Issues Briefing

Facts,statistics,& opinionsto bolsterthe case

for liberty

Compiled byBill Winter

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BookletBookletIf you are a Libertarian Party candidate, it is

not enough to simply assert that a particular

government program, policy, or law is causing

problems. You must be able to prove it with

specific facts, figures, and studies. ■ And if you

are speaking to an audience, it is not enough

to talk in broad generalities. You must be able

to give the “human dimension” of a problem —

by telling stories about specific people who have

suffered. ■ In this booklet, you’ll find those

kinds of resources: Statistics, research studies,

quotations, anecdotes, and analysis about most

of the major policy issues of the day — in easy,

bite-size sections. And each one is source-cited,

just in case you are questioned about where you

got your information. ■ In short, this “Issues

Briefing Booklet” can make you a smarter, better-

prepared, more effective Libertarian candidate.

Libertarian PartyLibertarian Party20002000200020002000

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Affirmative Action

■ In the mid-1940s, theDetroit Tigers were at the top ofbaseball, winning the AmericanLeague pennant in 1945 andfinishing in second place thefollowing two years.

Their fortunes turned, however,in the next decade, as the Tigersfinished among the top three teamsin their league only once and foundthemselves in last place in 1952.

What happened? While manythings contribute to a team’svictory on the field, we shouldn’toverlook the impact of baseball’sintegration. After Jackie Robinson’smajor league debut in 1947, theCleveland Indians, for example,immediately signed African-American talent such as Larry Dobyand Satchel Paige and won theWorld Series in 1948.

By contrast, Walter Briggs,owner of the Tigers, refused tosign any African Americans, andthe Tigers dropped from secondto fifth place in 1948 — andcontinued to spiral down thestandings throughout the 1950s.

The sad story of the DetroitTigers illuminates a facet of themorality of capitalism: It makesimmoral decisions such as bigotryexpensive.

Briggs could insist on preservingracial barriers only at the cost offewer wins and, by extension, fewerfans. In a free market, artificiallimitations on potential employeesand customers mar the productand cripple the firm.

By contrast, firms that want toremain competitive will seektalent and markets wherever theymay be found. And this drive toremain competitive prompts firmsto more open patterns of hiring,buying, and selling.— Robert Sirico, Acton Notes,

January 2000

1990 the world literacy rate foradults rose from 61.5% to 73.5%.Art museums and attendance arebooming. Live performance of artshas flourished as well. New musicalgenres continue to blossom.

Creators have the best chance ofliving from their work in a wealthy,capitalist society. Capitalist artconsists fundamentally of bringingthe consumer and producertogether. Therein lies its exhilarat-ing, challenging, and poeticnature. We should not deploreour culture, as do the pessimists.Rather, we should recognize itsfundamentally capitalist nature,which implies creativity, enter-tainment, innovation, and aboveall, diversity.— Tyler Cowen, Cato Policy

Report, September/October 1998

Civil Liberties

■ In Hong Kong, two demo-cracy activists were convicted ofdesecrating the Hong Kong andChinese flags at a rally calling forthe end of one-party rule inChina. Defacing the flags becameillegal when Hong Kong washanded over to China.

The judge who convicted thetwo said the Chinese flag is “asymbol which represents thestate, her people, and her land”and “should remain as a sacredsymbol respected by all Chineseregardless of their social, political,or philosophical beliefs.”

Funny, I could have sworn Iheard members of the U.S. Houseof Representatives sayingsomething very similar a fewmonths ago.— Charles Oliver, Reason

magazine, December 1998

■ To understand Clinton’s dis-mal record on civil liberties requiresan understanding of his genera-

tion. The story begins in the liberalacademy. Over the past quartercentury an intellectual war hasraged on university campusesbetween left-wing advocates ofwomen’s and minority rights onthe one hand, and advocates ofcivil liberties on the other.

Many cause-oriented feministsand minority activists seefreedom of speech, and civilliberties in general, as a barrier toempowerment. They know thetruth, and tend to be intolerant ofthe right of others to expresscounter-truth or politically incorrectviews. These impatient left-wingadvocates are winning the battle,and their academic victory is beingtranslated into political policy. Thetranslation is not a difficult onebecause left-wing political causes— abortion rights, gay rights,affirmative action — garner votes.

Civil liberties, however, do nothave a significant constituency.On some issues moreover —particularly those affecting freedomof speech — the radical left hasjoined the religious right in acensorial coalition. As a result, civilliberties have become bad politics,while the anti-civil libertiesagenda is a political freebie.— Alan M. Dershowitz, Penthouse

magazine, June 1998

■ Minnesota citizens may soonbe guinea pigs for yet anotherprivacy invasion experiment.

A new law authorizes a studyto fingerprint all citizens.Proponents of the law are excitedabout the possibility thatfingerprinting requirements ondriver’s licenses would allowretailers to check the fingerprintsof suspect customers and “knowin three minutes” if they are whothey say they are. (Imagine theembarrassment experienced atgrocery stores by citizens waiting

Americans With

Disabilities Act

■ The Americans with Disabil-ities Act (ADA) was supposed tomean more disabled Americanscould enter the workforce. Yetthis year, only 29% of disabledpeople are employed full or parttime, according to survey resultsreported in the Washington Post(July 23, 1998). This figure islower than before the law wasenacted. In 1986, 33% of disabledAmericans were employed.— Competitive Enterprise

Institute UpDate, December 1998

■ When the list of “victims”defined under various civil rightsacts was completed in 1991, some80% of all Americans (everyonebut white males under 40, notdisabled, and not on welfare orSSI disability) were classified as“minorities.” It has become such astatistical joke that most citizens,including many of the “disabled,”have finally become angered.— Martin L. Gross, The End of

Sanity, Avon Books (1997)

Art & Government

■ The Left concludes thatgovernment support for the artsis needed; the Right often favorsgovernment support for “tradi-tional” culture. A review of theevidence offers strong reasons forcultural optimism and confidencethat a modern commercial societywill stimulate artistic creativityand diversity.

The music of Bach, Mozart,and Beethoven is more accessibletoday than it was in the 18th and19th centuries. Movies can berented on videocassette verycheaply. New editions of manyliterary works are publishedregularly. Between 1970 and

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to be “verified.”)The original language of the

bill clearly shows the future plansfor identification by biometrics.These include “tobacco, liquor, andlottery sales enforcement; healthcare; voter registration; andschool access, and other situationswhere accurate personal identifi-cation is essential.”— Twila Brase, Intellectual

Ammunition, June/July 1998

Crime

■ In the wake of the recentwave of shootings in America’sgovernment schools, there hasbeen an orgy of hand-wringingand finger-pointing in the main-stream media. Blame for thesetragedies is variously ascribed tothe availability of firearms or theviolent content of movies,television, and video games.Occasionally, blame is placed withthe parents of the perpetrators.

Amidst all the clamor, therehave been a few voices soundinga very different alarm: Thatmillions of American children areon psychotropic drugs — many ofwhich have violent side-effects.

Samuel L. Blumenfield, writingin WorldNetDaily (July 7, 1999)noted: “What is most disturbing,however, is the growing aware-ness that the increased violenceamong school children may havemore to do with the drugs thanwith the guns they use to carryout their violence.”

Kelly O’Meara, writing in theJune 28, 1999 issue of Insight

magazine, reports that there arenow over five million schoolchildren on psychotropic drugs,most of which are prescribed andadministered in the governmentschools themselves. The Decem-ber 1996 Teacher Magazinereports that there are four million

on Ritalin alone, while AlexanderCockburn, writing in the LosAngeles Times (July 6), reportsthat Ritalin is being given to abouttwo million American schoolchildren.

Eighteen-year-old Eric Harris,who with his friend Dylan Klebold,17, massacred their classmatesand a teacher at Columbine HighSchool in Littleton, Colorado onApril 20, had been taking Luvoxfor Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.

T. J. Solomon, 15, who shot andwounded six fellow students atHeritage High School in Conyers,Georgia, on May 20 was on Ritalinfor depression. Also on Ritalin forbi-polar disorder was 15-year-oldShawn Cooper, who fired twoshotgun rounds, narrowly missingclassmates and teachers at hishigh school in Notus, Idaho.

Kip Kinkel, 15, who first killedhis parents and later killed twostudents and wounded 22 morein his Oregon school’s cafeteria,was on Ritalin and Prozac.

Mitchell Johnson, 13, who,with his friend, Andrew Golden,11, shot several children and ateacher at Westside Middle Schoolin Jonesboro, Arkansas, was beingtreated by a psychiatrist and ispresumed to have been on somesort of medication.— Mark Valverde, Freedom Net-

work News, August-October 1999

■ “That could have been mymother.”

That’s what drove MalekeCard, 19, to step in and grapplewith the mugger tugging at thegold chains that were around theneck of Nicole Evans, 40, Fridaymorning outside a Bronx subwaystation.

Card, a good kid, didn’t hesitatewhen he leaped into action todefend a woman he didn’t evenknow. During the ensuing struggle,

Card, in self-defense, stabbed themugger in the head and neck withthe penknife he was carrying.

After the struggle, Cardretrieved and returned the goldchains to Evans. Then he walkedaway towards his house, wherehe planned to get ready for workin a Midtown video arcade, butcops arrested him two blocksaway from the Prospect Avenuetrain station. Card now facesattempted murder charges and 25years in jail.— Douglas Montero, The New

York Post, September 27, 1999

■ Crime rates, according toFBI reports, fell about 16% per100,000 population from their 1991peak to 1997 and fell another 7%in 1998. Politicians claim creditbecause of their support for prisonconstruction, longer mandatedsentences, greater police funding,or policies that reduce unemploy-ment . . .

No doubt many of these factorshelp explain falling crime rates,but there is another, perhapsmore important, cause which hasgone largely unnoticed: Privatecitizens’ growing investments oftime and money in security.

Private crime control—includingvoluntary watch, patrol and escortarrangements, alarms, improvedlocks and better lighting, self-protection, and private securitypersonnel — has been a growthindustry for decades. A 1970 esti-mate put private security personnelat roughly equal to public police,but by 1990 there were about 2.5private security personnel for everypublic police officer. Today, the ratiois probably at least three to one.

Consider [also] the market forsecurity alarms. Alarm salesincreased by about 11% per yearin 1970, but this growth ratereached 15% in 1990. In 1970,

one percent of U.S. homes wereconnected to central alarm systems.By 1990, one in ten homes were.— Bruce L. Benson, The Cato

Institute, August 20, 1999

■ The avalanche of new lawsCongress has passed since 1970to make America’s streets safe hasfailed, a report concludes.

“There is no persuasiveevidence that federalization oflocal crime makes the streetssafer for American citizens,” saysa report prepared by a blue-ribbon task force sponsored bythe American Bar Association andchaired by former AttorneyGeneral Edwin Meese III.

The 16-member task force saysa Congress worried about beingcalled “soft on crime” actuallymay be hurting the fight againststreet violence by passing federallaws that duplicate state and localefforts nationwide.— The Associated Press,

February 17, 1999

■ The Department of Justicereported in January [1998] thatthe nation’s prison and jailpopulations have risen nearly 6%from the previous year — morethan 50% since the beginning ofthe decade. At midyear 1997 anestimated 1,725,842 men andwomen — roughly 645 out of every100,000 Americans — were heldin the nation’s prisons and jails.— Jubilee Extra, Prison Fellowship

Ministries, March 1998

■ Number of sex criminals(rapists and child molesters)released from jail in 1994 onparole or probation: 134,000.

■ Number of sex criminalswho remained behind bars in1994: 99,300.— NRA’s CrimeWatch Weekly,

February 18, 1997

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Defense &

Military Spending

■ Republican prosecutorshave spent the better part of thepast year obsessively looking fora smoking gun to hold against thepresident. But they might havedug up more dirt if they hadthought a little more literally: BillClinton is, after all, the world’sbiggest arms dealer.

