Reason.tv - Topics

Mike Riggs Discusses the Reversing Trends of Immigration and Austerity w/ Thom Hartmann

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 00:00:00 EDT

Reason Associate Editor Mike Riggs joined the Heritage Foundation's Lachlan Markay with RT's Thom Hartmann to discuss how slowing and even reversing immigration trends from Latin America will effect how the GOP will strategize during the November election. The panel also discusses whether austerity and cutting spending have lead European nations into another recession. Airdate: April 25, 2012.

19.25 minutes.

Scroll down for HD, iPod and audio versions of this video and subscribe to Reason.tv's Youtube channel to receive automatic notification when new material goes live.

Arizona's Immigration Law Heads to the Supreme Court

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 00:00:00 EDT

"As long as there is not a direct conflict, which the federal government did not do a very good job of pointing to today, the Arizona law gets to stand under the Preemption Doctrine," says Reason's Damon Root, who was at the Supreme Court during Wenesday's oral arguments surrounding Arizona's controversial immigration law. "The federal government is saying that 'we have the power to stomp out all of the state experiments in immigration law enforcement.'"

Much like the Health Care arguments before the Court in March, Root does not see this as a good day for the Obama administration, in part due to their Solicitor General Donald Verrilli's poor performance. "At one point," Root explains "Justice Sotomayor interrupted [Verrilli] and said "look I am terribly confused by what you are saying."

Runs about 3.50 minutes.

Produced by Meredith Bragg.

For more of Reason.tv's coverage of immigration, go here: http://reason.com/topics/immigration

Scroll down for downloadable versions and subscribe to Reason.tv's YouTube Channel to receive automatic updates when new material goes live.

Arab Spring Update: Freedom House's Arch Puddington on How 2012 Will Be Like 1989.

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 13:00:00 EST

"As significant as 1989 when the Berlin wall came down, overwhelmingly the story of 2012 is centered in the Middle East,” says Freedom House's Arch Puddington. "People were inspired by events in Egypt, they started demanding their rights.”

Puddington has helped record the long-overdue revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Syria, and countries in the Freedom in the World 2012 index. Founded in 1941, Freedom House quantifies and ranks the political freedom and civil liberties of every country in the world as "Free," "Partly Free," or "Not Free."

Though the Arab Spring has led some regimes to respond with arrests and killings, Puddington remains confident political rights and civil liberties will succeed in the longer run. Since the first Freedom in the World index was published in 1973, he notes, free countries have doubled in number and not-free countries have declined. In the 2012 edition, 87 countries are listed as Free, 60 as Partly Free, and 48 as Not Free.

Approximately 5 minutes.

Interview by Matt Welch. Camera by Meredith Bragg and Joshua Swain; edited by Swain.

Scroll down for downloadable versions, and subscribe to Reason.tv's YouTube Channel to receive automatic notifications when new material goes live.

3 Supreme Court Decisions to Watch

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 11:00:00 EST

The Supreme Court is back in session with major decisions coming on the legality of Obamacare, Arizona's anti-immigration law, and the right of property owners to due process.

How's the court expected rule in these cases and what are the likely implications of its decisions?

Reason Senior Editor Damon Root sat down with Reason.tv's Nick Gillespie to talk about the 3 decisions to watch in the Supreme Court's current session.

Shot by Joshua Swain and Meredith Bragg; edited by Jim Epstein.

Approximately 4.30.

Scrolldown for downloadable versions and subscribe to Reason.tv's YouTube channel to receive automatic updates when new material goes live.

Matt Welch Talks New Proposal to Exchange US Homes for Visas on Freedom Watch

Fri, 21 Oct 2011 00:00:00 EDT

Reason Magazine Editor in Chief Matt Welch appeared on Freedom Watch With Judge Napolitano to talk about the federal government's new proposal to provide foreigners with visas if they purchase a US home for more than $500,000. Air Date: October 20, 2011.

Approximately 8 minutes.

