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Cato Daily Dispatch for January 18, 2005

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Cheney Supports Larger Personal Accounts
Neocons Looking Toward Regime Change in Iran
Deadline Looms for D.C. Stadium Private Financing

Cheney Supports Larger Personal Accounts

"Vice President Dick Cheney is playing a potentially pivotal role in shaping the Bush administration's ambitious domestic agenda, supporting larger personal investment accounts for Social Security than many other Republicans and helping gauge how the White House should proceed on Capitol Hill," the New York Times reports.

"On Social Security, Cheney, in internal administration discussions, has been advocating that the personal accounts Bush wants to create within the retirement system be at the large end of what has been under consideration, a position likely to hearten many conservatives in Congress who also want to establish the biggest possible accounts, they say."

In "Large Accounts and Small Cash Deficits: Increasing Personal Account Size within a Fiscally Responsible Social Security Reform Framework," Andrew G. Biggs, former assistant director of the Cato Institute's Project on Social Security Choice, argues that it is possible to reform Social Security and incorporate "large personal accounts within a structure that meets the concerns of fiscal-responsibility supporters of reform."

"A broadly supported personal accounts proposal need not be a watered-down compromise that pleases neither advocates of individual ownership nor guardians of fiscal responsibility," Biggs argues. "In fact, it is possible to construct personal account plans that garner enthusiastic support across the broad spectrum favoring reform."

Neocons Looking Toward Regime Change in Iran

"Having adopted legislation in the past aimed at Cuba and Iraq, similar groups of Republicans and Democrats in Congress are currently setting their sights on promoting 'regime change' in Iran," the Financial Times reports.

"As a result, new exiled Iranian opposition groups backed by some of Washington's neoconservatives are springing up in the hope of seeing large doses of U.S. funding."

In "Iran: Déjà Vu All Over Again," Charles V. Peña, director of defense policy studies, writes: "The bottom line, however, is that Iran, like Iraq, is not a direct military threat to the United States, even if it possesses weapons of mass destruction. The terrorist groups Iran supports are anti-Israeli and do not currently target the United States. And the allegations of linkages to al Qaeda are as tenuous as the claims made about Iraq. ... It would be folly for the United States to wage another war against another Muslim nation after Afghanistan and Iraq."

Deadline Looms for D.C. Stadium Private Financing

"Private investors had until noon today to make their pitch for a portion of the new D.C. ballpark," the Associated Press reports.

"The City Council wants private financing found for the new stadium that will be home to the Washington Nationals. The city can rely on publicly financed bonds for the project if private financing doesn't work out."

The Cato study, "Caught Stealing: Debunking the Economic Case for D.C. Baseball," shows that professional sports teams are not engines of economic development and the government-subsidized stadiums teams demand have little, if any, positive effect on a city's economy.

Professors Dennis Coates and Brad R. Humphreys of, respectively, the University of Maryland, Baltimore County and the University of Illinois, write: "Rooting for the team might provide satisfaction to many local baseball fans. That is hardly a reason for the city government to subsidize the team. D.C. policymakers should not be mesmerized by faulty impact studies that claim that a baseball team and a new stadium can be an engine of economic growth."

Jonathan Block, editor, jblock@cato.org