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Reason.com and Reason TV
Editor in Chief of Reason.com and Reason TV, and co-author of The Declaration of Independents: How Libertarian Politics Can Fix What's Wrong with America
PROFILE
Nick Gillespie
Guest
FROM Nick Gillespie
To the Point
Third parties: voting your conscience or wasting your vote? For millions of voters, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton present an agonizing choice between the lesser of two evils. Libertarian Gary Johnson offers an alternative for fiscal conservatives who won't vote for Trump but can't stand Hillary. The Green Party's Jill Stein speaks to disappointed and angry supporters of Bernie Sanders. But third-party candidates always pose a moral quandary: can they be anything but spoilers? Do they take votes away from the least of the perceived "evils" and help to elect the worst? We look at this year's competition for the Republicans and the Democrats.
To the Point
Is the US Facing Generational Warfare? The Obama and Romney campaigns are battling over Medicare and, less openly, the so-called "Third Rail of Politics:" Social Security . In 1940, there were 159 workers for every elderly recipient of Social Security, plenty of younger people to pay benefits for the old. An aging population has radically changed that. Now, those 159 workers have dwindled to only three, and they're paying for their parents' Medicare and Social Security. In the meantime, the elderly have become better off than their children and grandchildren. Is this a recipe for generational warfare? Is there a need to reform the social programs before it's too late?
Recommended
To the Point
Who's to blame for the opioid crisis? Some of the lawyers who took on Big Tobacco are now going after Big Pharma. It’s all about the deadly epidemic of opioid use. Are the drug companies to blame? What about the users? Later, on today’s Talking Point: making sense of Britain’s upset election.
Left, Right & Center
President Trump: US to withdraw from the Paris Climate Accord Trump says he was elected to serve Pittsburgh, not Paris.
To the Point
Trump plays scolder-in-chief with NATO allies At the opening of NATO’s dramatic new headquarters in Brussels today, President Trump acknowledged that Article 5 — promising that “an attack on one nation is an attack on all” -- has only been invoked one time: in the aftermath of September 11. But the President failed to provide what 27 other Alliance members have been waiting for: a re-commitment by America’s new leader to Article 5. Instead, they got a scolding.
To the Point
What happens when America retreats from the world? Is President Trump taking his "America First" agenda to extremes, withdrawing the country from the international stage on trade and climate change, distancing America from its traditional allies across the Atlantic and even threatening to physically isolate the country through the building of a wall along its southern border? León Krauze guest hosts.