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Cato Daily Dispatch for November 21, 2001

Pennsylvania Abandons School Privatization
U.S. Expands Role In Southeast Asia
Maryland County Declares Tobacco Smoke a Pollutant

Pennsylvania Abandons School Privatization

Pennsylvania Gov. Mark S. Schweiker (R) abandoned today a proposal to privatize the central management of Philadelphia's public school district, a centerpiece of a plan he unveiled three weeks ago to upgrade the city schools, according to The Washington Post. Mayor John F. Street (D) had bitterly opposed handing the administration to a private company, calling it "fantasyland" and refusing to negotiate with Schweiker until it was off the table.

"The mayor made it clear that the management of the central office by a private provider was something he couldn't live with," said the governor's spokesman, Steve Aaron. "The governor was not going to let one issue keep from moving this process forward."

In "The New Trend In Education: For-Profit Schools," Carrie Lips, a former Cato Institute policy analyst, writes that "All children deserve an education marketplace as dynamic as the computer and biotech industries. The existing for-profit education marketplace provides a glimpse of what a thriving, competitive market for education might look like if the United States opened the education sector to competition." Lips analyzes the education marketplace in the Policy Analysis "Edupreneurs: A Survey of For-Profit Education."

U.S. Expands Role In Southeast Asia

The United States will work with countries in Asia-Pacific to fight terrorism, and could extend the campaign to counter piracy, gunrunning, drug and human trafficking, a U.S. military commander said today, according to Reuters.

"The focus of U.S. action would be cooperating with the countries of the region... in sharing the policy that terrorism must be eliminated," Admiral Dennis Blair, commander of U.S. forces in the Pacific, told reporters in the Malaysian capital.

"Those who deal in illegal immigration of people around the region, those who run drugs, those who conduct international crimes, who run guns, they all rely on illegal transportation, illegal finance and networks which we need to squeeze down," Blair said.

Washington on Tuesday said it would provide nearly $100 million in "security assistance" to help Manila fight Abu Sayyaf, a Muslim rebel group that operates in southern Philippines.

"Instead of entangling itself in squabbles of limited international significance, Washington should encourage friendly states to better arm themselves and to create cooperative relationships with each other, for example, through the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and with reliable outside players, particularly India and Japan," writes Senior Fellow Doug Bandow in "Needless Entanglements: Washington's Expanding Security Ties in Southeast Asia". "The United States should adopt a lower military profile in the region and abandon expensive and risky commitments that no longer serve the interests of the American people."

In "Instability in the Philippines: A Case Study for U.S. Disengagement," Bandow argues that the United States should end its security commitments to the Philippines. The main problem facing the Philippines is domestic unrest and separatist violence, Bandow says. Although the Pentagon has attempted to justify its military presence as a means of dealing with humanitarian operations, drug trafficking, terrorism and environmental degradation, he says, "there's little the U.S. military can or should do to address any of them."

Maryland County Declares Tobacco Smoke a Pollutant

The Montgomery County, Md. council yesterday approved one of the most restrictive anti-smoking measures in the nation, setting stiff fines for people who smoke in their homes if it offends their neighbors, according to The Washington Post.

Under the county's new indoor air quality standards, tobacco smoke would be treated in the same manner as other potentially harmful pollutants, such as asbestos, radon, molds or pesticides. If the smoke wafts into a neighbor's home -- whether through a door, a vent or an open window -- that neighbor could complain to the county's Department of Environmental Protection.

Smokers, and in some cases landlords or condominium associations that fail to properly ventilate buildings, would face fines of up to $750 per violation if they failed to take steps to mitigate the problem.

When the nation's strictest public smoking ban took effect in the Washington suburb of Friendship Heights, assistant director of Cato's Project on Global Economic Liberty Jacobo Rodríguez, a nonsmoker who lives there, filed suit against the city and the ordinance was eventually retracted.

Robert A. Levy, Cato's senior fellow in constitutional studies and an expert on tobacco litigation, argues that smoking bans represent meddling, snooping, busybody government at its worst. He says bans are dismissive of the rights of an unpopular minority -- namely smokers -- without any basis in the Constitution, science or logic. "All a nonsmoker has to do to escape unwelcome outdoor tobacco fumes is take a step or two away," says Levy. "That's not too much to ask to promote civility without shutting down all social contact."

"Ordinarily, we rely on common courtesy and mutual respect when individuals relate to one another," Levy says. "But nosy, intrusive government has polarized the dispute between smokers and nonsmokers. As a result, venom has replaced respect and obstinate behavior has replaced common courtesy. It is government, not secondhand smoke, that has poisoned the atmosphere."