WASHINGTON, Feb. 12 (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 Cato Institute
WASHINGTON -- Campaign Finance Restrictions Benefit Incumbents, Study Says
Review of state laws shows challengers lose votes when party activity is limited
The House will vote this week on the Shays-Meehan bill to ban "soft money" donations and bar unions, corporations, and some independent groups from broadcasting certain types of political advertising within 60 days of an election or 30 days of a primary.
A new Cato Institute study released today, which looks at the effect of campaign finance laws enacted in 15 states, finds that "if parties are constrained in how much they can raise or spend, serious challengers will be penalized the most."
"Limits do not penalize incumbents as harshly, since sitting lawmakers can attract more money from interest groups and individual donors than can challengers," write authors Thad Kousser and Ray LaRaja. "Most critically, these fundraising obstacles, which can be attributed to regulatory limits on party activity, reduce challengers' vote totals."
States that curtail party-to-candidate limits see quite significant decreases in contributions to both challengers and incumbents, Kousser and LaRaja say. While each type of candidate loses money, challengers face a higher penalty in the election: a loss of 2.8 percent of the vote compared with incumbents' loss of 1.9 percent due to fundraising obstacles, they explain.
"The difference in these effects comes from the diminishing marginal returns on campaign dollars," the authors write. "Even controlling for other factors, incumbents raise a bit more than challengers and thus pay less of a penalty at the polls when their fundraising declines from its higher predicted level."
Kousser and LaRaja admonish national reformers to consider the tradeoff between competitive elections and curtailing corruption (or its appearance) as their study suggests. "Our analysis demonstrates that restrictions on party activity should be weighed against the costs to political competition," they write.
The study is available as Policy Analysis no. 426 on the Cato Institute website at http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-426es.html.
Reason Foundation
LOS ANGELES--Gun Control's New Language: How anti-terror rhetoric is being used against the Second Amendment
By Sam MacDonald
As the new congressional session gets into gear, a freshly invigorated gun control movement is preparing to act. Armed with a few questionable studies, some acid-tongued rhetoric, and vague allusions to the War on Terrorism, the anti-gun lobby is expected to hammer away relentlessly at the capital's most prominent Second Amendment stalwart, Attorney General John Ashcroft. The former Missouri senator should find their tactics familiar: He developed a similar strategy in his own quest for expanded powers against terrorism last fall, and it appears that his very success in that campaign will serve as a road map for gun control.
Give the gun control lobby credit for adopting a model that worked. Ashcroft's success in bulldozing the USA PATRIOT Act through the House and Senate was nothing short of a political rout. Even in the days immediately following September 11, many Americans were concerned that an expansion of federal power would come at the expense of civil liberties.
An unlikely coalition that included the American Civil Liberties Union and Phyllis Schlafly's conservative Eagle Forum called for careful deliberation. A band of Senate Democrats, led by Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., promised to deliver just that. By early December, however, Ashcroft had crushed his opposition. Here are the hard lessons his foes learned in that battle -- and are already using against him to pursue their own interests.
Exhibit 1 is the "Use NICS in Terrorist Investigations Act," introduced in December by anti-gun senators including Chuck Schumer, D- N.Y., and Ted Kennedy,D-Massachusetts. The measure would force the Justice Department to maintain the records it generates when conducting federally mandated background checks on gun purchasers (the National Instant Criminal Background Check System).
Ashcroft has steadfastly refused to use NICS, noting correctly that the records were intended to be destroyed lest they become a de facto national gun registry. But gun controllers argue this policy doesn't even make sense in normal times, and anyway, just look at the World Trade Center! They say federal investigators must preserve and pore over the records that are supposed to be destroyed once a buyer is approved. That way, dutiful snoops can see if any of the hundreds of alien detainees in custody have ever purchased a firearm.
Despite the timely nod to last fall's attacks, the same senators have in fact been trying to use NICS in criminal investigations for years. Take a peek at Schumer and Kennedy's proposed legislation. Section 3 is titled "Gun Sale Anti-Fraud and Privacy Protection." It bears a striking resemblance to the "Gun-Sale Anti-Fraud and Privacy Protection Act" the senators proposed in July. Both bills propose to protect Americans' privacy by making sure the federal government keeps track of how many guns they buy.
Who else has had the gall to rehash old pet projects under the guise of the War on Terrorism? John Ashcroft. In fact, he delivered a masterstroke in this regard. For decades federal law enforcement officials had been clamoring -- unsuccessfully -- for more surveillance, interrogation, and incarceration powers.
Enter Osama bin Laden. Now, call it the "Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism (USA PATRIOT) Act of 2001," and you're in business. How effective was Ashcroft's strategy? In November, The Chicago Tribune quoted an exasperated Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., the only senator to vote against the new powers: "The naming of the bill ...is the kind of cynical game played to intimidate people into not only not voting against it, but not debating it or questioning it." People who hate guns understand how powerful the anti-terrorism angle can be, and they are acting accordingly.