Scroll down for downloadable versions and subscribe to Reason.tv's YouTube channel to receive automatic notification when new material goes live.

Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.)

Thu, 14 Jul 2011 00:00:00 EDT

Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Arizona) has represented the Diamondback State's sixth congressional district since 2001, cutting a pro-immigration, pro-trade, limited-government, anti-spending path that contrasts sharply with the mainstream of the Republican Party.

Flake's campaign against "earmarking," or larding up bills with giveaways for legislators' home districts, brought national attention to this issue and inspired some important rule changes. He has been a lonely voice in the House calling for an end to the U.S.-imposed travel ban on Cuba . And in a state that has shocked much of the country with its intolerance toward both documented and undocumented immigrants, Flake has consistently argued for reducing obstacles to legal immigration and establishing more effective guest worker programs.

Now Flake has his eye on the Senate seat being vacated next year by the retiring Republican Jon Kyl. While there's plenty of competition for his House job, Flake is so far alone in the race for Arizona's junior Senate seat.

A former head of the Goldwater Institute and practicing Mormon, Flake is a leading voice for freer markets and more personal freedom within the Republican Party.

Late in June, Flake sat down with Reason Senior Editor Tim Cavanaugh to discuss these matters and more.

Approximately 28 minutes

Shot by Zach Weissmueuller, Paul Detrick and Alex Manning. Edited by Meredith Bragg.

Scroll down for downloadable versions and subscribe to Reason.tv's YouTube Channel to receive automatic notifications when new material goes live.

Nick Gillespie Discusses a Divided America on CNN's In The Arena

Wed, 11 May 2011 00:00:00 EDT

Reason.tv's Editor-in-Chief Nick Gillespie joined The Nation's Katrina vanden Heuvel on CNN's In the Arena with Eliot Spitzer to discuss how divided both Washington and Americans are by ideology today and whether there still is common ground. Airdate: May 11, 2011.

Approximately 7.35 minutes.

Scroll down for downloadable versions and subscribe to Reason.tv's YouTube channel to receive automatic notification when new material goes live.

Ask a Mexican Already! Q&A with Gustavo Arellano

Thu, 21 Apr 2011 12:00:00 EDT

Since 2004, Gustavo Arellano has written the wildly popular - and wildly politically incorrect - Ask a Mexican! column in the OC Weekly. In each installment, the California-born Arellano answers reader queries about Mexican-American mores that rarely come up in day-to-day conversation. Recent entries have discussed whether it's safe to shop for prescription drugs in border towns, why Mexicans eat so many tortillas, and if it's common for Mexican men to wear necklaces bearing their mothers' names (it's not, cautions Arellano, and probably a sign that a particular hombre has a chica south of the border).

The column, Arellano told Reuters, "started off as a joke. It was supposed to be just a satirical take on xenophobia against Mexicans and it just exploded." The column now appears in about three dozen publications and spawned a 2007 collection (buy it here). The column is remarkable not only for its humor and insight but its willingness to talk frankly about topics that usually stifle even the most-open conversationalists.

In April, Reason's Nick Gillespie talked with Arellano about U.S. natives' attitudes toward Mexicans, whether half-Mexican Anthony Quinn's performance in Zorba the Greek or Jack Black's Mexican-wrestler turn in Nacho Libre was more ethnically offensive, whether Mexicans can or should assimilate, the effect of the drug war on border relations, and much more.

Approximately 7 minutes. Filmed by Hawk Jensen and Zach Weismueller; edited Jensen.

Scroll down for downloadable versions of this video and subscribe to Reason.tv's YouTube channel for automatic notifications when new material goes live.

Shikha Dalmia Discusses Immigration at 2011 Students for Liberty International Conference

Thu, 17 Mar 2011 12:00:00 EDT

In February 2011, Reason Foundation senior policy analyst Shikha Dalmia spoke at the International Students For Liberty Conference about immigration.