From 1993 to 1997, thePentagon sold $70.6 billion inweapons to virtually every nationon earth, including governmentsthat have used them against theirown people, notably Indonesia,Mexico, and Turkey.— Mother Jones magazine,

April 1999

■ Containing Saddam Husseinisn’t cheap. Frequent military build-ups in the Persian Gulf since the1991 war have cost the nationabout $7 billion, in addition tothe tens of billions of dollarssome budget analysts estimate isspent annually on maintaining astrong U.S. military in the region.

The Pentagon does not releasefigures on the spending for day-to-day Gulf duties, [but] by privatebudget analysts’ estimates, roughly$50 billion of the annual $270billion in U.S. defense spendinggoes toward maintaining the Gulfdeployment and keeping the Iraqipresident in line.

“You’ve got carriers, groundtroops in Kuwait, pre-positionedequipment all over and you’respending money on no-fly zonesin northern and southern Iraq,”said Lawrence Korb, a formerassistant secretary of defense.

Around the Gulf, U.S. forcesinclude at least 24,000 soldiers,sailors, and Marines, many on ships.— Associated Press,

November 26, 1998

■ Number of foreign countrieswhere U.S troops were deployedin 1997: 100

■ Total number of countrieson the planet: 197

■ Percentage of countrieswith U.S troops: 51%

■ Some countries where U.S.troops were deployed, and theirmission: Haiti (dig water wells);Congo (to evacuate 57 people andone dog); Morocco (to supervise acivil war cease-fire); Cambodia andLaos (to clear land mines): Micro-nesia (to build a warehouse); Egypt(to monitor the Israel/Egypt demil-itarized zone); Belize (to renovateschools and roads); Ecuador andPeru (to monitor a disputedborder region).— U.S. Army News Releases,

May 23, 1997 & July 4, 1997

Drug Prohibition

■ Though [New MexicoGovernor Gary] Johnson nowadvocates a drug-free lifestyle, hestill does not think drug usersshould be treated like criminals.

“Did we belong in jail?”Johnson asked the Cato audience,noting that a felony record wouldhave prevented him from runningfor governor. “Does anybodywant to press a button and retro-actively punish the 80 millionAmericans who have used drugs?”

In 1997, Johnson noted, stateand local officials arrested 1.6million people for drug offenses,and about 400,000 drug offendersare behind bars right now.

“I don’t think we can continueto lock Americans up [for] badchoices,” he said.— Reason, December 1999

■ In the name of establishinga drug-free society, overzealouspolice have too often failed tonotice the difference between the

innocent and the guilty. As aresult, the war on drugs has gonebeyond keeping the peace. It’sbecome a threat to liberty.

From asset forfeitures to homeinvasions to military involvement,the war on drugs has takendisturbing turns.

Among the more recent incidents,a SWAT team broke into a Compton,California, home at about 11 p.m.on Aug. 9. They killed a retiredgrandfather by shooting him twicein the back. His widow — handcuffedand wearing only a towel andpanties, according to the LosAngeles Times — and six otherswere taken into custody. All werequestioned. None was charged.

By the way — no drugs werefound on the property. But onelife was ended and others changedforever because those officerswere waging a war on drugs.— Investor’s Business Daily,

September 21, 1999

■ The boundary betweengood and bad drugs is harderthan ever to draw.

The same week that a Republicancandidate for President spentstruggling to compose ever moretortuous non-denials of his druguse as a young man, a formerRepublican Presidential candidatecould be seen in full-page adver-tisements forthrightly acknowledg-ing his own use of another drug.

Oh, I know: two completelydifferent and incomparablesituations; how unfair to RobertDole and the Pfizer pharmaceuti-cal company even to mentionthem in the same paragraph asGeorge W. Bush and cocaine. Oneconcerns an illegal drug thatpeople take strictly for pleasure.The other concerns a legal drugthat people take . . .well, alsostrictly for pleasure, but (almost)always with a prescription.

You would be hard-pressed toexplain the taxonomy of chemicalsunderpinning the drug war to anextraterrestrial. Is it, for example,addictiveness that causes thissociety to condemn a drug? (No;nicotine is legal, and millions ofAmericans have battled addictionsto prescription drugs.)

So then, our inquisitive alienmight ask, is safety the decisivefactor? (Not really; over-the-counter and prescription drugskill more than 45,000 Americansevery year while, according toThe New England Journal ofMedicine, “There is no risk ofdeath from smoking marijuana.”)Is it drugs associated with violentbehavior that your societycondemns? (If so, alcohol wouldstill be illegal.)

Perhaps, then, it is the promiseof pleasure that puts a drug beyondthe pale? (That would once againrule out alcohol, as well as Viagra.)

Then maybe the molecules youdespise are the ones that alter thetexture of consciousness, or evena human’s personality? Tell thatto someone who has been savedfrom depression by Prozac.— Michael Pollan, New York

Sunday Times Magazine,

September 12, 1999

■ Percentage of inmates atJoliet maximum security prison inIllinois who tested positive fordrugs in 1999: 2

■ Percentage of prisonemployees who tested positive: 4

— Playboy, August 2000

■ Futile efforts to enforce[drug] prohibition have beenpursued even more vigorously inthe 1980s and 1990s than theywere during alcohol prohibitionin the 1920s. Drug enforcementcost about $22 billion in theReagan years and another $45

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billion in the four years of theBush administration. The federalgovernment spent $16 billion ondrug control programs in 1998alone and plans to spend $18billion this year. States and localcommunities spend even more.

What good has it all done? Well,total drug arrests are now morethan 1.5 million a year. There areabout 400,000 drug offenders injails and prisons now, and over80% of the increase in the federalprison population from 1985 to1995 was due to drug convictions.Drug offenders are about 60% of allfederal prisoners, while those infederal prison for violent offensesare only 12.4% of the total.

As for discouraging young peoplefrom using drugs, the massive federaleffort has largely been a dud. Everyyear from 1975 to 1995 at least82% of high school seniors saidthey found marijuana “fairly easy”or “very easy” to obtain.

When a public policy isn’tworking, we should try somethingdifferent. If spending more than$30 billion a year and arresting1.5 million people a year isn’tstopping drug use and abuse, thenwe should try a different strategy.— David Boaz, The Albuquerque

Journal (New Mexico),August 23, 1999

■ The nation’s largest federallyfunded teen anti-drug program,D.A.R.E., has no long-term effecton adolescent drug use, a newstudy to be published in the Augustissue of the American PsychologicalAssociation’s (APA) Journal of

Consulting and Clinical Psychologyfound.

“This study joins a growingbody of academic researchdemonstrating D.A.R.E.’s ineffec-tiveness as a deterrent to youthfuldrug use,” NORML FoundationExecutive Director Allen St. Pierre

said. “For this reason, numerouslocalities, including Houston,Oakland, and Seattle are scrappingthe program.”

Researchers tracked over 1,000students who participated in theD.A.R.E. program in sixth grade.They re-evaluated the students atage 20, ten years after receivingthe drug prevention education.The study found that the programinitially influenced the students’perceptions towards drug use, butconcluded that these changes didnot persist over time.— NORML Foundation News

Release, July 29, 1999

■ While African-Americans andHispanics make up 20% of theUnited States’ marijuana users (andabout 20% of the population), theymake up 58% of those arrestedfor federal marijuana charges.— The Drug Policy Letter,

January/February 1999

■ Number of Americansarrested in 1997 for murder,rape, robbery, and aggravatedassault (combined): 717,720.

■ Number of Americansarrested for marijuana offenses:695,200.

■ Percentage arrested forpossession: 87.

■ Percentage of federalprisoners incarcerated on drugcharges: 59.

■ For violent crimes: 2.5.■ Number of Americans in

federal and state prisons in 1980for violating drug laws: 23,900.

■ Number of people in federaland state prison in 1996 forviolating drug laws: 292,794— Playboy magazine, April 1999

■ In 1996, it was revealedthat, as part of their infiltration ofone Latin American drug cartel,federal agents had successfully

smuggled millions of dollars’worth of cocaine onto the streetsof America’s cities. At that level,it’s hard to see the differencebetween successful infiltrationand full-scale participation.

So, across the country,undercover DEA agents arestaking out undercover FBI agentswho are selling drugs to under-cover DEA agents who are stakingout undercover ATF agents.— Mark Steyn, The American

Spectator, April 1999

■ I agree that marijuana lawsare long overdue for an overhaul.I also favor the medical use ofmarijuana — if it’s prescribed by aphysician. I cannot understandwhy the federal governmentshould interfere with the doctor-patient relationship, nor why itwould ignore the will of amajority of voters who havelegally approved such legislation.— Abigail VanBuren, “Dear Abby,”

March 1, 1999

■ Increased drug arrests andlonger prison sentences have notslowed illegal drug use, accordingto a study by the nation’s largestorganization of lawyers.

In a study, the American BarAssociation’s Criminal JusticeSection found that illicit drug useincreased 7% from 1996-1997. . .

[At the same time], the ABAstudy found that 1.2 million peoplewere arrested on drug charges in1997, a 73% increase over thenumber of people arrested in 1992.— Gary Fields, USA Today,

February 4, 1999

■ Marijuana remains the fourth-largest cash crop in Americadespite law enforcement spendingapproximately $10 billion annuallyto enforce prohibition, a newreport from the NORML founda-

tion concluded.Nationally, only corn, soybeans,

and hay rank as more profitablecrops to American farmers.— NORML Press Release,

October 15, 1998

■ Two new reports, one fromthe FBI and one from the GeneralAccounting Office (GAO), foundthat drug-related corruptionamong law enforcement hasincreased since the early 1990s.

The FBI report, “Misconduct toCorruption,” found that thenumber of federal, state, and localofficials in prison has increasedfivefold in four years, from 107 in1994 to 548 in 1998.— The Drug Policy Letter,

Summer 1998

■ In the early 1960s, the UnitedNations committed itself to elim-inating the plant sources of cocaine,heroin, and marijuana in 25 years.The clock ran out in 1989. Insteadof reevaluating its plan, the UnitedNations promised last June to getthe job done in 10 years.

In 1989, President Bushproposed cutting drug use 55% in10 years. In February, PresidentClinton introduced his plan to cutdrug use in half in 10 years,without mentioning Bush’s plan.

Not to be outdone, the speakerof the House of Representatives,Newt Gingrich, rejected Clinton’splan and declared that the timelineshould be four, not 10, years.— Rob Stewart, The Drug Policy

Letter, Summer 1998

■ California law enforcementarrested more citizens on mari-juana charges in 1997 than in anyyear since 1985, newly releasedfigures from the Bureau ofCriminal Statistics revealed.

The rising number of arrestsone full year after voters legalized

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the use of marijuana for medicalpurposes alarmed many activistswho question whether police arecontinuing to punish patients despitethe new law. Law enforcementarrested 57,667 Californians onmarijuana charges in 1997, thedata showed.— NORML Press Release,

August 7, 1998

■ Thomas Jefferson: states-man, philosopher, drug kingpin.

As anyone who follows thehemp movement knows, our thirdpresident grew cannabis on hisVirginia farm. Lots of it.

According to Marijuana News,published by an Ohio chapter ofthe National Organization for theReform of Marijuana Laws, insome seasons Jefferson raisedmore than 100 acres of hemp,which was used to make sailclothand rigging. With a typical yieldof 150 plants per square yard,multiplied by 4,840 square yardsper acre, that’s more than 70million plants a year.

Under the 1995 OmnibusCrime Control Act, anyone whocultivates more than 60,000marijuana plants is a “drugkingpin,” subject to execution. Ina single year, then, the author ofthe Declaration of Independencequalified for the death penalty athousand times over.

Noting that the DemocraticParty’s platform praises the drugkingpin provision, Marijuana Newsconcludes, “If Thomas Jeffersonwere alive today, William JeffersonClinton would execute him.”— Reason magazine, June 1998

■ As a career police officer for35 years (including police chief ofKansas City, Missouri, and SanJose, California), I have seen theracism, violence, corruption, andfailure to curb drug abuse that

stems from government policies.Before 1914, Americans had theright to possess and use drugs. Ofcourse there were abuses, butthere was no $400 million blackmarket or widespread corruptionand violence, nor was there thevastly disproportionate incarcera-tion of non-whites, until theHarrison Act of 1914 criminalizeddrugs. Prohibition does not work.— Joseph D. McNamara, The New

York Times, March 18, 1998

■ Nearly 642,000 totalmarijuana arrests were made bystate and local law enforcementduring 1996, according to thelatest edition of the FederalBureau of Investigation’s (FBI)Uniform Crime Report.

