December 2, 1999

Large Loopholes
Lax Airport Safety
McCain’s Army?
Unstoppable Online Gambling

Large Loopholes

Despite laws that limit campaign spending on presidential primaries, candidates still manage to find plenty of loopholes. According to today’s Washington Post, a clever candidate can turn the New Hampshire primary limit of $660,000 into a $6 million spending spree. In Iowa, candidates will also most likely spend more than the $1.1 million state cap.

In "Why Campaign Finance Reform Never Works," Bradley A. Smith writes that spending caps choke both challengers and incumbents. In his policy analysis "Campaign Finance Regulation: Faulty Assumptions and Undemocratic Consequences," he finds that the notion that large sums are spent on campaigns is wrong -- total spending for candidates for all offices is less than $10 per eligible voter every two years.

Lax Airport Safety

A new Transportation Department report says airport security is so lax in many of the country’s busiest airports that investigators were not only able to gain access to restricted areas unnoticed, but were also able to seat themselves on departing planes without a ticket -- highlighting the difficulties the government and airlines face in combating terrorists.

In "Does U.S. Intervention Overseas Breed Terrorism?" Ivan Eland writes that there may be too much focus on deterring terrorism rather than understanding what motivates it. He concludes that a strong correlation exists between U.S. involvement in international situations and an increase in terrorist attacks against the United States. Doug Bandow opines in "A Foreign Policy for Terrorists" that most of those who hate America "would leave us alone if we left them alone."

McCain’s Army?

Presidential contender John McCain yesterday said he would employ a "rogue-state rollback" against outlaw regimes such as Saddam Hussein’s in Iraq, according to the Washington Times. McCain said he would use covert freedom fighters and other means to remove the dictator from power.

But the threat Saddam Hussein poses to U.S. security is overblown and our current policy of trying to overthrow Saddam is futile, writes David Isenberg in "Imperial Overreach: Washington’s Dubious Strategy to Overthrow Saddam Hussein." He recommends that general economic sanctions be replaced with a limited export control process that would restrict Iraq’s ability to rearm.

Unstoppable Online Gambling

The Second Annual Internet Gaming International Innovator Awards were recently presented in London, with prizes going "to those entities that have done the most to expand the boundaries, and enhance the credibility, of the online gaming industry." Winners included the offshore division of the Government of Antigua, and a company who is perfecting online sports wagering in the United States.

Tom Bell writes in "Gambler’s Web: Online Betting Can’t Be Stopped -- and Why Washington Shouldn’t" that licensed, land-based gambling businesses and the 37 states with lotteries won’t be able to stifle their online gambling competition. Controlling electronic gambling would be an enormous technical feat. He goes on to state in the policy analysis "Internet Gambling: Popular, Inexorable, and (Eventually) Legal" that gambling will inevitably be legalized.