Josefina Vázquez Mota won the nomination of the incumbent National Action Party (PAN) for Mexico’s upcoming presidential election. Most of the coverage in the international media today focuses on how she is the first woman to have a real shot at Los Pinos (the official residence of the president of Mexico). However, the real story should be what new ideas (if any) Vázquez Mota brings to the table. Unfortunately, there’s isn’t much to report.

The same can be said of the other two presidential contenders, Enrique Peña Nieto of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and Andrés Manuel López Obrador of the Democratic Revolutionary Party.

Perhaps William Booth of the Washington Post sums it up best when he writes about the three choices Mexican voters face in July:

“The popular former mayor of Mexico City with a messianic self-regard [López Obrador]; a telegenic leading man who wrote a book but has been vague about which books he has read [Peña Nieto]; and a perky, gal-next-door type who does a lot of smiling but has been blank on specifics [Vázquez Mota].”

Mexico will face serious challenges in the next six years, not least of which is a crippling war on drugs that kills thousands of Mexicans every year, but also a sluggish economy due largely to the sclerotic effects of public and private monopolies in key industries. This presidential election should be more about substance and less about style.

Mexicans Deserve Substance Over Style in Presidential Race is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

The issue of border security has made its way into the 2012 GOP presidential race and candidates are jockeying to separate themselves from the pack. The topic garnered some attention at the Republican national security debate on November 22. An Associated Press story today examines the candidate’s platforms on the topic and as the title implies, rightly concludes securing the border is impossible. I am quoted in the article and make exactly that point:

Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich have promised to complete a nearly 1,950-mile fence. Michele Bachmann wants a double fence. Ron Paul pledges to secure the nation’s southern border by any means necessary, and Rick Perry says he can secure it without a fence — and do so within a year of taking office as president.

But a border that is sealed off to all illegal immigrants and drugs flowing north is a promise none of them could keep.

“Securing the border is a wonderful slogan, but that’s pretty much all it is,” said Ted Galen Carpenter, a senior fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute. “Even to come close would require measures that would make legal commerce with Mexico impossible. That’s an enormous price for what would still be a very leaky system.”

The bottom line is the border is simply too big to control. Attempting to fully police the border must pass a simple cost-benefit analysis, and it is not clear that our current policy passes that test. And yet, the candidates all agree securing the border is necessary to combat terrorism, illegal immigration, and drug violence stemming from Mexico.

The candidates have little reason to reexamine that assumption. Not only is it politically advantageous to call for securing the border, but it is a convenient one-size-fits-all solution to those three broader policy issues. They have calculated that this is what voters want to hear.

But it is an illusory solution. Laws protecting the border must exist and be enforced, but it is not clear that this alone, even if done more effectively or efficiently, will prevent terrorists or illegal immigrants from entering the United States. And the “securing the border” panacea certainly will not end the flow of drugs into the United States.

Curiously, while the GOP candidates all express worries about terrorism and illegal immigration, the subject of the war on drugs has hardly been discussed.  Although drug violence in Mexico is the only major security problem the Untied States faces on any of its borders, the issue has not produced serious consideration thus far.  Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) has been the only candidate to offer a thoughtful, consistent approach the issue, calling for an end to the failed policy.

The candidates should be pressured to answer why Washington continues to spend billions of dollars to wage the war on drugs each year with little to show for it. The power of the drug cartels has reached the point that the Mexican government no longer controls some areas of the country. And there are worrying signs that the violence is beginning to bleed across the border into the United States.

Our prohibitionist efforts have failed and a new policy is needed. Only by removing the lucrative black-market drug trade and thus effectively defunding the Mexican drug cartels can we begin to end the violence and illegal activity that plagues Mexico and the southern U.S. border region.

That is the substantive discussion that should be taking place in the GOP debates, rather than the posturing and repeated faux policy prescriptions to secure the border.

