Conference back40::soapbox

So what's the skinny on this new politician just elected in the congress?
I was just reading in another conference that contrary to the purported
aim of reducing the size of government,  he was going to do absolutely 
nothing to reduce spending,  while at the same time increasing taxes on a 
whole list of items,  such as videotapes,  beer,  hamburger,  computers,
newspapers, capital gains,  etc.  Word has it that it's yet another try at 
a religious state.

Can anyone else enlighten us on what this dude is and isn't?

    
    <-----
    
     Who're you refering to and what religious state is he from?
    

He smells,  makes your taxes higher,  spends the money on pork,  raises
interest rates and makes a greater percentage of the population sick from
the as well.  Seems like a good deal to me.  Idiots.

    hummmm.... Sounds like he is Ted Kennedy in cog-neet-o!:)

    It's an republican (MBT or some such).  It's supposed to facilitate
    deficit reduction.  There was mention of this in the News Briefs note
    awhile back.  I think it was COMMIE::COMMIE that alluded to it possibly
    voiding warranties on some new cars as well.  

    Too late, it's already there I think. 

    
    And already in Texas as well...in conjunction with Official State
    Religious Inspection Centers (18 in DFW to service 1 million people;
    can anyone say "stand-in-line").  Call me paranoid (I'm from Texas),
    but this appears to be the early stages of a ban-older-ideas
    movement on the government's part.
    
    Texans hate mass-conversions...we'll just have to legislate them into it.
    
    Ain't Rome great ?

Well, geeziz, Phil - I only wrote 175.0 and .1 because I thought it might
be a reasonable place to discuss some environmental issues in general
rather than some of the particular ones which have already been brought
up in here. I mentioned that you might be able to shed some light on
the gas matter since you always seem to be well informed on the Environmental
issues and I respect a lot of your viewpoints on the matters.

If you actually would prefer to do this mr. bill emulation for some reason,
by all means carry on. I'm sure Brian McBride and others with some
environmental savvy will be glad to help us with our understanding of the
other matters.

    
    .7
    
    Stealing notes from paranoid Texans is a dangerous thing, bubba.
    We'll have to send you to Seminary. ;^D
    
    

RE: 176.8 by MOLAR::DELBALSO "I (spade) my (dogface)"

> Well, geeziz, Phil - I only wrote 175.0 and .1 because I thought it might
> be a reasonable place to discuss some environmental issues in general
> rather than some of the particular ones which have already been brought
> up in here. 

Well,  you touched my funny bone today,  and I apologize for any offense
taken,  none was intended.

I am not well informed on the science of urban air pollution and on
changing the chemistry of fuels to reduce same.  About the best I can do
for you would be to point to a general article in Science (10-Feb-1989 
pages 745-752).  I'd also suggest that you ask the EPA or perhaps oil 
companies for pointers to test results,  as well as that political group
that had the 1-800 number on the political ad on boston am radio this
morning (paid for by Auto Producers Association,  or some such).

There does appear to be a lot of political fud flying on this issue right
now.  A good time to be skeptical of any unsupported claim.


Phil

RE: 176.9 by SCAPAS::GUINEO::MOORE "I'll have the rat-on-a-stick"

Isn't Seminary in East Texas somewhere?  ;-)

    .11
    
    Actually, it is. In Big Sandy, Texas, where men are men, and sheep are
    in hiding.
    
    ;^)

    Phil:
    
    If you weren't so pathetic you might be funny.

    you want political issues. i read this whilst riding on the plane a
    couple of days ago. and those GD idiots in DC STILL don't understand
    that its LESS GOVERNMENT we want. taxes, pork, etc., are just
    supporting issues to be addressed.
    
    
below summarizes (read that to mean - not entirely complete) the layers of
government management between the current (soon to be gone) secretary of
AG espy and the people out in the country his organization is supposed to
serve. what staggers the mind is that these idiots STILL don't understand 
that what us common folks that make this country run want is a WHOLE LOT
less of THEM! the "abbreviated" org chart is:

                 source: american enterprise magazine

CABINET SECRETARY (espy himself)
  chief of staff to the secretary
  deputy chief of staff
  deputy secretary
  chief of staff to the deputy secretary
  associate deputy secretary

