-Caveat Lector- Would it be fair to state that with the rapist-in-chief tooting in the WH theater, the homos pushing a video in elementary public school classrooms their lifestyle is acceptable behavior, and terrorists being released, our federal government is slightly out of control? Has the moral majority become a moral minority? Woe to those who gave birth to the scum of the '60s generation. Bard -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, September 01, 1999 8:31 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Cato Daily Dispatch Cato Daily Dispatch September 1, 1999 by Peter J.M. Orvetti, Manager of Editorial Services http://www.cato.org/ http://www.cato.org/dispatch/09-01-99d.html In today's Cato Daily Dispatch, Reno is on the defensive over Waco, the Russian IMF scandal hits Gore hard, selling a national sales tax in Arizona, and a school fundraiser for disqualified Cleveland voucher students. Reno On The Run Over Waco? The resurgence of Waco leads the news again today, with CNN reporting that House Government Reform and Oversight Committee Chairman Dan Burton (R-Ind.) has subpoenaed White House officials to answer new questions about the 1993 conflagration at the Branch Davidian religious site. "I want to find out if [Attorney General] Janet Reno and the Justice Department hierarchy knew about it and if they did and kept a lid on it, why did they do that? And if they didn't know about it, why didn't they do a thorough investigation?" Burton said Monday. Unconfirmed reports suggest that Reno and FBI Director Louis Freeh may announce a plan to seek an outside investigation of Waco headed by neither the FBI nor the Justice Department. The New York Times leads today with Freeh's public support for an outside inquiry. A Cato Briefing Paper http://www.cato.org/pubs/briefs/bp-050es.html released on August 26 addresses what can go wrong when law enforcement starts acting like the military: "Over the past 20 years Congress has encouraged the U.S. military to supply intelligence, equipment, and training to civilian police. That encouragement has spawned a culture of paramilitarism in American law enforcement. The 1980s and 1990s have seen marked changes in the number of state and local paramilitary units, in their mission and deployment, and in their tactical armament. According to a recent academic survey, nearly 90 percent of the police departments surveyed in cities with populations over 50,000 had paramilitary units, as did 70 percent of the departments surveyed in communities with populations under 50,000. The Pentagon has been equipping those units with M-16s, armored personnel carriers, and grenade launchers. The police paramilitary units also conduct training exercises with active duty Army Rangers and Navy SEALs. State and local police departments are increasingly accepting the military as a model for their behavior and outlook. The sharing of training and technology is producing a shared mindset. The problem is that the mindset of the soldier is simply not appropriate for the civilian police officer. Police officers confront not an "enemy" but individuals who are protected by the Bill of Rights. Confusing the police function with the military function can lead to dangerous and unintended consequences-such as unnecessary shootings and killings." At a 1996 Cato Policy Forum, former Sen. Malcolm Wallop said, "I am concerned about the use of the military in domestic law enforcement activity. That is wrong. It ought to outrage Americans. It ought to outrage the military, and I believe it does. I have been told time and time again by military personnel that it is not their job to police Americans and that it sets a very dangerous precedent. Constitutionally, it is not the role of the military to work with federal, state, and local law authorities in law enforcement activities. We see from the Waco disaster what can happen when military operations collide with federal, state, and local law enforcement procedures," according to the Cato Policy Report http://www.cato.org/pubs/policy_report/cpr-18n6-5.html . Gore Gored By Banking Scandal The Russian financial scandal is continuing its groundswell and has burst into the presidential race, with rivals from both parties openly linking Vice President Al Gore's closeness to Russian leaders with the alleged improprieties. Gore's sole major Democratic opponent, Bill Bradley, openly attacked the Clinton administration's Russia policy, though did not mention Gore by name. But Republican Steve Forbes is running a radio ad stating that "Vice President Gore co-chairs the commission which oversees U.S.-Russia relations, but his aides say he was out of the loop. That's why Steve Forbes is fighting for change: immediately block all foreign aid to Russia until their workers are paid and root out the corruption of Russia's robber barons." Republican Elizabeth Dole chimed in by saying "Vice President Gore has failed in his only major foreign policy effort." On the front page of USA Today, Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers tells the paper that the United States will not support any more International Monetary Fund credits for Russia until there has been an adequate accounting of the money that has already been lent. Summers tells USA Today that the Justice Department does not have evidence "at this time" to bolster claims that IMF money might have been diverted by organized crime through at least one New York bank. The IMF is scheduled to release soon another $640 million to Russia under an already agreed $4.5 billion loan package. But "[t]he United States will not support disbursement of the next [installment] without adequate safeguards to assure that any funds disbursed are used properly [and] without adequate accounting," Summers said in the interview. House Banking Committee Chairman Jim Leach told MSNBC that "[c]learly the loan payment shouldn't go out if it's going to be handled the way the past has been handled. If money is to be stolen it shouldn't be transferred. It appears that communism has come to an end, but democracy really hasn't taken root. What you really have is a kleptocracy, a government that has institutionalized theft at its heart." Was Russian corruption inevitable? A June Cato Policy Analysis http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-348es.html argues that "Russia needs a genuinely capitalist monetary system. The system should have two pillars: the U.S. dollar, Russia's de facto free-enterprise money, and sound banks. Foreign banks should be allowed to compete on equal terms with Russian banks. The central bank should be eliminated, and with it the privileged access of some Russian banks to the resources of the Russian government. Similar