The UPI Think Tank Wrap-Up is a daily digest covering brief opinion pieces, reactions to recent news events, and position statements released by various think tanks.
Reason Public Policy Foundation
LOS ANGELES -- Good Enough for Government Work: Federalizing the bottom of the barrel
By James Morrow
There is a certain type of wannabe sophisticate in America who rhapsodizes about how wonderful and civilized Europe is in comparison with his own land of the free. Like high school French Club presidents who pompously describe the day's cafeteria offerings as having "a certain je ne sais quoi," these people can't stop talking about how wonderful it would be if the United States got in line with "the Continent" on everything from giving women scads of government-mandated maternity leave to making it once again acceptable to leave the office in the middle of the day for a long and boozy lunch.
But since Sept. 11, members of the Beret of the Month Club have discovered a new fault in the American way of doing things: the country's airports, they complain, have been guarded all these years by poorly skilled workers working for (sacre bleu!) private companies. When Europhiles head over to Paris for their annual vacations (complaining bitterly the whole way over, "Can you believe we only get two weeks off?"), one of the first things they notice on the ground is the number of heavily armed gendarmes swaggering around the airport with automatic weapons.
Wouldn't it make sense, they say, for America to follow Mother Europe's lead and put federal employees on the job instead of the "burger-flippers" currently employed by private companies to check bags?
"America's airport security is shockingly lax," declared Gregg Easterbrook in the New Republic shortly after the attacks. In contrast, Easterbrook writes, "Within sight of security checkpoints in most European airports are police with assault rifles, wearing armor vests....Once, in France, I was asked to turn on my sniper-bullet-shaped pocket flashlight to demonstrate that it really was a flashlight."
A nice story, but it's hard to believe that even the most illiterate guard in America would not have raised an eyebrow if you had thrown look-alike ammo in the dish with your change, even before Sept. 11. (Easterbrook also stands up for the working class in the proud tradition of the leftish New Republic: "Pass through security at most American airports...and you will be inspected by phlegmatic, minimum-wage workers, often recently arrived immigrants with low job motivation and a limited grasp of English." Gosh, Gregg, if you can see phlegmatic non-English-speaking foreigners at home, why bother going to Paris?)
Easterbrook's feeling (echoed by many, from Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) to travelers pulled aside in airports by TV camera crews in "what do you think about security?" interviews) that he is safer in Europe because there are a bunch of guys with guns hanging around the gates is fine, except for one thing: it is only a feeling, one that is in this case demonstrably wrong. In Europe, while government sets the standards for aviation security (just as in America), private companies actually do the work of screening passengers (again, just as in America--until recently).
And while it is a scary way to prove the fallaciousness of the argument, it must be noted that French cops allowed would-be shoe bomber Richard C. Reid to board an American Airlines flight from Paris to Miami recently, even though he checked no luggage, paid for his ticket in cash, carried little more with him than a Koran and a pair of explosive sneakers, and as it turns out attended the same mosque as Zacarias Moussaoui, believed to be the "20th hijacker" of Sept. 11.
This after the private employees of American Airlines demanded further scrutiny by local authorities of their oddly acting passenger.
Still, a few inconvenient facts have never been able to stand in the way of a good piece of government-expanding legislation. Anyway, Reid's conning of French cops -- government employees, every man-Jacques of them -- did not come in time for Congress to take it into account. Just before Thanksgiving the House and Senate came to terms on an aviation security bill that federalized baggage screeners and set minimum standards for such workers, including a high school diploma --standards that were quickly weakened once regulators panicked at the thought of laying off a quarter of the work force. They decided instead that a year's worth of experience staring at an x-ray machine screen was as good as holding a G.E.D.
In other words, those who said that the legislation would do nothing for security but much to swell federal payrolls (and who were accused of, as Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) put it, of "putting...private profit ahead of public protection") turned out to be right after all. The oft-maligned "burger flippers" get to keep their jobs, but they've now got Uncle Sam signing their paychecks.
Ultimately, though, it doesn't matter who pays the baggage checkers, or even whether or not they went to high school. The U.S. civil aviation system is an awesomely big affair that moves far too many passengers every day to guarantee that every leak can be plugged (by, say, imposing an El Al-style security regime) without imposing crippling costs and delays on a prime mover of the country and the world.
What that means is that we must all continue to take our exceedingly good chances, and as passengers we must all be vigilant. Richard Reid's shoe bomb would have made it past a battalion of post-graduate civil servants confiscating nail clippers and inspecting laptops. Ultimately it was his appearance that tipped off airline employees, and vigilant passengers and crew who kept him from detonating his clumsily engineered but potentially deadly shoe bomb--just as passengers did their duty on United Flight 93 after learning the true nature of their fate in what is today remembered as an ultimate act of American private enterprise.
(James Morrow is a writer based in Sydney, Australia, and New York City.)
The Cato Institute
WASHINGTON -- Sen. Daschle's latest economic stimulus "plan" is economic bunkum, say Cato experts.
Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) on Friday criticized the Bush administration's economic policies and claimed the administration's $1.35 trillion tax cut has consumed the budget surplus and left the government financially unprepared to fight both a war and a recession. Daschle also presented a plan that he said would stimulate the economy, aid the unemployed, reduce the tax burden on businesses and keep interest rates low.
