• 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 Dispatch for July 20, 2006

Subscribe to the Cato 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.)

Crisis in Lebanon

The Associated Press reports: "Israeli troops met fierce resistance from Hezbollah guerrillas on Lebanese soil Thursday, as the two-front Mideast war continued to bring violence and misery to Lebanon, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and northern Israel."

"A wave of bombings by Israeli warplanes Wednesday killed as many as 70 people, according to Lebanese television, making it the deadliest day since the fighting began on July 12."

Christopher Preble, director of foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute, comments, "Americans are rightly worried about the human tragedy unfolding in Lebanon. They are outraged over the provocations that precipitated the Israeli response, and saddened by the deaths of civilians on both sides. The greatest concern is ensuring that the crisis does not spread into a wider regional war. While there is more than enough blame to go around, the U.S. government should be focused right now on providing safe passage out of the war zone for all Americans who wish to leave. Beyond these immediate concerns, American policymakers should avoid further entangling the United States in the conflict."

Wal-Mart Health Benefit Blues

"A federal judge yesterday overturned a Maryland law that required Wal-Mart Stores Inc. to spend at least 8 percent of its payroll costs on health care for its employees," reports The Washington Times.

"U.S. District Judge J. Frederick Motz ruled that the law violates the Employment Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA), a federal law that sets minimum standards for pensions and health plans. The U.S. Supreme Court has struck down similar state laws that conflict with the federal law, ruling that ERISA pre-empts any state law related to employee benefit plans."

In "Wal-Mart Health Benefit Blues," Cato senior fellow Alan Reynolds writes, "Maryland's mandate does not compel Wal-Mart to spend a dollar more on employee compensation. All it demands is that Wal-Mart pays no more than 92 percent of compensation as wages (or non-health benefits). Compelling Wal-Mart employees to accept a larger fraction of their pay in health insurance rather than cash is a particularly bad deal for housewives and students, usually covered under Dad's family plan. It is also a bad deal for seniors covered by Medicare. The law injures actual and potential Wal-Mart employees in Maryland, particularly housewives, students and seniors seeking relatively easy part-time work. Mothers want to be home to cook dinner when the kids get out of school. Students who have low-priced health insurance through college are not even allowed to work full-time."

In "Healthy Interstate Commerce," a recent post on Cato's daily weblog, Cato@Liberty, Arnold Kling, a Cato adjunct scholar, writes, "The judge who threw out Maryland's Wal-Mart law apparently did so on interstate commerce grounds. ... Maybe that same judge should throw out state health insurance mandates. They have the effect of making it impossible for private health insurance companies to engage in interstate commerce. Once upon a time, the right to engage in interstate commerce free of state regulation was something in the Constitution -- it did not merely depend on Erisa."

Re-Educating Congress

The Des Moines Register reports: "Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack and U.S. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, (D-NY), appeared together here Wednesday to tout a new $220 billion Democratic initiative to send more students to college in the face of soaring tuition rates."

"If enacted, it would create 1 million more college graduates than would have been expected by 2015, they said. Americans must be 'the most innovative and creative people on the face of the Earth, and to do that we have to have young people have access to college,' Vilsack said."

In "The Folly of Federal Policy," Neal McCluskey, a Cato education policy analyst, writes, "Here's how it works: People who want to go to college complain to their representatives in Washington that higher education is too expensive. Politicians, in turn, boost aid to get the petitioners' votes. Colleges, because they know students can now pay it, then raise their tuition to get more money to conduct research, pay higher salaries, and build nicer amenities to attract the now better-healed students. But then the people who complained originally are priced out of college again ... and the cycle repeats."

Holiday Dmitri, editor, hdmitri@cato.org