Cato Daily Dispatch for August 25, 2003
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Troops Facing Back-to-Back Overseas ToursPrices at the Pump: Up, Up and Away
Violent Crime at 30-Year Low
Troops Facing Back-to-Back Overseas Tours
"For the first time since the all-volunteer Army began in 1973, significant numbers of U.S. combat soldiers may have to start serving back-to-back overseas tours of up to a year each in places such as Iraq, Afghanistan and South Korea, top Army officers say," according to USA Today.
"Grappling with large, simultaneous deployments around the world, Army planners are trying to determine how many troops will have to serve extra tours. Based on the forces they must keep in place overseas, planners have concluded they will have no choice but to force thousands of troops to return to new overseas assignments after only a short time at home."
In "After Victory: Toward a New Military Posture in the Persian Gulf,", Christopher Preble, director of foreign policy studies, argues that American troops based in the Persian Gulf should be brought home. Along similar lines, Senior Fellow Doug Bandow argues that U.S. forces stationed for decades on the Korean peninsula should return home as well in "Bring the Troops Home: Ending the Obsolete Korean Commitment".
Prices at the Pump: Up, Up and Away
"Supply shortages pushed average retail gasoline prices up more than 15 cents a gallon nationally during the past two weeks, the largest retail price hike on record since the Lundberg Survey began keeping records 50 years ago," The Associated Press reports.
"The survey of 8,000 service stations on Friday showed an average of all grades of gasoline, including taxes, reached $1.7484 a gallon, just short of the survey's all-time high weighted average of $1.7608 set last March 21, analyst Trilby Lundberg said Sunday."
In "Gasoline Prices: Still Good News", Adjunct Scholar Rob Bradley, president of the Institute for Energy Research, writes: "If gasoline is so much cheaper than other liquids, why is there so much angst when prices rise? Typically, when gas prices surge, the government's first reaction is to investigate the oil industry for 'price gouging.' Since 1973, there has been an average of about one such investigation every two years. None of these studies has found that anti-consumer conspiracies caused prices to rise. Instead, every investigation has concluded that supply and demand fundamentals were at work."
Violent Crime at 30-Year Low
"All the indicators, from the sagging economy to the increase in newly released ex-cons on the street, had led many criminologists to predict the crime rate would go up. But it's not - at least according to the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), released Sunday by the Bureau of Justice Statistics. It found that violent crime and property crime are at a low not seen since 1973," reports the Christian Science Monitor.
"In 2002, there were 23 violent crimes per 1,000 people, compared with 25 victimizations per 1,000 people in 2001. A decade ago, the victimization rate was twice as high, meaning there's been a 54 percent drop in violent crime since 1993."
In "Fighting Back: Crime, Self-Defense, and the Right to Carry a Handgun", attorney Jeffrey R. Snyder writes that "shall-issue" concealed-carry gun laws may be one way of curbing violent crime.
"Citizens have the right to defend themselves against criminal attack--and that the last thing government ought to be doing is stripping its citizens of the most effective means by which they can defend themselves," says Snyder. "Carrying a handgun in public may not be for everyone, but it is a right that government ought to respect."
Jonathan Block, editor, jblock@cato.org