THE TAX POLICE: Demonstrating further that he is President Bush's least prudent choice in a generally solid Cabinet, Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill refuses to commit to abandoning the Clinton policy of promoting high global taxation. The European-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) wants to end "tax competition" among nations by, in effect, requiring universally high taxation. Senate Majority Whip Don Nickles (R.-Okla.) wrote a letter to O'Neill requesting the abrogation of the Clinton policy. Assistant Treasury Secretary for Tax Policy Mark Weinberger wrote back March 26, reported Bob Novak in his April 19 column, saying that "countries generally should not engage in practices that make it easier for other countries' laws to be broken or frustrated. . . . [T]hose practices might include bank secrecy rules or an unwillingness to exchange tax information with us that would permit taxpayers more readily to evade our laws." Novak commented, "That sounded like a tentative endorsement of what House Majority Leader Dick Armey has labeled a 'global network of tax police.' " The OECD is threatening sanctions against small countries considered tax havens, such as the Cayman Islands. Next could be the United States, for having lower taxes and more financial privacy laws than Europe.
INDIANA TROUBLE: Indiana loses a congressional seat in the current redistricting process, and Congressional Quarterly reports (April 21) that the Democrats who control the state house and the governorship want to force Republican Representatives Steve Buyer and Brian Kerns to run against each other by combining their districts. Though Republicans control the state senate, "a quirk in Indiana's redistricting law actually gives Democrats ultimate control over the new district lines," said CQ. If the house and senate deadlock over redistricting as expected, a five-member commission would decide the outcome. House leaders would appoint two commission members, senate leaders two, and the governor one, giving Democrats control.
ROBERTSON & ABORTION: Televangelist Pat Robertson made some puzzling comments about Communist China's population control policy to Wolf Blitzer on CNN April 16. "Well, you know, I don't agree with it. But at the same time, they've got 1.2 billion people, and they don't know what to do," said Robertson. "If every family over there was allowed to have three or four children, the population would be completely unsustainable. . . . I don't agree with the forced abortion, but I don't think the United States needs to interfere with what they're doing internally in this regard." After receiving criticism, Robertson issued a "clarification" that pleased few. Speaking to Paula Zahn on Fox News on April 18, Robertson said: "They've got 1.2 billion people, and they just will have massive starvation if they allow that population just to explode to two billion or two-billion-plus. It's unsustainable. The thing that I didn't make clear when I was talking with the program on that other network was that I am unalterably opposed to forced abortion. . . . The Chinese government is saying basically one child a family, which seems excessive perhaps but that's their rule, and so far, it's working for them. But they have a very serious problem, and it-you cannot imagine how many people will be out of work. You can't imagine the mass starvation, the desperate poverty that will result if they allow population explosion uncontrolled."
LIEBERMAN & BINGAMAN: "Moderate" Democratic Sen. Joe Lieberman (Conn.) lambasted the Bush Administration for delaying an onerous regulation that would have lowered the allowed level of arsenic in drinking water to 10 parts per billion from 50 parts per billion. "Today's action is like something Marie Antoinette might have done: Let them drink arsenic," said the hyperbolic would-be Vice President. Before popping off against Bush, however, perhaps Lieberman should go talk with fellow Democratic Sen. Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico. Liberal Bingaman was pleased with the decision-which would affect his state more than Connecticut. "Last year, Bingaman was briefed by the EPA on the method officials used for arriving at that [proposed stricter] standard," said Bingaman's office. "He determined that the agency's explanation was not persuasive."
CHINA FOLLY: As lawmakers muse over whether China's seizure of Americans and continued refusal to return our property means that the PRC should not receive favored trade status, the Cardinal Kung Foundation reported April 23 that the Chinese government has arrested a bishop, seven priests, and 13 lay Roman Catholics for not belonging to the government-run "Patriotic Catholic Church."
