WASHINGTON, May 17 (UPI) -- 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.
The Reason Foundation
LOS ANGELES -- Eviction Notice: Will people lose their homes to make way for a new Coast Guard museum?
by Mike Lynch
For a brief moment in March, Susette Kelo of New London, Connecticut, thought she had saved her home. After all, Superior Court Judge Thomas J. Corradino had ruled that the New London Development Corporation, an organization set up to take over her Fort Trumbull neighborhood, couldn't take her house through eminent domain.
But then she got her hands on the decision. "As I read, I realized that I had won the right to stay, but really only to fight again," says Kelo, who after four and a half years of battling the NLDC describes herself as a tortured homeowner.
"My concern is that they will come back with a legitimate plan and I don't know what will happen."
She's right to be concerned. The 247-page decision was double-spaced, a feature that, as NLDC chief operating officer Dave Goebel says, provides plenty of space to read between the lines. And the lesson Goebel took from the decision, which is now on appeal, is that the judge rejected his land grab not because it's unconstitutional for governments to take property from one citizen only to hand it to another, but because he had no concrete plans as to whom was going to get Kelo's property.
"All that means is that once you have a valid project you can take the land," says Goebel. "There was a project we had in mind, and that was putting the National Coast Guard museum on that site." So now Kelo and her neighbors fear forcible eviction if the Coast Guard decides it wants her plot of land.
Should it? In seven of the last 10 years, the Coast Guard has had to rely on emergency appropriations, those normally reserved for farmers and hurricane victims, to carry out its mission of keeping boaters safe, ports secure, and drug prices high. President Bush promised to boost its budget $1.6 billion, to $7.1 billion, for 2003.
But nearly half the increase is going straight into the military retirement fund, and the service will surely be back asking for more. An inspector general's report finds that the Coast Guard is doubling its effort on homeland security, and that this will leave it short in other critical areas, such as search and rescue staffing.
So why, in a time of war, should it be spending its scarce resources on a damn museum?
The Coast Guard is being cagey. It understandably doesn't want to get involved in an ugly eminent domain fight, and it promises to stay out of the court battles. Yet it plans to sign a memorandum of agreement with the NLDC to accept, as a gift, property for its museum.
Its preferred site happens to include plots of land that Kelo and others call home. Coast Guard spokesmen won't commit to not accepting land taken through eminent domain. They say they will only accept land obtained legally, which may very well include forcible eviction.
The NLDC's Goebel says he expects the Coast Guard to sign up. He has no other plans for the area. That's not to say that no one else does.
"What I find ironic is everyone saying what they want to do on this property," says Matt Dery, Kelo's neighbor, whose family has lived in its Fort Trumbull homestead since 1901. "What they forget is that there is someone else living there--us."
Kelo understands why the Coast Guard would want her land. "They want my property as much as I do," she says. "The only problem is that I was here first."
(Mike Lynch is Reason magazine's national correspondent.)
The Progress and Freedom Foundation
(PFF studies the digital revolution and its implications for public policy. P&FF is ideologically diverse and politically non-partisan, and its work focuses heavily on communications, computing and telecommunications.)
WASHINGTON -- Lessig's 'Fixes' Would Harm Digital Content: Adkinson Takes Issue with Stanford Prof's New Book
The dire warnings of one of the digital world's most touted thinkers, Stanford Law professor Larry Lessig, that content owners are "dinosaurs" using copyright to control innovation and stifle creativity on the Internet, are essentially baseless according to Progress & Freedom Foundation Senior Policy Counsel William F. Adkinson, Jr.
Worse yet, Lessig's proposed remedies would inhibit the development of a robust market for rich digital content and slow down broadband deployment.
In the wake of generally uncritical reviews of Lessig's new book, "The Future of Ideas," Adkinson has published a concise critique of the professor's assertions and proposed policy solutions in the new issue of the American Spectator.
Adkinson observes that Lessig does not credit the extent to which "copyright leaves a rich public domain" by keeping ideas in that realm. He chides Lessig for emphasizing the protection of "simple copying or its close cousins." Indeed, Adkinson argues, such "(p)iracy is in fact the central problem facing digital creations" and the "greatest threat" to getting content online: "The future of online content "depends crucially on the existence of clear, enforceable property rights."
Similarly he challenges Lessig's "dinosaur" contention, pointing out that the content owners are not trying to "suppress technology," but are simply attempting to
combat the pirating of their works.
To Adkinson, the "ultimate" difference between himself and Lessig is that he would rely principally on the marketplace - competition among the producers of music, movies and other works -- to promote online content and consumer interests, while Lessig relies on regulatory fiat. A prime example is Lessig's "fatally flawed" call for compulsory licensing of online music.
"Congress can neither adequately anticipate fast-moving technological and business developments, nor design compulsory licensing flexible enough to adjust to them..." Adkinson maintains. "Government has a key role in defining and enforcing the property rights (especially copyrights) involved, but should let competing private firms design and test business models, and set prices," harnessing the "process of 'creative destruction'."
In addition, Lessig's proposal to place restrictions on the types of technological protection measures that will receive legal protection from hackers "could gravely impair the efficacy of technological protection."
