EVENT FULL: This event is now full and we can no longer accept RSVPs. Please watch the live webcast here.

Americans take for granted that when we flip a switch, the light will go on; when we turn up the thermostat, the room will get warm; and when we pull up to the pump, gas will be plentiful and relatively cheap. In The End of Energy, Michael Graetz shows us that we have been living an energy delusion for 40 years. Until the 1970s we produced domestically all the oil we needed to run our power plants, heat our homes, and fuel our cars. Since then, we have had to import most of the oil we use, much of it from the Middle East. And we rely on an even dirtier fuel—coal—to produce half of our electricity. Graetz describes more than 40 years of energy policy incompetence—from the Nixon administration's fumbled response to the OPEC oil embargo through the failure to develop alternative energy sources to the current political standoff over "cap and trade"—and argues that we must make better decisions for our energy future.

Please join the Center for American Progress for a discussion on Graetz's new book, The End of Energy.

Copies of The End of Energy will be available for purchase at the event.

Over two years ago Christine Varney began her tenure as Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice. In this short period of time, under her leadership the Division has reinvigorated enforement against anticompetitive conduct and potentially problematic mergers. Moreover, the Division has worked closely with other arms of the Administration in addressing competitive problems in critical areas such as health care and agriculture. This approach to antitrust enforcement and engagement in competition issues across the government has contributed to the Administration's efforts to promote innovation, job growth through preservation of competitive forces in the market, and more efficient use of governmental coordination to spur economic growth.

Ms. Varney will address the critical challenges facing the Division and Administration in addressing competition issues throughout the economy.

Teacher effectiveness—the number one in-school factor determining student learning—is critical to education reform. In January 2010 the Illinois State Legislature passed a significant education reform law tying educators’ evaluations to improvements in student achievement (the Performance Evaluation Reform Act). Last month the legislature passed Senate Bill 7, incorporating performance into personnel decisions to ensure the most effective teachers are placed and remain in the classroom. S.B. 7 represents a bipartisan legislative package negotiated by legislators, the State Board of Education, education reform groups, teachers’ unions, and school management. This is an encouraging example of unions collaborating with management to support changes in teacher tenure, dismissal, layoffs, and strikes.

Join the Center for American Progress for a conversation of the process and collaboration involved in creating this major education reform legislation with key stakeholders. Discussants will consider implications and applications for federal policy. We will launch the conversation with a case study of the evolution and enactment of S.B. 7 by Elliot Regenstein, and will also release a new publication by Saul Rubinstein and John McCarthy on how six public school systems instituted reforms through union-management collaboration.

Central to the premise of health reform is the effort to simultaneously improve the quality of our health care and lower its costs. Meeting this challenge will require changing the way in which we use and pay for care. While accountable care organizations have received the lion’s share of public attention, the Affordable Care Act authorizes a pilot program to bundle Medicare payments around “episodes” of hospital care—paying collectively for the services that an individual receives during and after hospitalization. That is because many believe bundles have the potential to address two critical cost drivers in the health care system—volume and fragmentation. Between now and 2013, CMS is tasked with developing the most effective bundling pilots possible—building on experience from public- and private-sector initiatives to determine what works and what does not work.

Please join us for a discussion of the most effective design features for bundles that CMS should consider. We will also discuss lessons from the private sector.

In recent months, anti-Muslim forces have raised the specter of Sharia usurping the Constitution and destroying the American way of life. Bills have been introduced in more than two dozen states that would “ban” the practice of Sharia law—despite the fact that Sharia is not a collection of laws but a set of diversely interpreted guidelines for religious practice. In addition, no Muslim American leaders are calling for Sharia to override American laws. Banning religious freedom for Muslims is unconstitutional and would have serious consequences for international treaties and for religious expression in other faiths.

Join us for an enlightening discussion with a panel of experts who will explain the basics of Sharia, compare its precepts with those of Christianity and Judaism, dissect how it is being used as a wedge issue in political campaigns, and examine the the real impact on Muslim American communities.

EVENT FULL: This event is now full and we can no longer accept RSVPs. Please watch the live webcast here.

As a result of state and federal legislation promoting school reform, the role of the state education agency has grown, yet the agencies are still shrouded in mystery. How many people do they employ? What is the size of their budgets? Even less is known about the chiefs who lead these agencies.

Join us for a discussion tackling these important questions, as former and current chiefs will share firsthand knowledge of the limitations facing state education agencies and steps they took to overcome these challenges. The Center for American Progress, in partnership with the American Enterprise Institute, will release a report on perhaps the most extensive examination of state education agencies since the mid-1990s, featuring excerpts from in-depth interviews with 13 former and current agency chiefs from around the nation.

As the United States inches closer to the August 2 deadline to reach an agreement on the national debt limit, the president and Congress are facing the need to consider spending cuts even in previously untouchable areas of the budget. In order to make the tough choices needed to reduce the deficit and protect the long-term health of our economy, defense spending must be on the table, particularly since the Pentagon’s budget has done much to contribute to our current fiscal woes. Total U.S. defense spending (in inflation-adjusted dollars) has increased so much over the past decade that it has reached levels not seen since World War II, when the United States had 12 million people under arms and waged wars on three continents in order to deal with threats to our survival as a democratic nation.

Please join the Center for American Progress for a discussion of the role of defense spending in deficit reduction. This event will serve as the launch for a new CAP paper, "A Return to Responsibility," which examines the defense budget choices of past presidents faced with mounting debts and transitions from war to peacetime budgets. The paper argues that previous defense spending cuts—which have historically been bipartisan in nature—did not compromise U.S. national security or create a hollow military despite claims to the contrary. These examples and our current high level of defense spending make it clear that Congress and the Obama administration are well positioned to make sensible defense cuts that will protect our vital security capabilities abroad while building a stronger economy at home.