Cato Daily Dispatch for October 14, 2005
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Criminalization of Almost AnythingNo Relief for Medical Marijuana Users
Iran: Déjà Vu
Criminalization of Almost Anything
"An Ohio woman was arrested after she didn't pay just more than $1 that she owed in income taxes, WLWT-TV in Cincinnati reported."
"Deborah Combs owed the city of Loveland $1.16 last year, but she also hadn't filed her city income tax forms in five years, the television station said."
In "10 Outrageous Facts about Income Taxes," Chris Edwards, director of fiscal policy studies at the Cato Institute, writes: "The income tax is not an example of a good idea gone bad. It was bad from the beginning, and it just keeps getting worse. The income tax distorts financial planning and business investment, and it encourages tax avoidance and evasion. Because the income tax is built on an unworkable base of `income,' the law is continually changing. Let's simplify Americans' finances and disband the tax army by pursuing fundamental tax reform."
No Relief for Medical Marijuana Users
"An Army veteran who fled to Canada to avoid prosecution for growing marijuana to treat his chronic pain was yanked from a hospital by Canadian authorities, driven to the border with a catheter still attached, and turned over to U.S. officials, his lawyer says," The Associated Press reports.
In "The Drug War Toll Mounts," Radley Balko, a policy analyst for the Cato Institute, writes: "On peripheral issues like medicinal marijuana and prescription painkillers, the drug war has treated chronically and terminally ill patients as junkies, and the doctors who treat them as common pushers. Drug war accoutrements, such as 'no-knock' raids and searches, border patrols, black market turf wars and crossfire, and international interdiction efforts, have claimed untold numbers of innocent lives."
Iran: Déjà Vu
"Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her French counterpart warned Iran on Friday that Tehran faces referral to the powerful U.N. Security Council unless it backs away from its defiant stance on nuclear energy," The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports.
"France and two other European powers have tried to persuade Iran to drop what the United States insists is a covert drive for nuclear weapons, but Iran walked away from talks and has resumed nuclear activities it suspended during negotiations."
In "Iran: Déjà Vu All Over Again," former director of defense policy studies at the Cato Institute Charles V. Peña, writes: "In some ways, Iran appears to be more dangerous than Iraq, which now appears to have been less of a threat than Washington's pre-war rhetoric suggested. Iran's military is larger and probably in better condition than Saddam's forces, which were degraded as a result of the Gulf War and a decade of sanctions. Iran's defense expenditures are more than six times those of Iraq. Iran has Scud missiles, as well as longer-range Shahab-3 missiles that can reach much of the Middle East and South Asia, as well as the Persian Gulf. Iran has both chemical and biological weapons. And Iran is considered a state-sponsor of terrorism that backs the anti-Israeli groups Hezbollah, HAMAS, and the Palestine Islamic Jihad.
"The bottom line, however, is that Iran, like Iraq, is not a direct military threat to the United States, even if it possesses weapons of mass destruction. The terrorist groups Iran supports are anti-Israeli and do not currently target the United States. And the allegations of linkages to al Qaeda are as tenuous as the claims made about Iraq. As Yogi Berra said, its déjà vu all over again."
Jonathan Block, editor, jblock@cato.org