December 8, 2000

Senate Pushes to Overhaul Lenient Bankruptcy Laws
Forgiveness For Nonviolent Drug Offenders
No Agreement on Kyoto Protocol

Senate Pushes to Overhaul Lenient Bankruptcy Laws

The Senate approved a major overhaul of the nation's bankruptcy laws today, passing legislation by an overwhelming margin that makes it harder for people to seek legal protection from payment of their debts. The vote was 70 to 28, according to The New York Times.

But the bill's prospects for becoming law are uncertain at best because Congress may not get the opportunity to override President Clinton's threatened veto before lawmakers adjourn for the year. Even so, it is unclear whether an override, which would require a two-thirds vote, would succeed.

In "How to Fix U.S. Personal Bankruptcy Law," Michelle J. White explains that households have a financial incentive to file for bankruptcy, since the value of debts erased by bankruptcy is greater than the amount that must be repaid plus the cost of filing. She urged Congress to obligate people filing for bankruptcy to repay debt from both assets and future earnings. In the Regulation magazine article "Bankruptcy Reform: Principles and Guidelines," Joseph Pomykala explains the origins and state of bankruptcy in the United States.

Forgiveness For Nonviolent Drug Offenders

More than 600 religious leaders are asking President Clinton to commute the sentences of low-level, nonviolent federal drug offenders during his final weeks in office, according to the Associated Press.

The clergy members, calling themselves the Coalition for Jubilee Clemency, delivered the letter to the White House last month, but have not yet received a response. Clinton's own pastor, the Rev. J. Philip Wogaman of Foundry United Methodist Church in Washington, was one of the signers.

The letter asks Clinton to grant clemency to and release on supervised parole federal prisoners who have served at least five years for low-level, nonviolent drug offenses.

"Scores of Americans are serving unconscionably long sentences for drug offenses -- in some cases 20 years or more -- which are grossly out of proportion to the nature and severity of their crimes," the letter said. "These unduly severe sentences violate human rights and waste scarce criminal justice resources."

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 due mostly to non-violent drug offenses. Lynch is the editor of the new Cato book, "Beyond Prohibition: An Adult Approach to Drug Policies in the 21st Century," which explores alternative approaches to drug policy.

No Agreement on Kyoto Protocol

The United States, Canada and the European Union vowed today to continue their efforts to salvage an international agreement on curbing global warming, but a final accord remained elusive, according to The Washington Post.

"We did not reach an agreement [the negotiators] felt they could give" their governments, said Canadian Environment Minister David Anderson of the meeting in Ottawa. But, he added: "They believe they had enough understanding of positions to go back to [their] governments and explain. We have made progress. We believe the Europeans sincerely want an agreement; no one sat on their hands." Participating nations will now have to decide whether negotiators made enough progress to meet again next week in Oslo.

The Ottawa meeting marked the first time the EU and a bloc including the United States, Canada and Japan had met since talks on greenhouse-gas emissions collapsed at The Hague last month.

The EU had accused the United States and Canada of trying to undermine the Kyoto Treaty of 1997, which called for major industrial countries to cut back on such emissions. Many scientists believe that the emissions are raising the Earth's temperature and risking environmental catastrophe in the form of climatic change and rising ocean levels.

In a Cato Institute book, "The Satanic Gases: Clearing the Air About Global Warming," Patrick J. Michaels and Robert C. Balling Jr. explain why global warming is vastly overrated as an environmental threat. The book marshals an impressive array of scientific data, studies and analyses to argue that initial forecasts of rapid global warming were simply wrong. Perhaps more important, the book points out that attempts to "fix" the forecast by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are even more misguided than the original projections. The first and fifth chapters of the book can be read online.

In "Kyoto's Chilling Effects," Michaels writes that the protocol has poor chances of being ratified by the United States as "both Democrats and Republicans can agree that Kyoto will wreck our economy, according to just about every credible study that uses realistic policy assumptions." Director of Natural Resource Studies Jerry Taylor agrees in "Hot Air in Kyoto," stating that "impoverishing society today to avoid a very uncertain problem tomorrow would harm, not help, future generations."

		Palm Computing and Windows CE users: now you can read the Cato Institute's Daily Commentary and Daily Dispatch while you're on the go.

Sign-up and get the Cato Institute's Daily Dispatch in your email every weekday morning.