Alex Brill is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where he studies the impact of tax policy on the US economy as well as the fiscal, economic, and political consequences of tax, budget, health care, retirement security, and trade policies. He also works on health care reform, pharmaceutical spending and drug innovation, and unemployment insurance reform. Brill is the editor of Carbon Tax Policy: A Conservative Dialogue on Pro-Growth Opportunities (2017) and the coauthor, with Alan D. Viard, of The Real Tax Burden: More Than Dollars and Cents (2011). He has testified numerous times before Congress on tax policy, labor markets and unemployment insurance, Social Security reform, fiscal stimulus, the manufacturing sector, and biologic drug competition.

Before joining AEI, Brill served as the policy director and chief economist of the House Ways and Means Committee. Previously, he served on the staff of the White House Council of Economic Advisers. He has also served on the staff of the President’s Fiscal Commission (Simpson-Bowles) and the Republican Platform Committee (2008)

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The New York Times bestselling business journalist Christopher Leonard infiltrates one of America’s most mysterious institutions—the Federal Reserve—to show how its policies​ ​spearheaded by Chairman Jerome Powell over the past ten years have accelerated income inequality and put our country’s economic stability at risk.

If you asked most people what forces led to today’s unprecedented income inequality and financial crashes, no one would say the Federal Reserve. For most of its history, the Fed has enjoyed the fawning adoration of the press. When the economy grew, it was credited to the Fed. When the economy imploded in 2008, the Fed got credit for rescuing us.

But the Fed also has a unique power to reshape the American economy for the worse, which it did, fatefully, on November 4, 2010 through a radical intervention called quantitative easing. In just a few short years, the Fed more than quadrupled the money supply with one goal: to encourage banks and other investors to extend more risky debt. Leaders at the Fed knew that they were undertaking a bold experiment that would produce few real jobs, with long-term risks that were hard to measure. But the Fed proceeded anyway...and then found itself trapped. Once it printed all that money, there was no way to withdraw it from circulation. The Fed tried several times, only to see market start to crash, at which point the Fed turned the money spigot back on. That’s what it did when COVID hit, printing 300 years’ worth of money in two short months.

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A repeat of an earlier broadcast.

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Richard M. Reinsch IIContributor

Richard M. Reinsch II is a senior fellow at The Heritage Foundation and columnist for The Daily Signal. He is also a senior writer for Law & Liberty.

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Bethany Mandel 

Heroes of Liberty, a newly released book series for children, teaches values such as liberty and freedom amid what conservative columnist and commentator Bethany Mandel labels as a plague of “woke ideology” that is rampant in the children’s book-publishing world.

The writer, editor and mother of five who homeschools her children told JNS that she found an obvious gap when looking for suitable American history and literature to teach her kids. “There is a clear need in the market for wholesome, patriotic American content that doesn’t apologize for the values we hold dear,” she said.

“My wheelhouse is the intersection of parenting and politics, and I’ve been doing a deep professional dive into the endemic ‘wokeism’ in the entire industry of children’s literature and its impact, from top to bottom. I found that everyone from editors, to agents, to book reviewers and award donors, to librarians and teachers who have bulk-mass-purchasing power are being influenced by this culture,” said Mandel.

“A writer must present to their agent a voice that is considered unique, so many choose to include underrepresented voices such as transgender or black voices, which are indeed underrepresented in a culture where viewpoint diversity is important, but they swung a little bit too hard. … If there isn’t a ‘woke’ element such as gender in a manuscript, the book won’t be published,” she explained.

“Additionally, the way to win literary awards is to introduce challenging topics to children and teach them, and because this ideology views itself as responsible to teach children about everything, many parents find some of the content uncomfortable” for others to teach their children, she said. “So they seek out independent publishing houses like ours.”

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A "Best Of" set of great interviews.

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This is a partial repeat of Chris's 25th anniversary program.

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Fred Lucas is chief national affairs correspondent for The Daily Signal and co-host of "The Right Side of History" podcast. Lucas is also the author of "Abuse of Power: Inside The Three-Year Campaign to Impeach Donald Trump."

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