October 6, 1999
Johnson Has His Say
I'll Fly Away
Arizona Sunshine
A Comprehensive Examination
More Waco Stonewalling?
Johnson Has His Say
Gov. Gary Johnson (R-N.M.) is receiving saturated media coverage of his call for drug legalization in a speech at the Cato Institute yesterday. "Control it, regulate it, tax it. If you legalize it we might actually have a healthier society... I'm not pro-drug here. I'm against drugs. Should you go to jail for just doing drugs? I say no. I say you shouldn't," the second-term governor said. Johnson spoke before the Cato Institute conference Beyond Prohibition: An Adult Approach to Drug Policies in the 21st Century.
I'll Fly Away
Transportation Secretary Rodney Slater wants Congress to pass a Federal Aviation Administration measure that would significantly change how air traffic control systems are run, AP reports. "[I]f we don't act that's exactly what we are going to have - gridlock. We could see this system come to a chokepoint," Slater says. The Senate took up a bill Monday that would authorize $45 billion in FAA programs over four years. It concentrates on safety, modernization and competition issues, as does the House version adopted in June.
In an article for Regulation entitled "Commercializing Air Traffic Control: A New Window of Opportunity to Solve an Old Problem", Robert W. Poole Jr. writes, "The U.S. Air Traffic Control (ATC) System, owned and operated by the Federal Aviation Administration, needs major restructuring. The system currently runs on obsolete and failure-prone equipment such as 1960s mainframe computers, equipment dependent on vacuum tubes, and radar between twenty and thirty years old. The FAA maintains safety margins by artificially increasing the spacing between flights, imposing ground holds, and using other techniques that reduce system capacity. The airlines alone waste $3 billion a year in fuel and crew time due to the delays. Wasted passenger time is estimated at several billion dollars more… Commercializing air traffic control is achievable. It has already been done in sixteen other countries in response to the same problems that plague America's ATC system. Adapting their experience to the United States can produce a safer and more cost-effective American system."
Air traffic control modernization and FAA reform were also discussed in an earlier Regulation article, "Change, Challenge, and Competition: A Review of the Airline Commission Report". Cato Institute scholar recommendations on transportation policy in general can be found in the Cato Handbook for Congress (pdf).
Arizona Sunshine
The Supreme Court is letting Arizona give tax breaks to people who donate money for scholarships at religious schools. The development is being "saluted as a major victory by backers of tuition vouchers and other aid for families whose children attend private schools," AP reports. The court rejected two appeals Monday in which challengers called the Arizona program a violation of the separation of church and state.
Several views of the voucher controversy were discussed in the 1997 Cato Policy Analysis "Vouchers and Educational Freedom: A Debate", in which Joseph L. Bast of the Heartland Institute and David Harmer, author of School Choice: Why You Need It--How You Get It, took on Douglas Dewey of the National Scholarship Center in Washington. And in 1996, David Boaz and R. Morris Barrett looked at the bottom line in the Cato Briefing Paper "What Would A School Voucher Buy? The Real Cost of Private Schools". They concluded: "The data presented make it clear that, today, private schools are an option not just for the wealthy but also for people who can only spend $2,000 a year or even less. Does that mean that every American child, $3,000 voucher in hand, could have a quality private education immediately? Clearly not, but that is not the point. What this research establishes is that, in any of the cities surveyed, low-cost alternatives to the public schools are not only possible-- they exist today. They offer a beacon of hope to families mired in the government school morass. A voucher or tax credit plan would open new options even for parents and students unable to contribute additional funds. Furthermore, if the voucher or tax credit were pegged at 50 percent of public cost (as in the California school choice initiative of 1993), the value would exceed $3,000 in many urban and suburban school districts."
A Comprehensive Examination
As President Clinton leads an uphill fight to win passage of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty by a skeptical Senate, AP looks at the history of such pacts: "In 1958, deep in the Cold War, President Eisenhower proposed a global ban on all nuclear weapons test explosions. He said it would make the world safer. He didn't have many takers. More than four decades later, winning ratification of a treaty to ban nuclear testing, a top Clinton administration priority, is still a hard sell. President Clinton conceded Monday he doesn't have the votes needed for Senate ratification. Despite repeated efforts by the big nuclear powers to limit the nuclear arms race, set in motion by the U.S. bombing of Japan in World War II, the issue hasn't been in the forefront of public attention during most of the 41 years since Eisenhower's proposal."
A Cato Policy Forum, The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty: Thumbs Up or Thumbs Down?, was held September 16 to discuss the potential ratification of the CTBT. That day, the Cato Web site ran a commentary by Ivan Eland, "A 'Grand Deal' on the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty: A Faustian Bargain", in which Eland wrote, "As the number of nuclear weapons is reduced and fewer types of warheads are in the U.S. arsenal, nuclear testing is likely to become even more important for ensuring that the weapons will work. At the present time, there is no need for the United States to rescind its voluntary moratorium on nuclear testing; but nor should it be constrained by a treaty from explosive testing if the threat changes in the future. It is vital to U.S. security that the reduced number of warheads that the United States is allowed under any future agreement be modern, safe and in working order."
In January, the Cato Policy Analysis "The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty: The Costs Outweigh the Benefits", examined the debate: "Advocates of the CTBT make several arguments in support of the treaty. The reasons reduce to two points: the ban will constrain the modernization and development of nuclear weapons by the nations that already possess them, and it will help prevent the spread of nuclear weapons to additional nations. Both objectives are set out in the CTBT's preamble. Opponents of the CTBT are most concerned about one issue: in the absence of nuclear testing, U.S. nuclear weapons can be neither as safe nor as reliable as they should be. Those deficiencies will diminish the effectiveness of the U.S. nuclear deterrent. While the treaty will constrain the United States from modernizing and developing weapons, it will be possible for other nations to cheat with little or no risk of being caught because the CTBT cannot be verified."
More Waco Stonewalling?
Attorneys for members of the Mount Carmel religious community outside Waco, Texas, who survived the government assault on their church and homestead in 1993 are contending that the government is withholding important evidence by saying it is classified or falls under Privacy Act protection, AP reports. The plaintiffs' lawyers expect to go to trial early next year in their wrongful-death civil lawsuit against the government. "There are a lot of documents which have been turned over to us, large portions of which have been blacked out. And that, we'll be taking up with the court," attorney Michael Caddell says.
One survivor of the government siege spoke at the Cato Institute screening of the documentary Waco: The Rules of Engagement on September 15. That panel discussion is available in RealAudio format. In a September commentary, "Fanning the Flames of Waco", David B. Kopel and Paul H. Blackman looked at the lies. "More than ever, though, the recent unveiling of more FBI lies underscores the fact that the children died because of willful and knowing actions by our federal law enforcement professionals. Although the president shed crocodile tears over the 12 children at Columbine High School and now seeks partisan advantage by pushing for federal laws that could not possibly have prevented Columbine, he and his administration remain coldly indifferent to the 26 children at Waco. The day after the Waco fire, Clinton said, 'I do not think the United States government is responsible for the fact that a bunch of religious fanatics decided to kill themselves.' But the children didn't kill themselves. If the president and his attorney general really care about those 26 children, they will appoint outside investigators -- not the FBI -- to bring out the truth about what really happened on April 19, 1993."