July 25, 2000

Clinton Releases Testimony, Regrets Waco
Camp David "Exhausting"
Market Solutions to Traffic Congestion

Clinton Releases Testimony, Regrets Waco

With the media focused on the George W. Bush vice-presidential pick, the White House released a 155-page transcript of President Clinton's April testimony in the Justice Department's campaign finance investigation, according to The Washington Post.

In answering questions by Robert J. Conrad Jr., head of the Justice Department's campaign finance task force, Clinton expressed that he "felt personally responsible" for the roughly 80 deaths at Waco, Texas. Clinton believed he "made a terrible mistake" in allowing FBI agents to storm the Branch Davidians' compound.

The president was also pressed about his relationship to Indonesian businessman James Riady who contributed large amounts to his campaigns and who made payments to former Clinton friend Webster L. Hubbell after he left the Justice Department under an ethical cloud in 1994. Clinton said the Riadys never sought special treatment, and instead only pushed generically for closer U.S. relations with China.

This month, the Cato Institute hosted "The Rule of Law in the Wake of Clinton," a day-long conference that featured many notable speakers including ACLU president Nadine Strossen, Sen. Fred Thompson (R - Tennessee), and Cato's Roger Pilon. Sen. Thompson's speech focused on the campaign funding scandals which have surrounded the Clinton administration. The entire conference, along with his remarks, can be heard at the Cato Web site.

Camp David "Exhausting"

Weary Middle East peace negotiators sought to sustain the momentum of their Camp David talks into a 15th day Tuesday, struggling to assemble the intricate puzzle of an Israeli-Palestinian settlement, according to Reuters. President Clinton and Israeli and Palestinian negotiators were working late into the night in talks White House spokesman P.J. Crowley described as "exhaustive and exhausting."

Research Fellow in Foreign Policy Studies and author of "Quagmire: America in the Middle East," Leon Hadar examines the future of Israeli-Palestinian relations in "'Localizing' The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict." Hadar predicts that "the Arab-Israeli Conflict is now in the process of being 'de-internationalized,' transformed from a major regional conflict with enormous global ramifications for the United States and other global players, into a more 'localized' affair that Washington, at the start of the twenty-first century, will be able to treat with certain benign neglect." He makes the case that the United States may begin to see "diminishing returns" and not always be as active in the conflict.

Market Solutions to Traffic Congestion

The Washington Post reports today about a new test program in Seattle designed to alleviate traffic congestion problems. The Flexcar auto-sharing program takes advantage of the fact that the average vehicle sits idle more than 20 hours a day. The program aims to put fewer cars to work more often by having many people share them.

Members pay hourly and per-mile charges to use the cars, which are parked in densely populated areas, within easy walking distance of drivers. Each member has a master key. A numerical password opens the locked boxes inside, where ignition key and Flexcar gas credit card are stored.

In a recent Regulation magazine article, transportation experts Robert W. Poole Jr. and C. Kenneth Orski proposed using High Occupancy Toll lanes to ameliorate traffic congestion and as an alternative to High Occupancy Vehicle lanes. They write that "the way to alleviate congestion is to charge people sufficiently to reduce demand, thus allowing the free flow of vehicles, a principle as elementary and undeniably true as the law of gravity." They also state that a significant benefit of those projects is that they can often be financed, developed, and operated by private firms.

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