2023 NDAA Amendments on Arms Sales
Jordan CohenOn July 5, 2022, members of the House introduced amendments to the 2023 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which are now viewableonline. Out of the 1,172 amendments, 25 deal with restricting U.S. weapons sales abroad. These amendments can be broken down in three ways: creation and enforcement of new reporting requirements; protection and implementation of human rights measures in the U.S. arms sales process; and reducing dispersion of weapons away from the intended recipient.Reporting requirements are an easy way for Congress to start reform without needing to debate politically charged issues. For exam...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - July 7, 2022 Category: American Health Authors: Jordan Cohen Source Type: blogs
Colombia ’s Duque Got Almost Everything Wrong
Daniel RaisbeckAccording toThe Atlantic’s David Frum, Colombia’s outgoing president, Ivan Duque, is a misunderstood statesman. Ungrateful voters,he argues, fail to recognize Duque ’s brilliance and thus assign him “an approval rating in the low 20’s.”Frum cites Colombia ’s vaccination policy, a 10 ‐year work permit granted to Venezuelan refugees, and the country’s current economic growth as examples of “a record of policy success unmatched in recent South American history.” Which is why Duque, as Frum learned during the president’s recent visit to Washington, D.C., “is as baffl ed as ...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - July 2, 2022 Category: American Health Authors: Daniel Raisbeck Source Type: blogs
Colombia ’s Establishment Wins Again, But at What Price?
Daniel RaisbeckAccording to the international media, Gustavo Petro, the 21st century socialist who won Colombia ’s presidential election on Sunday, was an “anti ‐establishment” candidate. The description would be accurate if the Colombian establishment still consisted of august figures such as Roberto Urdaneta, an upper‐class poo‐bah who, unelected, ruled the country between 1951 and 1953. He was rumored to spend as much time in the Jockey Club as in the pres idential palace.Colombia has changed since then. The establishment is nowmade up of left ‐wing academics, woke journalists or “influencer...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - June 20, 2022 Category: American Health Authors: Daniel Raisbeck Source Type: blogs
Colombians Voted for Change, but Not as Expected
Daniel RaisbeckAccording to theFinancial Times, Colombia ’s current presidential election “could change Latin America” if it ends with the victory of Gustavo Petro, a former member of theM ‑19, an urban guerrilla group, andconfidant of the lateHugo Ch ávez. Petro, theFT argues, would lead “the most radical government in the country’s modern history.” Until now, Colombia has been a staunch U.S. ally in South America while avoiding Ch ávez’s brand of “21st century socialism.”Petro, who is praised by his friends for his “solid Marxist foundation,” plans to ban allexploration of oil, Colombi...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - June 3, 2022 Category: American Health Authors: Daniel Raisbeck Source Type: blogs
A Valentine ’s Day Full of Chocolate, Roses, and… Tariffs?
Scott Lincicome and Alfredo Carrillo ObregonChocolate and roses are the language of love, and through them, millions of people in the United States will today express their affection for their significant others. Yet, for the — *ahem* —dispassionate analysis we conduct here at the Cato Institute, candy and flowers are also prime examples of how free trade improves our lives by making it easier to purchase quality goods at lower prices, and by contrast, how protectionism does just the opposite.In the case of chocolate, we havepreviouslyexplained how the U.S. sugar program – a complex array of government price support...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - February 14, 2022 Category: American Health Authors: Scott Lincicome, Alfredo Carrillo Obregon Source Type: blogs
House 2022 National Defense Authorization Act Amendments on Arms Sales and Security Assistance
Jordan CohenThe House is set to vote on theNational Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for fiscal year 2022. Prior to the structured Rule for the act, there were a total of fifty amendments that, if passed, would directly impact weapons sales legislation. Overall, these bills are divided into five broad themes: congressional power, increased monitoring and reporting surrounding human rights violators, weapons sales to the Middle East, weapons sales to counter Russia, and weapons sales to counter China.Readers should examine the2020 Arms Sales Risk Index for our latest data on risks associated with the weapons sales proc...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - September 21, 2021 Category: American Health Authors: Jordan Cohen Source Type: blogs
Eight Reasons For Ending Joe Biden ’s Travel Bans
Ryan Bourne and Brad SubramaniamBack in July, Ioutlined why Joe Biden ’s crude COVID-19 travel bans on non-Americans coming from Europe, India, and a few other countries no longer made any sense from a public health perspective.Talk in Washington at the time was of lifting these restrictions by September. Well, here we are, mid-way through that month and the restrictions are going strong. Officials and diplomats now seem to think October or even Thanksgiving are the earliest potential dates for their removal. Some ponder whether the political incentives might point towards inactionuntil the mid-terms...which would mean b...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - September 16, 2021 Category: American Health Authors: Ryan Bourne, Brad Subramaniam Source Type: blogs
The Fable of the Cats
George SelginThe comparison has by now been made so often that it may qualify as a platitude. I mean that between stablecoin issuers and “wildcat” banks, the fly‐by‐night scams that supposedly flooded the antebellum United States with notes nominally worth some stated amount of gold or silver, but actually worth little more than the rag paper they were made of.Such disreputable stuff, we keep hearing, is what “private” currency always tends to be like. The paper sort survived until federal authorities nationalized the nation’s paper money during the Civil War. And (we are told), digital currency will...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - July 6, 2021 Category: American Health Authors: George Selgin Source Type: blogs
Another Massive Drug Bust —Will It Make Any Difference?
