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Cato Policy Report, May/June 1996

To Be Governed...

A collection of newspaper clips that speak for themselves.


Really stupid statement of the day, or "Where can I get stuff for free attached to a check payable to me for 260 percent of its production cost?"

Some time ago, Eastman Kodak brought a case against Fuji for dumping photographic paper in the United States--at 360 percent below cost! As a result, we will soon dedicate a $200 million Fuji facility in Greenwood, S.C. Protectionism not only saves jobs, it creates new ones.

--Sen. Ernest Hollings (D-S.C.) in the Washington Post, Mar. 17, 1996

Which will it be?

A White House spokesman said, "The president is opposed to the privatization of Social Security or efforts to make it less dependable for recipients."

--Washington Post, Apr. 9, 1996

Of course, there were no government-run schools in the days of the Founding Fathers

The Founding Fathers had it right. Only with public education can you have both the unfettered pursuit of individual private interests and a free society.

--Albert Shanker, in Vital Speeches of the Day, Mar. 15, 1996

"Nonpolitical" redistribution

Private accounts would be enormously expensive to administer, as millions of workers would continuously be directing small amounts of new money into stocks and bonds. By tying retirement benefits to the individual's own contributions, the plan strips away much of Government's ability to subsidize low-income families.

A better plan was proposed by a group led by Robert Ball, a former Social Security Commissioner. This group also would invest a substantial fraction of payroll taxes in the stock market. But in this plan, the Government, not individuals, would do the investing--saving overhead costs and preserving the option to redistribute retirement benefits to poorer workers. Under this plan, Government would invest passively--putting money in funds that mirror all companies represented in the stock market--in order to keep politics out of retirement decisions.

--New York Times editorial, Mar. 27, 1996

Making a spectacle of your tax dollars

Helping him become efficient . . . is his "coach," Shannon McDonald of Clutter Begone!, a new company in Alexandria. . . .

"You need some clearance here and to get rid of some of your glasses," she tells Johnson. She holds six pairs aloft. "I get them free from the military," this retired Air Force lieutenant colonel says.

--Washington Post, Apr. 9, 1996

Oh, that clears it up

Six human rights activists from the United States, Mauritania, and Sudan called on African Americans, the U.S. Congress and the U.S. media yesterday to wake up to black slavery in northern Africa and to end the political silence they said effectively condones its existence. . . .

The chief witness was William H. Twaddel, deputy assistant secretary of state for African affairs, who in somewhat elliptical testimony declared that "I don't think anyone is enslaving anyone in Mauritania" but added later, "I'd feel very uncomfortable saying that [slavery] didn't exist." . . . .

Twaddel's testimony was seconded by former representative and Congressional Black Caucus chairman Mervyn M. Dymally of California . . . who appeared as a $120,000-a-year lobbyist for the Mauritanian government. . . . He said, "I don't deny that there may be the appearance of slavery" in Mauritania, but said one has to be careful when one calls it "black slavery. General Colin Powell wouldn't be considered black in Mauritania," he said, and neither would most Jamaicans.

--Washington Post, Mar. 14, 1996

Tart Cherry Producers Sour on Free Market

[Cherry Marketing Institute president Phil] Korson said tart cherry production inspired the quest for a marketing order. Last year farmers grew 384 million pounds of them--87 million pounds more than America wanted to eat. . . .

The basic grower gripe, not surprisingly, is that too many cherries means that prices go into the tank--down to 5 cents per pound in late 1995. According to Korson it costs 27 cents per pound to grow them.

This is what the marketing order is supposed to fix. Growers in Michigan, Utah, and New York, which produce 90 percent of the national crop, would voluntarily limit the yearly available supply to 110 percent of the previous three-year average and would sell it at whatever price the market would bear.

--Washington Post, Mar. 19, 1996

Right, immigrants aren't that dumb

There is no reason to think public schools are a magnet for Mexicans or Haitians to sneak into the United States.

--Chicago Tribune editorial, Apr. 15, 1996

This article originally appeared in the May/June 1996 edition of Cato Policy Report.