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Cato Daily Dispatch for September 28, 2005

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Franklin Delano Bush
Baseball Comes to the Hill
Hotter Trends or Hot Air?

Franklin Delano Bush

"Back-to-back hurricanes have reshaped the geography of the Gulf Coast and the contours of George W. Bush's presidency. [...] Now, in the wake of hurricanes Katrina and Rita -- to the consternation of many in his Republican base -- he is outlining one of the most ambitious domestic goals of any modern president. It is akin to FDR's New Deal, a response to the Depression, and the anti-poverty projects of LBJ's Great Society," USA Today reports.

"Bush and the new Republican Party are turning their backs on Americans who want smaller government," says David Boaz, executive vice president of the Cato Institute. "They're delivering big-government conservatism across the board. But we already have a big-government party. The voters deserve a debate over the size and power of government. They deserve a debate right now on whether it is the responsibility of people in New York and Illinois and Colorado to pay for the education, health care, housing, and business investments of people in Louisiana and Mississippi."

In "The End of Small Government?," William A. Niskanen, chairman of the Cato Institute, writes, "If the era of small government is over, it ended in 2001, not in 2005."

Niskanen continues: "The primary condition that will threaten a substantial increase in the federal spending share of GDP is the combination of unfunded promises for Social Security and Medicare and a substantial increase of the ratio of retirees per worker -- a problem that will become clearer as baby boomers begin to retire in 2008. The primary cost of the war in Iraq and Katrina relief may turn out to be the inability to gain bipartisan attention to these much larger long-term problems. Whether the era of small government is over depends primarily on how these long-term problems are sorted out, not on the temporary spending for the war in Iraq and Katrina relief."

Baseball Comes to the Hill

"Home run king Hank Aaron and other baseball Hall of Famers plan to accompany commissioner Bud Selig on his latest trip to Capitol Hill to discuss steroids," according to USA Today.

The article continues: "The hearing was called to discuss two proposed Senate bills that would standardize drug testing and punishment in major professional sports. Three similar bills have been introduced in the House."

In "Busybodies on Steroids," Cato senior fellow Doug Bandow writes: "Does it matter, for instance, if professional wrestlers take steroids? Hardly. Where adult athletes are willing to risk their health, fans don't care if their role models have feet of clay, and athletic integrity is irrelevant to the sport, why should anyone care? In none of these cases should Washington be concerned."

"Instead, the government should leave adults free to do as they wish," Bandow adds. "A free society is inevitably a messy place. Some people do things that others don't like. Some people make mistakes. They may be making bad decisions. But it is far more important to preserve a free society than to stop athletes from making bad decisions."

Hotter Trends or Hot Air?

"The area covered by sea ice in the Arctic has shrunk for a fourth consecutive year, according to new data released by US scientists," BBC News, reports. "They say that this month sees the lowest extent of ice cover for more than a century. The Arctic climate varies naturally, but the researchers conclude that human-induced global warming is at least partially responsible."

"Note that Arctic ice reaches its minimum in September," argues Patrick Michaels, senior fellow in environmental studies at the Cato Institute. "The sun goes below the horizon on the first day of fall at the North Pole, and things re-freeze very rapidly. It is also worth noting that, from roughly 4,000 - 7,000 years ago, Arctic temperatures were probably about 2 degrees Celsius warmer than they are today, and that local cultures flourished. That means there were three millennia where the late-summer ice was far less than today, and people and animals adapted quite readily. In other words, for approximately 40 percent of the last 7,000 years, there was less ice in the Arctic.

"Further, records from Arctic expeditions in the 19th century show where ships spent the winter. They would do so at the edge of the ice in September. In general, they were in the same positions as today." In Meltdown: The Predictable Distortion of Global Warming by Scientists, Politicians, and the Media, Michaels discusses climate-change science. He cites hundreds of errors and exaggerations in scientific papers, news reports, and television sound bites -- from the "National Assessment" of global warming, a Clinton-era document that used computer models that its authors knew did not work, to the infamous New York Times story about the melting of the North Pole, published in September 2000 and halfheartedly retracted three weeks later.

Holiday Dmitri, editor, hdmitri@cato.org