Calling for open borders, Dalmia argues that immigrants create more wealth than they consume and that an increasingly globalized economy inevitably means that people, like goods and services, will be crossing borders in growing numbers. While nativists and protectionists may view such developments with alarm, allowing people to move more freely is a great advance both for human rights and economic progress.

Approximately 33.50 minutes.

Scroll down for HD, iPod and audio versions of this video and subscribe to Reason.tv's YouTube channel to receive automatic notifications when new material goes live.

Another Mexico: A Conversation with Storyteller Sam Quinones

Mon, 31 Jan 2011 10:00:00 EST

Sam Quinones covers immigration, drug trafficking and gangs as a reporter for the Los Angeles TImes.

Quinones is also the award winning author of two books: True Tales from another Mexico and Antonio's Gun & Delfino's Dream. The books are collections of nonfiction stories Quinones wrote while living and working as a free lance writer in Mexico.

Instead of writing stories about the official and bureaucratic Mexico we see on TV, Quinones focuses on "another Mexico," the regular people without influence on the fringes of Mexico's paternalistic political system. These are the independently minded people who dare to live their own lives, start businesses and risk everything to pursue their dreams in the US.

Reason.tv's Paul Feine sat down with Quinones to talk about popsicle kings, drag queens, cults, corruption, migration and the future of Mexico.

Approximately 13 minutes. Produced by Paul Feine and Alex Manning. Still photography by Sam Quinones.

Scroll down for downloadable versions of this and all our videos, and subscribe to Reason.tv's YouTube channel to receive automatic notification when new content is posted.

Delta Smelt and Undocumented Farm Workers: How Federal Policy Is Failing California's Central Valley

Wed, 12 Jan 2011 00:00:00 EST

California's Central Valley is a 450 mile long stretch of flat and fertile land that produces much of the food that we enjoy every day. But the people in small towns like Mendota (the cantaloupe capital of the world) are suffering these days, in part due to two federal policies.

In order to protect a threatened fish species called the Delta Smelt, much of the water that used to be pumped from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to farms on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley is now allowed to flow into the ocean. The result is predictable: hundreds of thousands of acres of farm land lies fallow and tens of thousands of jobs have been lost. In Mendota, the unemployment rate is over 40% and food lines are the norm.

But people going hungry in a region dominated by agriculture is only one of the contradictions in the Central Valley.

Nearly all the valley's farm workers are immigrants from Mexico and Central America, and many of them are undocumented. These people are crucial to the valley's economy, but they're breaking the law according to the federal government.

To learn more about the Central Valley and its discontents, we spoke to Robert Silva, mayor of Mendota; Kim Sullivan, a small business owner who makes gear drives for irrigation pumps; Maria Angel, a cafe owner and GED instructor; and Chris Collins, who recently authored a special Fresno Bee series about illegal immigration called "In Denial".

Approximately 8 minutes. Produced by Paul Feine and Alex Manning.

Scroll down for downloadable versions and subscribe to Reason.tv's YouTube channel to receive automatic notification when new material goes live.

Michael Moynihan Discusses the Rise of Right-Wing Extremism in Europe on Russia Today

Thu, 21 Oct 2010 00:00:00 EDT

Reason Magazine and Reason.com Senior Editor Michael Moynihan appears on Russia Today's The Alyona Show to discuss the rise of extreme right-wing parties in Europe and how they differ from the tea party movement in America. Airdate: October 20, 2010.

Approximately 6.22.

Scroll down for downable versions of this video and be sure to subscribe to Reason.tv's YouTube Channel for updates on when new material goes live.

Citizenship: The Pursuit of Happiness

dan.hayes@reason.org (Dan Hayes) — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 00:00:00 EDT

Whether it's Arizona's controversial new law requiring citizens to produce "papers" proving their legal status or President Obama's decision to send additional national guard troops to the US/Mexico border, immigration remains one of the most contentious issues in contemporary politics. As the battle over "comprehensive" reform heats up, everyone has an opinion.

