November 07, 2000

Clinton OK's Debt Relief, Says It's "Good For Our Souls"
Clean Air at Any Cost?
Big Brother in China's Chat Rooms

Clinton OK's Debt Relief, Says It's "Good For Our Souls"

Calling it "good for our souls," President Clinton yesterday signed a foreign aid bill that supplies $435 million to forgive debts of the world's poorest countries, according to The Washington Post. "By lifting the weakest, poorest among us, we lift the rest of us as well," Clinton said.

Clinton said the bill would free poor nations from crushing financial obligations to let them feed and educate their people better.

"It will be good for our economy because it represents an investment in future markets; good for our security because in the long run, it is dangerously destabilizing to have half of the world on the cutting edge of technology while the other half struggles on the bare edge of survival," Clinton said.

The money was contained in an already-signed $14.9 billion foreign aid bill that also increased military aid for Israel, and provided $100 million to the new government in Serbia and $300 million to fight HIV infections and AIDS around the world. With the funding, the International Monetary Fund expects to provide 20 of the world's poorest countries with debt relief by Dec. 31, officials said.

In "Shell Games Won't Help Africa," Director of the Project on Global Economic Liberty Ian Vasquez explains that the "need" for debt forgiveness is a testament to the fact that loans have not worked. He writes that loans have "subsidized regimes whose policies have destroyed their national economies." In "Debt and Dependency Are the IMF's Legacy," Senior Fellow Doug Bandow writes that international lending "failed to promote self-sustaining economic growth anywhere in the world. Instead, it has left debt and dependency in its wake."

Clean Air at Any Cost?

Nationwide clean-air standards are at stake in a major environmental case that asks the Supreme Court whether the government must consider compliance costs - and not just health benefits - in setting air-quality limits, according to the Associated Press.

Industry groups are asking the justices to rule that the Environmental Protection Agency must weigh the cost of reducing harmful emissions against the benefits of improved air quality.

The Clinton administration argues that the EPA is not supposed to consider costs in setting the national air-quality standard. The government wants the justices to reverse a lower court ruling that said the EPA went too far in adopting tougher clean-air standards in 1997.

In "The EPA's Clean Air-ogance," Steven J. Milloy and Michael Gough, commenting on air standards, show how "a close inspection of the EPA proposal shows that it lacks a sound basis in science." In "Time to Reopen the Clean Air Act: Clearing Away the Regulatory Smog," K.H. Jones and Jonathan Adler make the case for revisiting the Clean Air Act to reduce EPA regulations such as "mandatory carpooling and enhanced inspection and maintenance programs to technology standards for factory emissions and new emissions controls on lawn mowers, snow blowers, chain saws, and the like."

Big Brother in China's Chat Rooms

China has tightened its grip on Web sites offering news reports and will require chat rooms to use only officially approved topics, according to the Associated Press.

The new regulations, published Tuesday in state-run newspapers, would likely create more headaches for Chinese Web sites, already reeling from tough competition and a shortage of investment funds. But it could boost government-controlled media struggling to enter the Internet age.

The rules require general portal sites to use news from state-controlled media, seek special permission to offer news from foreign media and meet strict editorial conditions to generate their own news. Failure to do so could result in warnings, temporary suspension or permanent shutdown, the rules said.

Only state media would be allowed to set up news sites and even then only with government approval, the rules said.

Speaking in Shanghai three years ago, Cato President Edward H. Crane said that "as world trade develops, as the peoples of the globe get to know one another, to appreciate the traditions of other cultures, to form communities through the Internet and other means that transcend mere political boundaries, they will develop a growing distrust of and disinterest in the pronouncements of the political class." He added that "control over how human beings communicate with each other around the globe -- efforts at censorship are increasingly futile. And that is good news."

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