December 31, 1998

Gore, environmentalists wrong about reason for 1998's warm temperatures
El Niño created an illusion of rapid global warming, climate expert says

Alarmist claims by Vice President Al Gore that 1998's warmer than normal temperatures result from global warming aren't supported by the scientific evidence, according to a new study published today by the Cato Institute. Climatologist Patrick J. Michaels, professor of environmental science at the University of Virginia and senior fellow in environmental studies at the Cato Institute, writes that "the record temperatures were largely the result of a strong El Niño superimposed on a decade in which temperatures continue to reflect a warming that largely took place in the first half of this century." Satellite data show clearly that "the warmth of 1998 is an anomalous spike rather than a continuation of a warming trend."

In "Long Hot Year: Latest Science Debunks Global Warming Hysteria," Michaels notes that "imposing an El Niño upon an already warm decade creates the illusion of rapid global warming," as he predicted it would in his 1992 Cato Institute book Sound and Fury. The fact is that "observed global warming remains far below the amount predicted by computer models that served as the basis for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change."

Michaels points out that much recent scientific literature has seriously challenged the major claims made by Gore and the environmentalists. He notes that "carbon dioxide is increasing in the atmosphere at a rate below that of most climate-change scenarios because it is being increasingly captured by growing vegetation," and that, perhaps most important, "the direct warming effect of carbon dioxide was overestimated. Even global warming alarmists in the scientific establishment now say that the Kyoto Protocol will have no discernible impact on global climate." A senior scientist at the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research recently calculated that if every nation met its obligations under the Kyoto Protocol, the earth's temperature would be reduced in 2050 by just 0.07°C, an amount "so small that it cannot be reliably measured by ground-based thermometers." In other words, "the benefits of Kyoto are so minuscule as to be unmeasurable."

Other grave predictions have also been shown to be wrong. "The unpredictability of seasonal and annual temperatures has declined significantly. There has been no change in precipitation variability. In the United States, drought has decreased while flooding has not increased."

Policy Analysis no. 329


December 16, 1998

Term limits are fundamentally pro-democratic, reduce inequalities, study says
Voters favor term limits and reelect incumbents: the conundrum explained

"Slogans like 'We have term limits, they're called elections' make just as little sense as saying, 'We have an arms control agreement, it's called unilateral disarmament," because seniority has such a significant effect on a legislator's influence, according to a new study from the Cato Institute.

In a Cato Policy Analysis, "What Term Limits Do That Ordinary Voting Cannot," Harvard Law School professor Einer Elhauge addresses several common questions: "Why do the same voters who vote for term limits also routinely vote to return senior incumbents to office? Why don't they vote the bums out?" The answer is straightforward. "Voting your bum out is not a solution when what you want to do is oust the other districts' bums. For that you need term limits."

Elhauge says that term limits, like the one man, one vote Supreme Court decisions that required roughly equal populations in each congressional district, would have the effect of "reducing inequalities in the distribution of legislative power." Although each district now has the same population, "some districts have highly senior incumbents who wield enormous power, while others have junior legislators with very little power. Thus, without term limits, similarly sized populations have significantly unequal levels of legislative power."

Term limits reduce the unequal distribution of legislative power in several ways, Elhauge points out. "First, term limits reduce the possible difference in seniority. Second, term limits reduce the period of time in which any one district can have a stranglehold on the positions that have the most power." In short, "term limits make democratic choice far freer."

The fact that incumbents tend to get reelected at very high rates even though large majorities of voters favor term limits is perfectly logical, he points out. "A district that ousts its senior incumbent suffers a loss of relative clout in the legislature. To avoid that loss of power, it behooves individual districts to vote to retain their incumbents." In other words, "each district individually has incentives to do what is in the interests of none of the districts collectively: continue to reelect incumbents even if they drift away from the views of their electorates."

The situation is what Elhauge calls a "collective action problem," for which term limits are a collective solution. "If all the districts collectively could agree to oust their senior incumbents simultaneously, no district would suffer a loss of relative power, and each district would gain more accurate representation. Term limits are effectively just such an agreement."