But Schumer and his cohorts have done far more than copy Ashcroft's "cynical game." They have aped his style as well. During the early days of his campaign for expanded power, the attorney general regularly shrugged off a seemingly important question posed by members of the Judiciary Committee: Would such powers have enabled the Justice Department to stop the Sept. 11 attacks?
Rather than wrestle with these inquiries, Ashcroft simply admitted that he didn't know, stressing instead that there wasn't any time to ruminate on such trifles. Every minute his department went without the far-reaching new powers was another minute the terrorists had "a comparative advantage."
Fast forward to Dec. 13. In a press release pressuring Ashcroft to keep and use the NICS records, Schumer argued that "every day the FBI is barred from using this information, the investigatory trail grows colder."
But is that true? NICS does not keep records on people who purchase box cutters. Accused shoe bomber Richard Reid presumably secured his plastic explosives through someone other than a federally licensed gun dealer. The anti-gun movement has been citing a few studies done by hard-line disarmers at the Violence Policy Center and Americans for Gun Safety. These supposedly link terrorists to guns bought in the United States, but the fact remains that so far all the damage has been done by airborne goons with ordinary household implements, not firearms.
But Schumer, like Ashcroft before him, has no time for such quibbles. What the anti-gun forces do have time for is overblown rhetoric -- which is perhaps the most important page they have copied from Ashcroft's political playbook. The attorney general certainly set a blistering precedent. Throughout his struggle last fall, he regularly chided legislators, accusing them of stalling and thus hampering his ability to chase down threats to the nation.
The rhetoric reached a crescendo in late November and early December, when the Senate Judiciary Committee scheduled four separate hearings to question Ashcroft about the administration's proposal for military tribunals, his own refusal to release any information on the hundreds of people in custody, and maneuvers such as monitoring conversations between detainees and their lawyers.
At least that was the plan. In fact, the early hearings resembled junior varsity matches before the big game. Instead of Chairman Leahy vs. Ashcroft, the eager chattering classes got lower-ranking committee members trading flaccid barbs with the attorney general's lieutenants. When the big boys finally took the field on Dec. 6, everyone in Washington tuned in to see the fireworks, only to see Ashcroft turn the tables and deliver a memorable drubbing. Buoyed by public opinion polls that showed overwhelming support for his policies, Ashcroft went on the offensive.
"To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty," he said in his opening statement, "my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists, for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve."
On the issue of subjecting suspected terrorists to tribunals, he simply cracked wise: "Are we supposed to read them their Miranda rights, hire a flamboyant defense lawyer, bring them back to the United States to create a new cable network of Osama TV?" Fully aware of the same opinion polls bolstering Ashcroft, Leahy and the rest of the committee wilted. The only concessions Feingold managed to elicit were an assurance that Ashcroft wasn't referring to committee members in his diatribe and a promise to put a little more thought into the military tribunals.
Live television coverage cut out long before the gavel finally fell on the four-hour hearing, but not before recording a subtle indication that a few of the senators had learned a thing or two from Ashcroft. Instead of nailing him for shredding the Constitution, Kennedy and Schumer scolded him for leaving out the Second Amendment. The morning of the hearing, The New York Times had published an article detailing how Ashcroft had refused FBI requests to open the NICS files to terrorism investigators.
Schumer accused the administration of being a "wet noodle" on the issue. Kennedy piled on, and a press release issued after the hearings showed that he smelled blood: The first 10 or so paragraphs deal exclusively with the NICS controversy and -- surprise -- the purported "gun show loophole" that has long been a thorn in the anti-gun crowd's side. Concerns about tribunals and due process violations are relegated to the end.
The next day, Schumer, Kennedy, and friends submitted their NICS proposal to the Senate, recasting it as a tool in the fight against terrorism. Since then, gun prohibitionists around the country have tried their best to match Ashcroft's tough-guy rhetoric. "Ashcroft guns to seal image as far-right nut," snarled the headline of an editorial in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The Boston Globe's Thomas Oliphant wrote an op-ed citing "Ashcroft's Gun-Coddling Hypocrisy." A piece in USA Today equaled Ashcroft's own diatribe at the December 6 hearings: "When the next act of terrorism involving conventional weapons occurs, here or abroad, the gun lobby might just be an accessory."
Under ordinary circumstances, Ashcroft could easily shrug off this new clamor by arguing that the proposed measures are constitutionally suspect and would have done nothing to stop the September 11 attacks. Or he could make the point that the anti-gun crowd is dressing tired old measures in anti-terror clothing. He might even gain some sympathy by complaining that the personal attacks levied against him are way out of line. And he would be right.