Border Security, the War on Drugs, and the 2012 GOP Presidential Race is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Yesterday, Juan Carlos Hidalgo pointed out that Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos became the latest world leader to recognize the need to rethink the prohibitionist policies that allow powerful drug traffickers to flourish. Santos called for a new approach to “take away the violent profit that comes with drug trafficking” and that governments around the world, including the United States, the United Kingdom, and the European Union, need to debate legalizing select drugs, such as cocaine.

From Colombia to Mexico, the drug war rages on. Despite two decades of U.S.-aided efforts to eradicate drug-related violence in Colombia, the problem persists. Indeed, the trickle-down effects from Mexico southward now threaten to engulf Guatemala. Costa Rica, Honduras, and El Salvador are all experiencing alarming homicide rates at least partially related to drug trafficking. To address these spikes in violence and stem the flow of drugs, the United States has spent billions of dollars in Mexico and throughout Latin America. Sadly, there is little evidence that this policy has been successful, and the evidence mounts that it has been an outright failure.

A new policy is needed to stem the violence and consequences of the Mexican drug cartels pervasive power. In a new study released today, Ted Galen Carpenter, senior fellow, argues that the only lasting, effective strategy for dealing with Mexico’s drug violence is to defund the Mexican drug cartels. “The United States could substantially defund these cartels,” says Carpenter, “through the full legalization (including manufacture and sale) of currently illegal drugs.”

The new study, “Undermining Mexico’s Dangerous Drug Cartels,” is available here.

New Study on Mexico’s Drug Cartels and the Global War on Drugs is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

In the New York Times, Ethan Nadelmann takes aim at the “reefer madness” of the Obama administration, which despite promises and expectations has stepped up the war on marijuana:

But over the past year, federal authorities appear to have done everything in their power to undermine state and local regulation of medical marijuana and to create uncertainty, fear and confusion among those in the industry. The president needs to reassert himself to ensure that his original policy is implemented.

The Treasury Department has forced banks to close accounts of medical marijuana businesses operating legally under state law. The Internal Revenue Service has required dispensary owners to pay punitive taxes required of no other businesses. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives recently ruled that state-sanctioned medical marijuana patients can not purchase firearms.

United States attorneys have also sent letters to local officials, coinciding with the adoption or implementation of state medical marijuana regulatory legislation, stressing their authority to prosecute all marijuana offenses. Prosecutors have threatened to seize the property of landlords and put them behind bars for renting to marijuana dispensaries. The United States attorney in San Diego, Laura E. Duffy, has promised to start targeting media outlets that run dispensaries’ ads.

President Obama has not publicly announced a shift in his views on medical marijuana, but his administration seems to be declaring one by fiat.

As bad as the drug war is in the United States, it’s wreaking far more havoc in Mexico and Latin America. That’s why the Cato Institute is holding an all-day conference next week, “Ending the War on Drugs,” featuring:

• the former president of Brazil
• the former drug czar of India
• the former foreign minister of Mexico
• the author of Cato’s study on decriminalization in Portugal
• the Speaker of the House in Uruguay
• plus video presentations by former Secretary of State George Shultz and former Mexican President Vicente Fox.

Check it out. And be there November 15.

Reefer Madness Here and Abroad is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

It was 40 years ago today that President Richard Nixon said the “drug menace” had reached the dimensions of a “national emergency.”  Nixon asked Congress to allocate $155 million to fight drug abuse and requested a new central office in the White House to coordinate governmental efforts on the problem.  Thus began the modern drug war.  It’s true that criminal laws were already in place in many jurisdictions, but it was Nixon’s call for a “new, all-out offensive” that really started to ramp things up.  Each year brought calls for more money–and that  meant more police, more raids, more wiretaps, more arrests, and more prisons.  And more foreign intervention.

The Associated Press ran a good article that examined the 40 year policy and the trillion dollars that went into the policy.   Here’s an excerpt:

Using Freedom of Information Act requests, archival records, federal budgets and dozens of interviews with leaders and analysts, the AP tracked where [all the] money went, and found that the United States repeatedly increased budgets for programs that did little to stop the flow of drugs. In 40 years, taxpayers spent more than:

— $20 billion to fight the drug gangs in their home countries. In Colombia, for example, the United States spent more than $6 billion, while coca cultivation increased and trafficking moved to Mexico — and the violence along with it.