David Boaz“Law enforcement officials— some of whom Tuesday could barely contain their glee — announced they had arrested more than 800 people” along with “the seizure of 8 tons of cocaine and more than $48 million. ”Hooray!At last we ’ve turned the corner in the war on drugs. Right? Don ’t bet on it. When Americans read about ever‐larger drug busts, or when we watch television shows about drug enforcement, we get the impression that drug enforcement agents are clever and innovative, always staying one step ahead of the sinister pushers. But in reality the drug distributors are the innovative one...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - June 9, 2021 Category: American Health Authors: David Boaz Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, May 10th 2021
This study suggests that some of those changes contribute to age-related hypertension, providing yet another reason to put resources into the near term development of therapies that can reverse the aging of the gut microbiome, such as flagellin vaccination or fecal microbiota transplantation.
"Previous studies from our lab have shown that the composition of the gut microbiota in animal models of hypertension, such as the SHRSP (spontaneously hypertensive stroke-prone) rat model, is different from that in animals with normal blood pressure. Further, transplanting dysbiotic gut microbiota from a hypertensive animal ...
Source: Fight Aging! - May 9, 2021 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
The Gatekeepers of Medical Regulation are Horrified by Freedom, Responsibility, and Progress
Much pearl-clutching is in evidence in a recent article on the existence of groups, such as Libella Gene Therapeutics, attempting to prototype telomerase gene therapies via patient paid trials, or such as Integrated Health Systems and BioViva, trying to develop markets for such therapies via medical tourism. The gatekeepers of medical regulation stand in opposition to the idea that patients and their supporters can make responsible decisions about risk, based on the available data. Medicine is somehow a privileged space, different from every other human endeavor, in which only the anointed priesthood are allowed to determi...
Source: Fight Aging! - May 4, 2021 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Politics and Legislation Source Type: blogs
Passion Is Linked To Greater Academic Achievement — But In Some Cultures More Than Others
By Emily Reynolds
“Passion” is a word that often crops up on job descriptions and in interviews; articles proliferate online explaining how to adequately express your passion to potential employers. On the whole, passionate people — those who have a strong interest in a particular topic, who are confident in themselves and who dedicate themselves to what they’re doing — are thought of in a positive light, and considered likely to achieve their goals.
But when it comes to predicting achievement, how important is passion really? According to Xingyu Li from Stanford University and colleagues, writ...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - April 28, 2021 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: BPS Research Digest Tags: Cross-cultural Educational Source Type: blogs
Colombia's Trailblazing Model for Refugees
Colombia recently announced it will give temporary protection status to a million undocumented Venezuelan refugees, with permission to live and work in the country for 10 years. In doing so, it created a new model for managing its own refugee situation and perhaps others elsewhere as well. (Source: The RAND Blog)
Source: The RAND Blog - March 26, 2021 Category: Health Management Authors: Krishna B. Kumar; Shelly Culbertson; Louay Constant Source Type: blogs
American Compass Shouldn ’t Reject the Economics of Immigration
ConclusionCass and the other writers at American Compass can ignore economic theory, economic evidence, and the huge volume of peer ‐reviewed and non‐peer‐reviewed research on the economics of immigration as much or as little as they choose. But they cannot get away with telling the world that it is “paper thin” and focused almost entirely on a “massive influx of Cuban refugees in Miami in 1980.” I do not hope to change Cass’s mind, but hopefully I can at least convince him and some other readers of American Compass that there is a lot more to the economics of immigration than research about Mi...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - December 30, 2020 Category: American Health Authors: Alex Nowrasteh Source Type: blogs
Making Rights a Reality: Access to Health Care for Afro-Colombian Survivors of Conflict-Related Sexual Violence
Deborah Zalesne (CUNY), Making Rights a Reality: Access to Health Care for Afro-Colombian Survivors of Conflict-Related Sexual Violence, 51 Columbia Human Rights L. Rev. (2020): In 2008, Colombia enacted Law 1257, which states that “women’s rights are human rights,” and... (Source: HealthLawProf Blog)
Source: HealthLawProf Blog - November 9, 2020 Category: Medical Law Authors: Katharine Van Tassel Source Type: blogs
