innocent foreign policy expert from the cato institute in washington says the election is falling short of standards of democracy and underscores deeper problems within the country. given the amount of insecurity and instability in the fact that there are flawed voter registries there has been voter intimidation voter bribery there's a great deal of uncertainty as to what's going to happen and despite the fact that there are twenty four hundred candidates who are thirty to forty of them are women you have to really understand that the complexity of all this means that there really won't be what we would define as a liberal democratic electoral process what's interesting is that there's sort of a paradox with u.s. policy and u.s. policy makers in particular especially with this election and they're placing so much emphasis on these processes on the fact that you know these are elections that allow the voice of the afghan people to speak to the world that this is shows that they're on the march toward a democratic process but the same time they're placing so much emphasis on a process tha

at the cato institute. the feeling that if you don't toe the line that the funders want at the right-wing think tanks, your tenure there is likely to be short. i think that is a valid reason to scrutinize the arguments and qualifications of anything you hear coming out of aei or heritage or cato especially carefully. host: next caller. caller: hello, are bradford. since i'm a republican, and democrats who care about spending ought to be in support of a periled stimulus bill for jobs. trillion's are going to be needed for older and younger unemployed adults with the age educationa -- with the educational skills to earn $35 an hour. thank you for taking my call. host: professor delong. guest: if the economy does not recover, state finances at every level will still be an enormous trouble and will continue to be enormous trouble, yes. but there are hopes that what a recovery. it's just the fear that it will not be a very rapid or complete one. host: professor, another part of the equation is the issue of tax c

democracy can ever go together or earlier i caught up with innocent foreign policy analyst at the cato institute now we weren't even sure where to start afghanistan is a country where eighty percent of the population is estimated to be illiterate or polling stations are either closed or people live in such remote areas that their ballots are transported by mule where there is intimidation and pressure to vote how your tribe. tell you to so i first asked milou whether there really can be a democratic election and a country like that. i think that's an excellent question anyway i think we really need to define what victory is and what democracy really is and i would be sort of reluctant to listen to a lot of the u.s. policymakers when they make these blanket statements about afghanistan and democracy you'll be hearing a lot of u.s. officials in the next several days if not weeks saying that this is you know moving forward toward the progress of democracy and free and fair elections and all of this rhetoric to sort of buttress the claim of the mission however what you mention is that you know three

well joining me here to discuss it is julian sanchez a journalist and research fellow at the cato institute joined thanks so much for being here thanks for having me you know one thing that really bothers me about this i have to mention to you is that the government you know everything they do gets to be secret but we have seen them use state secrets just recently with the case of anwar all a lot here and yet they think that everything we need to we do is subject to their . super vision in their surveillance why is that ok why we get so i mean to do a really disturbing thing is that in a lot of cases they seem to think that even the legal standards to which they are subject are secret too which i think is pretty radically contrary to the basic principle of a free society that that you would have secret bodies of law and yet the court the secret intelligence court that issues national security warren says proceedings in secret it's major opinions even interpret the law are secret and so in a lot of ways we don't even know what the statutes congress passed actually mean and when they were int

and jeffrey miron, an economist at harvard university and a senior fellow at the libertarian cato institute. heather boushey, what's the economic argument for doing what the president wants and letting the tax cuts for top earners lapse? >> well, the important thing right mow is that the economy still needs customers. we still need people to go out there and spend money. and what the president has proposed is that we keep those tax cuts for middle-class families, the families that are going to spend the money, those extra dollars in their pocket you let them expire for the folks at the very top. we saw over the 2000s that those tax cuts for the wealthiest americans did not lead to strong economic growth, did not lead to strong investment, did not lead to strong job gains. and so we know that those folks aren't going to spend that money. they're not going to do as much as focusing those dollars on the middle-class where it can have the most bang for the buck. >> brown: that money does not stimulate the economy. that's the argument. >> that's the argument. that if you keep tax cuts for the we

i'd vote -- from the cato institution. i am an independent. we have a national-security problem.obbyists have taken over the government. the people did not have control. because of lobbyists, you can try to see your center, and you need to get behind in line of a bunch of rich congressman. did not cut me off. host: you are still on, joe. caller: it is a simple problem. corporations control everything. we have a corporate army. it costs us trillions of dollars to keep those guys over there. host: ok, joe. yet made your point. pam, a democratic plan, houston tx. caller: i think free trade is the issue behind all of our problems. they already took our manufacturing sector. now, they are attacking -- they are attacking this service sector. just wait until you see what they can do to any job that is at the end of a computer. it will be astonishing how some of our better jobs are all being shipped overseas, and we are being asked to replace that with working on roads. that is not what most of us have gotten our education for. those programs are fine, but the people that are being put t