This figure is an 80% increasesince 1990 and pushes the totalnumber of marijuana arrestsunder the Clinton administrationto approximately 2.1 million.

The 1996 yearly arrest totalfor marijuana violations is thehighest ever recorded by the FBI.Of the 642,000 arrests made formarijuana in 1996, approximately85% (545,700) were for simplepossession.— The NORML Foundation,

October 7, 1997

The Economy &

the Free Market

■ Adjusted for inflation, thehourly wage has fallen nearly15% since 1973. So what? Theonly measure that counts is whatwe can buy for the time we spendworking.

A half-gallon of milk cost 10minutes of labor in 1970; andonly 7 minutes in 1997. A gallonof gasoline cost 11 minutes in1950 and now goes for less thanhalf that. A three-minute coast-to-coast phone call cost an incredible

90 hours of work in 1910; today itcosts less than two minutes of worktime. Cars at first seem to costabout the same as they did in the1970s. But they are now far safer,pollute much less and are loadedwith standard goodies like stereosthat weren’t even options in 1970.

If there’s something sad aboutall this, it’s that so many Americansare convinced these improvementsare the fruits of reinvented govern-ment. As Michael Cox and RichardAlm observe in Myths of Richand Poor: It’s not governmentpolicy that gave us drive-throughservice, instant mail, [automatic]teller machines, home shoppingnetworks, air-conditioned offices,and much, much more.

It wasn’t public decree thatraised life expectancies by 30years over the past century, orshortened our workweek by morethan 20 hours. Over the past 200years, we’ve progressed not bythe grace of government but bythe mechanism of the market.— Michael Fumento, Reason,

April 1999

■ Without the wealthy, fewernew goods and services wouldfind their way to the rest of us.The system harnesses the spendingof a relative few and puts it to workdelivering goods to the many.Unequal income distributiondrives society forward.

A cellular phone costs just 2%of what it did a decade and a halfago, and computing power is lessthan 1% of its 1984 real price.

What better proof could therebe that free enterprise is society’sgreatest welfare program?— Michael Cox, Wall Street

Journal, March 6, 1998

■ Stock prices and retirementwealth have become moreimportant to the new 125 million-

strong investor class. The newinvestor class is increasingly madeup of middle-class people. Recentsurveys show that during the 1990s,49% of the newest investors havebeen women. Thirty-eight percentof the new investors are non-professional salaried workers. Thetypical new stockowner earns lessthan $70,000.

Karl Marx is both dead andwrong. Through the stock market,the American work force ownsthe means of production.— Lawrence Kudlow,

The Washington Times,November 3, 1998

Education

■ [In his book], The Con-spiracy of Ignorance: The Failure

of American Public Schools,author Martin L. Gross [notes]:

■ Since 1960, the number ofteachers in the U.S. has doubled,while the number of “supportpersonnel” has quadrupled.

■ Would-be teachers usuallycome from the bottom third oftheir high school graduating classes.

■ [Most] teacher exams aregeared towards the 10th-gradelevel. When Massachusettsteachers were tested last year at asomewhat higher standard, 59%of them flunked.

■ 12% of all students nowqualify for federal grants underthe Individuals with DisabilitiesEducation Act.— Capital Ideas, September/

October 1999

■ The next time you hear apolitician or a National EducationAssociation spokesperson say thatmore money means betterschools, remind them of theignominious failure of the KansasCity School District.

In response to a desegregation

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educational improvement, why,after 45 years of declining pupil-teacher ratios, are [government]schools so unsatisfactory theyneed to be “revolutionized” by [AlGore’s proposed] “investments”?— George F. Will, The Washington

Post, May 4, 2000

■ The majority, 60%, of U.S.high school students don’t under-stand the purpose of profits andthink wages are set by the govern-ment, according to the NationalCouncil on Economic Education.— USA Today, December 15, 1999

■ American schools, onaverage, have 52.1 teachers [and47.8 people in non-teachingpositions] — 15.2 in school staff,8.6 district staff, and 24 county-and state-level bureaucrats out ofevery 100 education personnel. Inseven states — Michigan, Oklahoma,Indiana, Mississippi, Florida, NewMexico and Alaska — more thanhalf of “education” personnel arenot teachers. Rhode Island andHawaii have the highest number ofteachers — 63 per 100 educationpersonnel. In almost all cases, thebureaucrats earn more thanteachers do.— Center for Education Reform,

August 17, 1999

■ Literacy levels havedeclined over the past 30 years,despite significantly increasedresources for public schools:

■ Inflation-adjusted per-pupilexpenditures have increased morethan 14 times since 1920.

■ In 1955, there were 27students per teacher; by 1990there were 17.

■ In 1949, there were 19pupils per staff member; by 1990there were nine.— David Kirkpatrick, School

Reform News, May 1999

■ Reducing class size meetsone Democratic criterion for anational program: It’s expensive.Eric Hanushek of the University ofRochester notes that reducing thesize of the average classroom byjust one kid for one year costssomething like $350. Multiply thatby all the American children ingrammar school and you come upwith $12 billion over seven years.But as Prof. Hanushek points out,there’s a problem here: There islittle evidence that reducing classsize has any effect on education.In fact, the nation has already runthe class-size experiment.

In the past 45 years, theaverage pupil-teacher ratio in thiscountry fell by 35%. Many of ourparents recall that they learnedreading in classes with more than35 students. Many of our childrenare in classes with fewer than 25.Yet with this dramatic change inclass size has come little or noimprovement in performance. Datafrom the National Assessment ofEducational Progress show that,despite shrinking classes, 17-year-olds today perform about as wellnow as they did in 1970.— The Wall Street Journal,

September 30, 1998

■ Percentage of Americanswho send their children to privateschool: 14%

■ Percentage of U.S. Housemembers who sent their childrento private school: 34.4%

■ Percentage of members ofthe U.S. House EducationCommittee who send theirchildren to private school: 40%

■ Percentage of U.S. Senatorswho sent their children to privateschool: 50%— Nina H. Shokraii, The Heritage

Foundation, September 9, 1997

Environment &

Global Warming

■ [For people who wonderwhether non-governmentalgroups can protect wildernessareas], during 1999, The NatureConservancy took direct action tobring 900,000 acres of biologi-cally significant land in the UnitedStates into conservation owner-ship or management.

That brings The NatureConservancy’s 48-year total towell over 11 million acres, anarea larger than Switzerland.— The Nature Conservancy

President’s Report,January 10, 2000

■ Wilderness conservation haslittle to do with urban sprawl.Our cities, suburbs, highways, andlocal roads now cover about 60million acres, well over double thearea they occupied in 1920 — butstill under 3% of the land area ofthe continental United States.

Most of what the wildernesshas lost to Americans it has lostto our agriculture. For every acreof land we use for home or office,roads, and byways, we currentlyuse six acres for crops. Anothereight acres are designated as range-larders for our livestock, which,pound for pound, outweigh us.

Happily, however, ouragricultural footprint has beenshrinking a lot faster than ourcities have been sprawling. WhenEuropeans first arrived on thiscontinent, the area now representedby the lower 48 United States hadabout 950 million acres of forest.That area shrank steadily untilabout 1920, to a low of 600million acres, as Americans spreadacross the landscape.

Then, astonishingly, we beganto retreat, and the wildernessbegan to expand once again.

lawsuit and orders from U.S.District Judge Russell Clark, KansasCity spent $2 billion building themost expensive school system inthe world. Beginning teachersalaries rose from a low of$17,000 to a high of $47,851.

Fifteen new schools wereconstructed and 70 had additionsor renovations. The luxuriousfacilities include a planetarium, avivarium, greenhouses, a modelUnited Nations wired for languagetranslation, radio and televisionstudios, movie editing and screeningrooms, swimming pools, a zoo, afarm, a wildland area, a tempera-ture-controlled art gallery, and 15computers per classroom. Studentscan study Suzuki violin, animalscience, and robotics. Languageinstruction spans French to Swahili.

Despite the extraordinaryfacilities and massive sums ofmoney, student performance is solow that recently the state had tostrip the Kansas City SchoolDistrict of its accreditation. Theschool district has fewer studentsand is less integrated today thanin 1984 when Judge Clark tookcontrol of the school district inorder to achieve “mathematicalracial balance.”— Paul Craig Roberts,

The Washington Times,

December 9, 1999

■ Pupil-teacher ratios havebeen shrinking for a century. In1955 pupil-teacher ratios in publicelementary and secondary schoolswere 30.2-to-one and 20.9-to-onerespectively. In 1998 they were18.9-to-one and 14.7-to-one.

We now know it is possible tohave, simultaneously, decliningpupil-teacher ratios and decliningscores on tests measuring schools’cognitive results.

If making classes smaller issuch an effective route to

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Precisely how fast is hard to naildown: The continent is large, mostof the land is privately owned,and the definitional debates rage.But all analyses show more, notless, forest land in America today— somewhere between 20 millionand 140 million acres more —than in 1920. Roughly 80 millionmore acres of cropland wereharvested 60 years ago than areharvested today.— Peter Huber, The Washington

Post, April 21, 2000

■ You never hear about the1997 survey of 36 official stateclimatologists finding that 58%disagreed with President Clinton’sclaim that “the overwhelmingbalance of evidence and scientificopinion is that it is no longer atheory, but now fact, that globalwarming is for real.” Nine out of10 agreed that “scientific evidenceindicates variations in globaltemperature are likely to benaturally occurring and cyclicalover very long periods of time.”

Further, last year more than15,000 scientists signed a petitiondeclaring, “There is no convincingscientific evidence that humanrelease of carbon dioxide, methaneor other greenhouse gases is causingor will, in the foreseeable future,cause catastrophic heating of theEarth’s atmosphere and disrup-tion of the Earth’s climate.”

The petitioners strongly urgedrejection of the accord signed inKyoto, Japan, in 1997 committingthe United States to drastic,incredibly costly reductions inemissions of these gases, declaringit “would harm the environment,hinder the advance of science andtechnology, and damage thehealth and welfare of mankind.”— Michael Fumento,

The Washington Times,July 8, 1999

■ While environmentalists railagainst the use of fossil fuels, thefederal government spends tensof millions of dollars every yearsubsidizing the use of fossil fuels.

For instance, in fiscal year1997, fossil energy research anddevelopment at the Departmentof Energy received $365 million.The Clean Coal TechnologyProgram (CCTP), which subsidizesadditional coal-related research,has cost taxpayers approximately$1.5 billion since its inception.— Intellectual Ammunition

(The Heartland Institute),March/April 1999

■ In the early 1990s, theNational Toxic Campaign Fund (aprivate environmental advocacygroup) labeled the militaryestablishment the nation’s worstpolluter, responsible for more than14,000 “toxic hot spots” at militarybases around the nation. Theenvironmental group estimatedthat, in 1989, the defense Depart-ment generated 900 millionpounds of hazardous waste.

No private business, or combin-ation of companies, has anywherenear such a devastating impact onAmerica’s environment. Neverthe-less, because of poorly drafted lawsand regulations, the public continuesto associate environmental degra-dation exclusively with businesses.— Murray Weidenbaum,

The Washington Times,

September 26, 1998

■ Private property serves avital social function often ignoredor trivialized. You don’t have tobe a keen observer to notice thatprivately owned property tends toreceive better care than commu-nally owned property. I’ve oftensaid that I don’t care that muchabout future generations. Whathas a kid who’s going to be born

in 2050 done for me?My actual conduct belies that

sentiment. I own a nice home thatis well cared for. Trees have beenplanted, rooms added, and manyother improvements have beenmade that will outlast me and beavailable for that kid born in 2050.Part of the reason I made sacrificesin current consumption to improvemy house is that the longer itprovides housing services, the moreI get when the house is sold.