Unfortunately, the gun control lobby learned its new tactics by watching the master himself pull these same stunts just a few months ago.
(Sam MacDonald is a Washington-based journalist and former Reason Washington Editor.)
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: Senators Propose Dangerous Increase in Fuel Efficiency
Standards and Regulatory Phase-Out of SUVs, Minivans and Light Trucks
by Gretchen Randall
Background: Two bills have been introduced in the Senate to increase Corporate Average Fuel
Economy (CAFE) fuel efficiency standards for autos, light trucks, SUVs and minivans. Presently,
cars must get an average of 27.5 miles per gallon (mpg) of gasoline while light trucks, SUVs and
minivans must average 20.7 mpg.
A bill introduced by Senator John McCain, R-Ariz., S. 1923, would require an average fuel economy of 36 miles per gallon by 2016 for cars, trucks, minivans and SUVs. Another bill, S.1927, introduced by Senators John Kerry, D-Mass., and Fritz Hollings, D-S.C.,would keep the two classes of vehicles but require an increase by 2013 to 38.3 mpg for cars and 32 mpg for vans, SUVs and light trucks.
Ten Second Response: Raising CAFE standards would force consumers into smaller cars, eliminate
consumer choice and result in more highway deaths.
Thirty Second Response: Federal mandates on fuel efficiency rob consumers of their right to choose
what size vehicle they drive. Government studies have shown that forcing people into smaller cars for fuel economy results in more traffic deaths. The government does not have the moral right to force Americans to risk and, in many thousands of cases, lose their lives in smaller vehicles.
Discussion: The National Academy of Sciences released a report, "Effectiveness and Impact of
CAFÉ Standards 2002" pointing out that since CAFÉ standards were imposed in 1975, an additional
2,000 deaths per year can be attributed to the down-sizing of cars required to meet the fuel efficiency standards. (To read the NAS report: http://www.nap.edu/books/0309076013/html/)
Senator McCain's bill would not require greater mileage efficiency before 2007 but would
Eliminate the so-called "SUV loophole" by combining cars, light trucks and SUVs into one category for mileage attainment as of 2007. It also would allow automakers to buy emission credits from manufacturers in other industries to meet their targets.
The Kerry/Hollings bill would allow the two tiers of mileage requirements until 2010 when cars would have to attain 33.2 mpg while light trucks and SUVs would need to average 26.3 mpg. By 2013 the mileage standard would increase to 38.3 mpg for cars and for light trucks and SUVs to 32 mpg.
Gloria Bergquist, spokeswoman for the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, is quoted by
Associated Press as saying: "Make no mistake, the Senate proposals would eliminate SUVs,
minivans and pickup trucks. If these proposals pass, the only place you'll see a light truck is in a museum."
(Gretchen Randall is the director of the John. P. McGovern, MD Center for Environmental and
Regulatory Affairs at the National Center for Public Policy Research.)
Institute for Public Accuracy
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--The Olympics: Some Downsides
*Helen Lenskyj, professor of sociology at the University of Toronto and author of "Inside the Olympic Industry: Power, Politics, and Activism" and the forthcoming "The Best Olympics Ever? Social Impacts of Sydney 2000."
"How much do the Olympics really cost and who ends up paying? The International Olympic Committee continues to do things in much the same way despite negative effects at each Olympics. Repeated attempts to inject social conscience into how the games are run have fallen on deaf ears. When the inspection team came to Toronto, it was clear that they had no interest in how the Olympics would negatively affect housing for low-income people and the harassment and evictions that result from landlords seeking enormous profits.... While some of the charges against the members of the Salt Lake City bid committee have been dropped, some charges are still on appeal.... The commercialization of the Olympics drives much of the problem. The IOC is clearly in bed with the transnational corporations that give the big money. This leads to a stifling of speech at the games... There is also the factor of political protests being prohibited at or near the venues. This is not consistent with a democratic society."
*Alexis Kelner, author of "Utah's Olympics Circus" (1989) and was a member of the Winter Games Feasibility Committee in the mid-1980s.
"The Olympics are not as green as they are claimed to be. One of the greatest environmental transgressions is the way they supported land exchange. Landowners profit from dubious programs that the Olympics allow. Also, there are exemptions for the building of many facilities from national environmental policy requirements, so that builders can bypass public involvement and court redress. In addition, environmental reporting is not accurate--organizers take credit for protecting wilderness areas when there was no possibility of damaging them in the first place."
*Sean Diener, executive director of the Utah Animal Rights Coalition.
"Several rodeos are being organized as part of a 'cultural olympiad,' where human contestants achieve scores by cruelly dominating animals that have no choice regarding their participation."
