Poli-Sci-Request@RED.RUTGERS.EDU (Charles McGrew, The Moderator) (01/24/86)
Poli-Sci Digest Thursday, 23 Jan 1986 Volume 6 : Issue 1
Today's Topics:
A new moderator
Information on Technology
Hosts, Drinking and Driving
City Boundaries
Phil. "State of Emergency"
A lesson in Politics
We're off on the Road to Managua
South Africa & Nambibia.
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Date: 23 Jan 86 19:43:50 EST
From: Charles <MCGREW@RED.RUTGERS.EDU>
Subject: A new moderator
Hello,
I'm the new moderator of Poli-Sci. You might say that JoSH would
prefer his politics pre-digested (but then again you might not). Some
of you may know me from Human-Nets; I'm the moderator of that as well.
I hope to be able to do a good job at this list.
Charles
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Return-path: <SIMCS@AFCC-3.ARPA>
Date: 8-Nov-85 10:26 PST
From: SIMCS.AFCC@AFCC-3.ARPA
Subject: Request for information on Technology
To: telecom@mit-xx
I am looking for information on when technology transition from the
research and development stage and transfered to off-the-shelf stage.
In concerned, I am looking for when R&D started on the following
fields and when they enter into the production market. I understand
that there is a lot of grey area around these dates, but I am looking
for journals, news items, and/or history articles which summarize the
following technologies;
A. Telephone Switch
B. Satellite Communication
C. The modern day computer
D. Fiber-Optic
E. Store and Forward digital switches
F. Higher Lever Computer languish
G. Local Area Networks
Any information you can provide is appreciated.
Sampson sends.
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Return-path: <SAPPHO@SRI-NIC.ARPA>
Date: Mon 11 Nov 85 17:45:40-PST
From: Lynn Gazis <SAPPHO@SRI-NIC.ARPA>
Subject: hosts and drinking and driving
There is a difference between drinking and driving and making a bad
deal buying property, or even climbing a dangerous mountain and
risking you neck. Drinking and driving is a CRIME, which endangers
other people's lives. And a host who provides drinks to someone he or
she knows is going to drive under the influence is not just failing to
stop a friend from doing something foolish, or even just failing to do
anything to prevent a crime. He or she is aiding and abetting that
person in committing a crime. If I gave weapons to someone I knew was
going to assault someone, then I should be legally responsible.
Lynn Gazis
[ Why? By that reasoning, anyone giving or selling anyone anything
remotely usable as a weapon is 'legally responsible' for what is done
with the object at any time in the future. -CWM]
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Return-path: <ihnp4!utzoo!henry@ucbvax.berkeley.edu>
Date: Mon, 11 Nov 85 19:34:58 PST
From: ihnp4!utzoo!henry@ucbvax.berkeley.edu
Subject: city sizes
> [I know where Phoenix is, it's the *character* of midwest towns I
> know of I was assiging it. I had no idea it was so large, though.
> --JoSH]
There's a lot of politics in this (which is why I feel justified in
sending in a comment on it... :-). The population of a city depends
on where you draw the boundary line around it. Many Southwestern
cities have impressive population figures because the line is drawn a
long way out, whereas Eastern cities often have political constraints
on this sort of thing. Where would you draw the line around New York?
If you used the same sort of algorithm that seems to be common in the
Southwest, you'd include most of several states.
If you want a real example of politics making unrealistic borders,
look at where the official metropolitan-area boundary between
Washington DC and Baltimore is. Much aid for cities is keyed to
population of metropolitan area. Guess who decides where the
metropolitan-area boundaries of Washington are? Right. I don't think
the Baltimore city hall is in Washington yet... but just wait a
while.
Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
{allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!henry
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Return-path: <FIRTH@TL-20B.ARPA>
Date: Sat 23 Nov 85 17:19:28-EST
From: FIRTH@TL-20B.ARPA
Subject: Bye-bye, Constitution
Say goodbye to another piece of the Constitution.