— $33 billion in marketing “Just Say No”-style messages to America’s youth and other prevention programs. High school students report the same rates of illegal drug use as they did in 1970, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says drug overdoses have “risen steadily” since the early 1970s to more than 20,000 last year.

— $49 billion for law enforcement along America’s borders to cut off the flow of illegal drugs. This year, 25 million Americans will snort, swallow, inject and smoke illicit drugs, about 10 million more than in 1970, with the bulk of those drugs imported from Mexico.

— $121 billion to arrest more than 37 million nonviolent drug offenders, about 10 million of them for possession of marijuana. Studies show that jail time tends to increase drug abuse.

— $450 billion to lock those people up in federal prisons alone. Last year, half of all federal prisoners in the U.S. were serving sentences for drug offenses.

Read the whole thing.

I hosted a debate this week to mark this unfortunate policy milestone.  Cato senior fellow Jeff Miron squared off against Dr. Robert DuPont, who was one of the key policy staffers in the Nixon White House in 1971.  Dr. DuPont remains convinced that the present policy approach is essentially correct.   Watch the event and decide for yourself.

In my 2000 book, After Prohibition, Milton Friedman noted that America’s drug war policy had dozens of negative consequences.  One consequence that he believed received too little attention was the policy’s effect on other people around the world.  Friedman said the policy was responsible for the deaths of “hundreds of thousands of people at home and abroad by fighting a war that should never have been started.”   The violence in Mexico confirms Friedman’s analysis.  The Los Angeles Times recently reported that more than 34,000 people have been killed during the government’s crackdown over just the past four years.

Ending the drug war is one of the signature issues for the Cato Institute.  The other think tanks in Washington, DC–Brookings, AEI, and Heritage–support the drug war.  We believe the drug war will eventually be widely recognized as a tragic mistake in much the same way as we presently look back upon the days of alcohol prohibition.

For additional Cato work related to drug policy, go here.

40 Years of Drug Prohibition is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

OK, I took some editorial license on the line from the 1970s song by C.W. McCall about truckers bantering on their CB radios, but the spirit of the song applies to our ongoing dispute with Mexico over access to U.S. highways.

On Friday, the comment period will end in the Federal Register on a pilot program proposed by the Obama administration that would allow qualified Mexican trucks and their Mexican drivers to make long-haul deliveries within the United States. With the exception of a brief interlude from 2007 to 2009, the U.S. has banned Mexican trucks from serving destinations within the United States.

I explain why this is bad for our economy and our reputation as a nation in an op-ed this morning in the Washington Times and in my own comments filed with the Federal Register. As I wrote in the op-ed:

Despite the hundreds of complaints already posted in the Federal Register, the Mexican trucking issue has never been about safety. The proposed pilot program would require Mexican trucks entering the United States to meet all federal regulations on driver qualifications, truck safety, emissions, fuel taxes, immigration and insurance.

Experience from the previous pilot program in 2007-09 demonstrated that Mexican trucks and their drivers are fully capable of complying with all U.S. safety requirements.

An August 2009 report from the Department of Transportation’s Inspector General found that only 1.2 percent of Mexican drivers that were inspected were placed out of service for violations, compared with nearly 7 percent of U.S. drivers who were inspected. In February 2010, the Congressional Research Service reported that recent data provided by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration found that “Mexican trucks are as safe as U.S. trucks and that the drivers are generally safer than U.S. drivers.” What the Teamsters and their congressional allies really object to is that these trucks will be driven by Mexicans.

The Obama administration deserves credit for its effort to end this dispute in the face of pressure from its union base. The sooner we allow more freedom and competition in the cross-border trucking sector, the better.