they fund cato institute, all these guys. ether right or left, ask and have them submit who funds them, because otherwise, we just going round and round year after year listening to american enterprise institute, who is a shill for republicans or conservatives. host: do you acknowledge that there are liberal think tank funded by a large democratic donors as well? caller: of course, but i am asking you for new viewers are people that are not aware, find out who finds them. host: we can certainly ask the question of kevin hassett when he joins us at 8:30 a.m. eastern time. we will turn our attention to campaign 2010. labor day is the official kickoff of the season. we will talk about that key house and senate races coming up next. first, a look at what is ahead on the sunday shows. >> here is the lineup for today's sunday television talk shows. at noon, eastern, you will hear "meet the press" re-airs. issues include fault midterm elections, unemployment, middle east peace, and afghanistan. charting host david gregory are republi

george will, joe scarborough, and not to mention the cato institute. this is not the standard left- right debate. yet, the media reflexively presented that way. >> but they are all part of the media and they have platforms to make their case. george will make his case persuasively, i think. i do not find him persuasive. he made a very strong case in the pages of the washington post. to a certain extent, they do have their case, but your broader point, with respect to data to a politics, is certainly true. it is a function of a two-party system. if we see the emergence of a serious third-party candidate, it will not feel as comfortable to have these right-left assumptions that guide the thinking on these issues. basically, i think our day-to- day politics are run by those kind of basic assumption. >> but do not think it makes it harder to have these larger itbates -- don't you think makes it harder to have these larger debates? with capitalism. you have many of the capitalist to sleep with a copy of any rand's "fountainhead" under their pillow. with the

of state workers increased by 8,000, spending increased by $390 million and the conservative cato institute gave yourerformance as a grade of d citing overspending and lack of tax reform. why should voters believe your campaign rhetoric of governor culver is anything more than the pot calling the kettle black. >> first of all, if you look totality of my record, you can see that we not only made iowa more competitive, we took iowa from being one of the high-tech states to below average in terms of taxes and cut taxes by a net of $150 million. we reformed government, reduced the number of agencies from 60 some agencies to 25 agencies. and i left the state in a strong fiscal position after reforming the budgeting process, putting in place the spending limitations and we put the cash reserve and economic emergency in place and had the budget balanced for the first time on generally accepted accounting principles, we reduced the unemployment rate from 8 1/2% to 2 1/2% and i left office with a $900 million surplus. contrast that with governor culver. he's taken the state in the other direction. t

the consultant class, the cato institute, etc., would not express their anger because they had a republican in office with george borscht. they were angry with president bush, who they believe did damage to the image of the republican party, when you talk about hurricane katrina, ought to control spending. -- out of control spending. now that president bush is not in office, they are talking about changing their own party, too. i thought it was notable that yesterday's at the values of voter summit that mike pence won the presidential straw poll. he is the number 3 guy in house leadership, but that does not mean he goes along. he is the only prominent republican and leadership who voted against the tarp bailouts of october, 2008, which tea party members and candidates relalally hate. hate. the fact that mike pence voted will play ait, that big role. host: let's go to colorado. the republican is ken buck. he is the current district attorney. he is a former justice department prosecutor. what are his chances? guest: this is one o ftf the marquee races of the year. buck is the -- a very promin

of state workers increased by 8,000, spending increased by $390 million and the conservative cato institute gave yourerformance as a grade of d citing overspending and lack of tax reform. why should voters believe your campaign rhetoric of governor culver is anything more than the pot calling the kettle black. >> first of all, if you look totality of my record, you can see that we not only made iowa more competitive, we took iowa from being one of the high-tech states to below average in terms of taxes and cut taxes by a net of $150 million. we reformed government, reduced the number of agencies from 60 some agencies to 25 agencies. and i left the state in a strong fiscal position after reforming the budgeting process, putting in place the spending limitations and we put the cash reserve and economic emergency in place and had the budget balanced for the first time on generally accepted accounting principles, we reduced the unemployment rate from 8 1/2% to 2 1/2% and i left office with a $900 million surplus. contrast that with governor culver. he's taken the state in the other direction. t