September 26, 2000

Anti-Globalization Protesters Take to the Streets Again
Clinton Pushes to Revive Violence Against Women Act
No Net Tax for California Any Time Soon
Congress Raises Stakes on Internet Gambling Ban

Anti-Globalization Protesters Take to the Streets Again

Black-clad demonstrators hurled Molotov cocktails and cobblestones torn from Prague's historic streets at police yesterday as they tried to shut down annual meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, according to Reuters. The protests were the ugliest since demonstrations against globalization began there during the weekend. One group pelted police with a hail of bottles and rocks and several police were set on fire when a fuel bomb exploded.

Activists had vowed to protest in a non-violent way, blockading delegates inside the meeting building and refusing to let them leave until they agree to abolish the World Bank and the IMF. They say the global lenders do more harm than good in the world's poorest nations.

Anti-capitalist protestors oppose the IMF and World Bank, which they regard as tools of global capitalism bent on keeping Third World countries poor through their policies. In "Globalphobia in the Streets -- Again," Center for Trade Policy Studies Director Brink Lindsey shows how protestors against "globalization" have it all wrong. The institutions they are attacking are not responsible for the policy outcomes they deplore.

In "Abolish the IMF," Steve Hanke writes that the IMF's meddling in the domestic affairs of poor countries stifles liberalization, trade and prosperity. He recommends abolishing the IMF rather than "reinventing" it.

Clinton Pushes to Revive Violence Against Women Act

President Clinton yesterday called on Congress to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act, according to The Washington Post. The bill has been stalled on Capitol Hill and will expire on Saturday unless the GOP leadership moves it to the floor for a vote.

"This is not rocket science. Yes, we're close to an election. . . . But it is wrong to delay this one more hour. Schedule the bill for a vote," Clinton said.

An amicus curiae brief submitted March 17, 1999, by Timothy Lynch, director of Cato's Project on Criminal Justice, and Jarret B. Decker, an attorney and Cato adjunct scholar, asked the Supreme Court to find the Domestic Violence Clauses of VAWA unconstitutional. In "Violence Against Women Act Exceeds Federal Authority," Roger Pilon, vice president for legal affairs at the Cato Institute and director of Cato's Center for Constitutional Studies, wrote that the Supreme Court should not uphold VAWA. Parts of the Act were subsequently struck down by the Supreme Court.

No Net Tax for California Any Time Soon

California Gov. Gray Davis, saying he did not want to stifle e-commerce, vetoed an Internet tax bill yesterday that sought to require retailers with stores in the state to collect taxes for online sales, according to Wired News. But the Democrat, who said policy makers still needed to review the matter, signed two other measures to create a commission to examine sales tax issues in the new economy and another calling for a three-year moratorium on Internet-access taxes.

"Imposing sales taxes on Internet transactions at this point in its young life would send the wrong signal about California's international role as the incubator of the dot-com community," Davis said in announcing his veto.

In "An Internet Tax Nightmare," and "Should Internet Sales Be Taxed?" Trade Policy Analyst Aaron Lukas offers many reasons why Internet taxation would be a bad idea, including the fact that allowing states to tax out-of-state e-commerce would effectively be a tax increase imposed without ever having to bring the issue to a vote. Lukas is also the author of the Policy Analysis "Tax Bytes: A Primer on the Taxation of Electronic Commerce" and recently testified before Congress on "Safeguarding Internet Tax Fairness."

Congress Raises Stakes on Internet Gambling Ban

Since the House failed to approve the Internet Gambling Prohibition Act in July, its champion, Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Virginia), has been rewriting it in hopes of attracting additional support, according to Wired News. House Republicans are in the middle of closed-door negotiations over the revamped bill, which appears likely to restrict Americans from using credit cards at online casinos.

The proposal "says that no money orders or checks or credit cards can be used in an Internet gambling transaction," says Michelle Semones, a spokeswoman for Goodlatte. "If you take away that convenience of using your credit card, you'll lose a lot of customers there."

Tom Bell writes in "Gambler’s Web: Online Betting Can’t Be Stopped -- and Why Washington Shouldn't" that licensed, land-based gambling businesses and the 37 states with lotteries won’t be able to stifle their online gambling competition. Controlling electronic gambling would be an enormous technical feat. He goes on to state in "Internet Gambling: Popular, Inexorable, and (Eventually) Legal" that gambling will inevitably be legalized. In "Don't Give Up the Right to Gamble," mathematician Guy Calvert shows that gambling is a natural human endeavor, entrenched in American history, and that "any coercive effort by the government to eliminate or reduce gambling must compete against that most formidable opponent, human nature." Calvert is also the author of the "Gambling America: Balancing the Risks of Gambling and Its Regulation."

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