The free market and privateproperty rights do not produce aUtopia; we’ll have to wait forheaven for that. But here on Earth,private property rights and freemarkets beat any other socialarrangements in servingmankind’s needs.— Walter Williams,

The Washington Times,

August 16, 1998

■ “There is not a shred ofpersuasive evidence that humanshave been responsible forincreasing global temperatures.During the past 50 years, as atmo-spheric carbon dioxide levels haverisen, scientists have made precisemeasurements of atmospherictemperature. These measurementshave definitively shown thatmajor greenhouse warming of theatmosphere is not occurring andis unlikely ever to occur.”— Arthur Robinson

& Zachary Robinson,The Wall Street Journal,December 4, 1997

■ “Unfortunately for the[global warming] theoreticians,computer models they haveconstructed predict one thing,while the climate keeps doingother things. Although tempera-tures have gone up somethingmore than one degree Fahrenheitover the past century, the increase

took place prior to the spewing ofso-called greenhouse gases fromcars and the like, meaning that therise is most likely natural. Duringthe past 20 years, weather satellitesinform us, atmospheric tempera-tures have actually cooled some.”— Jay Ambrose, Scripps Howard

News Service, August 2, 1997

■ “The climate warming of thepast 100 years, which occurredmainly before 1940, in no waysupports the results of computermodels that predict a drastic futurewarming. Even [the U.N.’s] Inter-governmental Panel on ClimateChange Chairman Bert Bolin hasadmitted that the pre-1940 warmingis likely a natural recovery from aprevious, natural cooling.”— S. Fred Singer, President, The

Science & Environmental PolicyProject, The Wall Street Journal,July 25, 1997

Farm Policy

■ Another absurdity arisingfrom the latest farm [subsidy billbeing considered in Washington,DC]: How can the Congressconsider relief simultaneously forpoor prices and poor production?Some farmers in the Midwest areto receive money because thereare too many harvests, others inthe East because there are toofew. By this strange rationale,farmers are to be paid whetherthey lose their crops to drought,or produce a surfeit and thus helpsaturate the market.

If there were no drought inthe East, farmers of some cropsthere would be subsidized forproducing too much and gettingpaid too little; if there werenatural calamity throughout theMidwest, farmers would be paidfor producing too little ratherthan too much. We need an

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Orwell to figure out why someare considered in need and notothers, or why low prices bring asmuch federal aid as high prices,or why a kind nature is as bad asan adverse one.— Victor Davis Hanson, The Wall

Street Journal, August 10, 1999

■ For some farmers, the bestcrop is the one they don’t harvest.

In west Texas last year, 200farmers obtained federallysubsidized insurance on a type ofcotton that wasn’t feasible togrow in their arid region. Theypaid $4.4 million in premiumsand then claimed nearly $15million in benefits when most ofthe crop failed.

Farmers in North Dakota andsurrounding states recentlyrushed out and bought seed fordurum wheat, even in areas notsuited for the crop, to takeadvantage of a new insurancepolicy offering benefits far higherthan they could earn if they grewand sold ordinary wheat.

The [crop insurance] programhas been costing the governmentmore than $1.5 billion a year, andCongress is considering doublingthat to improve the coverage andmake it less costly to producers —[even though] governmentauditors say the insurance systemis riddled with abuse, conflicts ofinterest, and errors becausetaxpayers bear most of the riskfor losses, not the privatecompanies that sell and servicethe policies.— Philip Brasher, Associated

Press, April 1, 1999

Government

Regulation

■ Add the medium-rare burgerto the endangered list of Americanvices. States including California,

Illinois, and North Carolina haveenacted laws requiring that burgersbe cooked medium to medium well.— The Wall Street Journal,

July 15, 1999

■ Who are the heaviest-dutyregulators? Try the Department ofTransportation, EnvironmentalProtection Agency, Treasury Depart-ment, Department of Agriculture,and Department of Health andHuman Services. The reportcalculates there are 117 rules inthe works that will cost businessesand consumers more than $100million annually; 38 of those willcome from the EPA. Another 70rules costing more than $100million were finalized last year.— The Washington Post,

April 9, 1999

■ Regulation has becomeAmerica’s version of socialism.

A recent report from theCompetitive Enterprise Institute,Ten Thousand Commandments,

tallies the price tag for imple-menting and sustaining federalregulations. The grand total is$688 billion per year.

More than 4,400 newregulations seeped through thebureaucratic pipeline last year,imposing at least $12.5 billionyearly in future costs.

[At least] 125 rules qualifiedfor “economically significant”status: They will cost at least $100million apiece annually.—Dan Miller, Intellectual

Ammunition, November/December 1998

■ The Clinton administrationhas some 4,538 regulations inprocess, 137 of which are“economically significant” andwill cost at least $100 millioneach. The number of these bigrules is up nearly a fifth from just

a year before.There was a time when

reformers thought the answerwas to elect Republicans. Give theGOP control of Congress, it wassaid, and they will rein in theregulators.

Now we know better. Four yearsago, Congress enacted the Cong-ressional Review Act, which requiresall agencies to submit their rulesto Congress. Lawmakers thenhave 60 days to use an expeditedprocess to block the proposals.

Not once has Congress acted.Perhaps every regulation

advanced by the administrationhas been a good one. All 4,684final rules issued in 1999. And the4,899 implemented the yearbefore. And the 4,584 imposed in1997. More than 14,167 newregulations passed after Congressapproved the CRA, and appar-ently not one warranted rejection.— Doug Bandow, The Washington

Times, June 6, 2000

■ Shortly after the NationalMaximum Speed Limit wasrepealed in 1995, the NationalHighway Traffic Safety Adminis-tration (NHTSA) predicted that anadditional 6,400 motorists’ deathswould occur annually, as a resultof rising speed limits.

Now the most recent NHTSAreports show the exact oppositeoccurred: 1997 had the lowesttraffic death rate in the nation’shistory. In 1996, the trafficaccident death rate was 1.7 per100 million miles driven. Thisnumber dropped in 1997 to 1.6per million miles driven.— National Motorists Association

Press Release, October 1998

■ When the casket companyshe worked for went belly-up,executive and stockholder ThelmaJaco was given caskets in return

for her lost investment. So sheopened a casket store. The first inAtlanta, her store offers caskets atprices far below those of funeralhomes.

For doing so she’s facing apenalty of up to a year in prisonand a $1,000 fine. Georgia lawallows only licensed funeraldirectors to sell caskets. This, ofcourse, is to protect the public.

Ask Jim Fowler, executivedirector of the Georgia FuneralDirectors Association. “Themajority of the population, I feel,will still want to deal with someonewho is experienced in service withfamilies upon the death of a lovedone. Folks in a retail establishmentare not those types of people.”

Critics charge that Georgiafuneral homes, thanks to this mono-poly, charge consumers markupsof 300% to 700% on caskets.— The Liberator Online,

October 17, 1998

■ On average, for every newlaw passed by Congress, unelectedbureaucrats turn out 18 newregulations with the force of law.— Paul Harvey, Imprimis,

October 1998

■ For four decades, [auto]safety experts all assumed thatsafer models were better. Nowfederal officials say we werewrong the whole time. NationalHighway Traffic Safety Adminis-tration honchos believe thatbecause the occupants of heaviervehicles fare better in crasheswith lighter vehicles, the heaviervehicles are a safety problem.Oddly, the government is notmandating that small cars bestrengthened.

Lighter cars mandated bygovernment fuel-economystandards are already causing2,200 to 3,900 deaths annually,

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according to a study by theBrookings Institution andHarvard. Paramedics, who witnesstraffic accidents daily, tend to puttheir families in SUVs, pickups, orlarge cars. Let the bureaucratsand insurance executives leavetheir luxury cars and limousinesand drive the subcompacts theyrecommend to us.— David C. Stolinsky, Wall Street

Journal, April 15, 1998

■ Standards for organic foodcan be handled much morecheaply, much more simply, andwith much less bureaucracy, byprivate industry. Organic farmerscould get together and form astandards association. Farmersand food merchants would submitto regular inspections byemployees of the association, andif they meet the standards, theycan display a certificate attestingto that fact. Violators would besubject to civil and criminal actionunder existing fraud statutes, withno need for any additional lawsor regulations.

In a free market, anyone whothinks one association’s standardsare too lax or too strict would befree to start another associationwhich could issue its own certificates.

Utopian? Impractical? Not neces-sarily. That’s how kosher food hasbeen regulated for centuries.— Charles Lembke, KNX Radio,

May 19, 1998

Government Size,

Cost, & Waste

■ The standard definition of acompromise is that each side givesup something to facilitate a deal. InWashington, however, compromisemeans that both sides get morethan they originally asked for;only taxpayers are asked to givesomething up.

Consider last fall’s budgetcompromise. Way back in 1997,the president and Congressagreed that in fiscal year 2000,the federal government wouldspend no more than $580 billionfrom its discretionary accounts.No matter: President Clintonproposed spending $592 billion.After much wrangling, Congressmanaged to get him to agree tospend a mere $617 billion.

“This is how agreements aremade in Washington,” says ScottHodge, a budget analyst at Citizensfor a Sound Economy. “The presi-dent requests a level of spending,Congress approves a slightly loweramount, and after they negotiatethey compromise at a higher levelthan even the president asked for.”

This dynamic was on displayin the agriculture research bill,which funds such worthy items asblueberry research and aquacul-ture studies. Clinton requested$469 million, the Senate ap-proved $474 million, and theycompromised at $486 million.

In the case of education,congressional leadership actuallybragged that they spent $1 billionmore than the president requested.— Michael W. Lynch, Reason,

March 2000

■ In a study funded by the EPA,Kip Viscusi and James Hamilton(1999) have found that EPA clean-ups of Superfund sites cost anaverage of almost $12 billion forevery cancer case prevented. Evenmore amazing is that virtually all— 99.5% — of the cancer casesthat will be averted by EPA effortsare prevented by the first 5% ofthe agency’s expenditures. Theremaining 95% of expendituresavert only 0.5% of the cancercases at a cost per case of anastonishing $200 billion.— PERC Reports, December 1999

■ So what happens when asurplus appears? Politiciansdevour it. [Economist Richard]Vedder and his Ohio Universitycolleague Lowell Galloway havestudied government budgets since1789 and discovered the following:In the last 50 years, 74 cents ofevery surplus dollar has gone fornew spending, 21 cents for debtreduction, and five cents for taxreduction.— Tony Snow, The Washington

Times, July 30, 1999

■ Nearly $6 of every $10 ofSuperfund money is used forpurposes other than toxic materialsclean-up, according to a reportissued by the General AccountingOffice. The majority of all Superfundmoney, the GAO found, goes tooverhead expenses —salaries formanagers and secretaries, rent, andlaboratory work. The GAO also foundthe percentage of money spent oncleanup has been declining forseveral years.— Environmental News,

August 1999

■ Tens of billions of taxpayerdollars are wasted each year onhundreds of federal programs thatduplicate or overlap the work ofother programs. For example, thereare 74 clean water programs, 127programs for “at-risk” youth, 340programs for children and families,64 economic development pro-grams, and 12 food safety programs.— Citizens for a Sound Economy

Issues Analysis, April 2, 1999

■ Government employment atall levels rose by 324,000 in 1998,the largest increase in eight years,the Nelson A. Rockefeller Instituteof Government at State Universityof New York in Albany reported.— The Wall Street Journal,

June 1, 1999

■ The federal government isslated to spend over $200 billionon highways over the next severalyears, [while at the same time]the Environmental ProtectionAgency (EPA) is doling out taxpayerdollars to support anti-highwayactivism at the state and locallevel.

According to Peter Samuel,editor of the Toll Roads Newsletter,

the EPA’s “Transportation Part-ners” program derides road-building as “an expensive short-term fix” that (heaven forbid)“encourages driving,” and isfunding 340 groups in 43 statesthat feel the same way.