According to recent news reports, it seems the
incompetents and amateur arsonists who run the
city of Philadelphia have decided to assume
"emergency" powers, under which they can order
to disperse any assembly of more than four
persons.
So much for the right of the people "peaceably to
assemble, and petition for redress of grievances."
Robert Firth
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Return-path: <@MC.LCS.MIT.EDU:MCGRATH%OZ.AI.MIT.EDU@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU>
Date: Sat 11 Jan 86 03:19:17-EST
From: "Jim McGrath" <MCGRATH%OZ.AI.MIT.EDU@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU>
Subject: A lesson in the Irrationality of Politics
Reply-to: mcgrath%mit-oz@mit-mc.arpa
This is a tale about how a well conceived public program can be
undermined by not paying attention to political forces. In October of
1965 a Presidential task force, consisting of academics and interest
group leaders, but no members of the bureaucracy and only one of
Congress (who was not there most of the time), designed a Model Cities
program. Their goal, based on long experience, was to make the
program effective by:
1) concentrating federal assistance into a small number of urban
areas to enhance its impact,
2) pay more attention to social issues than physical reconstruction,
3) tightly coordinate federal housing programs to get more bang
for the buck.
Originally they proposed a 5 to 10 city experimental program. But as
they talked, the numbers grew. First 36, and then 50 cities were
included (to give the Senate, with 50 states, some reason to approve
the "experiment"). Finally, they requested 66 cities.
It took 10 months to pass this high priority Presidential program.
Sections dealing with integration were knocked out, to appease
southern Democrats. Spending was reduced from $2.3 billion over five
years to $900 million and three years, to appease conservative
Republicans. The role of the federal coordinator, one of the three
goals, was practically eliminated.
But the real change came in the number of cities and what type of
cities were considered. The Senate doubled the number of cities, and
special provisions were put in so that certain cities would be sure to
be selected. Over 100 Congressmen were promised that their cities
would be selected before any applications had even been filed. But
even though goals 1 and 3 (and to a large extent 2) had been
abandoned, the program passed.
Next year the cities had to be picked by the civil servants in HUD,
and Congress had to appropriate the operating funds. HUD put off the
decision point until after the appropriations battle. After a very
hard and close battle, HUD awarded programs to 53% of their
supporters, and only 2% of those who opposed them. That 2%
represented one lone person, the ranking Republican on the Independent
Offices Subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee (the HUD
funding committee) - a man they could not afford to alienate. The
next and last year of the program, there was no real opposition.
While the allocation of the military budget among districts is
somewhat less openly political, this episode drives home the lesson
that politics count no matter what the program is. Moreover, a
wholly "rational" program was turned into an irrational pork barrel
mess by the political process.
People should keep the lesson of the Model Cities Program alive in
their minds when debating SDI, conventional weapons modernization,
etc... Like it or not, our political system, eminently rational on
its own merits, is often irrational with respect to solving problems.
Jim
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Return-path: <CARTER@BLUE.RUTGERS.EDU>
Date: 7 Nov 85 23:57 EST (Thu)
From: _Bob <Carter@RUTGERS>
Subject: Poli-Sci Digest V5 #45
JoSH,
Is the following orphan file I found something that you would like to
run in POLI-SCI?
_B
Helping Nicaragua - What You Can Do
Last of an eight part series.
As I left the beautiful Managua Airport with my tecNICA
colleagues (close friends, as they had become) or the first leg of my
journey back to Madison, I began to think what I would say to
friends back home who, I knew, would ask how they could help the
beautiful and efficient Nicaraguan people sustain and preserve their
way of life against the hostile forces that are arrayed against it.
Protest, of course. We must raise our voices in teach-ins, in
demonstrations, in protests of every sort, against the mistaken and
in fact imperialist policy Reagan is pursuing in Central America. But
it seems to me that, even if we can drive Reagan from office as we
drove his friend Nixon, something more is needed, to prevent the next
Reagan or Nixon from starting the next war against some small country
striving to better the lot of its citizens.
