US leaders and international visitors come to Hoover

In 2012, many US leaders and international visitors came to the Hoover Institution to discuss economic policy, national security, education, relationships among countries, and health care.

“By collecting knowledge, generating ideas, and disseminating both, the Institution seeks to secure and safeguard peace, improve the human condition, and limit government intrusion into the lives of individuals” (Hoover Institution mission statement).

Visitors to the Hoover Institution (from the United States)
    • Senator Rob Portman
    • Newt Gingrich takes part in the Leadership Forum
    • Governor Chris Christie
    • General Dempsey takes part in the Leadership Forum
    • San Jose mayor Chuck Reed

Visitors to the Hoover Institution (international)
    • Canadian minister of defense Peter MacCay
    • Delegation from the People’s Republic of China
    • Estonian parliamentary delegation
    • Turkish president Abdullah Gül
    • President of the World Bank Robert B. Zoellick

Commentary on the Middle East, the economic crisis, and health care

Throughout the year, Hoover fellows have commented on the Turmoil in the Middle East, including links to articles, videos, podcasts, and books.

Hoover's economic experts continue to lend their insight and sound advice to the causes of and solutions to the economic crisis. A compilation of articles, opinions, podcasts, television and press interviews, blogs, and books that Hoover fellows have written and contributed to is found here.

President Obama, having established that providing health care to all Americans is a high priority on his domestic policy agenda, has become actively involved in the ongoing debate. Hoover fellows, in response, have been assessing the costs of health care and the implications of providing universal health insurance to Americans. The page Health Care is a compilation of recent articles and commentary by Hoover fellows on, among other things, efficient health care policy, provision of health care, the public option, and the economics of health care.

Special featured guests on Uncommon Knowledge

In 2012, Uncommon Knowledge, hosted by Hoover Institution fellow Peter Robinson, featured many noteworthy guests. Some of those guests included George W. Bush, former president of the United States; Newt Gingrich, the fifty-eighth Speaker of the House; a remembrance episode paying tribute to Christopher Hitchens and showcasing clips from Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr.; Condoleezza Rice, the Thomas and Barbara Stephenson Senior Fellow on Public Policy at the Hoover Institution, the Denning Professor in Global Business and the Economy at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, and a professor of political science at Stanford University; Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia; author and television host John Stossel; and columnist, scholar, and social media maven Jonah Goldberg.

Thomas Sowell releases “‘Trickle Down’ Theory and ‘Tax Cuts for the Rich’”

Thomas Sowell, the Rose and Milton Friedman Senior Fellow on Public Policy at the Hoover Institution, released “‘Trickle Down’ Theory and ‘Tax Cuts for the Rich’” in September 2012. In this essay, Sowell articulates the true effects of tax cuts and corrects notions put forward by the media.

Searching the economic literature and examining tax policy going back to the 1920s, Sowell shows that tax cuts are about overall economic expansion, not about the individual beneficiaries of changes in tax rates. Relying on information from and the writings of a diverse group of US presidents (Wilson, Coolidge, Franklin Roosevelt, Kennedy, Reagan, and George W. Bush), and economists and businessmen (Joseph Shumpeter, Andrew Mellon, and John Maynard Keynes), Sowell demystifies the trickle-down theory and unscrambles misconceptions that have made rational debates about tax policies impossible for decades.

UncommonCouple.org website launched

On the occasion of what would have been Milton Friedman’s one hundredth birthday (July 31, 2012), the Hoover Institution launched a website dedicated to the lifework of the Nobel laureate and Hoover fellow and his partner in life and in public policy research, Rose Friedman.

Visitors to the site (http://uncommoncouple.org) will find complete lists of all their writings, spanning seventy-five years; links to their groundbreaking PBS series Free to Choose; finding aids to Milton’s personal papers and correspondence, which are held in the Hoover Institution Archives; and lists of and links to a variety of other audio, video, and written material. The last bibliography that Milton compiled is included on the site.