Recipients of EPA’s anti-roadlargess range from the BicycleFederation of America to the Envi-ronmental Defense Fund. Thus,American tax dollars don’t just payfor roads, they also pay for thecampaign to stop building them.— Competitive Enterprise Institute

UpDate, January 1999

■ Debate over the size andscope of government has longbeen the stuff of politics, and theupcoming presidential electionwill be no different. Al Gore iscertain to advertise his credentialsas a “New Democrat” by takingcredit for nearly 400,000 jobs cutfrom the federal payroll over thepast five years.

To see the true picture onemust count all the heads,including full-time federal civilservants, uniformed militarypersonnel, postal workers, andpeople who deliver goods andservices on behalf of the federalgovernment under contracts,grants, and mandates to state andlocal government.

When all those numbers areadded together, the federalgovernment looks very bigindeed. In 1996, the most recent

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year for which good numbers areavailable, the true size of govern-ment was just under 17 million,or roughly 10 times as large asthe head count Mr. Clinton usedwhen he announced the end ofbig government. That 17 millionincludes the 1.8 million civilservants in the president’s headcount, plus 1.5 million uniformedmilitary personnel, 850,000 postalworkers, 5.6 million contract em-ployees (of whom 4 million wereworking under service contracts),2.5 million grant employees, and4.7 million state and local employ-ees encumbered under federalmandates.

Although the contract, grant,and mandate numbers are esti-mates, they suggest the presenceof a huge shadow workforce thataccounted for 64 jobs per 1,000Americans in 1996 — not the 11per 1,000 advertised in thatyear’s federal budget.— Paul C. Light, The Wall Street

Journal, January 13, 1999

■ In the first-ever independentaudit of the federal government,number of the 24 major agenciesthat received a passing grade forkeeping basic records in order:Eight.

Value of military equipmentthat cannot be located: $636billion (including a $1 millionsurface-to-air missile launcher, a$423,000 Howitzer cannon, two$875,000 harbor tugboats, andtwo $4 million jet engines).— Playboy, November 1998

■ Economist Wendell Cox hasdiscovered that since 1980, forevery inflation-adjusted dollar ofextra compensation (wages andbenefits) the average privatesector employee has earned, theaverage state and local govern-ment employee has received an

extra $3.00.Over the same period, the

average federal employee hastaken home five times more inadditional compensation than hisprivate sector counterpart.

The average state and localgovernment worker now earnsover 30% more than the averageprivate sector worker, while theaverage federal non-militaryemployee earns 50% more.— Adrian T. Moore, Reason,

February 1998

■ In the year Newt Gingrichbecame Speaker of the House,federal outlays totaled $1.46trillion. This year, federal outlaysare expected to hit $1.7 trillion.By 2002, they are expected to hit$1.9 trillion.

“It is hard to grasp amounts sounfathomably huge, but here is anexercise that may help: Addtogether every penny the federalgovernment spent from 1800 to1940. Adjust the total upward toreflect nearly two centuries ofinflation. You will wind up withless than the $1.7 trillionbudgeted for this fiscal year.— Jeff Jacoby, Syndicated

Columnist, November 3, 1997

■ Amount of money the gov-ernment has spent on the “Waron Cancer” since 1971: $30 billion

■ Change in America’s cancerdeath rate: Increased from 199deaths per 100,000 population to200.9 deaths— Steve Sternberg, USA Today,

May 29, 1997

■ Amount of money thefederal government spendsannually to train new doctors: $7billion

■ Amount of money thefederal government might spendover the next several years to pay

hospitals not to train doctors, toreduce the doctor glut: $9.7 billion.— Amy Goldstein, The Washington

Post, August 24, 1997

■ Number of Americansexposed to radiation by thefederal government’s Cold Warnuclear tests: 230,000

■ Number of Americans whomay develop fatal thyroid cancerbecause of government nucleartests: 10,000 to 75,000— Steve Sternberg, USA Today,

August 4, 1997

■ Amount of money the U.S.Senate spent from 1992-1997 tosubsidize haircuts at the SenateBarber Shop & Beauty Salon: $1.8million

■ In 1998, amount of moneythe U.S. Senate spent to subsidizehaircuts: $180,000

■ Salaries earned by the federalemployees of the Senate BarberShop & Beauty Salon: Barber($62,000 a year); receptionist($47,000); shoe-shine attendant($27,400).— Ed Henry, Roll Call, October 13,

1997 & Andrew Moulton,The Washington Post,November 28, 1997

Gun Rights

■ Guns, like drugs, save livesand money. Research shows thatcitizens use guns two and a half tofive times more often to preventcrimes than to commit them. Indeed,firearms are the most effective wayto protect oneself against criminals— which is why police carry gunsrather than going unarmed orcarrying knives.—H. Sterling Burnett, The Las

Vegas Review-Journal,

December 21, 1999

■ Network television news-casts overwhelmingly promote an

anti-gun view, a new study concludes.“It’s clear that when it comes

to the gun debate, TV news is notan objective referee. It is apartisan player that has chosensides,” said L. Brent Bozell III,chairman of the Media ResearchCenter, which released the study,“Outgunned: How the NetworkNews Media are Spinning the GunControl Debate.”

The two-year study analyzed635 stories on gun policy by fourmajor networks — ABC, CBS, CNNand NBC — and found that while260 stories could be classified asneutral, stories that advocatedmore gun control outnumberedstories that opposed suchmeasures, 357 to 36.

“That translates into anastounding 10-to-l ratio of newssegments advocating gun control— hardly what any objectiveobserver would consider balance,”said Mr. Bozell.

Good Morning America wasthe most anti-gun program,according to the MRC study, with99.7% of its stories advocatinggun control.— The Washington Times,

January 6, 2000

■ My guess is that if you go outand ask people how many gundeaths involve children under age5, or under age 10, in the UnitedStates, they’re going to saythousands. When you tell themthat in 1996 there were 17 gundeaths for children under age 5 inthe United States and 44 forchildren under age 10, they’rejust astounded.

There’s a reason why theybelieve these deaths occur muchmore frequently: If you have agun death in the home involvinga child under age 5, you’re goingto get national news coverage.Five times more children drown

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in bathtubs; more than twice asmany drown in five-gallon waterbuckets around the home. Butthose deaths do not get nationalnews coverage.

This type of news coverage hasconsequences, because it affectspeople’s perceptions of the benefitsand costs of having guns around.Concentrating on gun deaths inthe home, exaggerating the risksof that, creates a false impression.

People are going to die becauseof that false impression. They’renot going to have guns in the home,even though that’s by far the safestcourse of action for them to takewhen they’re confronted by acriminal. You may prevent someof the accidental deaths, butyou’re going to create other typesof deaths because people won’t beable to defend themselves.— John Lott, Reason, January 2000

■ “Gun control? It’s the bestthing you can do for crooks andgangsters. I want you to havenothing. If I’m a bad guy, I’malways gonna have a gun. Safetylocks? You pull the trigger with alock on and I’ll pull the trigger[without a safety lock]. We’ll seewho wins.” (Mobster Sammy “TheBull” Gravano, interviewed byHoward Blum.)— Vanity Fair, September 1999

■ President Clinton goes onGood Morning America to advancewhat he calls the “common sense”idea that guns should be registeredjust like cars.

At last check there was no federalDMV, no waiting period to buy cars,and no limit on the number of carsyou can buy. Nor do the feds monitorcar sales between individuals.

Yet Clinton and other gun-grabberscontinue to make the analogy.— Reason magazine, August/

September 1999

■ Are gun locks, as PresidentClinton says, a “no brainer”? Yes,indeed. The lock-up-the-gunsproposal is great — as long as onedoesn’t think about it carefully.

Contrary to the impressioncreated by sensationalist media,fatal firearms accidents involvingchildren are far from common.According to the National SafetyCouncil, there were about 30 fatalgun deaths in 1995 among kidsage 0 to 4, and less than 40 forkids 5 to 9. This shows that evenwithout legislation from Washing-ton, the overwhelming majorityof families with firearms alreadyknow how to act responsibly.

Any parent knows that a singlechild’s death is unspeakablytragic. Yet the number of toddlerswho die from gun accidents isfewer than the number who diefrom drowning in buckets. Andit’s much lower than the 500 whodie in swimming pools. Yet thePresident is not scoring politicalpoints inveighing against bucketmanufacturers, or demandingfederal laws against unfencedpools in private homes. Politics,not saving children’s lives, is thefoundation of the current anti-guncampaign.— Dave Kopel & Eugene Volokh,

Independence Institute FeatureSyndicate, June 3, 1999

■ In 1994, when the U.S.Congress debated whether to ban“assault weapons,” a talk showhost asked then-Senator Bill Bradley(NJ), a sponsor of the ban,whether guns cause crime. Thehost noted that, in Switzerland,all males are issued assault riflesfor militia service and keep themat home, yet little crime existsthere. Sen. Bradley respondedthat the Swiss “are pretty dull.”

For those who think thattarget shooting is more fun than

golf, however, Switzerland is any-thing but “dull.” By car or train,you see shooting ranges every-where, but few golf courses. Ifthere is a Schuetzenfest (shootingfestival) in town, you will find riflesslung on hat racks in restaurants,and you will encounter men andwomen, old and young, walking,biking and taking the tram withrifles over their shoulders, to andfrom the range. They stroll rightpast the police station and no onebats an eye. (Try this in the U.S.,and a SWAT team might do you in.)

Shooting is the national sport,and the backbone of the nationaldefense as well. More per-capitafirepower exists in Switzerlandthan in any other place in theworld, yet it is one of the safestplaces to be.

According to the U.N. Interna-tional Study on Firearm Regulation,England’s 1994 homicide rate was1.4 (9% involving firearms), andthe robbery rate 116, per 100,000population. In the United States,the homicide rate was 9.0 (70%involving firearms), and therobbery rate 234, per 100,000.

[But] Switzerland, which isawash in guns . . . has substan-tially lower murder and robberyrates than England, where mostguns are banned.

Here are the figures: The SwissFederal Police Office reports thatin 1997 there were 87 intentionalhomicides and 102 attemptedhomicides in the entire country.Some 91 of these 189 murders andattempts involved firearms. Withits population of seven million(including 1.2 million foreigners),Switzerland had a homicide rateof 1.2 per 100,000. There were2,498 robberies (and attemptedrobberies), of which 546 involvedfirearms, resulting in a robberyrate of 36 per 100,000. Almost halfof these crimes were committed

by non-resident foreigners, whomlocals call “criminal tourists.”— Stephen P. Halbrook, The Wall

Street Journal (Europe), June 4,1999

■ While gun ban proponentsand several big cities continue topush forward with their recklesslawsuits against firearm manufac-turers, distributors, and dealers, arecent study by the National Centerfor Policy Analysis has exposedthe suits as being in conflict withtheir alleged goal — recoveringthe cost to the cities due to theaction of criminals and negligentindividuals’ misuse of firearms.

NCPA’s study indicates thatfirearms in the hands of law-abiding citizens save far moremoney in preventing crime andinjuries than criminals cost thecities through their misuse offirearms. The net financial benefitto this country because of firearms,according to the study, ranges ashigh as $38.8 billion, easily dwarfingthe medical and law-enforcementcosts incurred because of theactions of armed criminals.

A copy of this study can befound at http://www.ncpa.org.— NRA-ILA [National Rifle

Association/Institute forLegislative Action] Fax Alert,March 26, 1999

■ A recent study by John Lottand David Mustard of the Univer-sity of Chicago published in theJournal of Legal Studies foundthat concealed handgun lawsreduced murder by 8.5% andsevere assault by 7% from 1977to 1992. Had “right-to-carry” lawsbeen in effect throughout thecountry, there would have been1,600 fewer murders and 60,000fewer assaults every year.— Investors Business Daily,

January 8, 1998

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Health Care

■ The Cleveland [medical]Clinic has landed a contract totreat sick Canadians whootherwise might face long delaysgetting treatment in that country’sovercrowded health care system.

The contract will pay for 6-1/2weeks of radiation therapy, airlinetickets for patients and their spouses,meals, and hotels.