“Let Them [Safety Certified Mexican] Truckers Roll, 10-4” is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

• Please join us this Thursday, April 21 at 4:00 p.m. Eastern for a book forum and debate on “green energy” policy, following the recent release of the Cato book The False Promise of Green Energy. On Thursday, University of Alabama Professor of Law and Business Andrew P. Morriss (one of the book’s authors) and Center for American Progress Vice President for Energy Policy Kate Gordon will debate the merits of the “green” economic agenda, moderated by Cato Institute Senior Fellow Jerry Taylor. Complimentary registration is required of all attendees by noon TOMORROW, Wednesday, April 20. We hope you can join us in person and for the reception following the event–if you cannot attend in person, we hope you’ll tune in online or on Facebook.
• “Nothing in international law, however, can change the United States Constitution’s procedures for when the United States can go to war — which require the consent of Congress.”
• Nothing says it’s time to convert Medicaid to block grants like letters from 17 governors opposing the idea.
• Nothing would spur economic recovery like a “liberate to stimulate” regulatory agenda.
• Nothing says “failure” like 37,000 dead and climbing.
• Nothing is more complicated and convoluted than the U.S. tax code, which changed 579 times in the last year–more than one change every day:

Tuesday Links is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

In a speech today at Georgetown University, President Obama called for a goal of cutting America’s oil imports by one-third within a decade. Like all efforts to wean Americans from big, bad imports, such a policy will mean we will all pay more than we need to for the energy that helps to power our economy.

I’ll leave it to my able Cato colleagues to dissect the president’s proposal in terms of energy policy, but in terms of trade policy, this is about as bad as it gets.

We Americans benefit tremendously from our relatively free trade in petroleum products. Like all forms of trade, the importation of oil produced abroad allows us to acquire it at a price far lower than we would pay if we had to rely more heavily on domestic oil supplies.

The money we save buying oil more cheaply on global markets allows our whole economy to operate more efficiently. Oil is the ultimate upstream input that virtually all U.S. producers use to make their final products, either in the product itself or for shipping. If U.S. manufacturers and other sectors are forced to pay sharply higher prices for petroleum products because of import restrictions, their final goods will cost more and will be less competitive in global markets. If households are forced to pay more for gasoline and heating oil, consumer will have less to spend on domestic goods and services.

The president talked in the speech about the goal of not being “dependent” on foreign suppliers, but most of our oil imports come from countries that are either friendly or at least not in any way an adversary. According to the U.S. Department of Commerce, one third of our oil imports in 2010 came from our two closest neighbors and NAFTA partners, Canada and Mexico. Another third came from the problematic providers in the Arab Middle East and Venezuela (none from Iran, less than one-third of 1 percent from Libya.) The rest came from places such as Nigeria, Angola, Colombia, Brazil, Russia, Ecuador and Great Britain.

Even if, by the force of government, we could reduce our imports by a third, there is no reason to expect that the reduction would be concentrated in the problematic providers. In fact, oil is generally cheaper to extract in the Middle East, so a blanket reduction would probably tilt our imports away from our friends and toward our real and potential adversaries.

In one speech, the president has managed to state a policy goal that is bad trade policy, bad security policy, and bad foreign policy.

What’s Wrong with Imported Oil? is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

• Shifting America’s focus away from individual liberty is waging war on the future, not winning it.
• U.N. “authorization” is the Emperor’s new fig leaf for war with Libya.
• Why are we fighting Mexico’s drug war?
• David Boaz remembers Geraldine Ferraro, who helped advance the war against gender discrimination in politics.
• Chris Preble eulogizes the Weinberger/Powell doctrine against the backdrop of the Libyan war:

Tuesday Links is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

As Ted Carpenter notes below, President Obama is departing on an important trip to Latin America. The countries that he will visit exemplify the macroeconomic stability and advancement of democratic institutions now found in much of the region.

Brazil, by far the largest Latin American economy, has enjoyed almost a decade of sound growth and poverty reduction. Chile is the most developed country in the region thanks to decades of economic liberalization, a process that has also made it Latin America’s most mature democracy. And El Salvador is undergoing a delicate period in its transition to becoming a full-fledged democracy with its first left-of-center president since the end of the civil war in 1992.

In an era when most Latin American nations are moving in the right direction—albeit at different speeds, with some setbacks, and with notable exceptions—the United States can serve as a catalyst of change by contributing to more economic integration and the consolidation of the rule of law in the region.

Unfortunately, despite President Obama’s assurances that he’s interested in strengthening economic ties with Latin America, his administration is still delaying the ratification of two important free trade agreements with Colombia and Panama. President Obama also continues to support a failed war on drugs that significantly exacerbates violence and institutional frailty in the region, particularly in Mexico and Central America.

It’s good that President Obama’s trip will highlight significant progress in Latin America, but his administration’s policy actions still don’t match the U.S. goals of encouraging economic growth and sound institutional development in the region.

Obama’s Trip to Latin America is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

President Obama’s trip to Latin America is likely to focus on economic topics, but two security issues deserve scrutiny during his stops in Brazil and El Salvador. 

Washington’s diplomatic relationship with Brazil has become somewhat frosty, especially over the past year.  U.S. leaders did not appreciate Brazil’s joint effort with Turkey to craft a compromise policy toward Iran’s nuclear program.  The Obama administration regarded that diplomatic initiative as unhelpful freelancing.  And when Brazil joined Turkey in voting against a UN Security Council resolution imposing stronger sanctions on Tehran, the administration’s resentment deepened.  Obama should not only try to soothe tensions, he should shift Washington’s policy, express appreciation for Brazil’s innovative efforts to end the impasse on the Iranian nuclear issue, and consider whether the milder approach that the Turkish and Brazilian governments advocate has merit.

In El Salvador, worries about Mexico’s spreading drug-related violence into Central America are likely to come up.  El Salvador and other Central American countries are seeking a bigger slice of Washington’s anti-drug aid in the multi-billion-dollar, multiyear Merida Initiative.  President Obama should not only resist such blandishments, he should use the visit to announce a policy shift away from a strict prohibitionist strategy that has filled the coffers of the Mexican drug cartels and sowed so much violence in Mexico, and now increasingly in Central America as well.  Prohibition didn’t work with alcohol and it’s not working any better with currently illegal drugs.

Obama’s Latin America Trip is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Mexico ends 2010 with 15,000 illicit drug-related murders for the year—a record for the Calderon administration that began its term four years ago by declaring an all-out war on drug trafficking. Drug war violence skyrocketed since Calderon took office, claiming more than 30,000 lives. Though it is an unwinnable war whose consequences also include the rise of corruption and the weakening of the institutions of civil society, it is being used by drug warriors and skeptics alike to push for pet projects ranging from increased development aid to more military cooperation.

A recent example comes from the Washington Post this week. It editorialized in favor of an Obama administration plan to stem the flow of arms to Mexico, and it ran a story the same day citing the claim that 90 percent of guns in Mexico’s drug war come from the United States (though the Post also noted that the Mexican and U.S. governments refuse to release the results of their weapons traces). My colleague David Rittgers notes here that the proposed gun regulation is unlawful and here he has explained that a more realistic figure for guns of U.S. provenance is about 17 percent. In a Cato bulletin earlier this year, former Mexican foreign minister Jorge Castañeda calculated a similar figure and explained why attempts at controlling the trade in U.S. arms are a waste of time:

In fact, we only know with certainty that about 18 percent of guns come from the United States, according to Mexican and U.S. sources. The rest is surely coming from Central America, countries of the former Soviet Union, and beyond. And as countries as diverse as Brazil, Paraguay, Somalia, and Sudan attest — all countries with a higher arms per capita than Mexico — you don’t need a border with the United States to gain easy access to guns. Nevertheless, the possibilities of really limiting the sales of weapons in the United States is not imminent, to put it mildly. Moreover, asking the United States to stop arms trafficking from north to south is like asking Mexico to control its border from south to north, whether it is for drugs, people, or anything else. It’s not going to happen.

Another Dubious Record in Mexico’s Drug War is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

The Mexican government announced yesterday that it will expand the list of U.S. products subject to punitive import duties in retaliation for a brazen, 15-year-long refusal of the United States to honor its NAFTA commitment to allow Mexican long-haul trucks to compete in the U.S. market.  Given continued U.S. intransigence on the issue, Mexico’s decision is understandable, if not laudable.

