Then they have the kids to a lot of times. Then they have to prepare food. Its a hard life. I always say just because i dont know anything because not much has been written about asmat women what appears to be a culture in which women have very little importance for power isnt necessarily true. Its just that we men are privy to mans world and we are the writers. I always say that if you know of any ph. D. Candidates who are women who are looking for a thesis, a woman could go live in asmat and come up with really remarkable stuff. The role of the women and really what their role is. Obviously much greater than we in and my interactions with them would indicate. But it is cut off to me. Thank you and i think that was it. Thank you everybody. Appreciate it. [applause] [inaudible conversations] the judges decision in 2010 was instructive. Hes the first person who is a neutral person to have reviewed all of the evidence in the case and he decided that the evidence in the case was either not credible because it was obtained through torture or coercion or for other reasons. I remember reading the first time i was able to read the diary years ago so much more became clear to me because mohammad talks about the torture that he was subjected to that resulted in him providing false information about himself and others because essentially he was told what they wanted him to say. So he was also in a position he said in the book of more incriminating the fiction he could make up the happier his interrogators were. There is one point, he talks about whenever they asked me about somebody in canada i had incriminating information about that person even if i didnt know him. Whenever that about the word i dont know i got nauseous because i remember the words often redacted. All you have to say i dont know, i dont remember and fu and that of course is the word that was used. Mohammad doucet i erase these words from a dictionary. That passage comes after you read about the pain that he goes through. One of the things again that i think about in this book in the last year that we had with more information coming out about torture our debate about torture has been debased and await because its focused on effectiveness and effectiveness doesnt matter. Its a moral. This book shows yet again that there are two things that torture absolutely guarantees. One is pain and the other is false information. Good afternoon and welcome to our book form at the Cato Institute today for a republic no more Big Government and the rise of american political corruption by jay cost. My name is john samples paradigm Vice President president and publisher here the Cato Institute and i again would like to welcome you to our event today for this very important book. Now if you have been to book forms before you will notice they will proceed in many ways the same as all other book forms have. That is you will hear from some participants and then there will be a question and answer session about the talk and then lunch. Also one other thing is like all of our other events. Please turn off your cell phones now so that we can have the event in peace and quiet. Some things are going to be different today. We are trying some Different Things different format. In this particular case of our author jay cost was beaten for a while about the book to give you a general ally of the land and jay will be joined by my colleagues mark calabra and Chris Edwards. They will for a few minutes give you their impressions of the book and then mark jay and chris will have a conversation about the spread of political corruption in america and about the book a republic no more. Im going to begin today by getting beaten in straight of stuff out of the way. Im going to introduce everyone youll be hearing from and then we can go straight to our event. Jay cost is in elections analyst political analyst and pounded at the Weekly Standard if you read the way the Weekly Standard regular you will know his work well. He previously wrote for the horserace blog and realclearpolitics. Some of you may remember those days and he had an earlier book spoiled what and how the politics of pretended corrupt the once noble Democratic Party and now threatens the american republic. He received a b. A. In from the university of virginia and an m. A. In Political Science from the university of chicago. In 2000 by while working on his dissertation at the university of chicago costs joined the staff of realclearpolitics and became a writer for the Weekly Standard in 2010 pickup of his education background is in Political Science jay claims he is come to the reading history of american elections than Political Science and Public Opinion polling. Our book today is proof of that interest in political history which many of us would say has an Important Message for Political Science and indeed for american politics. My colleagues are mark calabra and Chris Edwards. Mark calabra is director of Financial Regulations at cato. Before joining cato in 2009 he spent six years as the senior professional staff of the u. S. Senate committee on banking, housing and urban affairs. He handled issues relating to Housing Mortgage finance economics, banking and insurance for Ranking Member richard shelby. Prior to his service on capitol hill calabria served as Deputy Assistant secretary for Regulatory Affairs at the u. S. Department of housing and urban development. And also held a variety of positions at Harvard Universitys joint center for housing studies the National Association of homebuilders, the National Association of realtors. He has been a Research Associate with the u. S. Census Bureau Bureau center for economic studies. He holds a doctorate in economics from george mason university. If you dont know the cato step well today when the conversation mark will be the one with a the yellow tie on. The other fellow would be Chris Edwards. Chris is the director of tax policy studies at cato and editor of downsizing government. Org. He is a top expert on federal and state budget issues. Before joining cato edwards is a senior economist on the congressional joint economic committee, and manager with pricewaterhousecoopers and an economist with the tax foundation. Chris has testified to congress on fiscal issues many times in his articles on tax and budget policies have appeared in the washington post, the wall street journal and other major newspapers. I can say this because chris is a collie. No one at cato rails against political corruption better than Chris Edwards so he was a natural for our event today and i must say in his research he comes up with a lot of examples. Chris holds a b. A. And m. A. In economics and a member of the Fiscal Commission of the National Academy of sciences. Please join me in welcoming jay cost to the Cato Institute. [applause] thank you john for that very kind introduction and thanks as well to mark and chris for participating today and thank you to everybody who is here and thank you especially to Cato Institute for hosting this forum. As john said we are here to talk about my new book a republic no more Big Government and the rise of american political corruption. I was attracted to the idea of the history of political corruption because i like the idea of writing a history of something that nobody is studied in isolation and it was a different subject. The subject may be a lot of people dont particularly want to talk about because it doesnt show our history and the brightest of lights. I thought i would set sail in american politics and see what i might find it as it turned out i discovered quite a bit. My book is one part history one part civics in one part policy analysis. I was thinking about a way to tie all of that together in some brief remarks and since markets here and sure we will talk about fannie mae and freddie mac which i analyze in the final chapter of the book. Im looking forward to that because their behavior, their behavior was probably the most obscene example of legal corruption that i have discovered. Im going to take an opportunity at the end of these remarks to bring them into the picture. First let me outline exactly what my argument is. I take a broader and more philosophical view than what we typically read in newspapers or see on television. Usually its a matter of extortion or bribery or kickbacks. In my telling those are all examples of corruption but i view the problem much more broadly in my framework is James Madison opens federalist number 10 with a very provocative phrase. They need to break and control the violence of factions. If you read this in the federalist papers you know hamilton is by far the better polemicist in those essays that phrase violent factions knocks me off my feet when i ponder it. He defines as faction quote a number of citizens whether amounting to a majority or minority to hold united and actuated by some common impulse of passion or interest adverse to the rights of other citizens or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community. That gives me some very useful definition of corruption. It occurs when the government does violates by lowing faction to dominate public its incompatible with the form of government. Its suppression at the heart of massa heart of nasas project after all all the republic all the, which are republic busters as faction if it hopes to govern for the sake of all an retrospect of the individual rights of all. Madison rejected the idea that virtue provided for Civic Education or public religion could overwhelm what he saw as the inevitable tendency to factionalism. He said it is sewn into the nature. He also rejected other thinkers who suggested that a small nation our city state would be ideal for her public because in most instances so the theory went small groups are less likely to bicker over big issues. But madison observed in especially during the 1780s the experiences the State Government saw the opposite. In the federalist papers he makes a persuasive claim in my opinion that even when men dont have something substantive to bicker over they will find and invent reasons to fight one another. As an alternative to this medicine madison embraces an institutional solution because after all factionalism is sewn into the nature of man and popular rule is at the heart of the republican project. Theres a problem here. Republican governance is inherently unstable. If virtue doesnt call a small size and the city and state doesnt cut it what you do . Madison solution was institutional. He thought as long as the institution of government was welldesigned factionalism could be thwarted and this idea of this principle is at the very heart of her complicated system of checks and balances. It is an effort to build the institutions of government just so. Just so that the Government Works on behalf of everybody rather than a select few. Madison called that goal the great desideratum of government and other provocative face. Woodrow wilson once called our constitutional regime a utopian system with forces calibrated against one another. In other words the rules of a constitutional gamer to be structured so that the vast array of forces in society could combine within the government to produce something that is in the common interest. A faction may have representatives who will do its bidding in the government but those agents will only possess limited power and will be regularly signing by agents allied with other factions. Per madisons theory its irrelevant to check these selfish ambitions driven by selfish ambitions. All that matters is the result. The only proposal that should make it through the constitutional gauntlet and the enactment into law will be those that benefit the people generally. Everything else will fall by the wayside a decisive check on correction in per serving the republic integrity of the regime. To be truly truly madisonian may require truly madisonian may require something other than strictly parents to the constitution. Its not simply commitment to that document. In the constitution cannot be understood. It is rather compromise hammered out at the Constitutional Convention in 178087 convened after the existing Governmental Authority has proved unworkable. The status quo at that time could no longer stand. Delegates disagreed on many points in two important disputes are illustrative for my purposes. First is how powerful should the new government be and how dependent on local edges should be . One group led by Madison Alexander hamilton and George Washington wanted a powerful government. Mostly immune from parochial or local concerns apart from a popularly elected house of representatives. Madisons original proposal envisioned a government distant from the gallows. The gallows. As i was beat to selected by the house the president by both chambers of commerce and the congress would have Veto Authority over state state legislation. Finally a council of revision would have authority to monitor and veto state laws or excuse me vetoes federal laws. Meanwhile the congress would have enormously wide discretion. It could legislate and this is a quote in all cases to which separate states are incompetent or which the harmony of United States may be interrupted by the exercise of individual legislation. The virginia plan was a truly National Plan of governance. Opponents rallied to the proposal of William Patterson of new jersey which called for slight alterations to the existing articles of confederation which had limited power and parochial orientation. Under the new jersey plan the Continental Congress would acquire the tax and an executive council be created to provide direction to Public Policy. The constitution is worked out occupying middle ground between the two. After months of debate delegates decided the government should have more power than patterson proposed that less than what madison proposed. Furthermore it would depend more on local perspectives and madison wanted but less so than what patterson and vision. This was not merely a splitting of differences either. The framers blended the divergent views and you can appreciate this if you read madisons notes on the Constitutional Convention. You can see them taking care to make sure that this compromise actually worked, the various pieces fit together into a coherent whole. It was a compromise and eight. These were people skeptical of centralized power and fearful creeping monarchism get they werent desperate need of a central authority. The constitution gave them gave the government enough power to meet the existing crises but not so much as to overwhelm state and local authorities. It also distance the government from popular sentiment but certainly not without cutting it off entirely. Over the ensuing two centuries or more the American Population grew from 4 million to over 300 million in society change. Straining the original compromise and gradually enforcing an effective revision of the governing charter. New problems emerged and repeatedly the public decided the power of the federal government had to grow to deal with new threats. Today washington d. C. Has achieved the scope of centralized power that was envisioned in the virginia plan. For for all intents and purposes the federal government can legislate whenever it sees fit. Rarely does the Supreme Court remind washington of any constitutional limit yet this is where we turn to the problem of corruption. The country never revived. The institutions that channel government ever expanding powers. We have margins and the Electorate College mandated the expanded the franchise but nevertheless the basic institutions remain largely as they were when the constitution went into effect in 1787. From the madisonian perspective this is a problem. If our institutions require a particular design in order to break into the violence faction and serve the common good than it is imprudent to give expanded powers to institutions that were urgently intended to do much less. But that is exactly what we have done and we have done so in a decidedly ad hoc manner. Even if the trajectory and the growth of government has always been upward it has been his sake and as senate. As crises arrive voters elected new covering to deal with the challenge and expansion is retained even after the danger has abated. This haphazard process has left us with institutions that are far too parochial and tie to factional interest to permit the white exercise of the expansive authority. Perhaps not surprisingly our 18th century institutions wield their 21st century powers. Lacking adequate checks and balances in this new redesigned regime they regularly killed Public Policy to benefit our interest gro