“We have a shortage of radi-ation therapists and the waits havebecome unacceptably long,” saidKristen Jenkins, a spokesman forCancer Care Ontario, an agencythat oversees cancer programs.

About 560 Canadians fromOntario have [already] been sentto the hospital.— The Akron Beacon Journal,

January 23, 2000

■ After the Children’s DefenseFund, a lobbying group, claimedthat 10 million American childrenwere not covered by healthinsurance, the federal governmentresponded by committing $40billion over five years to provideKidcare, with the White Housevowing to sign up at least 5 millionuncovered children by 2000. Butsince the program’s enactment in1997, fewer than 500,000children have enrolled, leadingthe administration to launch a $1billion “outreach” effort, completewith a toll-free telephone number,to sign up more children.

But a survey conducted by theDepartment of Health and HumanServices showed that even amongfamilies with incomes of $10,000or less, 97% of children get all thehealth care they need, and less than2% cite lack of money or insuranceas a reason for not getting care.

And as Robert Goldberg ofWashington’s Ethics and PublicPolicy Center notes, another study

by the National Bureau of EconomicResearch even found that uninsuredchildren tended to be healthierthan those covered by Medicareregardless of income or race, withnotable increases of illness ratesamong low-income children afterstarting to use Medicare.— The Weekly Standard,

March 22, 1999

■ In one of the most embar-rassing setbacks for the EPA inrecent memory, a federal judgehas thrown out the agency’s land-mark 1993 risk assessment linkingsecondhand smoke to cancer.

The ruling, handed down July17, invalidated EPA researchlinking exposure to secondhandsmoke, also known as environ-mental tobacco smoke (ETS), to3,000 cancer deaths each year.

[Critics] argued that the EPAcherry-picked data and ignoredstandard scientific and statisticalpractices to reach its conclusions,an opinion shared by a largenumber of independent scientists.— Environment News,

September 1998

■ A Florida hospice was fined$8.9 million, wiping out profits forfive years, because 176 of 15,426dying patients lived too long.

Medicare rules say that hospicepatients must be within six monthsof death when they are admitted.As the hospice’s executive directorobserved, “this is easier to tellafter the fact than before.”

To avoid fraud penalties in thefuture, a day before the six-monthlimit on life runs out, the hospicewould have to terminate the lifeof patients who have managed tohold on to it.

This is what you get withsocialized medicine.— Paul Craig Roberts, Washington

Times, May 17, 1998

Immigration

■ There is little question thatthe U.S. economy would benefittremendously from increasing H-1bvisas for high-skilled workers.Every additional high-tech workerbrings to the United States about$110,000 of free human capital.High-tech immigration is likereverse foreign aid. Or as BillGates puts it, America’s ability torecruit inventive minds from therest of the world is “one ofAmerica’s greatest advantages inthe global high-tech marketplace.”

So where’s the oppositioncoming from? Some GOPrestrictionists still worry aboutimmigrants stealing jobs fromAmericans . . . [Clinton and Gore]are too beholden to labor bossesto command the immigration highground.

High-skilled immigrants createjobs, they don’t take them. Somestudies have found that everyadditional high-skilled newcomeradds about four new SiliconValley jobs for Americans. H-1bimmigrants are not the world’s“tired, poor huddled masses” orthe “wretched refuse” EmmaLazarus’ torch welcomes. They arethe best and the brightest fromthe rest of the globe.— Stephen Moore, The Washington

Times, September 17, 1998

■ T.J. Rodgers, founder ofCypress Semiconductor onimmigration: “For every foreignengineer you let me bring intothis country and put to work atCypress, I will guarantee you fivenew jobs locally to manufacture amicrochip, sell the chip, ship thechip, market the chip, and adminis-trate the chip. The winners andlosers in the information age willbe differentiated by brain power.

“But we have Senators, like

Ted Kennedy, who don’t see that.They want to send back the first-round draft choices of theintellectual world so that they cancompete against us in theirhomelands. Four out of my 10vice presidents are immigrants.

“Some 35% of my engineersare immigrants. My V.P. ofresearch — the guy who designsmy most advanced chips — isfrom Cuba.”— The New York Times,

March 14, 1998

Industrial Policy

■ [Despite the lobbying to“protect” the U.S. steel industry],there really is no U.S. steel crisis.The decline in steel shipments inthe last half of last year can betraced in part to the GM strike.GM buys about 99% of its steelfrom U.S. producers, so last year’s54-day labor walkout took a biteout of domestic demand. The autounions that struck GM ended upsticking it to the steelworkerswho lost their jobs as a result. Somuch for labor solidarity.

U.S. steel production last yearof 102 million tons was onlyslightly below 1997’s record of105 millions tons; for much of1998, there was actually a steelshortage in the U.S.

What about America’s ownsteel consumers? Even at recordproduction levels, U.S. makers canmeet only about three-fourths ofAmerican steel demand. Importrestraints mean that Americansteel users will pay higher pricesthan their foreign competitors,hurting their sales.

So for every steel job saved byquotas, there may well be manyjobs lost at Deere or Caterpillaror somewhere else.— The Wall Street Journal,

March 16, 1999

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National Debt

■ In 1916, John D. Rockefellerhad enough money to single-handedly pay off the entireAmerican national debt. In 1997,Bill Gates and Warren Buffett puttogether don’t have enoughmoney to pay for two month’sinterest on it.— CoffeeBreak, March 1998

Police &

Government

Power

■ [In the past few years], thePentagon has been equippingpolice departments with M-16s,armored personnel carriers, andgrenade launchers. In all, theDepartment of Defense issued 1.2million pieces of militaryhardware to police departmentsbetween 1995 and 1997.— Cato Policy Report, November/

December 1999

■ Most Americans believe theFBI intentionally covered up itsactions during the BranchDavidian standoff in Waco, Texas,six years ago.

In the aftermath of the FBI’sdisclosure that potentially incen-diary tear gas canisters were usedon the final day of the standoff,57% in an ABCNEWS.com pollthink the bureau has been inten-tionally trying to cover up its actionsat Waco. Just 23% believe its previousdenials were an honest mistake,as the FBI has maintained.— ABCNEWS.com,

September 14, 1999

■ When government controlsboth the economic power ofindividuals and the coercivepower of the state . . . thisviolates a fundamental rule ofhappy living: Never let the people

with all the money and thepeople with all the guns be thesame people.— P.J. O’Rourke, Eat the Rich: A

Treatise on Economics, 1998

■ “There has been a dramaticrise in the number of SpecialWeapons and Tactics (SWAT) teamsand a rapid expansion of their rolessince the early 1980s, accordingto a new study by Peter Kraska, aprofessor of police studies atEastern Kentucky University.

“Kraska surveyed 690 law en-forcement agencies serving citieswith populations of more than50,000. According to his survey,90% have active SWAT teams. Inthe early 1980s, only 60% ofthese cities had such units. Theresearchers found that even insmaller cities and rural communi-ties two of every three policedepartments have SWAT teams, atrend that Kraska calls ‘militariz-ing Mayberry.’

“The SWAT teams wear camo-uflage, body armor and gas masks,and use weapons such as ‘flash-bangs’ (a diversionary device),submachine guns, explosives andchemical weapons. Kraska’ssurvey shows that the SWAT teamsreceive training by active andretired military experts in specialoperations. Some units also havehelicopters and armored person-nel carriers at their disposal.”— NewsBriefs (National Drug

Strategy Network), July 1997

■ Number of federal employ-ees who carry weapons as part oftheir jobs: Almost 60,000.

■ Number of federal agenciesthat arm their workers: 45

■ Which federal employeescarry guns: Poultry inspectors,park rangers, and disaster aidworkers. Plus special agents fromthe Small Business Administra-

tion, NASA, the Department ofEducation, the U.S. Fish & WildlifeService, and the Department ofVeterans Affairs.— Sarah Foster, World Net Daily,

August 15, 1997

■ States that use spy satellites:North Carolina (uses spy satellitephotographs to search for un-reported property improvementsthat might increase property taxassessments); Georgia (the Depart-ment of Revenue uses NASAsatellites to search for impropertimber cutting); Arizona (the Dep-artment of Water Resources usesspy satellite photographs to monitor750,000 acres of state farmland todiscover which farmers don’thave irrigation permits, or exceedwater-use regulations).— Ross Kerber, The Wall Street

Journal, January 23, 1998

Poverty

■ In the United States today, asmaller percentage of the popu-lation suffers from materialdeprivation than at any previoustime in history. And peopleclassified as “poor” in the UnitedStates have incomes that exceed theaverage income of most nations.

Our success in reducing povertyis not a result of government wel-fare programs. Rather, it appearsthat the continuing rising tide ofAmerica’s free-market economy islifting almost all boats.

Some 30 million Americans, orbetween 10 and 15% of the popu-lation, are still classified as poor.At the turn of the century, between40 and 50% of American house-holds had income levels that wouldhave classified them as poor by to-day’s standards. The number of “poor”senior citizens, children, and blacksis half of what it was in 1950.— Cato Policy Analysis,

December 15, 1999

■ How poor are the “poor”?Consider the following statistics,all drawn from governmentreports: The average poor Amer-ican has a third more living spacethan the average Japanese andfour times as much living space asthe average Russian. Seventypercent of poor households own acar; 27% own two or more cars.

Poor children actually consumemore meat than do higher-incomechildren and have average proteinintakes 100% above recom-mended levels.

Indeed, most poor childrentoday are supernourished, growingup, on average, to be one inchtaller and 10 pounds heavier thanthe GIs who stormed the beachesof Normandy in 1941.— Robert Rector, The Wall Street

Journal, September 24, 1998

Privatization

■ Federal Express presidentand CEO Frederick Smith joltedeveryone at a Congressionalsubcommittee hearing on postalreform legislation when hesuggested Congress seriouslyconsider abolition of the USPS[United States Postal Service]because it “is inexorably losing itsstatus as a provider of last resort.[Such] legislation would permitthe USPS to split its products andservices into competitive,operated by a private corporation,and noncompetitive.”

Smith told the panel that theUSPS “must be confined tononcompetitive markets anddismantled as these marketsshrink. Closing down the USPS . . .is an option that ought to beconsidered seriously.”— The Direct NewsLine,

March 8, 1999

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Politicians

■ According to the Center forResponsive Politics, amount corp-orations paid lobbyists in Wash-ington, DC in 1998: $1.42 billion.

■ Number of registeredlobbyists: 20,512.

■ Number of lobbyists pereach of the 535 members ofCongress: 38.— Playboy, March 2000

■ Give tax dollars to politi-cians? Forget about it, mosttaxpayers say.

New IRS figures show a furtherdecline in the percentage of tax-payers who put a checkmark in the“yes” box on their [income tax]return asking if they want to send$3 of their taxes to the presiden-tial election campaign fund.

Based on a sampling ofreturns filed through August, only11.3% of individual income-taxreturns included a “yes” checkmark. That was down from 12.6%in the same period [last year].

The figure has been decliningsteadily from nearly 29% in theearly 1980s.— The Wall Street Journal,

November 10, 1999

■ How representative is “thepeople’s house,” the U.S. House ofRepresentatives? The Center forVoting and Democracy exploresthat question in a new report,“Electing the People’s House:1998,” which contains hundredsof tantalizing facts and figures.With apologies to the incompa-rable “Harper’s Index,” here is asmattering of tidbits from thistreasure trove:

■ Ratio of lawyers in theHouse to lawyers in the voting-age population: 38-to-1.

■ Ratio of college professorsin the House to college professors

among voters: 9-to-1.■ Percentage of eligible voters

who voted in the 1996 Houseelections: 46%.

■ Percentage of eligible voterswho voted for a winningcandidate: 29%.

■ Percentage of voters whovoted for a losing candidate: 37%.

■ Number of the 435 Houseseats where incumbents have no[major party] opposition in thisNovember’s election: 84.

■ Won-lost record in 1996 ofincumbents first elected before1980: 56-2.