It seems to me that we might start by trying to emulate the sense
of cooperativeness and community spirit that I saw in so many
Nicaraguans. Not only did they seem to share the goals and ideals of
the Sandanista government; their easy acceptance of the sacrifices
that the government and party was compelled to ask of them gave them
an air of serenity and peace that I can remember seeing only in very
religious people, nuns and priests, at home. If we could just
achieve that outlook and attitude, we would find that many things
that we now value would seem unimportant. They would certainly not
seem worth fighting colonial wars to preserve.
Take "freedom of the press," for instance. As a journalist I have
been taught that this was sacred, but after thinking about it, I
believe that a completely free press is necessary only if the people
and the government are adversaries. After return from up-country, I
spent a half-day at the offices of MENTIRA (Movimiento
Estadistica Nicaraguenza para Tasar Igualdad Racia'l en las Americas)
a private civil rights organization sympathetic to the Sandanistas. I
raised the question of censorship of La Prensa, the right wing paper,
even though my visit took place before the suspension of free speech
President Ortega was compelled to proclaim a few days later.
MENTIRA was headquartered in a small set of basement rooms, which
my hosts told me had been gay night club before the Revolution. It
was pleasantly decorated with patriotic posters, although somewhat
run down. (Incidentally, Madison gays will be interested to know that
MENTIRA members assured me that there is no discrimination against
homosexuals in Nicaragua, and that many Nicaraguan gays had actually
rethought their sexual preferences under the new government.) The
important thing to understand about the extensive censorship of La
Prensa is that the only articles the government asks the editors to
omit are the ones that would upset the people or which attempt to
separate them from their close relationship with Sandinismo by
advocating selfish narrow individualistic values at the expense of
the community. I thought the large white spaces on the front page of
La Prensa gave a light airy feeling to the paper's page make-up.
In the same way, I think it might be time to rethink some of the
legalistic values that seem so important to some people in this
society, but which serve mainly to give employment to lawyers. One
of these notions that I was raised to value is due process. While I
was up-country, I bicycled through the sleepy little city of Jinotega
(pop. 15,000) just at the time the Army was executing 13 Miskito
Indians for treason. I stopped and chatted with one of the sentries
after the execution had been carried out. He was very unassuming and
friendly and teased me when I couldn't remember the words for "firing
squad." (Peloto'n de fusilamiento.)
There had been no need for witnesses or lawyers at the military
trial, he said. A very respected young officer had brought them in,
and explained to the court martial that they had given aid and
comfort to the U.S.-backed contras. During the ceremony, I was struck
again by the simple dignity of all Nicaraguans. The condemned
prisoners were serious and correct in their bearing, as if they knew
they were serving as a public example. The soldiers were tender and
caring toward the Miskitos, aside from a little friendly jostling.
They took care to offer blindfolds and cigarettes (I'm sorry to say
that many people still smoke cigarettes in Nicaragua.)
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Return-path: <hofmann@AMSAA.ARPA>
Date: Mon, 2 Dec 85 14:24:21 EST
From: Jim Hofmann <hofmann@AMSAA.ARPA>
Subject: South Africa, Nambibia.
I was once a victim. I was once a victim of effective South
African propaganda. They tell us they are our friends through
various emmisaries and sources (Falwell, Reagan, Schultz and the
Heritage foundation) when they send commando raids into Angola
to knock out US corporation (Gulf) owned oil refinerys. US
papers publish little about this aborted operation and most people
in the US don't even know about it. They never have publicly
apologized.
Pretoria tells us they are moving slowly and surely to end
aparthied yet at the same time they seek to annex Nambibia (South
West Africa) into their empire (truly an "evil empire" if there
ever was one). They tell us it is for their own good, seemingly
they plan to civilized an already civilized territory by making it
a homeland. To their ends, they sign a non-agression pact with
neighboring countries but are the first to violate it. When the
other participants in the pact make moves to protest, Pretoria
shrilly denounces them.
And still aparthied exists in South Africa. What can we do? What
can I do? Can anyone on this list tell me?
Once a victim now a willing catalyst for change ...
Hofmann.
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End of Poli-Sci Digest
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