Policy Analysis no. 328


December 15, 1998

Jury verdicts should reflect the "conscience of the community," author says
New book on jury nullification marks the 207th anniversary of the Bill of Rights

In America, "the role of the jury has been minimized, as the power of government has increased," according to a new book from the Cato Institute. But author Clay S. Conrad argues that jury nullification-a jury's decision not to enforce a law-is becoming increasingly widespread as more juries find that the "laws they are asked to enforce are questionable, or even repugnant." Conrad's book, Jury Nullification: The Evolution of a Doctrine, was published today by the Cato Institute and the Carolina Academic Press.

The Bill of Rights guarantees the right to trial by jury in "all criminal prosecutions." A criminal trial jury can nullify-render an independent verdict-by acquitting a defendant who may be factually guilty because the jurors feel that it would be unjust, unconstitutional or simply pointless to convict.

Conrad's book covers the history of jury independence, demonstrating that the founders intended that jury nullification be a strong force in American law. Thomas Jefferson called trial by jury "the only anchor ever yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution." John Adams declared, "It is not only [the juror's] right, but his duty . . . to find the verdict according to his own best understanding, judgment, and conscience, though in direct opposition to the direction of the court."

The jury should serve as a "check on the excesses of democratic government," Conrad says. Today's juries deserve to know that they can refute the "layers upon layers of incompatible and often contradictory or nonsensical laws and procedures" and to act on their conscience, according to Conrad.

Conrad chronicles jury nullification from before the Magna Carta through colonial-era libel cases, the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, the National Prohibition Act and the Vietnam War. He concludes with an examination of recent cases in which juries have refused to convict and an analysis of bills, which have been introduced in several states, that would allow juries to be informed, either by judge or attorney, of their latent power to nullify in the interests of justice.

Jury Nullification: The Evolution of a Doctrine


December 14, 1998

Three years after Dayton agreement, its goal of a unified Bosnia "unrealistic"
Cato study recommends three-way partition overseen by European force

The "General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia-Herzegovina," negotiated at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, and formally signed in Paris on December 14, 1995, has failed to accomplish its main objective and should be abandoned, according to a new study from the Cato Institute. "The Clinton administration's continued and uncritical devotion to the agreement is compromising U.S. national security and saddling the United States with an expensive yet futile nation-building operation of unknown duration," the study says.

In "Rethinking the Dayton Agreement: Bosnia Three Years Later," Cato foreign policy analyst Gary Dempsey says that "what actually exists in Bosnia today is not a nation rebuilding and healing itself but a Potemkin state, a monumental façade erected and maintained by the international community."

The study finds that the "goal of creating a unitary, multiethnic Bosnian state is not realistic." While heavy artillery in Bosnia is now quiet, "the few successes reveal the Dayton Agreement for what it really is: a complicated cease-fire, not a solution to Bosnia's long-term problems. Reintegration has all but stopped, nationalist political parties continue to dominate the political arena, and 85 percent of Bosnians polled still say they will not vote for a candidate from another ethnic group."

Moreover, Dempsey points out that "international reconstruction aid has been plagued by corruption, and Western dollars often end up in the coffers of the very nationalist political parties that are considered the chief obstacles to peace. Economic growth is artificial, privatization has stalled, and the West has begun resorting to increasingly high-handed measures to force Bosnian Croats, Serbs, and Muslims to live under the fiction of one government."

The Clinton administration has refused to consider changing course, however. In September, Secretary of State Madeline Albright declared, "There will be no revision of the Dayton Accords." That "unwillingness to rethink the agreement is ill-conceived," Dempsey says. "The administration needs to jettison its presumption that there are only two options for U.S. policy on Bosnia: adhere to the Dayton Agreement or cut and run. There is another option: a negotiated three-way partition of Bosnia overseen by a European-led transition force. That is the most politically feasible way to create the conditions necessary to allow the departure of U.S. troops at the earliest possible date."

Policy Analysis no. 327


December 4, 1998

Four Cato Institute experts at White House Social Security conference
Cato Project co-chair José Piñera on five-member presidential discussion panel

Four top Cato Institute experts will be key players in next week's White House meeting on Social Security reform, according to Michael Tanner, director of the Cato Project on Social Security Privatization. "We've come a long, long way since the Cato project was launched in August, 1995," Tanner declared. "Then, the Social Security system's impending crisis was little understood, and the idea of offering workers the choice of putting their payroll taxes into personally owned accounts was given little chance of succeeding. Today, things have changed dramatically, and the fact that so many Cato experts have such a prominent role in next week's meeting is a reflection of the very significant shift in opinion on personal accounts."

Tanner said that both of the co-chairs of the Cato Project on Social Security Privatization, José Piñera and William Shipman, will be participants in the White House conference, as will Stephen Moore, Cato's director of fiscal policy studies, and Peter Ferrara, associate policy analyst and coauthor with Tanner of two recent Cato Institute books on the issue, A New Deal for Social Security and Common Cents, Common Dreams.

Piñera is widely known for his role in the world's first effort to privatize pensions in Chile, where he was minister of labor and social security in 1980. He will be one of five members of a panel that will discuss market-oriented approaches to Social Security reform. Others on the panel are Henry Aaron of the Brookings Institution; Carolyn Weaver of the American Enterprise Institute; Robert Ball, former commissioner of Social Security; and Gene Steuerle of the Urban Institute.

William Shipman is a principal at State Street Global Advisors, a large international financial services firm, and the author of several studies on Social Security privatization, including a recent paper on transition costs. Earlier this week, he was the featured Newsmaker speaker on Social Security privatization at the National Press Club. Stephen Moore is one of Washington's leading experts on budget and tax matters, and his most recent Cato publications include "A Fiscal Report Card on the Nation's Governors: 1998" and "A Fiscal Portrait of the Newest Americans." In addition to coauthoring Cato's two most recent books on Social Security, Peter Ferrara was the author of the very first book published by the Cato Institute, Social Security: The Inherent Contradiction, in 1980. He was associate deputy attorney general at the U.S. Department of Justice and is now general counsel and chief economist at Americans for Tax Reform.


December 1, 1998

Government investment of Social Security funds fraught with peril
Threatens free society; opens Pandora's box of government control

There has been a growing consensus that private investment is the key to any Social Security reform. Earlier this year, president Clinton suggested that the only way out of Social Security's looming financial crisis without devastating tax hikes or benefit cuts is to "take advantage of the higher return on investment" in private capital markets. The key questions at the center of the upcoming debate on Social Security's future, according a new study from the Cato Institute, will be, "What kind of private investment? And who should do the investing?"

In "The Perils of Government Investing," Michael Tanner, Cato's director of health and welfare studies, warns that those are critical questions because the implications of government control of investment are potentially fraught with peril. The federal government could potentially become the largest shareholder in American corporations. According to Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, allowing the government to control such an enormous amount of private investment "has very far-reaching potential dangers for a free American economy and a free American society."

"The result could be a government bureaucrat sitting on every corporate board," explains Tanner. "It is obvious that allowing the federal government to purchase stocks would give it the ability to obtain a significant, if not a controlling, share of virtually every major company in America. Experience has shown that even a 2 or 3 percent block of shares can give an activist shareholder substantial influence over the policies of publicly traded companies."

"A nearly infinite list of current political controversies would be ripe for restrictions if the federal government began investing Social Security funds," according to Tanner. "Both liberals and conservatives would have their own investment agendas." For example, should Social Security funds be invested in:

  • Tobacco companies?
  • Companies that make nuclear weapons? Or do business in Burma or Cuba?
  • Companies that pay high executive salaries or do not offer health benefits?
  • Companies that extend benefits to the partners of gay employees?
  • Companies that pollute? Or companies that donate to Planned Parenthood?

The bottom line, warns Tanner, is that government investment of Social Security payroll taxes would result in a dangerous mix of government involvement in corporate governance and social investing.

Briefing Paper no. 43


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