December 15, 2000

Hastert Advises Clintonian Approach to Tax Cuts
Vulnerable to Terrorists, or Vulnerable to the CIA?
Posthumous Vindication for Death Row Inmate
When the Welfare State Replaces Giving

Hastert Advises Clintonian Approach to Tax Cuts

Under the headline "Hastert Tries To Steer Bush Away From Big Tax Cut," The Washington Post reports today that House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) cautioned the incoming Bush administration yesterday against pressing for passage of a big, across-the-board tax cut next year, counseling instead for a piecemeal approach that would attract Democrats.

"We are most successful, especially in tax policy, when we start to take tax ideas and do them one piece at a time," Hastert told reporters. "When you tie the whole pile of tax cuts together, it is really hard to define how they affect people."

One way tax cuts affect people is known for sure: They get to keep the money they worked hard to earn. In "Return the Surplus to Those Who Earned It," Doug Bandow writes that the individual tax burden is huge and giving it back to workers would be a boon to the economy. "Cutting taxes would also be the right thing to do. People are paying too much for too little. The budget is larded with pork, unnecessary programs, special interest subsidies and blatant waste." The Cato Handbook for Congress also calls for drastic tax cuts.

Vulnerable to Terrorists, or Vulnerable to the CIA?

A federal panel warned yesterday that the United States is vulnerable to terrorists wielding weapons of mass destruction, calling for the creation of a new counterterrorism agency and the loosening of restrictions on CIA agents that prevent them from recruiting confidential informants who have committed human rights abuses, according to The Washington Post. The panel, chaired by Virginia Gov. James S. Gilmore III, urges President-elect Bush to bolster U.S. preparedness against terrorist threats within one year.

The Cato Institute recently hosted the policy forum "How Should the United States Respond to Terrorism?" Video of the event can be seen on the Cato Web site.

In "Does U.S. Intervention Overseas Breed Terrorism?" Director of Defense Policy Studies 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.

Posthumous Vindication for Death Row Inmate

An inmate who died of cancer on death row 11 months ago has been cleared by DNA tests in the 1985 rape and murder of an 8-year-old girl, and an aide to Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) said today that he is planning similar tests for other condemned prisoners, according to the Associated Press.

"If the FBI data is accurate, clearly this man should not have been on death row," said Bush spokeswoman Katie Baur.

The Cato Institute recently hosted the forum "Should the Death Penalty be Abolished?" featuring Judge Alex Kozinski of the U.S. Court of Appeals, Cato Adjunct Scholar Jarett Decker and others.

When the Welfare State Replaces Giving

Canada's National Post reports today that according to a new study, Manitobans are the most charitable Canadians and charitable Albertans the most generous, but all Canadians -- especially those east of the Ontario-Quebec border -- are Scrooges compared with their American cousins.

That's because they have less, especially after taxes, to give, the Fraser Institute charges. They say Canadians are about as likely as Americans to donate to charity but tend to give a lot less.

"Contrary to the widely held opinion that Canada is a more giving society, the Canadian provinces, in fact, are strikingly less generous than our American counterparts," said institute analyst Jason Clemens.

In the Cato book, "Generosity: Virtue in Civil Society," moral philosopher Tibor R. Machan places generosity among the human virtues and shows why virtue requires moral choice rather than coercion. He argues that generosity can be cultivated only in freedom because there is no virtue in a compulsory act.

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