Chartcast series The Numbers Game

The challenge facing economists broadcasting podcasts is how to keep their audience’s attention and to get the audience to focus on details as they throw around numbers and describe long run trends in the economy. Hoover Institution research fellow Russell Roberts has developed an innovative approach to this challenge by creating chartcasts.

A combination of charts, tables, graphics, cartoons, brief written descriptions, and the spoken word, chartcasts are part of the menu of outreach vehicles Roberts is using to simplify complex economic concepts and analyses.

Caravan launched on Advancing a Free Society

The Hoover Caravan is a product of the Herbert and Jane Dwight Working Group on Islamism and the International Order, cochaired by Hoover fellows Charles Hill and Fouad Ajami, with the active participation of John Raisian, the Tad and Dianne Taube Director of the Hoover Institution. Participants gather in a round-table discussion format to discuss various topics and ideas. The contributors write 750-word essays and columns that can be seen on Advancing a Free Society: The Caravan.

Shevardnadze papers opened

The weekly radio interviews of Ėduard Shevardnadze, president of Georgia, during his last years in office are now available at the Hoover Archives. In these interviews Shevardnadze discusses the foreign policy of Georgia, especially relations with the United States and Russia; his trips to foreign countries and various districts of Georgia; visits of foreign statesmen and public figures to Georgia; and recent political, cultural, and social events.

The collection consists of transcripts of interviews and related preparation materials from September 2002 to November 2003, when Shevardnadze resigned. The entire collection, which has been digitized, is available in the Hoover Archives reading room. A detailed Russian finding aid briefly describes each of the seventy interviews.

2012 Hoover fellow awards

In 2012, Hoover fellows George P. Shultz, John Taylor, Edwin Meese III, and Stephen Haber received prestigious awards. On May 24, 2012, George P. Shultz, the Thomas W. and Susan B. Ford Distinguished Fellow at the Hoover Institution and sixtieth US secretary of state, received the 2012 Henry A. Kissinger Prize from the American Academy in Berlin in recognition of his important contributions to academics, business, economics, and policy. The Manhattan Institute hosted a banquet in New York City in honor of John Taylor, the George P. Shultz Senior Fellow in Economics at the Hoover Institution and the Mary and Robert Raymond Professor of Economics at Stanford University, who was named this year’s recipient of the prestigious Hayek Prize for his book First Principles: Five Keys to Restoring America’s Prosperity (W.W. Norton 2012). Edwin Meese III, a distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution and former US attorney general (February 1985 to August 1988), received one of four 2012 Bradley Prizes from the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation at a ceremony at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC, on Thursday, June 7, 2012. Stephen H. Haber, the Helen and Peter Bing Senior Fellow at Hoover and the A. A. and Jeanne Welch Milligan Professor in Stanford’s Department of Political Science, was the senior faculty member selected to receive the 2012 Walter G. Gores Award, which honors excellence in undergraduate and graduate teaching.

For more information, please see the following:
    • Shultz receives 2012 Henry A. Kissinger Prize
    • Manhattan Institute honors Hoover fellow John Taylor
    • Hoover fellow Edwin Meese III awarded 2012 Bradley Prize
    • Haber receives Walter J. Gores Award

“Choice and Federalism” released by the Koret task force

The Hoover Institution’s Koret Task Force on K–12 Education decided to take a look at the role the feds play in American education. Throughout its analysis, the task force considered choice, transparency, and accountability in the undercurrents of its research. With task force member Russ Whitehurst at the helm, the eleven-member group came up with a series of recommendations for what the federal government’s role might look like going forward:

    1. Continue down the path of top-down accountability
    2. Devolve power to states and districts, thereby returning to the status quo of the past century
    3. Rethink the fundamentals and do something different

In this report, Choice and Federalism, the task force recommends moving away from the top-down approach and fully embracing policies (which may mean abandoning some old practices) that promote parental choice of all hues. All eleven task force members engaged fully in this project, although one member (Eric Hanushek) did not agree with all recommendations.