• SUPPORT CATO
• FOR STUDENTS
• FOR MEDIA
• FREE NEWSLETTERS

• HOME

• ABOUT

• BLOG

• BOOKSTORE

• EVENTS

• EXPERTS

• MULTIMEDIA

• PUBLICATIONS

Books

Reviews & Journals

Public Filings

Policy Studies

Opinion & Commentary

• RESEARCH AREAS

• SPEAKERS BUREAU

• SUPPORT CATO

• CATO UNBOUND

• DOWNSIZING
  GOVERNMENT.ORG

• ELCATO.ORG

Cato Daily Dispatch for December 13, 2002

Subscribe to the Daily Dispatch via email

(Links to outside sources were active as of the date of this dispatch; however, not all news sources maintain links to current stories indefinitely. Some links also may require registration.)

North Korea Announces Reopening of Shuttered Nuclear Plant

According to Voice of America News, "the United States is expressing regret over North Korea's announced intention to reactivate a nuclear power plant shut down as part of a 1994 agreement with Washington.

"Officials say the North Korean decision is 'regrettable' but they say the United States continues to seek a peaceful resolution of the nuclear dispute with Pyongyang and will consult on an appropriate response with friends and allies.

"North Korea had announced earlier Thursday it was restarting its Soviet-era nuclear power plant at Yongbyon, saying it was 'compelled' to act because of an electricity shortage caused by the shut-off of Western fuel-oil shipments to the energy-starved country."

The Cato Institute's vice president for defense and foreign policy studies, Ted Galen Carpenter, issued the following reaction:

"North Korea stunned its East Asian neighbors as well as the American foreign policy community in October by admitting that it was pursuing a uranium enrichment project. Such a project violated the clear intent of the agreement Pyongyang signed in 1994 to freeze its nuclear program. The project also violated North Korea's obligations under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and a 1991 agreement with South Korea to keep the Korean peninsula nonnuclear. Now, Pyongyang has threatened to reactivate the plutonium reactor that was explicitly mothballed under the 1994 framework agreement.

"United States policymakers must ackowledge that the framework agreement is dead and seek other options for dealing with North Korea. Resorting to military force is clearly too dangerous, economic sanctions probably won't work, and trying to bribe North Korea again would be pathetically naive. Instead, the U.S. should warn North Korea that we will not stand in the way of Japan and South Korea if those two countries decide to counter the North by building nuclear arsenals of their own."

In an op-ed appearing in the Financial Times, Carpenter expands on the ideas above, offering a fresh approach to U.S. foreign policy in the troubled region.

Bush Signs Order Permitting Tax Dollars to Fund Religious Groups

President Bush signed an executive order Wednesday permitting greater involvement of the federal government in the funding of religious charities.

The Baltimore Sun reports today: "In a victory for churches and other religious groups that do business with the federal government, President Bush signed an order yesterday allowing taxpayer money to flow to organizations that discriminate in their hiring on the basis of religion.

"Critics called Bush's surprise action an assault on the Constitution's separation of church and state.

"Speaking to religious leaders in Philadelphia, the president declared that 'faith-based' groups play a vital role in communities by providing social services, from feeding the hungry to ending drug addictions. For years, he complained, such groups have been denied federal contracts 'for no good purpose.'

"'If a charity is helping the needy,' he said, 'it should not matter if there is a rabbi on the board or a cross or a crescent on the wall or a religious commitment in the charter.'"

Although many religious charities may perceive the flow of federal dollars to their causes to be a victory, many critics warn that religious charities may develop a dependence on the government that could lead to a loss of integrity for both church and state.

According to Michael Tanner, the Cato Institute's director of health and welfare studies, "already many of the large charities, groups like Catholic Charities and Jewish Federations, Lutheran Social Services and others, receive more money from government than they receive in contributions from their own members. They maintain large lobbying offices in Washington, whose sole job it is to go up and testify at hearings and ask for more tax money. They have ceased being a charity."

In his policy analysis, "Corrupting Charity: Why Government Should Not Fund Faith-Based Charities", Tanner points out that "charitable giving is at a record high; there is no need to risk deepening the involvement of government and religious charity. President Bush should abandon his proposal and leave charities to do what they do best."

Cato hosted a forum in February, 2001, "Government Funding of Faith-Based Initiatives: Compassionate Conservatism or Corrupting Charity?". The panel included Joe Loconte of the Heritage Institute, Melissa Rogers of the Baptist Joint Convention, and Barry Lynn of the Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, who characterized the idea of "faith-based initiatives" as "the worst single idea in modern political theory."

Bush Administration Proposes Increase in Fuel Efficiency Standards

The Associated Press reports that the Bush administration is proposing "that light trucks gradually improve their average fuel economy by 1.5 miles per gallon," a standard close to what automakers were voluntarily aiming to reach. Environmentalists have criticized the proposal, saying it does not go far enough.

"The plan, announced Thursday by the National Highway Traffic Safety Commission, calls for an increase in fuel efficiency from the current 20.7 miles per gallon to 22.2 mpg by the 2007 model year. Agency officials said it is based on what is possible with available technology, without requiring automakers to sacrifice performance or reduce vehicle weight.

"Anything greater may have required automakers to reduce the size of their vehicles, which could put occupants at greater risk in a crash, NHTSA Administrator Jeffrey Runge said.

"'We are very interested in doing whatever we can to enhance fuel economy,' Runge said. 'What we don't want to do is to cause a safety consequence.'

"Environmentalists said the increase is trivial and will not reduce greenhouse gas emissions and foreign oil dependence.

"'The president wants to pose as an advocate of energy conservation while he protects the auto industry's interests,' said Philip E. Clapp, president of the National Environmental Trust."

While energy conservation may be the goal of increased efficiency standards, they are a remarkably ineffective way of achieving it. According to the Cato Institute's chairman, William Niskanen, and Peter VanDoren, editor of "Regulation" magazine, the fuel efficiency mandates are self-defeating. In "Government Should Steer Clear of the Fuel Economy Issue", they argue that "the standards put a damper on new car sales by increasing vehicle price or reducing size, and they reduce the per-mile cost of using cars because the vehicles use less fuel per mile. The lower sales of new cars means longer retention of existing cars. These older cars pollute more and use more gasoline, undermining the purpose of the efficiency standards. The new cars would use less gasoline per mile, which leads people to drive more. The current best estimate is that every 10% increase in the mpg standard results in a 2% increase in vehicle miles traveled."

Fuel efficiency mandates not only result in more fuel consumption, but also result in increased deaths due to the smaller vehicles auto manufacturers must produce to meet the legal standard. In "Smaller Cars Can Save Fuel But Cost Lives", Cato's director of natural resource studies, Jerry Taylor, notes that "the average weight of a car fell to 3,100 pounds in 1989 from 4,100 pounds in 1975, when the fuel standards were first passed by Congress. Although fuel efficiency more than doubled, so did the vulnerability of American motorists." The decreased vehicle sizes auto manufactuerers had to produce to meet the standards "have been directly responsible for between 34,900 and 67,300 highway fatalities over 10 years."

Christopher Kilmer, editor, ckilmer@cato.org