Cato Daily Dispatch for December 11, 2003
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Campaign Finance: The Morning AfterClimate Critics Turn up the Heat on Bush
Ridge Revives Debate on Immigrant Status
Campaign Finance: The Morning After
"Even though it erected formidable new barriers between politicians and deep-pocketed donors, the election law upheld Wednesday by the Supreme Court has not shut down big money in politics," the Los Angeles Times reports. "Instead, creative operatives allied with both parties are constructing new groups to raise and spend political money to get around the law."
Many proponents of campaign finance restrictions are already looking at the decision as a green light for more regulations, but they should know that "the most important factor driving campaign finance upward is 'more government,'" according to Patrick Basham, author of a Cato Institute briefing paper, "It's the Spending, Stupid!: Understanding Campaign Finance in the Big-Government Era". "Taxes and regulations on society have increased the gambit of government at all levels. Increasing government activity leads to more efforts to influence political decisions including spending on campaigns, a relationship confirmed by scholarly studies." Basham is a senior fellow in Cato's Center for Representative Government.
Climate Critics Turn up the Heat on Bush
"Several times at the talks now going on in Milan over a global warming treaty, Bush administration officials have portrayed states' actions to curb heat-trapping gases as evidence of American resolve," The New York Times reports. "But in this country, officials in many of those same states are strongly criticizing the administration's statements, saying their efforts are no substitute for federal action."
Jerry Taylor, Cato's Director of Natural Resource Studies, was quoted in the Times' article. "It's not surprising that the administration, when it goes in front of an international body like this, is going to brag about all the initiatives undertaken on global warming at the state level," he said. "What's the alternative? To go and say we're taking no significant steps and don't intend to in the near future?"
Tomorrow, the Cato Institute will host a full-day conference, "Global Warming: The State of the Debate". A statement on global climate change by Andrei Illarionov, economic adviser to Russian President Vladimir Putin, will be read at the conference. Panelists at the conference will include Indur Goklany of the U.S. Department of the Interior; John Christy, director, Earth System Science Center, University of Alabama at Huntsville; Patrick J. Michaels, senior fellow, Cato Institute, and Peter Van Doren, editor, Regulation magazine.
Ridge Revives Debate on Immigrant Status
"Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge told a Miami audience this week that the U.S. government should consider offering some form of legal status to as many as 12 million illegal immigrants, raising the issue of immigration reform, which was halted by the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks," according to The Washington Post.
In "Willing Workers: Fixing the Problem of Illegal Mexican Migration to the United States", Dan Griswold, Cato's associate director of the Center for Trade Policy Studies, writes that "legalizing Mexican migration would, in one stroke, bring a huge underground market into the open. It would allow American producers in important sectors of our economy to hire the workers they need to grow. It would raise wages and working conditions for millions of low-skilled workers and spur investment in human capital. It would free resources and personnel for the war on terrorism."
Griswold concludes that "President Bush and leaders of both parties in Congress should return to the task of turning America's dysfunctional immigration system into one that is economically rational, humane, and compatible with how Americans actually arrange their lives."
Christopher Kilmer, editor, ckilmer@cato.org
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