The dispute is not very complicated.  Under the terms of the deal, Mexican trucks were to have been able to compete in U.S. border states by 1995, and throughout the United States by 2000.  But President Clinton, at the behest of the Teamsters union, suspended implementation of the trucking provision on the grounds that Mexican trucks weren’t safe enough for U.S. highways.

By 1998, the Mexicans had had enough, and brought a formal complaint under the NAFTA dispute settlement system, and in 2001, prevailed with a unanimous panel decision that found the United States in violation of the agreement, and ruled that Mexican trucks meeting U.S. safety standards had to be given access to the U.S. market.

In response to the NAFTA decision, Congress stipulated 22 safety requirements that Mexican trucks had to satisfy in order to gain access to the U.S. market.  But before the U.S. Department of Transportation could grant any permits to Mexican truckers, in 2002, environmental and labor groups filed a lawsuit to block implementation on the grounds that the regulations violated U.S. environmental law.

In 2004, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously struck down the truck ban, and soon after a government pilot program was developed to allow a limited number of Mexican trucks to serve the U.S. market.  But funding for the pilot program was cut off by a Teamsters-friendly Congress in 2008, which effectively put the U.S. market off limits to Mexican trucks once again—and the United States squarely in violation of its NAFTA obligations, again.

In August 2009, after it became apparent that the administration and Congress preferred the economic cost of the trucking ban to the political cost of crossing the Teamsters, the Mexican government tried to change the equation by imposing $2.4 billion in retaliatory duties on about 90 U.S. products.  A Mexican trucking association also filed a $6-billion lawsuit against the U.S. government.

But with no discernible progress toward resolution over the past year, the Mexican government announced yesterday that it will expand the list of U.S. products subject to punitive, retaliatory duties in an effort to convince Congress and the administration to finally live up to America’s word.

The Mexican government is right to retaliate—and to expand the list of products subject to punitive duties.  Of course, retaliation hurts innocents, like U.S. businesses and workers, and Mexican businesses and consumers, who have nothing to do with the central dispute.  And it increases the amount of red tape and the role of governments in international trade.  But retaliation—when authorized by agreement and properly targeted—can also be an effective tool in promoting trade liberalization, reducing red tape, and diminishing the impositions of government.

It is by changing the political calculus that retaliation can be effective.  Thus far, U.S. politicians have found the economic costs of the Mexican trucking ban and the retaliation to be tolerable (for themselves)—at least relative to the expected political costs from doing the right thing by ending the ban.  By expanding the list to include other products, like oranges, the Mexicans hope to impress upon other U.S. interests, like the citrus industry in a very important swing state, that they have dogs in this fight as well.

Between the rising costs on the economic side of the equation and the diminishing political benefits on the other, support among politicians for the truck ban should dissipate.

The Obama administration’s failure to connect the dots is surprising.  Its fealty to the Teamsters directly undermines the lofty goals of its National Export Initiative—which seeks to double U.S. exports in five years.  On trade policy, the administration appears yet to fully grasp that the hip bone’s connected to the thigh bone, the thigh bone’s connected to the knee bone, the knee bone’s connected to the ankle bone, etc.  When you restrict imports (in the immediate case, imports of Mexican trucking services), you restrict exports.

The rising economic and political costs of the truck ban suggest that something’s going to have to give soon.  By amplifying the stakes, the Mexicans are right to hasten that day.

Mexican Retaliation for U.S. Truck Ban is Proper is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

For the first time ever, Mexican President Felipe Calderón said yesterday that it was “fundamental” to have a debate on the legalization of drugs. Calderon, from the conservative National Action Party (PAN), had until now been reluctant to pay heed to the growing calls in Mexico and Latin America for a hemispheric debate on drug legalization. Once they left office, two of Calderón’s predecessors—Ernesto Zedillo and Vicente Fox—have also engaged in the debate, calling for the need to legalize drugs as a way to battle the drug violence that is crippling Mexico. Others, such as Jorge Castaneda, former foreign minister of Mexico, have also called for an end to prohibition.

