WASHINGTON, March 3 (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 Reason Foundation
LOS ANGELES -- Flip-flop into oblivion
How Dennis Kucinich aborted his chances to be the peace candidate
By Jesse Walker
Yet another Democrat has entered the presidential election of 2004: Florida Sen. Bob Graham, who only a month ago was undergoing major heart surgery. (Credit Dick Cheney for blazing that particular trail.) There are now nine candidates for the Democratic nomination, more if you count those who are still merely "exploring" the possibility of a bid, fewer if you ignore those whom Serious Opinion, as it styles itself, deems unworthy of consideration.
I'm a sucker for lost causes, which makes me more sympathetic to the also-rans than I probably should be. Some of them seem to be in the game only for ego reasons. The craftier ones presumably hope for some payoff when they exit the race: in exchange for Candidate X's endorsement and his 1 percent of the delegates, the future President Kerry or Edwards will award him a diplomatic post in Spain, or the regency of occupied France, or the federal funds to build a new dog track back home.
And some are there, in theory, to be the consciences of the party, sticking up for their principles while the front-runners assemble their cynical coalitions. Please note the phrase "in theory." In actual practice ... well, let's consider the case of Ohio's Rep. Dennis Kucinich.
Kucinich is a Catholic populist with what used to be called "ethnic" political roots. Part of that ideological mix is a skepticism toward the national security state, which has led him to oppose the impending war with Iraq. Another part, less acceptable to the Democratic left, is opposition to abortion. And so this week, after years as a reliably pro-life voice, he suddenly discovered the rights of she who owns the womb.
"People want to make sure that their president has a capacity to grow and a capacity to evolve," he explained to the San Francisco Chronicle. "I've been thinking about this for years ... None of us have all the answers on a given day."
Who does he think he's fooling? There have been signs that Kucinich might change his stance on abortion for about a year -- that is, for about as long as he's been seriously mulling a presidential campaign. Obviously, the reversal was intended to curry favor with the party power-brokers, who would never allow a pro-lifer to head the Democratic ticket. (Years ago, Dick Gephardt and Al Gore made the same switch for the same reason.)
Less obviously, it was meant to curry favor with the protest community. After all, Kucinich has virtually no chance of winning the nomination, whatever his stance on abortion. He does have a shot, though, at winning a smaller contest: the race to represent the anti-war constituency.
Without his switch, the peace vote might otherwise fall in behind a less fetally friendly candidate -- Howard Dean, or Al Sharpton, or Gary Hart. Heck, even Graham voted against the Iraq resolution last year. (Granted, Graham also used his perch atop the Intelligence Committee to help pass the USA Patriot Act. His chances of becoming this year's Eugene McCarthy are about as high as Kucinich's chances of becoming this year's Hubert Humphrey.)
But there's a political miscalculation here. The implicit message to Kucinich's flip-flop was not "I believe in abortion rights." It was "I'm willing to sell out my principles to survive."
Given how strongly the Washington winds are blowing towards war, this is not the sort of impression that will win you the peace vote. If protesters wanted a candidate who bends with every gale, they could just vote for John Kerry and be done with it.
(Associate editor Jesse Walker is author of "Rebels on the Air: An Alternative History of Radio in America.")
The Cato Institute
WASHINGTON -- One last time: the case against a war with Iraq
By William A. Niskanen
One last time, let me summarize the case against a war with Iraq -- hopefully before the shooting starts. Secretary of State Colin Powell has provided substantially more documentation for a view that most of us have shared for some time: Saddam Hussein is a tyrant and a liar and he controls some dangerous weapons. But that is not a sufficient basis for another war with Iraq.
The administration has yet to challenge any of the following statements that bear on whether Iraq is a serious threat to U.S. national interests:
-- Iraq has not attacked the United States. The administration has provided no evidence that Iraq supported the Sept. 11 attack.
-- Iraq does not have the capability for a direct attack on the United States -- lacking long-range missiles, bombers and naval forces. Iraq has an indirect capability to attack the United States only by supplying dangerous weapons to a terrorist group that might penetrate the United States.
Three conditions, however, bear on the relevance of this indirect capability:
-- Iraq doesn't have a record of supporting terrorist groups "of a global reach."
-- Iraq is in no way distinctive in its potential for an indirect threat to the United States.
-- A dozen or more national governments that are not friendly to the United States have nuclear, chemical or biological weapons programs at some stage of development.
Any terrorist attack that could be clearly attributed to support by Iraq, as was the Sept. 11 attack to the Taliban government in Afghanistan, would clearly provoke a U.S. military response and a regime change in Iraq.
Other conditions, however uncontested, are not a clear threat to U.S. national interests and there is no clearly correct U.S. response. They include the following: The Iraqi government is clearly a threat to the Iraqi population. The issue here is whether U.S. interests are clearly served by using military force to overthrow a local tyrant.
Iraq is also a potential threat to some neighboring countries. The issue here is whether U.S. interests are clearly served by a war with Iraq to prevent such a regional threat from being exercised, even if, as is now the case, the major neighbor governments do not support such a war.
A war, of course, is not without costs.
In this case, the major cost of a war with Iraq is that it would undermine the continuing and more threatening war against terrorism. Critical intelligence resources would be diverted to the conduct of the war and away from the war against terrorism. Other governments, whose support is not critical to a war in Iraq, might reduce their cooperation in the sharing of intelligence on terrorists and their willingness to arrest and possibly extradite terrorists.
