October 31, 2000

Voucher Initiatives Flunking with Voters
Cities Take the Lead on Death Penalty Moratoriums
Space Cowboys

Voucher Initiatives Flunking with Voters

School voucher ballot initiatives are failing badly in the latest polls out of California and Michigan, according to The Washington Post. Although supporters are well funded and have a clear message, the ballot initiatives also face formidable opposition, funded by the teachers' unions and headed by a broad coalition of civic and political leadership.

With few days left for the expensive campaigns, the California proposition appears headed for a big defeat and late polls show support eroding rapidly for the Michigan measure -- an outcome that would continue the frustration of voucher advocates, who have yet to win a statewide vote anywhere.

The school voucher issue is debated in "Vouchers and Educational Freedom: A Debate," by Joseph L. Bast, David Harmer, and Douglas Dewey. In "What Would a School Voucher Buy?" Executive Vice President David Boaz and R. Morris Barrett explain that $3,000 a year would go a long way toward buying a quality education.

Cities Take the Lead on Death Penalty Moratoriums

The New York Times reports today about growing support for a moratorium on executions in North Carolina that may be representative of a broader national trend. The story tells of the Charlotte city council, which recently adopted a measure calling for a two-year halt to capital punishment while steps are taken to ensure that it is administered justly.

With a statewide moratorium campaign being waged by clergy, civic leaders, lawyers and citizens' groups, Charlotte became the seventh municipality in North Carolina, and the largest, to pass such a resolution since mid-1999. The latest was Greensboro, where the City Council acted in early October with the support of three members who are death-penalty advocates.

The North Carolina cities joined more than two dozen other municipalities, including Philadelphia, Atlanta, Baltimore and San Francisco, that have also adopted moratorium resolutions.

The Cato Institute recently hosted the forum "Should the Death Penalty be Abolished?" featuring Judge Alex Kozinski of the U.S. Court of Appeals, Cato Adjunct Scholar Jarett Decker and others.

In "Are You Death Qualified?" Clay S. Conrad writes about the unique jury selection procedure for capital cases known as "death qualification," in which any citizen with qualms about inflicting death can be disqualified from jury duty. As a result, Conrad writes that "of the over three thousand people on death row in America (the overwhelming majority of whom are guilty), not a single one has received a trial before a jury representative of the community in which they were tried. In each and every case, the juries who tried these prisoners were biased against them." Women and minorities are removed from the panels at a much higher rate than are white males.

Space Cowboys

Two Russians and an American blasted off for the $60 billion International Space Station today, according to Reuters. They will be the first people to live on the station.

Their stay is supposed to last about four months, longer if NASA's ambitious launch schedule slips. In the end, they will be swapped for another crew -- this one with two Americans and one Russian -- who will arrive on a space shuttle. Other ``Expedition Crews'' will follow, rotating one after another until the station is completely constructed sometime in 2006 or later. After that, the crews will get larger, the stays perhaps longer.

The road to launch has not been easy, however. The project's cost has been estimated at triple its original budget, and its funding has been under constant threat.

In “Time to Privatize NASA,” Edward Hudgins writes: “Why are no regularly scheduled commercial spaceflights available for [Senator John] Glenn to book? Because no government agency that runs with the efficiency of the Pentagon and the U.S. Postal Service will ever realize the dream of commercially viable orbiting stations or moon bases.” In “A Tale of Two Spaceships,” he examines the different track records of the airline industry and the government-regulated space industry. Hudgins recommends in the Cato Handbook for Congress that NASA be privatized.

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