In today’s edition, El Universal newspaper in Mexico City claims [in Spanish] that Calderón’s turn around had something to do with a meeting he had a few days ago with Juan Manuel Santos, president-elect of Colombia. According to the newspaper’s sources, Santos told Calderón that drug trafficking is not under control in Colombian territory and that Mexico should be the country leading a public debate on legalization or decriminalization of drugs.

As I’ve written before, there is a growing consensus within Latin America about the failure of the war on drugs and the need to implement a sensible approach to drug policy. The question remains: Is anyone in Washington paying attention?

President of Mexico Calls for Debate on Legalization of Drugs is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

The controversy over America’s immigration policy does not allow for easy answers, as the post below by Roger Pilon demonstrates. Even among those of us who advocate limited government and free markets, there is room for debate about what our immigration policy should be and the order in which needed reforms should be pursued.

Roger gives a welcome nod to the argument for “a serious guest-worker program,” which I’ve argued is essential to any successful reform effort. He also acknowledges that its implementation should be in concert with serious enforcement rather than delayed indefinitely by demands that we “control the border first.”

One place where I differ with my dear colleague is in his assertion that: “We no longer control our southern border, and Congress seems unable or unwilling to do anything about it.”

I’m not sure there ever was a time, at least in recent decades, that the U.S. government exerted “control” over the southern border in the sense that illegal entry was largely prevented. Sealing a 2,000-mile border remains a daunting challenge to those who advocate it.

If anything, our border with Mexico is more under control today than at any time in recent years. According to estimates by the Pew Hispanic Center and the Department of Homeland Security, the number of people living in the United States illegally has dropped by more than 1 million in the past two years. That strongly implies that the net inflow of illegal immigrants across the border has declined sharply.

The main reason for the drop in net illegal immigration is probably the recession, but increased enforcement has arguably played a role as well. According to a recent paper by Dr. Raul Hinojosa-Ojeda of UCLA, the federal government has dramatically increased the resources it spends to “control the border.”

Consider: The U.S. Border Patrol’s annual budget has shot up by 714 percent since 1992, from $326 million to $2.7 billion. During the same period, the number of Border Patrol agents stationed along the southwest border has grown from 3,555 to 17,415. Hundreds of miles of fencing has been constructed along the border, much of it across private property.

If this is the mark of a government “unwilling to do anything,” I would shudder at the cost and intrusion of a more concerted effort.

The bottom line is that our “enforcement only” approach to controlling the border has failed, and it will continue to fail until we create a legal alternative to illegal immigration.

Let’s Get Serious about Immigration Reform is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

CEI’s Alex Nowrasteh has a commentary on Townhall.com illustrating how restrictive immigration policies confound security. Twenty-three Somalis with suspected ties to an Islamist group were mistakenly released from a Mexican prison last January, and their whereabouts now are unknown. He continues:

Forcing immigrants underground creates an enormous black market where terrorist activities and serious crimes can continue undetected. If legal immigration were much easier, the American government would know who was entering the country and do a better job in screening out criminals and suspected terrorists.

I’m leery of touting terror threats for any reason beyond alerting the public to information they can use for national and self-protection. A small group of possible terrorists in Mexico is far from doing any significant harm and not particularly worrisome.

But this story illustrates how the border security that matters gets harder—and how much tax money gets wasted—when our policies make legal immigration difficult or impossible. The government is preoccupies with workers made minor criminals by their extraordinary efforts to improve their and their families’ circumstances.

Restrictive Immigration Policies Confound Security is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

I suspect I may be falling into a publicity trap here, but nonetheless I am unable to resist blogging about an email I received this morning from the Global Development and Environment Institute at Tufts University.  The email contained this teaser:

How does cheap food contribute to global hunger?  GDAE’s Timothy A. Wise, in this recent article in Resurgence magazine, explains the contradictory nature of food and agriculture under globalization. He refers to globalization as “the cheapening of everything” and concludes:

“Some things just shouldn’t be cheapened. The market is very good at establishing the value of many things but it is not a good substitute for human values. Societies need to determine their own human values, not let the market do it for them. There are some essential things, such as our land and the life-sustaining foods it can produce, that should not be cheapened.”