Reason.tv caught up with immigrants to learn why they moved to a country that defines itself as a multicultural melting pot. Citizenship: The Pursuit of Happiness was produced and edited by Dan Hayes. Thanks to Rob Raffety for the inspiration!

Approximately 5.15 minutes.

Scroll down for downloadable iPod, HD, and audio versions of this and all our videos, and subscribe to Reason.tv's YouTube channel to receive automatic notification when new material goes live.

Joel Kotkin: Why America Will Still Lead the World in 2050

Thu, 10 Jun 2010 12:00:00 EDT

What will America be like in 40 years, after it adds another 100 million people? With so much bipartisan handwringing about everything from illegal immigration to environmental degradation, it seems like many are expecting America to collapse before 2050. Enter urban historian Joel Kotkin, who offers a rare and optimistic take on America's future.

Kotkin is the Distinguished Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University and the author of the new book, The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050. Topics include: immigration, suburbia, job creation, why America's demographic trajectory gives it an advantage over its peers.

Interview by Ted Balaker, shot by Paul Detrick and Zach Weissmueller, and edited by Alex Manning.

Approximately 9.35 minutes long.

Scroll down for downloadable iPod, HD, and audio versions.

Subscribe to Reason.tv's YouTube channel to receive automatic notification when new material goes live.

Mickey Kaus on How Unions Killed the Democrats, Immigration, New Media, & Bringing the Velvet Underground to Beverly Hills High

Fri, 04 Jun 2010 08:00:00 EDT

The Kaus family was deeply intertwined with California politics and culture long before journalist/blogger Mickey Kaus started his longshot bid to unseat Sen. Barbara Boxer in the 2010 Democratic primary.

Mickey’s father, the Viennese-born Otto Kaus, was a well-respected jurist who sat on the California Supreme Court from 1981 to 1985. His brother Stephen is a prominent Bay Area civil-litigation attorney and a commentator for The Huffington Post. Mickey’s maternal grandmother, Dorothy Huttenback, was a musical prodigy who headed up the Los Angeles Music Guild for three decades, and Dorothy’s son Robert served as chancellor of the University of California at Santa Barbara. Both sides of the family were part of the historic wave of German-speaking Jews who fled the Nazis for Southern California in and around the 1930s, injecting a distinctive, semi-alienated yet intensely patriotic intellectual style to the Golden State’s civic conversation.

Mickey Kaus’ position within the national public policy discussion has always been that of a tweak-your-own-side contrarian. He was part of the group of writers at the left-of-center Washington Monthly in the 1980s who hatched what they called “neoliberalism”—a qualified rejection of interest-group politics and Keynesian economics in favor of policies intended to harness rather than oppose market forces. That frame led him to The End of Equality, a seminal 1992 book that stressed opportunities over outcomes and took on the liberal sacred cow of welfare. Kaus certainly hadn’t abandoned the liberal fold—among other things, the book called for a federal jobs program, universal health coverage, and compulsory national service—but he wasn’t an ordinary Democrat either.

By the end of the 1990s Kaus’ name was synonymous with political blogging. He had launched one of the first and most influential journalist blogs, Kausfiles, which for most of its lifespan has been published by Slate. In 2005 he helped kick-start the video debate site Bloggingheads.tv with his friend and frequent sparring partner Robert Wright. There and elsewhere, Kaus has distanced himself from his own Democratic Party on unionism, health care reform, public sector pensions, and especially immigration.

In 2010 Kaus decided to put his money where his mouth is and run against Boxer, the powerful three-term senator, as a way to advance the discussion about modern Democratic priorities. Needless to say, Kaus has no chance of unseating Boxer in the California primary coming on June 8. Yet his insights on new media, unions, and politics more broadly are well worth hearing. And his story about bringing the Velvet Underground to perform at Beverly Hills High in the '60s is not to be missed.

Reason.tv Editor Nick Gillespie spoke with Kaus in May, just after Arizona passed a controversial law about checking the immigration status of anyone who comes into contact with law enforcement.

