Cato Daily Dispatch for October 29, 2002
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Political Rhetoric Hinders Social Security ProgressCalifornians Unimpressed with Gov. Davis
Greenpeace Claims Global Warming Will Submerge Manhattan
Political Rhetoric Hinders Social Security Progress
On Oct. 8, House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt (D-Mo.) urged Congress to hold "a meaningful Social Security discussion" about the federal retirement system's future because the issue is too important for typical political posturing. Yet the next day, Gephardt ignored his own advice, accusing Republicans of a "stealth campaign to gut Social Security" after Election Day, according to a USA Today editorial.
So it goes across the USA. With both the House and Senate up for grabs next week, congressional campaigns are rife with talk about Social Security and its looming financial crunch. Candidates know the issue concerns seniors, the most reliable voters.
Yet little of that rhetoric is meaningful, or constructive. Instead, candidates are running from reasonable reforms while charging that opponents want to gut Social Security. The tactics aren't new. Democrats have long charged that Republicans would cut benefits, but offer no fixes of their own. Republicans have promoted personal savings accounts without noting they would be coupled with lower guaranteed benefits. The result has been stalemate, even as thoughtful lawmakers in both parties admit changes are needed to keep the system solvent.
"This is a clear case of the politicians being far behind the public," says Michael Tanner, director of Cato's Project on Social Security Choice. "Polls show that as many as two-thirds of voters support proposals to allow younger workers to invest a portion of their payroll taxes through individual accounts. The need for Social Security reform is real and the American public understands this. It's a shame that politicians are not giving voters the honest debate on this issue that they deserve."
Californians Unimpressed with Gov. Davis
One week before election day, Democrat Gray Davis is clinging to a steady lead over Republican Bill Simon Jr., but widespread discontent with the incumbent has kept him from pulling away in the governor's race, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Californians remain underwhelmed by their choices: More than half of likely voters in the poll say their pick is merely the best of a bad lot. And they give Davis dismal ratings on most issues facing the state. A majority believe that California is on the wrong track and just about half consider Davis a poor leader.
In Cato's "Fiscal Policy Report Card on America's Governors: 2002", Cato Senior Fellow Stephen Moore and Stephen Slivinski, director of tax and budget studies at the Goldwater Institute, gave Gov. Davis an "F."
"Although Davis has tried to blame the state's fiscal detioration on the policies of his predecessor, Republican Pete Wilson, the truth is that when Davis entered office he inherited a $12 billion two-year surplus," write Moore and Slivinski. "Gray Davis's fiscal performance has been one of severe budget bungling and overspending."
Greenpeace Claims Global Warming Will Submerge Manhattan
By the year 2080, Manhattan and Shanghai could be under water, droughts and floods could become more extreme, and hundreds of millions of people will be at risk from disease, starvation and water shortages, according to Greenpeace as reported by Reuters.
"We're talking about the submergence of islands, submergence of Shanghai, the submergence of Bombay, the submergence of New York City," Greenpeace Climate Policy Director Steve Sawyer told Reuters late on Friday. "Manhattan would be under water."
He went on to say that "most coastal cities would be uninhabitable in their present forms...and that's a catastrophic change of the shape of continents."
"Yet again, Greenpeace shows that it's miles behind the scientific power curve on global warming," says Patrick J. Michaels, a Cato senior fellow and professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia.
Michaels is the senior author of a major paper to be published in the scientific journal "Climate Research" next month, which conclusively demonstrates that warming in this century will be at or below the lower limit of the range of 1.5 to 5.8° C. As a result of this reduced warming, sea level cannot rise much more than nine inches. This is less than the observed sea level rise of the last century along much of the U.S. Atlantic Coast, a rise which occurred largely because of geological rather than climatic factors. "No one noticed a foot in 100 years," Michaels said, "so why should we care about less in the future," he added.
"Greenpeace doesn't do much science, and they only rely on old, outdated research when it comes to global warming," said Michaels.
Wyatt Dubois, editor, wdubois@cato.org