored by Assemblyman Ash Kalra, is one that we've seen in the past, an approach that would mean a complete takeover of health care by state government. She also updates listeners on Sen. Bernie Sanders' new efforts at the federal level.

Our podcast guest this week is fellow podcaster Spencer Klavan, host of the podcast "The American Mind." In his new book: "How to Save the West: Ancient Wisdom for 5 Modern Crises," Spencer defends Western culture and explains why and how we must hand it on to future generations. Spencer is a classicists with a PhD from Oxford. He lectured at Oxford before becoming associate editor of the Claremont Review of Books.

Our podcast this week features PRI senior fellow in business and economics Wayne Winegarden. Wayne discusses his study ranking the 50 states in terms of the regulatory burden imposed on charities by the state. Nonprofits and charities make significant contributions to communities – from food pantries to homeless shelters, to churches and schools. In some states, the regulatory cost of starting a charity or the reporting requirements and fees can be onerous. Listen to the podcast to find out where your state stands. Also, Wayne gives his thoughts on the state of the economy given the recent bank failures.

Our guest this week is noted author and attorney Philip Howard. Beginning with his book The Death of Common Sense in 1995, Philip has written about the central role of human responsibility in a functioning government—the freedom to make timely choices, and to be accountable for them. In 2002, he formed Common Good, a nonpartisan coalition to champion these ideas. His latest book, Not Accountable, shows how elected officials have been disempowered by public unions.