Look for a version of this exchange in the August/September print edition of Reason.

L.A. May Day

Fri, 07 May 2010 06:00:00 EDT

Concern, fear, and outrage over Arizona's controversial new immigration law set passions high for the estimated 60,000 marchers at what is reportedly the nation's largest May Day event. Reason.tv took to the streets to get a firsthand view of the demonstrators and their concerns.

Filmed and edited by Hawk Jensen. Approximately 5 mins.

Scroll down for downloadable versions. Subscribe to Reason.tv's YouTube channel to receive automatic notification when new material goes live.

Wall Street Journal's Jason Riley on Immigrants: Let Them In

Fri, 08 May 2009 11:00:00 EDT

During Reason Weekend, the annual event held by the nonprofit that publishes this website, The Wall Street Journal's Jason Riley, author of the recent book Let Them In: The Case for Open Borders, gave a spellbinding presentation about the myths surrounding immigration.

Riley walks through the history of German, Irish, and Mexican migrants in rich and compelling detail, deflating nativist hype while also complicating easy narratives about the United States as a mythic destination for all the wretched of the world.

Approximately 30 minutes.

Go here for audio podcast.

Shot and edited by Roger Richards.

For more Reason.tv with Riley, go here.

Reason on immigration here.

Return to the Gulag

Thu, 26 Feb 2009 00:00:00 EST

Jon Utley was two years old in Moscow when his father, Arcadi Berdichevsky, a Russian trade official, was sent to a labor camp by the Soviet secret police. His mother, Freda Utley, escaped with Jon to England and then to America.

In 2004 and 2006, Utley, a well-known journalist, embarked upon a search to learn of his father's fate. This documentary traces Utley's journey through former labor camps and cities in northern Russia and his final uncovering of the horrible truth at the dreaded camp city of Vorkuta within the Artic Circle.

Directed by John J. Michalczyk, Return to the Gulag is a small but revealing window into Russia's turbulent 1930s.

Reason.tv is proud to present this Etoile Production, which was funded by The Freda Utley Foundation and the Jacques Salmanowitz Program For Moral Courage in Film at Boston College. Thanks also to the Fitzgerald Griffin Foundation.

For more information about the documentary, visit http://fredautley.com/Berdichevsky.htm.

For a DVD version of this program ($15 donation, plus shipping), please go to the website of The Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation or email vocmemorial@aim.com.

Jason Riley on Immigration: LET THEM IN ALREADY!

Wed, 06 Aug 2008 01:00:00 EDT

The title of Jason L. Riley's new book helps explain why it has proven so controversial: Let Them In: The Case for Open Borders.

Let Them In is as exhaustively researched as it is eminently readable. Riley, a member of The Wall Street Journal's editorial board runs through the six biggest anti-immigration arguments at play in today's heated political world—and finds them wanting.

Riley sat down earlier this summer with reason.tv's Nick Gillespie to discuss the leading myths about the causes and effects of immigration.
For a longer 25 minute version. Click on the video below.

To download MP3s of the short and long versions of these interviews, go here.

The Wall

Wed, 28 May 2008 05:00:00 EDT

At a time when pundits and politicians of all stripes endorse securing the border between the United States and Mexico, reason.tv travels south to see what's really going on—and what the human and monetary costs are of amping up border patrols.

Building a wall along the border with Mexico is a great idea—if America wants to be like China and the former East Germany. In the 13th episode of reason.tv's acclaimed and controversial Drew Carey Project, our host suggests there are better ways to ensure American security while also promoting free trade with our neighbor to the South.

"One way out of this mess would be to simply allow peaceful workers to enter our country through legal ports of entry," says Carey. "If we did that we could stimulate our economy, bring a huge underground labor market out into the open and we could put unscrupulous smugglers out of business. More importantly, we'd free up border patrol resources that could be used to fight criminals and terrorism."

Watch previous Drew Carey Project episodes here.

