Cato Daily Dispatch for June 7, 2005
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Up in Smoke: Federal Marijuana Ban Overrules State LawsCongress Pushes for Overhaul of Pension-Funding Rules
Blair Wants Climate Change Deal
Up in Smoke: Federal Marijuana Ban Overrules State Laws
"The federal government can prosecute seriously ill patients who use marijuana with a doctor's recommendation, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled yesterday, dealing a major setback to a movement that has seen 10 states adopt laws permitting the drug's medicinal use," reports the San Diego Union-Tribune.
The story continues: "In a decision that caregivers and drug policy analysts have anticipated for weeks, the court said state laws such as California's that allow sick and dying people to grow and smoke marijuana do not protect patients from going to jail."
In "Where's the Compassion: Forget the War on Drugs Already," Cato senior fellow Doug Bandow explains that drug laws are the real dangerous threats to public health and safety. "The only way to protect the public is to guarantee the right of the sick to use marijuana and to stop jailing pot smokers who just want to get high," Bandow writes. "Nothing would be served by imprisoning Rush Limbaugh for his apparent legal transgressions, just as we all are poorer for the millions of people jailed in the government's misbegotten war on drugs over the years. We should treat drug use as a medical, moral, and spiritual issue -- not a criminal one."
Congress Pushes for Overhaul of Pension-Funding Rules
"Fearing that airlines and other struggling industries could present the country with its next S&L crisis, Congress and the White House are pushing an overhaul of pension-funding rules that has been overshadowed by Social Security," according to USA Today. "... More than half of the 100 largest plans had less than their promised benefits on deposit, which the committee's chairman blames on lax rules that are supposed to guarantee full endowment."
Richard Ippolito, chief economist at the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) from 1986 to 1999, writes in "Is Pension Insurance the Next S&L Crisis?": "The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC), the federal agency that insures private-sector defined-benefit pension plans in the event of bankruptcy, is in bad shape financially and rapidly getting worse. From 2000 to 2003, the agency went from a surplus of $9.7 billion to a deficit of $11.2 billion. Pension plan underfunding stands at more than $350 billion. Fully $85 billion is held by pensions whose sponsors have a bond rating below investment grade, including $6.4 billion held by United Airlines, which is in bankruptcy.
"Congress should recognize its shortcomings, and sever its ties to pension insurance. It should make the PBGC a true insurance pool. Pension insurance can continue to be mandatory, but after five years, each pension plan should be allowed to seek coverage in the private sector. In the meantime, the ownership of the pool should be turned over to the sponsors of the defined benefit plans, run by a board of directors elected by the plans according to procedure whereby votes are proportional to covered participants. The members of the pool would be liable for any further deficits that develop and they own any surplus that they create. Congress should pay in an amount that covers the problem they created as of the transfer date, allowing the pool to start fresh."
Blair Wants Climate Change Deal
"Tony Blair is still hoping for a breakthrough on climate change under Britain's presidency of the Group of Eight leading industrial nations and will use his first in-depth discussion on the subject with President George W. Bush on Tuesday to urge further US action," reports the Financial Times.
"Mr. Blair conceded he had been 'very ambitious' to seek consensus on climate change, given the US rejection of limits to its greenhouse gas emissions. But he believes there is more common ground between Americans and Europeans than there appears."
In "Kyoto: The Hidden Cost of Victory in Iraq," Cato senior fellow Patrick J. Michaels predicted in 2003: "It is doubtless that Blair has told Bush the price of military alliance in Iraq: Drop U.S. opposition to Kyoto."
In his Cato book Meltdown: The Predictable Distortion of Global Warming by Scientists, Politicians, and the Media, Michaels explains why all the news we hear about global warming is bad. He argues that when issues compete with each other for monopoly funding by the federal government, a culture of exaggeration is created and the political community then takes credit for having saved us from certain doom.
Holiday Dmitri, editor, hdmitri@cato.org
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