Think tanks wrap-up

WASHINGTON, Nov. 26 (UPI) -- The UPI think tank wrap-up is a daily digest covering opinion pieces, reactions to recent news events and position statements released by various think tanks.

The Cato Institute

WASHINGTON -- How did freedom fare on the ballot?

by Patrick Basham

In an inconclusive electoral bout, freedom took a few blows while landing some punches of its own on Election Day 2002.

More than 200 ballot measures gave voters in 40 states a temporary voice in the policy decision-making process. In recent weeks, considerable newsprint was devoted to informing us how this year's crop of initiatives leaned to the liberal, rather than the conservative, side of the spectrum. But instead of categorizing ballot questions by arguably outdated ideological labels, a more appropriate yardstick is whether or not the success or failure of a ballot measure advanced or hindered the cause of limited government, personal freedom, and individual responsibility.

For example, four states and Washington, D.C. were given the opportunity to relax their drug laws, thereby emphasizing rationality and compassion over coercion. But Ohio voters rejected treatment rather than incarceration for non-violent drug offenders. Nevada voters, living in a state that is the gambling and prostitution capital of the nation, rejected -- with a straight face -- a proposal to decriminalize the possession of 3 ounces or less of marijuana for adults. South Dakota voters rejected a proposal to legalize marijuana-like industrial hemp. Most surprisingly, in Arizona voters rejected a pro-medical marijuana initiative.

Drug policy reformers may find some solace, however, in the passage of two citywide marijuana measures. In San Francisco, voters approved medical marijuana, while voters in Washington approved a treatment-instead-of-jail measure for drug offenders.

It's clear that Florida voters got out on the illiberal side of the bed on Election Day. Exhibit A is their overwhelming approval of a constitutional amendment banning smoking in indoor public places, including offices, restaurants, and bars. Arizona voters also chose to more than double the state's cigarette tax and to use the additional revenue for anti-smoking programs. Somewhat more sensibly, in Missouri voters narrowly rejected a quadrupling of the cigarette tax.

Initiatives in eight states sought to expand the freedom to gamble. In Tennessee, voters repealed a 168-year old ban on a state lottery. North Dakota voters approved a proposal for their state to join a multi-state lottery. One day, perhaps, voters in these (and other) states will be asked to fully privatize the lottery business.

A moral victory was achieved in Massachusetts, where a proposal to eliminate the state personal income tax was barely defeated. Impressively, and somewhat surprisingly, Northern Virginia voters soundly defeated a proposal to increase the local sales tax to pay for regional transportation improvements. Voters in California and Washington wisely rejected similar proposals.

A slim majority of Oregon voters must have decided they wanted fewer entry-level jobs in their state as they went ahead and approved an increase in the job-destroying minimum wage. However, the same electorate went some distance to redeeming itself when, by a 4-to-1 margin, voters rejected a single, government-funded universal health care program.

Unfortunately, Florida voters weren't content regulating the decision-making of private businesses. They also decided, albeit narrowly, to constitutionally limit class size in Florida schools. Score another one for the teachers' unions. Florida's voters also approved a measure offering free preschool to every four-year old in the state.

Meanwhile, out on the West Coast, California voters followed the compassionately conservative instruction of actor-turned-would-be Republican gubernatorial candidate Arnold Schwarzenegger and approved an increase in funding for before- and after-school programs.

On the campaign finance reform front, the most encouraging news came from, of all places, liberal Massachusetts, where voters rejected the idea of taxpayer money being used to fund political campaigns. However, in Republican-leaning Colorado, voters approved a reduction in the size of permissible individual, political action committee, and party campaign contributions to candidates. Further limits on campaign donations will only serve to further diminish electoral competition.

And finally, for those who may have missed the result, Oklahoma voters approved a ban on cockfighting. Evidently, one bird's freedom was found to end at the tip of another bird's beak. But an analysis of ballot measures nationwide finds that, by contrast, the average midterm voter remains highly ambivalent when calculating where his own freedom ends and his neighbor's begins.

(Patrick Basham is senior fellow in the Center for Representative Government at the Cato Institute.)

The Institute for Public Accuracy

(The IPA is a nationwide consortium of policy researchers that seeks to broaden public discourse by gaining media access for experts whose perspectives are often overshadowed by major think tanks and other influential institutions.)

WASHINGTON -- Behind the war lobby

-- William Hartung, senior research fellow at the World Policy Institute at the

New School for Social Research and co-author of a report on U.S. military spending and security assistance since Sept. 11.

"The Bush administration's strategy of 'preemptive war' in Iraq is the brainchild of a small circle of conservative think tanks and weapons lobbying groups like the Project for a New American Century, or PNAC, whose members have been pressing this approach for over a decade. In the run-up to the 2000 presidential election, PNAC published a report on 'Rebuilding America's Defenses' which has served as a blueprint for the Bush/Rumsfeld Pentagon's military strategy, up to and including the coining of terms such as 'regime change.' PNAC's founding document -- a unilateralist call for a return to the 'peace through strength' policies of the early Reagan years -- was signed by Paul Wolfowitz, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and numerous others who have gone on to become major players in the Bush national security team. Like the Coalition for the Liberation of Iraq, a newly formed group of current and former Washington insiders designed to promote the Bush administration's policy in Iraq, PNAC draws its support from a tightly knit network of conservative ideologues, right-wing foundations, and major defense contractors. Bruce P. Jackson, a former vice president at Lockheed Martin who is a board member and a founding signatory of the Project for a New American Century's mission statement, serves as the chairman of the Coalition to Liberate Iraq. In adopting the strategy promoted by this conservative network, the Bush administration has successfully pressed for more than $150 billion in new military spending and arms export subsidies since Sept. 11, 2001, much of which is going to major weapons makers like Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman."