Cato Daily Dispatch for March 25, 2002
Paul Benjamin, editor, pbenjamin@cato.orgU.S. to Resume Drug Interdiction Flights in Peru
Parties Develop New Fund-raising Methods
Indian Farmers Fight for Biotech
U.S. to Resume Drug Interdiction Flights in Peru
The Bush administration said on Sunday it hoped to quickly resume a U.S.-backed drug surveillance program over Peru that was suspended a year ago after a Peruvian jet shot down a civilian airplane, killing an American missionary and her baby, Reuters reports.
"We want to restart these air interdiction flights. Let there be no doubt about that," Secretary of State Colin Powell told reporters aboard Air Force One on President Bush's flight from Lima, Peru to San Salvador. "And I expect that we will finish the various review elements ... in the near term. I don't expect this to linger too much longer," Powell added.
The surveillance flights were suspended after a Peruvian military jet shot down a civilian float plane in April 2001, mistakenly suspecting it was involved in drug trafficking. A U.S. surveillance flight had drawn the attention of the Peruvians to the plane, which was carrying a group of missionaries.
Cato executive vice president David Boaz appeared on CNN's Crossfire last April to discuss the downing of the civilian plane and the dangers of the U.S. campaign against drug production in Latin America. Video of his Crossfire appearance is available online.
Parties Develop New Fund-raising Methods
As one major fund-raising route closes, political parties are fast developing another with great potential to raise lots of money at little cost: the Internet, the Associated Press reports.
A new congressional ban on unlimited "soft money" donations to the political parties, which takes effect after the fall election, will make it more important for campaign fund-raisers to collect large numbers of smaller checks.
Direct mail and telephone solicitations are the traditional tools that Republicans and Democrats have relied on to solicit money in large-scale drives. But some candidates in 2000, such as Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., used the Internet to raise money quickly. Now the parties are trying to make better use of Web sites and e-mail to reach far more potential donors at far less expense--and engage supporters in grass-roots campaigning at the same time.
In "Special Interest Reformers," Cato scholar John Samples writes that, "For proponents of regulation, all money is equal, but some money is more equal than others. Looking at the money that remains unregulated - the money that is 'more equal' - tells us a lot about who benefits from new restrictions."
In "Lessons from Washington," former research assistant Michael New writes, "Reducing the incentives of special interests to influence elected officials seems like a far better strategy for reducing corruption than using coercion to restrict the activities of individuals, parties and PACs."
Indian Farmers Fight for Biotech
Indian cotton farmers have sought the right to sow genetically modified (GM) cotton varieties and have threatened to protest if the government fails to permit them to do so, the Indo-Asian News Service reports.
"Give farmers the right to choose, or else the farmers in Andhra Pradesh, Punjab, Haryana, Gujarat and Maharashtra will launch a civil disobedience movement and start commercial cultivation in June," said Sharad Joshi, founder of the farmers coordination group Shetkari Sangathana. Joshi is the former chairman of a task force appointed by the federal government to study the impact of globalization.
Since 1996, India has been testing genetically modified Bt cottonseeds. Farmers from Gujarat and Punjab revealed how they accidentally discovered that the GM varieties were able to withstand attacks by bollworm with just 10 percent of the pesticides normally used. In addition, the crop yield was up to 30 percent higher from the first generation of seeds.
In "Politics and Cynicism Dominate UN Biotech Deliberations," Henry I. Miller of Stanford University notes that, "Paradoxically, almost all developing countries favor restrictive biotech regulation. The environmental regulators in those countries see biotech regulation as a growth industry, and they have been bought off by the promise of resources for 'capacity building' (a UN euphemism for bigger regulatory bureaucracies)."