In response to Sen. Daschle's remarks, Cato Senior Fellow Alan Reynolds said:
"Sen. Daschle once again takes the side of tax collectors rather than taxpayers. 'Low interest rates,' Daschle claims, 'are the best possible tax cut.' But interest rates do not rise and fall with the U.S. budget. That is simply a hoax.
"Japan has the world's lowest interest rates and the world's biggest budget deficit. Besides, if taxes were less onerous, American families and firms would not have to borrow so much. Trying to fix the government's budget at the expense of family budgets is a bad idea that never works."
Chris Edwards, Cato's director of fiscal policy, said:
"Sen. Daschle's new stimulus plan is the latest muddled attempt by federal politicians to make themselves appear relevant in the face of the current recession. His plan is a hodgepodge of spending increases and nearly useless tax cuts combined with contradictory rhetoric. Topping the list of tired rhetoric is Daschle's attempt to tie the budget situation to interest rates.
"Daschle perpetuates an urban myth when he argues that tax cuts cause higher interest rates through the federal budget balance. After all, we went from a huge surplus last year to near-zero surplus this year while interest rates have fallen. Where is Daschle's evidence that Bush's tax cut affected interest rates?
"A stranger contradiction is Daschle's straddle on the effectiveness of tax cuts. In the same breath Daschle claims President Bush's tax cut was too big, then implicitly admits that tax cuts are the best economic medicine by laying out his own tax cut plan."
The Heartland Institute
(The goal of the libertarian Heartland Institute is to help build social movements in support of ideas including parental choice in education, market-based approaches to environmental protection, privatization of public services, and deregulation in areas where property rights and markets do a better job than government bureaucracies.
Supported by contributions from private individuals, foundations, and corporations, Heartland does not accept government funds and does not conduct "contract" research for special interest groups.)
CHICAGO--Central Planning Dooms "Smart Growth"
By Randal O'Toole
Imagine that almost every city, county, town, and village in the United States has at least one communist on its staff--not an infiltrator, but someone whose job title is Communist, whose job description is to implement communism in that community.
Difficult to believe? The most important part of soviet communism is central planning. Now go back to the previous paragraph and replace the word "communist" with "planner" and "communism" with "planning." Then the paragraph turns out to be the truth.
In the United States, many planners agree with architect Andres Duany, who urges land-use planners to write plans "with such precision that only the architectural detail is left" to the land owners. Most planners believe property rights are "flexible," and that no property owner should be able to do anything with his or her land without government approval.
Despite their scientific pretensions, planners really have no idea how a city or any other economy works. So they rely on fads to tell them how to run our lives. In the 1950s and 1960s, the fad was urban renewal. Today, it is "smart growth."
Smart growth says Americans drive too much, and the large lots on which they live waste too much land. The smart-growth fad is furthest advanced in Oregon, where planners have passed an unbelievable set of regulations for land use and transportation. Here are just a few of them.
Planners have drawn urban-growth boundaries around all of Oregon's cities and towns. These boundaries contain just 1.25 percent of all the land in Oregon, yet planners hope to force 90 percent of Oregon residents to live within them. Only actual farmers should be allowed to live outside the boundaries, say planners.
Inside the boundaries, planners regulate everything from parking on the streets to the use of church buildings. One Portland church with 400 seats in its sanctuary was told it could allow no more than 70 people to worship in the church at one time. A growing church was told it could not expand unless it remained closed on Saturdays and held no more than five weddings or funerals a year.
To fit a growing population within the urban-growth boundaries, planners are rezoning existing neighborhoods to higher densities. If you own a quarter-acre lot in such a neighborhood, you would not be allowed to build a single house on it--even if many other homes in the neighborhood are on quarter-acre lots. Instead, if the area is zoned to 24 units per acre, you will be required to build a six-unit apartment. If your existing house burns down, you will be required to replace it with an apartment.
Planners also want to control the design of people's homes. They derisively call houses with garages in front "snout houses," and say people who own such houses drive too much. So Portland has passed an ordinance requiring that garages be recessed behind the front of new homes.
To further discourage driving, planners are deliberately not building new highways. Their goal is to increase congestion so people will walk or ride public transit instead of drive. Planners are building concrete barriers and speed bumps on existing roads to slow traffic and reduce traffic flows. They call this "traffic calming" . . . though the people who must drive on such roads feel anything but calm.
Smart growth turns out to accomplish the exact opposite of almost everything it promises. It makes cities more congested. It increases air pollution. Artificial land shortages lead to unaffordable housing. Open spaces are rapidly filled with high-density housing.
Portland planners admit their goal is to "replicate" Los Angeles--the nation's most congested and polluted city, and one of its least affordable. In the last 18 years, congestion in the Portland area has grown faster than in any other U.S. urban area. The city has gone from being one of the 50 most affordable to one of the 10 least affordable markets for single-family housing in the nation.
A decade ago, smart growth ideas were peculiar to Oregon. But now they are rapidly taking over the country. Government officials in such diverse states as Florida, Georgia, Maryland, Mnnesota, Washington, and Wisconsin have strongly endorsed smart growth.
In retrospect, it is likely that planners in our city governments will do far more harm to our personal and economic freedoms than communists in the State Department. The solution is simple: Fire all the planners.
(Randal O'Toole is senior economist with the Thoreau Institute and author of the recent book, "The Vanishing Automobile and Other Urban Myths.")