UNDERSECRETARY
  principal deputy undersecretary
  deputy undersecretary
  principal associate deputy underseretary
  associate deputy undersecretary
  assistant deputy undersecretary
  associate undersecretary

ASSISTANT SECRETARY/INSPECTOR GENERAL/GENERAL COUNSEL
  chief of staff to the assistant secretary
  principal deputy assistant secretary
  deputy assistant secretary
  assosciate deputy assistant secretary
  deputy associate deputy associate assistant secretary
  assistant general counsel/inspector general
  deputy assistant general counsel/inspector general

ADMINISTRATOR
  chief of staff to the administrator
  principal deputy administrator
  deputy administrator
  associate deputy administrator
  assistant deputy administrator
  associate administrator
  deputy associate administrator
  assistant administrator
  deputy assistant administrator
  associate assistant administrator
  principal office director
  office director
  principal deputy office director
  deputy office director
  assistant deputy office director
  associate office director
  deputy associate office director
  assistant office director
  deputy assistant director
  principal division director
  division director
  deputy division director
  associate division director
  assistant division director
  deputy assistant division director
  subdivision director
  deputy subdivision director
  associate subdivision director
  assistant subdivision director
  branch chief

  then we get out of D.C. and the numbers of bureaucratic layers number 
  in the hundreds. does anyone think that maybe we could gut a few dozen of 
  these layers and still get along ok?

What's the difference between an associate deputy administrator
and a deputy associate administrator?

Is this for real?

    
    They're both in charge of the Dept. of Redundancy Dept.

    My eyes started to cross, but I think I counted 52 layers!!!
    

    .8:
    
    What's the expression, "to tear <obj.> a second orifice", or some such?
    
    Dick

    >>My eyes started to cross, but I think I counted 52 layers!!!
    
    righto! there are exactly 52 layers of management from espy to the
    first level of management in "the field". the article did a good job of
    explaining how so many positions get propogated by starting out in one
    department, say energy, and then immediately propogating to the others.
    amazingly wastefull.
    
    the dept. of AG DID NOT dispute the chain of command. i suspect that's
    because its worse than depicted in the article.

    Suggest everyone reading the Haag-meister's gem of a note, send copies
    to each of your congressleech and ask him/her what is being done about
    such a waste of money. Also, might ask why they have so many people on
    their staffs. Mass. own Fat Boy has 38 to help him know how to vote and 
    when he should be awake for a roll call vote. Best of all is these
    slugs can have things put into the Congressional Record without even 
    attending the session. Call it in. Back in the early 60's Thomas Dodd
    of Conn. was doing this on a regular basis. Then an aide let it be
    known that this was normal operation as the most honorable senator was 
    usually too drunk/too "busy" to attend. Margaret Chase Smith also
    offered an amendment to a bill one time which would require members of
    Congress to give up their seats if they missed more than 50% of votes.
    Studies showed this would affect about 40% plus of the Congress so it 
    did not get voted on - got tabled by some chairman. The question each
    person must ask is did I just vote to return some jerk who isn't going
    to do anything about staff reductions, committee reductions or is the 
    person someone who has helped create the mess and thinks it's
    excellent?
    
    Bye bye causcuses of little use. Get 'em Newt!
    
    

    Orange County Could Use Some Role Models 


    Tom Hayden 

    WHEN WE TRY to understand how Orange County Treasurer Robert Citron
    went bad, we might draw on our wisdom about inner- city crime: He came
    from a bad neighborhood and was under pressure. You could see it
    coming, and no one stepped  in. 

    Although many ignored the warning signs, the Los Angeles Times over the
    past  decade described the county in news stories as ``a big league of
    con games,'' the  ``nation's investment fraud capital'' and the
    ``white-collar fraud capital.'' 

