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Cato Dispatch for December 11, 2006

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(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.)

Arab States Consider Shared Nuclear Program

"The oil-rich Arab states on the Persian Gulf said Sunday that they will consider starting a joint nuclear program for peaceful purposes," the Associated Press reports. "The announcement comes as the U.S. and its allies allege Iran is developing atomic weapons in violation of treaty commitments and appears to be a muscle-flexing gesture to the gulf's Persian state. It also was sure to ratchet up a nuclear arms race. ... The area's Arab nations have expressed worry over the disputed Iranian nuclear program, which is the focus of a standoff with the West over Tehran's refusal to suspend uranium enrichment. Iran insists its program is for peaceful purposes, including generating electricity."

In "What to Do Before Tehran Gets the Bomb," Ted Galen Carpenter, Cato's vice president for defense and foreign policy studies, writes: "Few Americans want Iran to get nuclear weapons, but as European Union leader Javier Solana conceded, the European-led negotiations to stop it are going nowhere fast. Unless there is an unexpected breakthrough -- and soon -- our leaders face a set of highly imperfect options. The best by far is to try to strike a grand bargain with Iran. Washington should offer to normalize diplomatic and economic relations with Iran, and pledge to refrain from efforts at forcible regime change. In exchange, Tehran would be expected to open its nuclear program to rigorous, on-demand international inspections to guarantee that no nuclear material was diverted from peaceful purposes."

Souring On Milk Regulation

"Most U.S. dairy farmers work within a government system set up in the 1930s to give thousands of small dairies a guaranteed market for their milk and to even out prices for consumers," The Washington Post reports. "Farmers who participate in regional pools operated by the federal government or the states deliver raw milk to cooperatives or food processors. They get a guaranteed price, whether the milk ends up in a gallon jug, cheese, butter or ice cream. ... Developed for a bygone era of small dairies and decentralized milk plants, the system lives on when 3,000-cow dairies are not uncommon and huge cooperatives and food companies dominate the business. Business groups, fiscal conservatives and some dairy organizations have called for Congress to overhaul the complex system of protections and subsidies, which they say is costly to taxpayers and consumers. A recent USDA study acknowledged that 'dairy programs raise the retail price' of milk." 

In "Milking the Customers: The High Cost of U.S. Dairy Policies," Cato trade policy analyst Sallie James writes: "The U.S. dairy program, administered through federal and state governments, subsidizes milk production and raises dairy prices. ... In order to preserve domestic prices above the world prices for dairy products, the U.S. government maintains prohibitively high tariffs on imported dairy products. That invites scorn and retaliation from our trade partners and is one more agricultural program that exposes the United States to charges of hypocrisy as it seeks to paint itself as a country in favor of free markets and opportunity for all. A better policy would be one that allows farmers to make their living, like other entrepreneurs, from markets rather than a government check."

U.S. Incarceration Level Reaches All-Time High

"Tough sentencing laws, record numbers of drug offenders and high crime rates have contributed to the United States having the largest prison population and the highest rate of incarceration in the world, according to criminal justice experts," reports Reuters. "A U.S. Justice Department report released on November 30 showed that a record 7 million people -- or one in every 32 American adults -- were behind bars, on probation or on parole at the end of last year. Of the total, 2.2 million were in prison or jail."

In "Criminalization out of Control," Gene Healy, Cato senior editor and author of Go Directly to Jail: The Criminalization of Almost Everything, writes: "Examples of reflexive criminalization abound. ...Because Congress criminalizes unreflectively, the federal criminal code has become vast and incomprehensible. A research team led by Professor John Baker of Louisiana State Law School recently estimated that there are more than 4,000 separate federal criminal offenses. That number, inexact as it is, vastly understates the breadth of the criminal law, because the federal criminal code, in turn, incorporates by reference tens of thousands of regulatory violations never voted on by Congress. And this burgeoning culture of criminalization reverberates down the law enforcement ladder as local police increasingly use handcuffs and jail to deal with situations that clearly don't warrant it." 

Susan Semeleer, editor, ssemeleer@cato.org