■ Won-lost record in 1996 ofincumbents first elected in the1980s: 113-0.— Tom Brazaitis, The Cleveland

Plain Dealer, August 9, 1998

■ Clinton is neither the first, theonly, nor the worst criminal to holdhigh office. As rulers go, he mayeven be above the 50th percentile.

Think of — to confine ourselvesto the recently deceased — Pol Pot,Sani Abacha, and Sam Yorty. Thepoint is that governing somehowseems not to attract, as you mightnaively suppose, the most ardentlylaw-abiding, moral, and ethicalpart of the population. On thecontrary, those who have ruledthroughout history seem to havebeen disproportionately recruitedfrom the lower percentiles.

“Public service” is an inaptexpression for politics. The onlyterm limits most politicians mightsupport would be limits on thelength of prison sentences.— Joseph Sobran, Syndicated

Columnist, June 11, 1998

■ Percentage of Americans whosay politicians tell the truth: 12%

■ Percentage of Americans whosay prostitutes tell the truth: 55%— Fox News Sunday/Opinion

Dynamics, February 1997

■ Americans increasinglysuspect the worst about theirgovernment. They think Uncle Sammay be a mass murderer, or a drugdealer, or a presidential assassin.

For example, 51% of the publicbelieves it is either very likely orsomewhat likely that federalofficials were “directly responsiblefor the assassination of PresidentKennedy” in 1963, according to anationwide poll of 1,009 peopleconducted by Scripps HowardNews Service and Ohio University.

More than one-third of thosesurveyed suspect that the U.S. Navy,either by accident or on purpose,shot down TWA flight 800 nearNew York City. And an even higherpercentage suspect FBI agents delib-erately set the fires that killed 81Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas.— Scripps Howard News Service,

July 5, 1997

Property

Forfeiture

■ Federal agents can seize aperson’s house, car, boat or otherproperty by invoking more than ahundred different federal statutesinvolving everything from wildlife(prosecutors have seized farmequipment from ranchers andfarmers accused of violating theEndangered Species Act) to takingmoney out of the country ormaking large bank withdrawals ordeposits. In Miami, the $150,000home of an elderly Cuban-Americancouple was grabbed after they wereconvicted of holding illegal weeklypoker games for friends andrelatives on their patio. A federalappeals court eventually nixedthe seizure, saying it was anexcessive punishment.

Since 1979, federal seizuresunder forfeiture laws haveincreased 25-fold. More than $5billion in property has been

confiscated from accused privatecitizens and businesses. Seizuresby state and local governmentshave increased a hundredfoldsince the early 1980s, accordingto forfeiture expert Steven Kessler.

The Clinton administration ispushing to make forfeiture lawseven more sweeping. Justice Depart-ment lawyer Irving Gornstein toldthe Supreme Court in November1997 that the government had aright to confiscate practically anyproperty involved in a violationof the law “except that one smallcategory of cases where perhapsthe property is involved in whatmight be a minor infraction, suchas a parking offense.”— James Bovard, USA Today,

May 27, 1999

■ When police raided EstelRogers’ home in 1997, they foundby some accounts nearly $240,000in cash, most of it hidden away ina blue bag in her bedroom. Rogers,an elderly widow who lives in amodest frame house in the Flatwoodscommunity of Lincoln County,claims that the money came froma lifetime of hard work — fromfarming, logging, and sellinghandmade rugs and quilts.

“When I worked and made it,I’d go and put it in my satchel,’’Rogers says of the money, notingthat her father didn’t believe inbanks and taught her not to trustthem either.

The federal government didn’tbuy her story, though, and filed acivil forfeiture action last summeralleging that the money came fromdrug trafficking. An order signedDec. 10 by U.S. District Judge KarlS. Forester allows the governmentto take the cash along withRogers’ house and 38 acres ofland — even though Rogers hasnot been tried or convicted.

“She’s 80 years old, and they’re

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going to put an 80-year-old womanout,’’ says Rogers’ son, Gary. “TheUnited States is no longer a freecountry. There’s other countriesthat have more rights than us.’’— Danville (Kentucky) Advocate

Messenger, March 30, 1999

■ While people are terrified ofprivate crime, they have neglectedto notice how government actionscost them far more than privatecriminals.

The Justice Department estimatedthat total losses from the 7,885bank robberies nationwide in 1994was approximately $28 million.

The same year, federal pros-ecutors confiscated $2.1 billion inproperty, cash, and other goodsin asset forfeiture proceedings.— James Bovard, Freedom In

Chains (St. Martin’s Press, 1999)

Public Opinion

■ In 1954, Americans wereasked how much of the blame forteenage crimes should be placedon comic books. 57% said “some”or “a great deal.”

[In 1999], 64% told Gallupthey blamed the Internet at leastpartly for the mass shootings atColumbine High School.— USA Today, December 31, 1999

■ After seeing an ABC pollindicating that 78% of Americansfavored legislation forcing emplo-yers to pay for employee healthcare, Spy magazine decided to seejust how far people were willingto go in taking “free” goodies ifoffered to them by politicians.

Posing as Congressional staffers,they asked 100 New York-areaworkers this question: “New Yorkis facing stiff competition in dairyproduction. Congressman Leachwants to introduce legislation thatwill stimulate New York dairy

production by requiring employ-ers to provide their full-timeemployees with ice cream. Wouldyou support such a bill?”

A whopping 68% said yes.— The Liberator Online,

August 1998

Smoking

■ What do the public healthofficials in Maine have against DickMetayer’s private smoking club?

Last spring, Maine imposed asmoking ban in restaurants “toprotect employees, as well aspatrons” from inhaling tobaccosmoke. Knowing his customers,Metayer responded to the ban bychanging his restaurant’s format— and the sign above the door —from “Uncle Dick’s FamilyRestaurant” to “Uncle Dick’sSmokers Club.”

He also turned his businessinto a private club by charging a$1.00 annual fee and keeping an850-name member list at the door.The new format ensures that guestsand staff know that smoking is afeature of Metayer’s establish-ment. Both have a choice to dineor work in any of the hundreds ofother restaurants in Maine thatare now smoke-free by law.

Despite Metayer’s efforts, theMaine Bureau of Health has askedthe state Attorney General toforce “Uncle Dick’s Smokers Club”to ban smoking.— Guest Choice Network,

January 2000

■ The government says, with astraight face: “Members of thepublic believed in the truth andcompleteness of the statementsmade by” the [tobacco] compa-nies, and “relied upon the state-ments — and demonstrated thatreliance by purchasing and smokingcigarettes, and by refraining from

trying to quit or reduce theirconsumption of cigarettes.” Butthere are about as many ex-smokers as smokers in America,and history suggests why.

“In my early youth, I wasaddicted to tobacco,” wrote formerpresident John Quincy Adams in1845. “Say, sport, have you got acoffin nail on you?” asks a characterin an O. Henry short story writtenin 1906. The New Dictionary ofAmerican Slang dates the phrase“coffin nail” from the late 19thcentury. Which fact indicates thatthe government, in its suit againstthe tobacco companies, iscommitting the sin — fraud — thatit supposedly is suing about.

Let us stipulate that thecompanies, without which theworld would be better, have beendeceitful about the addictivenessand harmfulness of cigarettes. Butto prove fraud, government mustshow that its tobacco policy hasbeen substantially affected by thecompanies’ duplicities, and thatthe companies preventedgovernment and the public fromknowing the truth. Good luck.— George Will, The Washington

Post, October 3, 1999

■ Smoking is not like measles,striking innocent tots out of theblue. “Very few 12-year-olds haveeven tried a cigarette,” writes MaryGrace Kovar, an epidemiologistwith the National Opinion ResearchCenter in Washington. “The modelage for trying a cigarette is 16.”Smoking is not a disease of children;it is a choice made by adolescents,often to distinguish themselvesfrom children.

Moreover, not just anybodysmokes. Kovar’s analysis notes thatsmokers age 15 to 17 are verymuch more likely than nonsmokersto be alcohol users and skipschool. Adolescents who smoke

tend to be risk takers and rebels.“I think you’ll find the same thingthrough early adulthood, and maybebeyond,” Kovar said. “There is agroup of risk-taking people. I’vealways disliked targeting an agegroup instead of targeting peoplewho need certain kinds of help —but that’s what we do.”

Presumably, adolescents whoare attracted to risk and rebellion— the ones who are most likely tosmoke — are also the ones leastlikely to listen to adults whobluster about making America aland of “tobacco-free kids.” Or,worse still, they may listen andthen decide that not beingtobacco-free is a good way toshow that they are not kids.— Jonathan Rauch, National

Journal, July 10, 1999

■ The architects of California’ssmoking ban routinely claim theypassed the law for the benefit ofemployees. According to a recentsurvey of 300 California bars andtaverns, conducted by KPMG PeatMarwick, the employees could dowith a little less help.

■ Since January 1, 1998, 60%of California’s bars have lostbusiness.

■ Of that group, the averagedecrease in business has been26.2%.

■ 50% report more customerfights and complaints.

■ Almost 30% have had to layoff employees or cut workinghours of shifts.

■ 65% report a loss of regularcustomer business.

■ Employees at 59% of theestablishments report losses in tips.— The Guest Choice Network,

July 1999

■ Members of Congress andother Hill insiders can buycigarettes in the House and Senate

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without paying the District’s heftycigarette tax or its sales tax. TheSenate sells a carton of cigarettesfor $22.90 — $10.40 less than theclosest drug store. At the House, acarton goes for $26.

That annoys some D.C. residents,who pay a 65¢ cigarette tax eachtime they buy a pack and another5.75% sales tax on top of that —especially while lawmakersincreasingly look at cigarette-taxincreases as a way to reap newrevenue while deterring smoking.

“That’s unfair,” said TerrenceCasey, 23, a nonsmoker who livesin the District. “They should betaxed like everyone else.”— The Washington Times,

June 14, 1999

■ As for smoking, its none ofthe government’s damned business!

I am radically pro-tobacco.Tobacco, an aromatic Native Amer-ican herb, has made extraordinarycontributions to Western civili-zation in the past 400 years. Itfocuses thoughts, stimulatesenergy, and improves efficiency.

Like everything else, it can beabused. But tobacco, with all ofits long-term health risks, is a farbetter choice for teenagers thanthe host of other legal and illegaldrugs that are out there, whichdull the mind over time.

Tobacco is a handmaiden ofthe arts — while Ritalin, whichdopes kids into servitude, will bethe end of art as we know it.— Camille Paglia, Salon,

January 20, 1999

■ Anyone proposing stiff taxeson the poor and middle class would,presumably, face an uproar. Butlo, such tax proposals exist andhave barely aroused protest.President Clinton’s [1998] budgetassumes the equivalent of a $1.10per pack increase in cigarette

taxes by 2003. Senator Orrin Hatch(R-UT) has a similar plan. SenatorKent Conrad (D-ND) would raisethe tax by $1.50 a pack by 2001.

How regressive are these pro-posals? Under Conrad’s proposal,someone who smokes a pack aday would pay $547.50 in addedannual taxes. If the smoker made$10,000, that’s 5.5% of income; at$20,000, it’s 2.7%.

What’s being proposed is avast income transfer system inwhich money moves mainly fromsmokers to others. The largesttransfers involve new governmentspending. What justifies taxingsmokers to support this spending?Studies have shown that, becausesmokers die younger, they havelower lifetime health costs thannon-smokers. The latest study, doneby Dutch researchers and pub-lished last year in the New EnglandJournal of Medicine, estimatesthat if no one smoked, health costswould ultimately rise about 5%.— Robert J. Samuelson,

The Washington Post,February 25, 1998

Social Security

■ It is low-income workers,minorities and young people,especially, who are penalizedunder the current [Social Security]system. Heavy payroll taxesconsume cash that could havegone to investment. Over the past17 years, the stocks that make upthe S&P have increased 15-fold.

