November 10, 2000

Voting away the Electoral College?
California Votes to Reduce Prison Population
World Urges U.S. to Lift Cuba Sanctions
Share Your Cable, Government Demands

Voting away the Electoral College?

The presidential election's state of limbo has renewed congressional efforts to abolish the Electoral College and have Americans choose presidents by direct popular vote, according to USA Today.

Several senators and House members said they will start the long, difficult process of trying to amend the Constitution to change the 213-year-old way presidents are elected.

In today's Daily Commentary, "In Defense of the Electoral College," director of the Center for Representative Government John Samples argues that "the Electoral College is an affirmation, rather than a betrayal, of the American republic." He points out that "a state like Montana, with 883,000 residents, gets the same number of Senators as California, with 33 million people. Consistency would require that if we abolish the Electoral College, we rid ourselves of the Senate as well. Are we ready to do that?"

California Votes to Reduce Prison Population

California's enormous prison system, the largest in the Western Hemisphere with more than 162,000 inmates, may be radically altered since voters on Tuesday overwhelmingly approved a measure that will sentence nonviolent drug offenders to treatment instead of prison, according to the New York Times.

Nearly one in three prisoners in California is serving time for a drug-related crime, more per capita than any other state. The new law,Proposition 36, puts California at the forefront of a national movement to change drug laws; it will send first- and second-time nonviolent drug offenders into treatment, reducing the prison population by as many as 36,000 inmates a year, according to the state's nonpartisan Legislative Analyst's Office.

In "Population Bomb Behind Bars," Director of the Project on Criminal Justice Timothy Lynch comments on the fact that the number of incarcerated people surpassed 2 million for the first time this year.

"In California, the Correctional Peace Officers Union has grown so large that it is now a political force," he writes. "With over 27,000 dues-paying prison guards, the union gives political contributions to the candidates who promise to build more prisons, hire more guards, and increase guard salaries and benefits. And the private firms who contract with the prison authorities for assorted supplies are political players too--since they are well aware that as the prison population grows, their revenues rise ever higher."

World Urges U.S. to Lift Cuba Sanctions

The U.N. General Assembly resoundingly criticized the United States today for maintaining sanctions on Cuba for nearly four decades and urged Washington to lift them as soon as possible, the Washington Post reported today.

The nonbinding, Cuban-drafted resolution passed with 167 votes in favor--the widest margin in the nine years that Cuba has brought the initiative to the United Nations. Only the United States, Israel and the Marshall Islands voted against it. Four countries abstained.

In the recent Cato study "A Policy toward Cuba That Serves U.S. Interests," Philip Peters argues that U.S. sanctions have failed to promote change in Cuba and have placed Castro in the world political limelight while renewing his claim to victimhood.

"Whether or not the embargo is lifted completely," he writes, "a policy that respects the rights of Americans to trade with, invest in, and travel to Cuba would more effectively serve U.S. interests in post-Soviet Cuba: defending human rights, helping the Cuban people, and connecting with the generation of Cubans that will govern that country in the early 21st century."

Share Your Cable, Government Demands

The Federal Trade Commission voted Thursday to postpone action on the proposed merger between America Online and Time Warner to give the companies time to address competitive problems raised by their $129 billion deal, according to the Associated Press.

Company officials and FTC staff members have been tussling for weeks over how to implement a requirement that the combined AOL Time Warner open its high-speed cable lines to rival Internet companies.

In "Open Access, Private Interests, and the Emerging Broadband Market," William E. Lee argues that forcing cable owners to share their Internet pipeline is unjustified because cable already faces competition from DSL and wireless broadband services. Open-access rules also violate the First Amendment, Lee says. Since bandwidth is finite, piggybacking Internet Service Providers take up space that could otherwise be used by cable owners to disseminate content of their own choosing.

In "Will the Real Giant Please Stand Up?" Solveig Singleton comments that the government has overreacted to the proposed AOL-Time Warner merger. The real monopolists, she argues, are the agencies that investigate antitrust allegations. "They're slow, over-confident, and the only change seems to be that they get bigger every year. If you want to avoid dealing with them, you have to emigrate to outer space--you don't just turn off the TV," she writes. "If you need an ominous looming giant to worry about, how about the federal government?"

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