The National Center for Public Policy Research
(NCPPR is a communications and research foundation dedicated to providing free market solutions to today's public policy problems, based on the principles of a free market, individual liberty and personal responsibility. NCPPR was founded to provide the conservative movement with a versatile and energetic organization capable of responding quickly and decisively to late-breaking issues, based on thorough research.)
CHICAGO -- Ten Second Response: Sportsmen and Hunting Groups Write President Bush about Forest Management
by Gretchen Randall
Background: In the ongoing argument over logging in national forests, a group of hunting and sportsmen's clubs wrote President Bush last week pointing out that forest management is as essential for wildlife conservation as it is for healthy forests. Young forests, which grow after either forest fires or logging, are necessary for many species to survive -- such as the ruffed grouse, American woodcock, wild turkey, golden-winged warbler and Kirtland's warbler.
Ten Second Response: While we are busy saving "old growth" forests for the spotted owl, we imperil other species that need young growth to survive.
Thirty Second Response: Nature knows best and has always provided through natural means such as forest fires, the mix of old and new growth forests that are necessary for all varieties of wildlife to survive. When man intervenes for one species or to just protect "old growth" trees, we upset nature's balance and put other species at risk.
Discussion: The letter was signed by 31 groups including the National Wild Turkey Federation, Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, Izaak Walton League of America, National Rifle Association, and Ruffed Grouse Society. It says, "Forest management practices, including commercial timber harvest and prescribed fire, are essential tools in the maintenance of diverse, healthy forest landscapes. The removal of either of these tools from the hands of trained resource professionals on our National Forests would be a
disservice to sportsmen and, more importantly, our nation's forest wildlife."
(Gretchen Randall, director of the John P. McGovern, M.D. Center for Environmental and Regulatory Affairs at the National Center for Public Policy Research.)
The Cato Institute
WASHINGTON -- Vanish the Crusader
by Ivan Eland
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's decision to kill the $11 billion Crusader self-propelled artillery system has already met resistance in the Army and Congress. The Crusader has now become a litmus test for whether the Bush administration is serious about reinvigorating its endangered agenda for military reform.
As the Senate Armed Services Committee holds hearings today on the artillery system, the secretary should have the courage to fight fiercely the pitched battle with Congress and the vested interests -- both inside and outside the Pentagon -- that will be needed to end this program, which is an armored white elephant to taxpayers.
President Bush has repeatedly pledged to modernize existing weapons selectively, skip a generation of weapons technology, and invest the savings from canceling unneeded or outdated armaments in futuristic technologies that would transform the U.S. military to fight new threats. Bush has argued that the military needs to be lighter, more agile, and more rapidly deployable to hot spots around the world.
The wars in Kosovo and against terrorism demonstrate that the need for such transformation is most acute in the Army. In the war on terrorism in Afghanistan and around the world, the Army has used rapidly deployable units from its special forces and light divisions. In the war in Kosovo, the Army was too heavy to get to the theater in time to play a significant role in the fighting.
Eric Shinseki, the Army's top general, seems to have recognized that the Army needs to get lighter. He is developing medium-weight units with lighter, wheeled vehicles that can be deployed more quickly. Yet the Army continues to buy "legacy" weapons systems that do not mesh well with the vision of a "transformed" Army. The heavy Crusader (although the Army has lightened the system, the combined weight of the mobile gun and attached supply vehicle is still 80 tons), designed to fight the heavy armor of the bygone Cold War era, is the best example of that mismatch.
The RAND think tank, the National Defense Panel -- an independent commission of retired generals and defense industrials and intellectuals -- the House and Senate Armed Services Committees, and even President Bush have all come to the same conclusion. Even some in the Army's ground-vehicle community argue that the technology in the Crusader is not a "leap ahead" and that the system is an expensive way to make marginal improvements in the Army's firepower.
Nonetheless, the Army continues to press to build the Crusader and maintains that the mobile artillery piece can provide more firepower farther and faster (the system is automated and has higher rates of fire) than its predecessor -- the Paladin -- and can be transported with fewer airlift aircraft. Yet the ascendancy of air power (cruise missiles, fighter and bomber aircraft launching precision guided weapons, and flying artillery from the AC-130 gunship) -- demonstrated in all wars since Desert Storm -- could provide a more flexible substitute for mobile artillery to provide fire support for forces on the ground.
If the office of the secretary of defense believes that the Army still needs mobile systems on the ground to provide its own fire support, the taxpayer's dollars could be better spent on enhancing the capabilities of the Paladin. How? By purchasing a smart artillery shell guided by Global Positioning System satellites, giving the Paladin a more capable gun, or investing in digital communications technology connecting artillery to ground and airborne sensors.
Alternatively, the Army could buy a precision multiple-launch rocket system. If instead the Pentagon believes that a new mobile gun system is truly needed, a research and development program for a lighter, more easily deployable alternative to the Crusader is a better use of scarce resources.
Despite the Bush administration's rhetoric about modernizing existing weapons selectively, skipping a generation of technologies, and using the savings to transform the force, the 2003 defense budget effectively terminated no major weapons systems. Even the president, during his campaign, criticized the Crusader program.
If the secretary of defense cannot muster the courage to fight hard to kill this outdated and unneeded weapon, the administration's already troubled effort to transform the way the Pentagon fights wars will ring hollow.
(Ivan Eland is director of defense policy studies at the Cato Institute.)