Is the market risky? In theshort-term, yes, but in the long-term (and that’s the nature ofretirement investment), no — asextensive research has shown.Uncle Sam shouldn’t be aninvestor, but every American should.— James K. Glassman,

The Washington Post,December 8, 1998

■ Allowing the government tocontrol Social Security investmentcould result in “a government bur-eaucrat sitting on every corporateboard.” It is obvious that allowingthe federal government to purchasestocks would give it the ability toobtain a significant, if not acontrolling, share of virtuallyevery major company in America.

Experience has shown thateven a 2% or 3% block of sharescan give an activist shareholdersubstantial influence over thepolicies of publicly tradedcompanies. A nearly infinite list ofcurrent political controversieswould be ripe for restrictions if thefederal government began investingSocial Security funds. Both liberalsand conservatives would havetheir own investment agendas.

Should Social Security fundsbe invested in tobacco companies?Companies that pay high executivesalaries or do not offer healthbenefits? Companies that extendbenefits to the partners of gayemployees?— Cato Institute Press Release,

December 1, 1998

■ Amount of money theaverage black man loses in SocialSecurity payments (becauseAfrican-Americans have a lowerlife expectancy than whites):$10,000— USA Today, December 11, 1997

■ A recent Zobgy Poll asks thisstraightforward question: “Howlikely would you be to supportSocial Security privatization if itallowed you to take your SocialSecurity money and invest it in aretirement account of your choosing?”

A whopping 68.7% of respon-dents said they support privatiza-tion. More than 80% of people 54and younger favor the idea.

And that support cuts across

demographic lines — gender, race,income level, education level,union vs. nonunion, you name it.— Edward H. Crane, Cato Policy

Report, May/June 2000

Sprawl

■ Herbert Gans wrote hisfamous book, The Levittowners,

30 years ago to defend suburbanitesfrom the charge that they were“an uneducated, gullible, pettymass which rejects the culturethat would make it fully human,the good government that wouldcreate the better community, andthe proper planning that woulddo away with the landscape-despoiling little boxes in whichthey live.”

Those attitudes persist to thisday [in Al Gore’s rhetoric aboutsprawl and] a recent report of thePennsylvania commission appointedby [Republican] Governor TomRidge. Identifying urban sprawl asthe single most important environ-mental problem for the Keystonestate, the report declared, “Wemust find ways to prompt individualPennsylvanians to explore theirpersonal lifestyle choices — wherethey choose to live and work,where and how much they traveleach day, how much energy theyconsume or save, and considerchanges in those patterns that willnot only improve the long-termquality of their lives but alsocontribute to a better quality oflife for all citizens of the Com-monwealth.” And this gem camefrom a Republican administration.

The same government thatbrought you urban renewal islikely to make an even worsemess of suburban renewal.— Steven Hayward, The National

Review, March 22, 1999

■ The basic problem with theanti-sprawl crusade [by Vice

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President Al Gore and others] isits flawed statistical foundations.Average commute times haveremained remarkably constantover the past quarter century,having declined from an averageof 22.0 minutes in 1969 to 20.7minutes in 1995.

[In fact,] U.S. automobilecommute times are faster than inmore [public] transit-dependentEurope and Japan.— Wendell Cox, Political Economy

Research Center’s PERCReports, March 1999

Taxation

■ According to the Roper Centerfor Public Opinion, Americans —across all demographic categories— believe that the highest per-centage of income that a familyshould pay in taxes is 25% (ratherthan the current 40%).— Dollars & Sense (National

Taxpayers Union), September/October 1999

■ The major reason the officialU.S. savings rate (a very flawedstatistic) has tumbled is becauseour tax system behaves dysfunc-tionally. The federal income taxdouble and in some cases tripletaxes Americans who save.

First, we tax a worker’s incomewhen it’s earned.

Next, if the money is investedrather than instantly consumed,we tax the capital gains on stocks;we tax the income of the busi-nesses that we own the stocks in;if there are dividend payments,the government imposes a levyon those too. We even tax the 3%or 4% interest income on basicsavings accounts.

If we are fortunate enough todie with money left over afterpaying all those other taxes, thetax collector robs the grave by

snatching away up to 55% of theestate. No wonder one ofAmerica’s top-selling financial self-help books advises Americans to“die broke.”— Stephen Moore, The Washington

Times, September 22, 1999

■ Fox News Opinion Dynamicsconducted a survey. On July 16, theresults were reported on its websiteby Fox News reporter DanaBlanton. One question asked:“Some people say the governmenthas plenty of money of its own andit should be spent on programs.Other people say that the govern-ment has no money except thatwhich it takes from citizens intaxes. Which do you believe?”

Thirty-nine percent of therespondents said the governmenthas no money except what ittakes from citizens in taxes.Eleven percent said neither orthey were not sure. But get this:50% said the government hasplenty of money of its own.

Since government can’t spendwhat it doesn’t first take, thecorrect answer is government hasno money except what it takesfrom its citizens in taxes. Butwhat about that 50% of theAmerican people who believegovernment has plenty of moneyof its own? These are the peoplebig-spending politicians love.

Politicians can convince thesepeople that any elected officialwanting to hold down spendingfor Medicare, food stamps, welfare,you name it is mean-spirited,uncaring, stingy and possibly aracist. After all, if government hasplenty of money of its own, whatelse could explain why apolitician would want to limit orcut government spending?— Walter Williams,

The Washington Times,July 31, 1999

■ According to the TaxFoundation, taxes now consumemore than 38% of the averagefamily’s budget. That is more thanis spent on food, clothing, housing,and transportation combined.

Compare this to the plight ofmedieval serfs. They only had togive the lord of the manor one-third of their output — and theywere considered slaves. So whatdoes that make us?— Daniel Mitchell,

The Washington Times,March 9, 1999

■ For a worker earning$60,000 a year and living in astate with average taxes, thegovernment’s share rises to 36%.The overall tax burden is now atan all-time high. Nearly half theamount taken from workers’paychecks is hidden.

Three ways to bring thosecosts out of hiding are to replacefederal income and payroll taxeswith a national sales tax, torepeal withholding, and toencourage employers to adopt theRight to Know Payroll Form, firstproposed by the Mackinac Centerfor Public Policy. That payrollform itemizes on workers’ paystubs each and every one of thecosts that the employer must bearon behalf of the worker as aresult of government tax andregulatory policies.— Dean Stansel, Cato Policy

Analysis, March 15, 1998

■ The current tax system didnot become the behemoth that itis today overnight. In 1913, whenCongress first began collectingpersonal income taxes, the taxcode was only 15 pages long.Today, it is more than 10,000pages long.

To administer the tax system,the Internal Revenue Service

(IRS) distributes almost eightbillion pages of forms andinstructions a year. Placed end toend, these forms would stretch694,000 miles, or about 28 timesaround the Earth.— Citizens for a Sound Economy’s

Sentinel, June 1998

■ Taxes are now nearly at ahistorical high, more than 19% ofthe Gross Domestic Product. That’sas high as they’ve been since1969, which included the run-upfrom LBJ’s Vietnam surcharge.

Aggregating taxes at all levels,[the non-partisan Tax Foundation]calculates that the median, two-earner family, with a 1996income of $53,000, is now paying38.4% of that in taxes.— The Wall Street Journal,

January 16, 1998

■ The average family of fournow pays more in taxes than forfood, shelter and clothingcombined. Taxes today, as apercentage of income, are threetimes higher than they were just30 years ago.

If the cost of government ismeasured by a fraction of an 8-hour day, today we work forgovernment 2 hours and 49minutes to pay taxes. The nation’seffective tax rate is 35% this year.In 1900, taxes took $1 of every$12 from American workers; in1950, taxes took $1 of every $4;today, taxes take more than $1 ofevery $3. And that does not payfor all of government sincespending has exceeded taxes forthree decades, leading to a $5.3trillion debt.— George Marotta, Journal of

Commerce, May 12, 1997

■ Number of days the averageAmerican had to work in 1998 topay their taxes: 129 (January 1 to

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May 9)■ Number of years the

average American family headwill have to work in their lifetimeto pay taxes: 15-20— The Tax Foundation,

Washington, DC, 1998

■ The root of Japan’s [ongoingeconomic] problem lies in amassive increase in taxes over thelast three decades.

In 1966, total taxes consumedjust 17.8% of GDP in Japan,compared to 24.6% in the U.S.

By 1995, Japan’s tax burdenhad increased by 60% to 28.5% ofGDP, now putting it above theUnited States’ 27.9% figure.

A typical Japanese companypays a total (national) tax rate of57.9%. This is well above the 35%corporate rate in the United States.— Bruce Bartlett, The Washington

Times, March 13, 1998

Victimless

Crimes

■ John Stossel, libertarian’sgift to television, takes up thecause of people who are beingpunished for “victimless crimes”(“Sex, Drugs and ConsentingAdults,” ABC). They include porno-graphers, drug users and sellers,gamblers, ticket scalpers, prostitutes,homosexuals, and sufferers in searchof help in committing suicide.

What the examples of law-breakers being arrested for con-sensual activities have in common,Mr. Stossel argues, is society’s habitof imposing certain moral viewson those who don’t share them.Moreover, he discerns hypocrisyand inconsistency in a state’sefforts to suppress gambling whilepromoting its own lottery and toban marijuana while permittingthe use of alcohol and tobacco.

As for the famous war on

drugs, which has filled thenation’s prisons to little avail, Mr.Stossel observes concisely, “it’swhat happens when you attemptto outlaw something that lots ofpeople want.”— Walter Goodman, The New

York Times, May 26, 1998

■ Number of states whereadultery is a crime: 27 (Penaltiesrange as high as a year in jail anda $1,000 fine.)

■ Number of states wheresodomy is against the law: 20(Maximum sentence: Lifeimprisonment. Even marriedcouples can be prosecuted underthese laws.)

■ Number of states wherefornication — sex betweenunmarried adults — is illegal: 10

■ Number of states cohabita-tion is illegal: 10— Peter McWilliams,

Ain’t Nobody’s Business

If You Do (1996)

Welfare

■ As economist JonathanHobbs stated, “the welfare systemsustains a nationwide welfareindustry of more than 5 millionpublic or private workers . . . Theindustry has demonstrated that itsgoal is not to eliminate poverty,but to expand welfare throughincreased spending.”

In other words, even if welfarerolls are down, we are stillspending enough to sustain thereal welfare bums, i.e, whateconomist Walter Williams callsthe “Poverty Pentagon” — thearmy of politicians, bureaucrats,social workers, government-funded non-profit organizationsand academic researchers whostudy and administer the poor.— Thomas J. DiLorenzo,

The Free Market,January 2000

■ Rather than giving relief,government welfare adds to themisery of the poor. But that isonly half the problem withgovernment welfare. JenniferRoback Morse points out that thesystem tends to corrupt potentialdonors to charity as well.

It gives those able to financereal solutions to poverty anexcuse, “I gave to the taxcollector.” People latch on to thepolitical rhetoric that theproblems of poverty are beingadequately handled by govern-ment. Knowing that they arealready being taxed to supportthose programs, they choose togive less to private charity.

In the process, they lose thedirect contact with the deservingpoor and with it the redemptivequality which charity has for thedonor.— Jim Johnson, Intellectual

Ammunition, June/July 1998

Special thanks to the followingcontributors: Don Ernsberger, LloydAndrew, Bill Williford, KeithConstantine, Ward Bond, DiannePilcher, J. Birchfield, LP of Virginia,Mike Smyth, Mark Messics, CimberleeMothersbaugh, Victoria Linne, CelesteNeumann, Marcy Dormann, MelissaRyan, Kate Swartz, Joanna Parker,Charles Poe, Andy Nousen, JohnDeMeo, Clifford Thies, WayneLangerman, Dick Whitelock, AlanPerlman, Chris Witzky, John Paff,Robert Wilson, Wayne Langerman,Andrew Spark, Scott Frost, PeterCappello, Greg Damian, Jeff Hemphill,Jeffrey Schwartz, M.D., P.C. Elloway,James Taggart, Steven Riegler, ScottShreckhise, David M. Davis, AlanPerlman, Research Etc., Brooke King,Don Hull, Mark Schumann, DonaldWilhelmson, Marc Beauchamp

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