November 01, 2000

Vouchers Gain a Surprising Ally
Investors Credit Themselves with Prosperity
Can Feds Regulate Puddles?

Vouchers Gain a Surprising Ally

In a surprising lead editorial today, The Washington Post spoke favorably of school choice initiatives on the ballot in Michigan and California. Arguing that the present system of government schools has failed many students, the editorial advocates experimentation with vouchers.

It also debunks many of the criticisms of vouchers: "Vouchers would drain money from public schools only as fast as they drain pupils. Students with special needs can be given vouchers of greater value. Schools that accept vouchers, like private schools today, could be held to certain academic and safety standards. Nondiscrimination should be a condition for schools to participate. As under Florida's new law, students could be given the freedom to opt out of religious practices in parochial schools. And the argument about fly-by-night schools suggests that poor parents are less able than others to discern whether their children are learning; presumably schools that succeeded would be schools that survived."

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.

Investors Credit Themselves with Prosperity

Twice as many American families own mutual funds today as in 1992, when Al Gore was first elected vice president, and the stock market has quadrupled since then. But interviews with voters in the last week in the suburbs of St. Louis -- the sort of politically mixed region that has become so important in this year's unusually close presidential race -- show that many of these voters, including Gore supporters, don't credit the Clinton administration for the nation's prosperity and market gains, according to The New York Times.

For some of these voters, the increase in stock ownership and the time spent fretting over 401(k) choices and other investments has brought a greater fluency about the market and economics. They repeatedly cited factors such as gains in worker productivity from the technology boom, and the success of Alan Greenspan, the Federal Reserve chairman, in engineering a smooth monetary policy.

This dramatic demographic change is causing a shift in public opinion away from government programs to investor-friendly policies, according to Richard Nadler in "The Rise of Worker Capitalism." The nation's 76 million stockholders have "internalized their new role as capitalists" and that this change has fundamentally altered the relationship between labor and capital, Nadler writes.

In "Who Gets Credit for America's Great Economy?" Associate Director of Cato's Center for Trade Policy Studies Daniel T. Griswold explains that "venture capitalists, Internet entrepreneurs, globally competitive corporate executives and 130 million working Americans deserve most of the credit for this expansion, not politicians."

Can Feds Regulate Puddles?

The Supreme Court's great continuing federalism debate came to rest yesterday in an unlikely place: an abandoned strip mine in northeastern Illinois that a consortium of suburban Chicago cities and towns proposes to use for a solid-waste landfill, according to The New York Times.

The once-desolate spot is now home to many animal species, including a breeding colony of great blue herons and other migratory birds protected by international treaties. The birds' presence led the Army Corps of Engineers to assert jurisdiction over the 410-acre site under the Clean Water Act, treating the isolated ponds as "waters of the United States," and to deny the necessary permit for dredging and filling the property.

After 13 years, the Solid Waste Agency of Northern Cook County is no closer to getting its landfill project, but it is at the center of one of the Supreme Court term's major cases on the limits of federal power. In arguments before the court yesterday, the regional agency challenged the Army Corps of Engineers' jurisdiction over the site as unauthorized by the Clean Water Act itself.

Vice President for Legal Affairs Roger Pilon testified "On the First Principles of Federalism" in 1995, noting that "the question the people and the states are increasingly putting to Washington is simply this: By what authority do you rule us as you do?" In the Cato Journal article "Federalism and Individual Sovereignty," Nobel laureate in economics James M. Buchanan also discusses the proper role of the federal government.

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