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Cato Daily Dispatch for October 13, 2005

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Privatizing the Corps of Engineers
Time to Derail Amtrak
Drug War: The Real Public Threat

Privatizing the Corps of Engineers

"The Army Corps of Engineers is planning to repair New Orleans area levee breaches caused by Hurricane Katrina with fortified walls much stronger than the originals, design documents show," reports the Times-Picayune. "Corps officials say the new designs are intended to compensate for structural weaknesses caused by the breaches -- and for uncertainty over the strength of the original designs.

"'At this time, we haven't fully understood the failure mechanisms at all of these locations,' said Walter Baumy, chief of the engineering division of the corps' New Orleans district. He said the corps is getting feedback from engineering teams investigating the breaches and incorporating that into the designs."

In the latest issue of Cato's Tax & Budget Bulletin, Chris Edwards, Cato's director of tax policy studies, examines the Corps of Engineers and "the inefficiencies that result from federal funding of such local infrastructure." Edwards writes: "A better solution is to privatize and devolve to lower governments the Corp's activities. The New Orleans levees, for example, should be transferred to the State of Louisiana. State, local, and private ownership would better ensure that infrastructure is efficiently maintained and upgraded, and not subject to neglect because of distracted policymakers in far away Washington."

Time to Derail Amtrak

"The Amtrak board has approved an essential step in the Bush administration plan to break up the railroad, voting to carve out the Northeast Corridor, the tracks between Boston and Washington, as a separate division," according to The New York Times.

"The board, made up entirely of Mr. Bush's appointees, voted in a meeting on Sept. 22 to create a new subsidiary to own and manage the corridor, which includes nearly all the track that Amtrak owns. The plan, which would require action by Congress, is to transfer the corridor to a consortium including the federal government and the governments of the states in the region that would share the costs to maintain it."

In the Cato Policy Analysis "Help Passenger Rail by Privatizing Amtrak," Joseph Vranich, a former member of the Amtrak Reform Council, and Edward L. Hudgins, a Cato adjunct scholar, write: "Most Amtrak trains outside of a few high-density, short-distance corridors are a throwback to days gone by. The railroad does not now contribute much to America's mobility, and its future plans, although expensive, spell more of the same. History is clear that increasing subsidies to Amtrak will not solve Amtrak's problems. The nation must create a public-private rail franchise program and eliminate disincentives to private companies that may be interested in taking over promising Amtrak routes."

Drug War: The Real Public Threat

"In the 2005 growing season, CAMP [Campaign Against Marijuana Planting] says it so far has destroyed more [of California's marijuana] plants than ever -- 1.1 million worth $4.5 billion on the street, up from 621,000 plants last year. But agents still lost ground to growers," USA Today reports. "No longer is marijuana cultivation the cottage industry that flourished in the 1960s and '70s after waves of counterculture migrants bought cheap land in the northern California mountains and grew pot for their own use and extra income."

In "Forget the War on Drugs Already," Doug Bandow, a Cato senior fellow, argues that America is "increasingly alone in prosecuting marijuana users. The Netherlands has long tolerated personal possession and allowed cannabis coffee shops. Pot is now available as a prescription drug at pharmacies. Spain no longer arrests recreational drug users; Portugal has decriminalized marijuana use. So has Luxembourg."

Bandow warns: "[T]the 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. 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."

Greg Garner, editor, ggarner@cato.org