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THE LIGHTHOUSE
"Enlightening Ideas for Public Policy..."
Vol. 4, Issue 46
November 18, 2002
Welcome to THE LIGHTHOUSE, the weekly e-mail newsletter of The Independent Institute, the non-politicized public-policy research organization. We provide you with updates of the Institute's current research, publications, events and media programs, plus commentary on current affairs.
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IN THIS WEEK'S ISSUE:
1. Department of Homeland Insecurity
2. Brazil Needs Market Radicalism
3. Psst! Sell Your Kidney?
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DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND INSECURITY
Contrary to the White House's intentions, the proposed Department of Homeland Security will make Americans less safe from terrorist attacks, argues Paul Craig Roberts, research fellow at the Independent Institute, in a new syndicated column.
"One hundred government agencies from 22 departments crammed into an unaccountable bureaucracy of 170,000 civil servants creates less security," writes Roberts, whose former service in the Treasury Department gave him ample opportunity to observe the undesirable consequences of bureaucratic turf wars.
The U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, according to Roberts, is a particularly ineffective and unaccountable bureaucracy that would become even less accountable were it to be merged into Homeland Security.
"The INS cannot even rid us of illegal rapist-murderers," he writes. "Once the INS has a 170,000-person bureaucracy in which to hide, the opportunities for passing the buck will be endless."
Roberts also fears that the proposed Homeland Security Department would seek to expand its scope to justify a large budget, leading to civil rights violations, censorship of the Internet and tougher but counter-productive gun control laws.
"Federal police forces will be able to liquidate any group by declaring it 'terrorist,' just as Janet Reno exterminated by Branch Davidians by declaring them 'child abusers,' and FBI and BATF agents murdered Randy Weaver's family by declaring him 'armed and dangerous.'"
Finally, Roberts takes aim at the belief -- popular in influential neoconservative circles -- that Iraq and other countries in the Middle East can easily be make into stable, rights-respecting democracies with only a little nudge from the United States military. A more likely scenario, he argues, is that a U.S. war in Iraq will lead to the spread of militant Islam in Iraq and elsewhere.
"A Leap into the Dark," by Paul Craig Roberts (11/15/02)
http://www.independent.org/tii/lighthouse/LHLink4-46-1.html
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