The Score: North Korea, American Experiment, Housing Prices, More CPAC
This week on The Score – What explains high housing prices across the country? Did the Trump-Kim summit help or hurt U.S. relations with North Korea? Is there a future for uranium mining in America? What about coal? (Yes, what about it?)
Hanoi Summit
As I promised last week, The Score has more conversations from the 2019 Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC. Those will come up later in the program.
First, a couple of weeks ago, assistant managing editor John Dale Grover of The National Interest was a guest on The Score to talk about what he thought would happen at the second meeting of President Donald Trump and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un.
This week, John comes back to analyze what actually happened. Joining us was another writer from The National Interest, Curt Mills, who has an interesting take on the National Security Advisor in “John Bolton’s Big North Korea Gambit.” Our conversation took a turn to discuss Bolton’s management style and how it affects the Trump administration’s foreign policy making.
I met up with John and Curt at the offices of the Center for the National Interest in Washington on Wednesday. You can find them on Twitter as, respectively, @JohnDaleGrover and @CurtMills.
Minnesota Think Tank
The Center of the American Experiment is a think tank based in Golden Valley, Minnesota, and focused on that state’s public policy environment. According to its web site, “For more than 25 years, Center of the American Experiment has been the most impactful and effective public policy organization in Minnesota. It leads the way in creating and advocating policies that make Minnesota a freer, more prosperous and better-governed state.”
When I was at CPAC last week, I had a chance to speak with the organization’s president, John Hinderaker. He told me about the Center’s mission and some of its recent accomplishments.
Hinderaker is on Twitter as @jhinderaker and the Center of the American Experiment’s feed is @MNThinkTank.
Housing in America
Everybody has to live somewhere but housing prices often put a crunch on people, especially middle-income earners in vibrant economic zones.
I met with economist Emily Hamilton, a return visitor to The Score, at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, to ask her about the economic and regulatory forces that affect the price of housing.
We talked on Wednesday in the Mercatus broadcast studio in Arlington, Virginia. As it happens, that morning the Mercatus Center released its own podcast on this topic, “Making the Housing Market More Resilient for Homeowners, Neighborhoods, and the Economy,” featuring Hamilton, Brian Knight, Chad Reese, and Kevin Erdmann (who was a guest on The Score last July).
You can follow Emily Hamilton on Twitter at @ebwhamilton.
Uranium and Coal
As environmental activists urge us to seek alternatives to fossil fuels in an effort to slow down global climate change, one option often overlooked is expanding nuclear energy to produce electricity.
Scott Melbye is executive vice president of the Uranium Energy Corporation. He was at CPAC to promote uranium mining in the United States, which – he argues – would have benefits both for energy users and for national security. I asked him specifically about Virginia’s moratorium on uranium mining, which has been in effect for about 40 years despite legislative attempts to repeal it. He said that law may be unique among the states. (The U.S. Supreme Court is considering a case to overturn the ban.)
For more information, he said, The Score’s listeners should visit DomesticUranium.org. Uranium Energy Corporation has a Twitter feed at @UraniumEnergy.
And while we’re talking about energy, we should look at coal, too. When I was at CPAC, I was introduced to Chris Skates, a communications advisor to Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin.
Although I thought he was whistling past the graveyard, Skates made an enthusiastic case for coal’s comeback after years of decline. Listen to his arguments and decide for yourself if he’s on the right track. Follow Chris Skates on Twitter at @CSkates.
The Score will be back next week with more news, reviews, and interviews. Don’t forget to tell your friends where to find us and join in the conversation by leaving comments below.
