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March 26, 2002
Vol. 5 No. 13
In this issue:
1. Blame Canada
2. Art student appreciation
3. Warts and all
4. Quick Hits
5. Ethicist's Dilemma - and other highlights from Reason Online
6. Reason's print edition
7. Reason News
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With the ink barely dry on the decision to slap tariffs on imported steel, the Bush administration has turned to Canadian lumber as the latest affront to U.S. notions of fair play, hitting imports of the wood with a 15.83 percent anti-dumping penalty. The National Lumber and Building Materials Dealers Association says the lumber tariff will add $1,500 to the cost of a new American home.
The wood writ smacks a U.S. firm -- Weyerhaeuser -- with a 2x4. The company sends Canadian lumber south, so now it will come in with a 35 percent tariff -- the new anti-dumping penalty on top of already existing taxes on Canadian wood. Message to U.S. companies: don't scour the globe looking to work that abundance/scarcity angle; go hire lobbyists in D.C. instead.
"The decision to impose duties is based on deeply flawed trade law and the extreme demands of a protectionist special interest group of some U.S. lumber producers. It is the wrong way to deal with this issue," said William Corbin, a vice president at Weyerhaeuser.
Will sand be next on the protectionist hit parade? Somebody must be dumping foreign sand, driving out high-quality American sand and high-paying American sand jobs, right? (A new tariff on imported oil would just be too obvious, but wouldn't Dubya's old wildcatter buddies love that?)
Japan is ready to run to the World Trade Organization (WTO) over the new steel tariffs. WTO gnomes could order the U.S. to drop tariffs on other Japanese goods in response. But the real harm of such futzing -- and Bush's tariff fetish in general -- is that it gives cover to countries like Japan to continue their own ruinous protectionist policies.
Meanwhile, emboldened by the new goodies for domestic wood and steel producers, textile folks in the U.S. are clamoring for even more protection from economic reality. Governors from the Lint Belt held a "summit" to decry the state of America's textile mills and demand federal help. After all, textile workers vote too.
"I do worry that one day we'll wake up and be a nation that can't make anything," South Carolina Gov. Jim Hodges said. "We've got to realize that our American economy is one that knows how to make things."
Why T-shirts and socks have to be among those things, Hodges didn't explain.
http://www.nationalpost.com/financialpost/story.html?f=/stories/20020323/424137.html
http://www.charlotte.com/mld/observer/2002/03/23/news/2918585.htm
These are strange times when Israel disguising dozens of spies as art students and sending them to case federal sites across the U.S. is more comforting than the alternative. Namely, that the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) is a loony bin.
A 60-page DEA report details the belief that Israeli intelligence has used young men and women to pose as art students to gain access to government buildings, or surveil sensitive sites or the homes of federal agents.
The Bush administration has declared the story to be an "urban myth," but this is the same outfit whose solicitor general just told the Supreme Court that the government reserves the right to lie if foreign policy might dictate a fiction. So that declaration isn't much help.
Why the Mossad would think that dropping off people with thick "Middle Eastern" accents in places like Spotsylvania County, Virginia, to sell art door-to-door makes for great spook cover remains the big gaping hole in this tale. Odder still, why would these spies target federal agents by knocking on their doors and announcing their presence?
Israel surely spies on the U.S., but this doesn't seem a very efficient method.
The really odd thing is the way the feds have apparently put together an internal security network quite capable of tracking the comings and goings and nationalities of door-to-door salesmen, yet fails to track known terrorists.
Perhaps the Ecstasy trade the feds tracked back to Israel got the best of them and spurred some big leaps of logic. Perhaps they reasoned they the X ring was so efficient that it "had" to have some sort of state connection. From there on to some vaguely shady looking "art student" scam that has been plied the world over. Put two and two together, get eleven. And you still get to keep your gun and badge.
http://cryptome.org/dea-il-spy.htm
http://www.usdoj.gov/dea/pubs/intel/01008/
http://www.atlanta.creativeloafing.com/2002-03-20/fishwrapper.html
http://atlanta.creativeloafing.com/2002-03-20/news_dea.pdf.
The Gulf War was supposed to have been its last hurrah, but like bad pizza, the stubby-winged A-10 "Warthog'' warplane keeps popping back up. The Pentagon has killed off the A-10 several times now, only to turn back to the ground-pounder when things get hairy.
A handful of the planes now waits at an airbase outside Kabul, ready to continue the action they began with Operation Anaconda. Those strikes were flown from bases outside Afghanistan. Their new base leaves them minutes from the fighting.
Old service rivalries conspire against the A-10. The Air Force hates having a clunky subsonic plane that can only do what the Army tells it to do. The Army hates relying on the Air Force for close air support. The Army has set about spending billions to build its own helicopter air arm so it can do the job without Air Force help.
Trouble is, there is nothing quite like having a plane that can loiter over targets, absorb punishment, and still deliver things that go boom. Recent weeks have shown that helicopters -- if they can be found and targeted -- remain relatively easy to bring down with cheap, unsophisticated weapons.
So it is back to the Warthog. With all the added billions now headed to the Pentagon, it would be nice if someone threw some cash at studying the case of the Warthog --not to "save" the plane or enshrine it in new "doctrine," but to try to figure out how and why the Pentagon keeps getting the Hog so very wrong.
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/htx/nm/20020324/ts/afghan_dc_3.html
Quote of the Week
"We don't think we've done anything wrong." -- Tim Roby, communications director for Wisconsin Gov. Scott McCallum, on why McCallum used a state plane to fly him a few miles up the road. The 30-minute trip cost $2,600 and saved the governor about 17 minutes in travel time.
http://www.jsonline.com/news/state/mar02/29211.asp
Cadence Count
A left-right coalition marches in lockstep in opposition to any kind of medical research that might, possibly, maybe involve cloning of human cells. They want to enact a federal ban.
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/081/nation/Coalition_urges_a_ban_on_all_human_cloning+.shtml
Dead and Not Gone
States hungry for revenue look for ways around federal tax code changes, specifically the death tax. Could asking your accountant for great places to die be far behind?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A12175-2002Mar24.html
Is it Over?
The final Whitewater report, in all its detail.
http://icreport.access.gpo.gov/final/
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