reforms have been implemented at least in part in other former socialist countries with good results. In addition to fostering economic growth, the reforms have been politically popular. The U.S. government and international institutions should learn from the experience of those countries and stop supporting Russia's current monetary institutions." And last year, Anna J. Schwartz of the National Bureau of Economic Research wrote in a Cato Foreign Policy Briefing http://www.cato.org/pubs/fpbriefs/fpb-048es.html that it is time to get rid of the International Monetary Fund altogether: "The International Monetary Fund and the U.S. Treasury Department's Exchange Stabilization Fund are undemocratic institutions unaccountable for their actions. Their current functions have little to do with their original missions. The ESF is used by the executive branch to circumvent Congress in the provision of foreign aid. Its foreign exchange interventions have, in any event, always been wasteful and ineffective at controlling the relative price of the U.S. dollar. The IMF has also been used to provide massive bailouts in the cases of Mexico in 1995 and of Asian countries since 1997. Defenders of the IMF as an international lender of last resort are misinformed since the IMF does not and cannot serve that purpose. Both institutions should be abolished, not reformed, because they are not needed to resolve currency crises and they preclude superior solutions." Cato Institute Chairman William A. Niskanen testified on "The IMF and U.S. International Policy" http://www.cato.org/testimony/ct-wn050598.html before the Joint Economic Committee in 1998. Cutting-Edge Taxes The Arizona Republic reported last week on that state's residents' skepticism about a national sales tax proposal. Americans for Fair Taxation and U.S. Rep. Matt Salmon (R-Ariz.), brought a 23 percent sales tax plan to a news conference in Arizona last week, noting that the tax would replace all the money the government has been collecting for Social Security, Medicare and the entire cost of running the federal government. But the National Retail Federation fears that a sales tax could stifle commerce. "This may fly in states with no or low sales taxes, but what kind of competitive position does that put us in?" asked the group's representative. "The Economic Impact of Replacing Federal Income Taxes With a Sales Tax" http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa193.html is addressed in a Cato Briefing Paper by Laurence J. Kotlikoff, who writes that "[a] national sales tax would eliminate many of the distortions of current income taxes. It would do away with the differential tax treatment of corporate and noncorporate businesses, which distorts business decisions; of capital gains and dividends, which affects decisions about retaining earnings; and of investment in equipment, structures, and inventories. A sales tax would also end encouragement of current relative to future consumption, the tax exemption for health insurance premiums, and the work disincentive associated with the progressivity of the present tax structure. A national sales tax could be made progressive by combining it with a refundable tax credit. Each household could file a form requesting the tax credit and receive a check from the Internal Revenue Service equal to the amount of credit for which the household qualified." Another Cato Policy Analysis http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa222.html concludes, "A tax system with 17,000 pages of law and regulation few citizens understand is not suitable for a free society. Similarly, a federal agency that cannot adequately maintain its own accounting ledgers is poorly suited to police those of individual and business taxpayers. The tax system of a free society must necessarily release the American people from the burdens of compliance and the hassle of dealing with an error-prone enforcement agency. The potential for enforcement abuse is too great to allow a government agency to continue to wield the power of the [Internal Revenue Service], particularly given its dismal track record of accountability. An increasingly viable alternative is to eliminate the income tax system and the agency that administers it... The IRS can no longer be trusted. The income tax is no longer sustainable. Americans should abolish it in favor of a national sales tax." In 1995 testimony http://www.cato.org/testimony/ct-it68.html before the House Ways and Means Committee, Stephen Moore said that "[a]lthough Congress may not be ready quite yet to enact a flat tax or a national sales tax, let me assure you that the public is. Americans are entirely exasperated with the current income tax--they want a system that is simpler, fairer and more pro-growth� I favor a national sales tax because I believe that the income tax is incompatible with a free society. The IRS routinely intrudes on our basic civil liberties and privacy rights--and it's intrusions are getting worse all the time. I want an America where it is no longer the government's business how much money you make and what you do with it." A Collection For Cleveland The School Choice Committee is seeking $2 million in donations to keep Cleveland voucher students in school, AP reports. Judge Solomon Oliver is allowing continuing voucher students to continue in the program while the constitutionality of vouchers is under adjudication, but first-year voucher students have been shut out. The School Choice Committee wants money to help these students; the Ohio Roundtable, a public policy organization, donated $25,000 Monday. The voucher issue is discussed in "Vouchers and Educational Freedom: A Debate" http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-269.html , a Cato Policy Analysis featuring Joseph L. Bast and David Harmer versus Douglas Dewey. Harmer is the author of the Cato-published book School Choice: Why You Need It--How You Get It http://www.cato.org/cgi-bin/Web_store/web_store.cgi?page=school.html&cart_id = . What voucher funds can actually provide for students is the topic of "What Would a School Voucher Buy? The Real Cost of Private Schools" http://www.cato.org/pubs/briefs/bp-025es.html , a Cato Briefing Paper by David Boaz and R. Morris Barrett. For highlights of this month's best audio clips check out CatoAudio http://www.cato.org/pubs/catoaudio/ca-index.html , a lively monthly audio series that brings you inside the Cato Institute for Policy and Book Forums, speeches and debates. To unsubscribe from this list, visit http://www.free-market.net/partners/c/cato.html#dailydispatch DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance�not soapboxing! 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