This sort of stuff could only be written by someone on full academic tenure and who has never had to worry about feeding his family.

It would take many hours to rebut all of the idiocies contained in the full article, but for now I will just say: Yes, it is true that U.S. government subsidies for corn, for example, cause environmental damage in the Gulf of Mexico (Cato scholars have in fact covered this before as part of our ongoing campaign to eliminate farm subsidies). And yes, poor farmers abroad have suffered because of government intervention in food markets. But those are problems stemming from government intervention, not the free market.

Tufts Academic Gives Two Thumbs Down to Cheap Food is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

The apparent drug gang killings of U.S. consular employees this weekend in Juarez, Mexico are a bloody reminder that President Obama is getting the United States involved in yet another war it cannot win. Drug gang killings also occurred in Acapulco, with a total of 50 such fatalities nationwide over the weekend.

Unfortunately, Obama has responded to the latest incident by following the same failed strategy as his predecessors when confronted with drug war losses: a stronger fight against drugs.

Though the deaths are the first in which Mexican drug cartels appear to have so brazenly targeted and killed individuals linked to the U.S. government, illicit drug trade violence has killed some 18,000 people in Mexico since President Calderon came to power in December 2006—more than three times the number of American military personnel deaths in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars combined.

The carnage only shot up after Calderon declared an all-out war on drug trafficking upon taking office. After more than three years, the policy has failed to reduce drug trafficking or production, but it is weakening the institutions of Mexican democracy and civil society through corruption and bloodshed, which are the predictable products of prohibition.

The 29 people killed in drug-related violence this weekend in a 24 hour period in the state of Guerrero sets a dubious record for a Mexican state. And an increasing number of Mexicans, including former Mexican Foreign Minister Jorge Castañeda, are calling for a thorough rethinking of anti-drug policy in Mexico and the United States that includes legalization. Legalization would significantly reduce drug cartel revenue and put an end to an enormous black market and the social pathologies that it creates.

Drug Violence in Mexico is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

There are numerous possible reasons for UN climate chief Yvo de Boer’s decision to resign—from his inability to cobble together a new climate treaty last December in Copenhagen (where he wept on the podium), to recent revelations of his agency’s mishandling of climate change data.

What the climate science community and the public should focus on now are the ramifications of de Boer’s resignation.  For one thing, it signals that hope is dead for a UN-brokered global treaty that would have any meaningful effect on global temperatures.  It also means that the UN intends to keep its Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change pretty much intact under the leadership of the scientifically compromised Rajenda Pauchari, who should have resigned along with de Boer.

This development guarantees that the Obama administration will have an unmitigated mess on its hands when signatories to the Framework Convention sit down in Mexico City this November in yet another meeting intended to produce a climate treaty.  The Mexico City meeting convenes six days after U.S. midterm elections, in which American voters are fully expected to rebuke Obama for policies including economy-crippling proposals to combat climate change.

In short, Mexico City is about as likely to produce substantive policy decisions as the TV show ‘The View.’  Backers of radical climate change measures are now paying the price for over two decades of telling the public—in this case literally—that the sky is falling.

UN Climate Official Steps In It, Then Aside is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

In 2008, there were some 6,300 drug war killings in Mexico, double that of the previous year. El Universal newspaper in Mexico reports that deaths related to the drug war have just surpassed 7,000 since the beginning of 2009, with more than 1000 of those homicides in the last 48 days. That’s a daily rate of 21.3 deaths for the year.

Drug traffickers have long operated in Mexico, but the rise in drug violence is a direct result of President Calderon’s all out war on the drug trade, which he announced upon coming into office December 2006. Annual drug war deaths have more than tripled since then. As Washington starts to spend the bulk of the $1.3 billion Merida Initiative to help Mexico fight drugs (Washington has spent $24 million so far), we can expect the violence to continue increasing. (For a review of Mexico’s futile war on drugs, see Ted Carpenter’s study.)

A Dubious Record in Mexico’s Drug War is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog