Featured | Page 17 | Discovery Institute

^{Stephen C. Meyer
May 16, 2019
Foreign Policy}

The Best Brexit Strategy is to Leave First, and Then Deal

_{Stephen C. Meyer
May 16, 2019
Foreign Policy}

Last month, the European Union’s Council of Ministers voted to allow Britain another extension in its Brexit deliberations. Despite Prime Minister Theresa May’s “success” in negotiating this extension, her Conservative Party recently experienced massive losses in local council elections with more than 1,300 Conservative councillors losing their seats. Since then, May’s party has tanked further in opinion polls. One recent poll has only 11 percent of the electorate supporting Conservative candidates in the upcoming May 23 elections for the European Parliament. Three years after voting to leave the European Union (EU), British voters must now suffer the indignity of voting to send representatives to a body they no longer wish to represent them. Read More ›

^{Bailey Takacs
May 16, 2019
Education}

Students and Parents Badly Hurt by the Legislature

_{Bailey Takacs
May 16, 2019
Education}

The 2019 legislature missed out on a big opportunity this year. Instead of working to reform how our schools operate, the legislature took a step backwards by undoing much of the good work that was done in response to the McCleary court ruling just two years ago. Read More ›

^{George Gilder and Steve Forbes
May 13, 2019
Economics, Technology}

The Creativity of Capitalism and the Post-Google Era

_{George Gilder and Steve Forbes
May 13, 2019
Economics, Technology}

Discovery co-founder George Gilder sat down with Steve Forbes on Forbes’s podcast What’s Ahead. There are not many minds that have been able to predict what’s ahead quite like Gilder who has proven to be a true visionary in economics and tech. In this conversation with Forbes, Gilder discusses his new book Life After Google: The Fall of Big Data Read More ›

^{Scott S. Powell
May 10, 2019
Economics}

How the U.S. Can Solve the Current Trade Tariff Impasse With China

_{Scott S. Powell
May 10, 2019
Economics}

Trade talks between the U.S. and China have hit an impasse, but there is surprising bipartisan support for the Trump administration to stay the course on what will be a long process to resolve the full range of trade problems specific to China. Success on this first round of trade negotiations in the form of ending the tariff penalties that are at the heart of a year-old trade war, with further reduction and even elimination of tariffs on as many categories as possible, should actually be attainable in the near term. Future rounds of trade talks to find remedies for China’s intellectual property and trademark theft, national security threats, and forced technology transfer from American companies doing business in China will be far more problematic. China is already feeling the pain of our tariffs, just as American farmers are feeling the pain of their retaliatory tariffs against U.S. agricultural products. Both sides benefit from more trade with minimal tariffs that come naturally because of comparative advantage — a theory that has worked consistently since David Ricardo developed it in 1817. Read More ›

^{Christopher Rufo
May 6, 2019
Economics}

How Seattle’s Elite Brushes Off Violent Homeless Crime

_{Christopher Rufo
May 6, 2019
Economics}

A year ago, in Seattle, a man living in a city-funded homeless encampment raped a woman in the bathroom of a Volkswagen dealership in the city’s Ballard neighborhood, according to the victim and law enforcers. Christopher Teel had arrived from Texas as a transient and was evading at least one active warrant, but the city-sanctioned encampment welcomed him without conducting a criminal-background check. The story caused a sensation, with wide media coverage and public demands for increased security measures, but the woman, Lindsey, remained silent, and her identity was kept secret. Nearly a year later, Lindsey contacted me. Read More ›

^{Discovery Institute
April 22, 2019
Human Exceptionalism}

Wesley J. Smith Testifies Before Texas State Senate

_{Discovery Institute
April 22, 2019
Human Exceptionalism}

Discovery Senior Fellow Wesley J. Smith appeared before the Texas State Senate Committee on Health and Human Services to advocate in favor of SB2089. The purpose of the bill is to improve Texas’s medical futility provisions and to make end of life healthcare disputes between patients, providers, and their families cooperative rather coercive, which Smith currently believes to be the …

^{Christopher Rufo
April 16, 2019
Economics}

Seattle’s Revolt of the Elites

_{Christopher Rufo
April 16, 2019
Economics}

In Seattle, people are losing patience with city leadership over the homelessness crisis, but the frustration is running in both directions: the city’s political, cultural, and academic elites are conducting their own revolt — against the people.

Since the release of Eric Johnson’s documentary Seattle Is Dying, which depicts an epidemic of street homelessness, addiction, crime, and disorder, city elites have launched a coordinated information campaign targeted at voters frustrated with the city’s response to homelessness. Earlier this month, leaked documents revealed that a group of prominent nonprofits — the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Campion Advocacy Fund, the Raikes Foundation, and the Ballmer Group — hired a PR firm, Pyramid Communications, to conduct polling, create messaging, and disseminate the resulting content through a network of silent partners in academia, the press, government, and the nonprofit sector. The campaign, #SeattleForAll, is a case study in what writer James Lindsay calls “idea laundering” — creating misinformation and legitimizing it as objective truth through repetition in sympathetic media.

How Theresa May Can Get a Better Brexit Deal — and How Trump Can Help

_{Stephen C. Meyer
April 5, 2019
Economics, Foreign Policy}

Last week, British prime minister Theresa May failed for a third time to secure a majority in Parliament for her Brexit deal. Now she faces an ever-narrowing set of options. ... Yet, as she must realize, delay by itself offers no hope of a fundamental change in the dynamics of the negotiation and, therefore, no realistic hope of resolving the political crisis now engulfing Britain. Read More ›

^{Scott S. Powell
April 3, 2019
Economics}

U.S. Trade Deal with China Imperfect, but Both Sides Benefit

_{Scott S. Powell
April 3, 2019
Economics}

The U.S. and China are edging closer to finalizing a trade deal that should end the tariff penalties that are at the heart of a year-old trade war. But a comprehensive deal that includes remedies for China’s theft of intellectual property and forced technology transfer from American companies doing business in China may not be in the cards in closing Read More ›

^{Christopher Rufo
April 2, 2019
Economics}

A Brewing Rebellion in the Emerald City

_{Christopher Rufo
April 2, 2019
Economics}

For the past five years, like many of its West Coast counterparts, Seattle has endured a steady expansion of homelessness, addiction, mental illness, crime, and street disorder. But the activist class—a political and cultural elite comprising leaders in government, nonprofits, philanthropy, and media—has enforced a strict taboo on declaring the obvious: something is terribly wrong in the Emerald City. Last month, veteran Seattle reporter Eric Johnson of KOMO violated that taboo with a shocking, hour-long documentary called Seattle is Dying, which revealed how the city has allowed a small subset of the homeless population—drug-addicted and mentally-ill criminals—to wreak havoc. Johnson’s portrait is backed up by evidence from King County homelessness data, by city attorney candidate Scott Lindsay’s “prolific offender” report on 100 homeless individuals responsible for more than 3,500 criminal cases, and by my own reporting on the homelessness crisis. Read More ›