Entries associated with the tag "Cato Institute":

Cato on the Republicans: "The fact is, with the exception of Rep. Ron Paul who trails badly in the polls, none of the GOP candidates has a consistent record of standing for small-government. Sooner or later someone needs to point out that being a conservative means more than being anti-abortion or tough on terrorists."

Sam Smith on the Democrats' front-runner: In a recent poll, "Democrats favored Hillary Clinton to deal with health care by a two to one margin over Obama and Edwards combined -- an absurd judgment given her previous health care legislation that was laughably incompetent and confusing as she attempted to conceal its gifts to the insurance industry.... By 52% to 39% Clinton beats both Obama and Edwards as the one best able to deal with Iraq, even though she is clearly the one with the worst record of doing so this far. By the same margin, she is the one who Democrats think best represent the core values of the party. This may be tragically true in contemporary terms, but before her husband took office the party had dramatically different --and better -- values.... This is a party that doesn't need a candidate; it desperately needs a therapist."

"All across the country, proprietors, landlords and residents associations are privately, voluntarily implementing smoking bans," says the Cato Institute's Tom Firey (surely no pun intended). "Because those actions are voluntary and private, market forces will lead to the provision of establishments and housing for both nonsmokers and smokers. This is fitting in a free society that values choice and respects the individual. It also protects public health -- people who don't want to be around tobacco smoke, whether out of health concerns or dislike of the smell and nuisance, don't ave to be around tobacco smoke.

"This legislation [banning smoking in apartments, as proposed in some California jurisdictions] does not respect individual choice and it is not motivated by concern for public health. It is social conservatism pure and simple -- some politicians want to use their office to impose their personal morality on other people."

My first thought was that this was a nice takedown of a characteristic liberal fallacy (all good things should be required by law), and a good example of how markets can promote live-and-let-live. My second thought was that it was also a nice example of a characteristic libertarian fallacy (we're all individuals with no more basic interdependency than a bunch of billiard balls).

How exactly does the market protect the health of smokers' children? I don't think that question refutes Cato's case, because not everything that's bad for kids can be outlawed without producing even worse effects -- but it does suggest that libertarians have a shallow understanding of the way people live together.

IOW, my decisions to smoke, or to leave my motorcycle helmet at home, rarely affect only me. Sometimes it's best to think and legislate as if they do, but exactly when is the question for political philosophers.

Given its continued adherence to the wingnut antiscience position on climate change, I don't trust the Cato Institute. But senior fellow Jerry Taylor reminds us that the bipartisan political consensus in Illinois (stretching from Barack Obama to his predecessor, Peter Fitzgerald) is probably wrong:

"Ethanol made out of corn is probably the closest thing we have to a domestic alternative to gasoline. But no matter how nice 'growing our own fuel' might be in theory, it's uneconomically expensive in fact. Even after 30 years of lavish federal subsidy, ethanol (defined as fuel that is nine parts gasoline and one part ethanol) has only managed to capture a bit more than 3 percent of the automotive fuels market, and even industry participants concede if the subsidies and consumption mandates were removed today, the entire industry would collapse.

"One might think the current run on gasoline prices would have substantially narrowed the cost gap, but one would be wrong. It takes a tremendous amount of energy to grow corn and a lot of energy to distill it into ethanol and get it into the market. Accordingly, rising energy prices has made ethanol more expensive."

Instead of abolishing the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (of Waco infamy), Republicans have built it a fancy new HQ, report the disgruntled libertarians at the Cato Institute. 

Rich Miller of the indispensable Capitol Fax Blog on Governor Blagojevich: "He can list all of John Wayne’s B movies, but he can’t remember if his kid ever got another $1,500 check."

Chicago real-estate blogger Eric Rojas on the Pleasure Chest controversy in Lake View: "Which do you think creates more problems for the 'neighborhood'? High end adult toys or low-end malt liquor?"

Worst Congresscritter in the worst Congress? Our own suburban pork-bringer Dennis Hastert, says Rolling Stone.

Stirling Newberry tells hard truths about the real Ronald Reagan and the lacking liberalism of those times.

Betting on the Senate races? Here's an automatically updated map of the latest money-where-the-mouth-is.  Percentages are probability of that side winning, not votes!  (Hat tip to BlogNetBiz.com/Econ.)

Ever have one of those arguments with Texans or New Jerseyans over which state is the most crooked? Here's more fodder: the indispensable Illinois Campaign for Political Reform finds that Gov. Rod Blagojevich has collected $1.1 million from out-of-state donors, while Republican challenger Judy Baar Topinka has $195,000.

Much of Blago's out-of-state money comes from places--California, Wisconsin, Ohio, even Indiana--where the donations would be illegal if made within state lines:

"Wisconsin accounted for $92K in giving, including $39K from Bulk Petroleum, $25K from Edison Liquors (a Wirtz company), and $20K from Miller Brewing. All of that giving would be illegal under Wisconsin law, which bars direct contributions from corporations to candidates."

ICPR's David Morrison concludes, "It’s perfectly legal for them to give as much here as they want to, since our laws allow that. Why they would want to give here is, of course, another matter."

The nonpartisan ICPR would like Illinois to enact "fair, sensible contribution limits."

The Cato Institute would oppose such limits on principle, regardless of the evidence. But Cato's Ed Crane makes an interesting point regarding the recent Connecticut primary--which upstart Ned Lamont won, Crane argues, only because he can bankroll himself:

Under current law, he writes, "candidates have rights the rest of us don’t have. Apparently, they can’t be corrupted by their own money, so there are no limits on what they can spend on their own campaigns. More than 60 percent of Ned’s campaign expenditures came from Ned. Without Ned, Ned loses. In fact, no political observer thought any candidate dependent on [the current federal] $2,000 contribution limit had any kind of chance of ousting Lieberman."

And for those who remember 38 years back:

"This antiwar election is directly analogous to my late friend Gene McCarthy’s race for the presidency in 1968. Gene used six-figure contributions from wealthy liberals like Stewart Mott who opposed the war in Vietnam to fund a campaign that ousted a sitting president from his own party. Gene often said that had the ’74 amendments to the FECA been in place in ’68 [i.e. contribution limits], he would not have run."

Who wins this argument? Is it OK for Illinois to be for sale in order to allow for the rare upsurge to be funded by wealthy noncandidates?