December 14, 1999

Clash (of the titans)
Terrorists Arrested
Another Federal Land Grab?
School Voucher Challenge

Clash (of the titans)

In last night's Iowa presidential debate, George Bush and John McCain clashed over campaign finance reform. McCain's reforms, according to Bush, would bankrupt the GOP and aid Democrats. In "Why Campaign Finance Reform Never Works," Bradley Smith discusses how the campaign limits that McCain favors don't work. Cato president Ed Crane also testified before Congress as to why limits are unconstitutional, as did Roger Pilon earlier this year.

Bush and McCain also disagreed over ethanol subsidies, with McCain taking a strong stand against them bravely in the heart of farm country. In "Push Ethanol Off the Dole," Stephen Moore discusses how ethanol subsidies have been a costly boondoggle with almost no public benefit. In a policy analysis entitled "Archer Daniels Midland: A Case Study in Corporate Welfare," James Bovard looks at the numbers behind ADM's subsidies: every $1 of profits earned by ADM's corn sweetener operation costs consumers $10, and every $1 of profits earned by its ethanol operation costs taxpayers $30.

Terrorists Arrested

About one dozen people with alleged ties to terrorist Osama Bin Laden were arrested in the Middle East, according The Washington Post. The arrests had prompted the State Department to issue travel warnings to Americans over the weekend, with officials fearing terrorist attacks on Americans abroad in connection to millennium celebrations.

In "Does U.S. Intervention Overseas Breed Terrorism? The Historical Record," Ivan Eland examines the Clinton policy of focusing on combating terrorism by deterring and disrupting it beforehand and retaliating against it after the fact. More attention should be paid to what motivates terrorists to launch attacks, he argues.

Another Federal Land Grab?

Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt has asked President Clinton use a 1906 law to "stop urban sprawl" by creating three new national monuments, reports The Washington Times. The government would take over millions of acres of land in Arizona (where only 13 percent of land is privately held) and expand an existing monument in California. The Arizona land in question is a three-hour drive to the closest city -- clearly not in danger of becoming "urban sprawl."

In "Executive Orders and National Emergencies: How Presidents Have Come to 'Run the Country' by Usurping Legislative Power ," attorneys William J. Olson and Alan Woll discuss the presidential usurpation of legislative power, which has been particularly egregious under President Clinton. Clinton's "Land Legacy" program, which provides funding to state, local and federal agencies to preserve more open lands, is examined in " How and Why to Privatize Federal Lands." Giving more land-management responsibilities to the government is not a solution -- instead, land should be auctioned for certificates to be distributed equally to all Americans, argue its authors.

School Voucher Challenge

Yesterday the Supreme Court rejected a challenge to a Vermont policy of subsidizing tuition for some students who attend private school but that also denies such funds to students who attend religious schools, reports The Washington Post. The state's 130-year-old tuition reimbursement program was originally established to help pay private school tuition for students in rural areas where there is no public high school, but the parents who filed the suit believe they have been discriminated against due to their religion. Parents are clearly looking for alternatives to the failing public school system.

"The Real Cost of Private Schools" is examined in a Cato Briefing Paper in which David Boaz and R. Morris Barrett write that "American schools are failing because they are organized according to a bureaucratic, monopolistic model. A school voucher of $3,000 per student per year would give more families the option of sending their children to non-government schools," they write.