And a war with Iraq threatens to enflame the militant Muslims around the world and unify them against the United States. Those of us who live and work in the District of Columbia (and in New York City) would be more threatened by terrorism as a consequence of a U.S. war with Iraq.
One other cost of a war with Iraq is that it would be strongly contrary to the centuries-old principle of international law against preventive wars, the principle by which Americans have always distinguished the bad guys from the good guys. A U.S. violation of this principle might invite a more general breakdown of this important principle.
A third cost of a war with Iraq would be the casualties of innocent people, both Americans and Iraqis, casualties that are likely to be high in an urban end-game for the Iraqi regime.
Compared with these costs, the budget and economic costs of the war, probably less than 1 percent of one year's U.S. gross domestic product, seem trivial.
In summary, Powell's articulate enumeration provided more detail on Saddam Hussein's deceits and transgressions but no new information that would make a sufficient case for the United States to wage a preventive war with Iraq.
(William A. Niskanen is the chairman of the Cato Institute, a former senior economic adviser to President Ronald Reagan, and a longtime defense analyst.)
The National Center for Policy Analysis
(The NCPA is a public policy research institute that seeks innovative private sector solutions to public policy problems.)
DALLAS -- Doctors on strike
By Bruce Bartlett
In recent days, there have been numerous press stories about doctors going on strike to protest high medical malpractice premiums. This is just the most obvious evidence that something is fundamentally wrong with the nation's tort liability system.
A number of reports suggest that the cost is growing out of control, imposing a de facto tax on all Americans that is slowing economic growth and investment, while doing little for those suffering real harm.
According to a new study by Tillinghast-Towers Perrin, the total cost of the U.S. tort system reached $205.4 billion in 2001, an increase of 14.3 percent over the previous year -- far faster than the rate of economic growth. This is like a tax of 2 percent on everything in the American economy that takes $721 per year out of the pockets of every citizen.
This cost is paid in the form of bankrupt companies, reduced investment and jobs, higher prices for medical insurance and many other goods and services.
Of course, any civilized society has to have a means of compensating victims of personal injuries resulting from medical mistakes, harmful products and such. But the cost of compensating people for these problems has been going up rapidly without any evidence that the underlying causes are increasing. Doctors are not making more mistakes than they used to and businesses are not manufacturing more dangerous products than they used to. Yet the cost of torts has risen from just over 1 percent of GDP in 1973 to twice that this year.
Responsibility for rising tort costs lies mainly with greedy trial lawyers who sue based on the flimsiest of evidence, and out-of-control juries that think nothing of awarding hundreds of millions of dollars in damages at the drop of a hat. Last year, for example, a jury in California awarded $290 million to the family of three people killed in the rollover of a Ford Bronco.
Many other examples can be found at www.overlawyered.com, an excellent Web site that, unfortunately, I find too depressing to read regularly. According to Jury Verdict Research, the median medical malpractice award doubled between 1995 and 2000, from $500,000 to $1 million.
In recent years, a key cause of rising tort costs has been asbestos. As trial lawyers search farther and farther for "deep pockets," more than 6,000 companies have become embroiled in litigation, according to a recent RAND study. These defendants include many companies far outside the asbestos and building products industries. They have already paid out $54 billion, yet it is estimated that there are still another $200 billion to $265 billion in claims yet to be paid.
Increasingly, the only way companies can cope with rising asbestos liabilities is by declaring bankruptcy. Some 80 companies have already done so. These bankruptcies have cost at least 60,000 jobs, according to a new study by economists Joseph Stiglitz, Jonathan Orszag and Peter Orszag. Each worker lost $25,000 to $50,000 in wages as the result of these asbestos-related job losses, plus another $8,300 in losses in their 401(k) plans.
The rise in asbestos awards has less to do with an increase in asbestos-related illnesses than the failure of a few judges to do their jobs properly. According to a study by economist Michelle White, a few judges in a few jurisdictions are responsible for the bulk of asbestos awards. Perhaps inadvertently, they have changed the rules of the game for defendants, increasing the likelihood that plaintiffs will get large awards and encouraging lawyers to file as many cases as possible.
Yet despite the massive increase in awards, little reaches those who really need it. RAND found that transactions costs eat up 50 percent of all the money and 65 percent of what reaches plaintiffs goes to those who have not yet -- and might never -- develop any asbestos-related disease. Looking at all tort cases, Tillinghast-Towers Perrin found that only 22 percent of tort costs compensated victims for actual losses.
What is frightening is that the link between medical malpractice or corporate malfeasance and any scientific evidence of wrongdoing or error is becoming increasingly tenuous. For example, a new report by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists found that cerebral palsy almost never results from problems in childbirth. Yet victims of this condition are routinely awarded large sums -- as if the delivery doctor was solely at fault.
Similarly, billions of dollars were awarded to women with silicon breast implants even though there is no scientific evidence that they cause illness, according to the Institute for Medicine.
Judges and juries must learn that the money they are awarding is not free money from the tooth fairy. The tort system today is severely broken and in desperate need of reform. Even the American Bar Association, whose members are enriched by it, has come to agree.
(Bruce Bartlett is a senior fellow at the National Center for Policy Analysis.)