How the Wall Street Journal's Op-Ed Page Gets Made: Q&A with Robert Pollock

Mon, 12 May 2008 15:00:00 EDT

Former reason intern Robert Pollock has been the editorial features page editor at The Wall Street Journal for more than a year. The Buffalo native sat down recently with reason.tv to talk about how he came to his libertarian beliefs; how the mainstream media is toeing the Journal's line on capital gains taxes; why The Washington Post is the Journal's competition and why The New York Times' editorial pages have a "hectoring" tone; how the GOP turned its back on its small-government philosophy; why America needs more immigrants; and much more.

This 10-minute interview was conducted by reason.tv Editor Nick Gillespie and filmed by reason.tv's Dan Hayes.

Clandestino

paul.feine@reason.tv (Paul Feine) — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 16:01:00 EDT

Manu Chao is a French-born musician and political activist whose parents fled Franco's dictatorship in Spain in the 1950s.

"Clandestino" (1998) is a song about the plight of undocumented people everywhere.

Here are the English lyrics:

Alone I go with my sorrow
Alone goes my sentence
To run is my destiny
To escape the law
Lost in the heart of the great Babylon
They call me
clandestine
For not having any papers

To a city of the north
I went to work
I left my life
Between Ceuta and
Gibraltar
I'm a line in the sea
A ghost in the city
My life is forbidden
So says the authority

Alone I go with my sorrow
Alone goes my sentence
To run is my destiny
For having no papers
Lost
in the heart
Of the great Babylon
They call me clandestine
I'm the lawbreaker
Mano negra clandestine
Peruan clandestine
African clandestine
Marihuana illegal

Alone I go with my sorrow
Alone
goes my sentence
To run is my destiny
To escape the law
Lost in the heart of the great Babylon
They call me
clandestine
For not having any papers

Immigration

Mon, 31 Mar 2008 10:10:00 EDT

As soccer superstar David Beckham kicks off the Los Angeles Galaxy's 2008 season, Drew Carey asks what this says about immigration in the U.S. in a new reason.tv video.

While workers from Mexico draw the ire and fiery rhetoric of anti-immigration forces, there was no outrage or concern when the English-speaking soccer hero brought his family and curling free kicks to America.

"I think we should welcome all peaceful people to our country,” says Drew Carey. "They get to the pursue the 'American Dream' and we get to benefit from all the wonderful things that immigrants bring to our country—like good old fashioned soccer. Sounds like a pretty good deal to me."

Paul Fan Video v. Clinton Fan Video: Tattoos, Handcuffs, Defiance Beat Hair Nets, Rubber Gloves, Spunkiness

jsullum@reason.com (Jacob Sullum) — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 13:53:00 EST

Keith Halderman unfavorably compares that cringe-inducing Laverne and Shirley ode to Hillary Clinton with Aimee Allen's catchy Ron Paul song (above). While I have my doubts about rhyming grave with state, and I'm not sure why the IRS is putting duct tape over Allen's mouth (maybe because she tried to sell books by Irwin Schiff?), her effort is undeniably superior: original, pointed, and sexy, as opposed to an embarrassing retread of a song that was bad enough to begin with. But inasmuch as Allen is a professional songwriter and performer, while the Hillary fan who thinks the senator has what it takes to make all our dreams come true is (I'm assuming) not, the comparison is not exactly fair. There's a much more telling contrast between the war and civil liberties themes of Allen's video and the stop-the-invading-landscapers message of campaign commercials like this one.

In the April issue of reason, which subscribers will receive soon, Dave Weigel explains why Paul's "lunge for the Minuteman vote didn't work."

Update: The Aimee Allen video seems to have been removed from YouTube, although it's still available here. You can find the audio of her song on YouTube, illustrated by various still images (here and here, for example), but it's not quite the same.

Update to the update: The video is back up on YouTube. The issue seems to have been the implied connection to the Paul campaign. It is now labeled "Aimee Allen: *Unofficial* Ron Paul Revolution Video."