    The best-known criminal in the neighborhood, of course, was Charles
    Keating,  whose Irvine- based Lincoln Savings and Loan ripped off
    innocent and unsuspecting  thrift depositors, costing taxpayers $2.7
    billion. That's 33 times the money stolen in  bank robberies nationally
    in 1992. 

    Between 1981 and 1993, 46 financial institutions in Orange County were
    seized  for insolvency or mismanagement -- more than any county in
    California. 

    How to explain this 1980s culture of junk-bond junkies and twisted
    career  criminals? A criminologist at the University of California at
    Irvine, opined, ``money is  every third word here.'' 

    This was the toxic environment in which Citron was expected to manage
    other  peoples' money. With rampant moral breakdown and a parlor
    atmosphere of lawlessness all around him, Citron didn't have a chance.
    His home-boy politicians expected him  to bring back as much loot as
    possible, so they wouldn't have to raise taxes or cut  services. 

    Citron turned to the dudes in Rolexes, Merrill Lynch and their lawyers,
    who had  given $80,000 to Orange County politicians, including himself,
    since 1987. Merrill  Lynch's law firm was bond counsel on at least 15
    bond deals with Orange County. 

    Best of all, the money guys were clean. They weren't break ing any
    securities  laws that might bring down heat. 

    The game was so exciting that apparently no one who was playing with
    Orange County's money took a serious look at Kevin Phillips's book,
    ``Arrogant  Capital,'' about the ``financialization of America'' and
    the rise of bond traders as modern  pirates. 

    ``Financialization is not nirvana, but a late stage of great economic
    powers  heading into trouble,'' the conservative Phillips wrote. States
    become ``unable to roll back  their public debt once it gains momentum
    because the vested interests (are) too great.'' The  rich get richer on
    speculation, according to Phillips, ``while large parts of the nation 
    wither and stagnate.'' 

    As we enter a permanent deficit economy, the traders also take over the 
    political centers where public investments are made and loans are
    sought. In the 1992 national  elections, securities and investment
    firms were top donors of ``soft'' money -- slush funds  among friends,
    really -- to the two major parties. 

    Right after his election, President Clinton exploded at his advisers,
    ``you mean  to tell me that the success of the (economic) program and
    my re-election hinges on the  Federal Reserve and a bunch of
    (expletive) bond traders?'' Now more familiar with the  way the deal
    goes down, President Clinton has named a Goldman Sachs trader to be 
    secretary of the treasury. 

    So consider all this when judging Citron. Who was there in his
    neighborhood, in  the state, indeed in our great nation, to be a
    responsible role model? Who to counsel  respect for law? Who to
    instruct in right and wrong? 

    
    Economic advice from Tom Hayden !  Well, maybe it would be better
    than his marital advice....
    
      bb

    sure, consider the source, when you can't argue the facts.
    
    DougO

    
    You are right that I know little about Orange County.  But the
    investments were just the usual risky gambles, just like the ones
    Bentsen has been making in Washington to fool people into thinking
    the US government is really cutting its budget.  Citron went around
    bragging to everyplace that they ought to use his methods.  Like a
    lot of other risky schemes, the fall came later.
    
    There just isn't any magic way to beat the market.  Nobody knows
    how to predict interest rates.  It's the same mistake that's been
    made since forever.  Yet the suckers still get taken.
    
      bb

    <copied from http://www.timeinc.com>
    
HYPERDEMOCRACY

Washington isn't dangerously disconnected from the
people; the trouble may be it's too plugged in

BY ROBERT WRIGHT

The most vilified expanse of asphalt in the history of the universe is,
almost certainly, the Washington Beltway. Whereas most municipal
freeways are associated with fairly mundane evils -- potholes,
rush-hour traffic -- the Beltway has come to symbolize nothing less
than a looming threat to American democracy. It is the great invisible
buffer, impermeable to communication, that separates the nation's
capital from the nation. It is what keeps many politicians -- the ones
with an ''inside the Beltway'' mentality -- out of touch with the
needs of the citizenry. It is the reason Washington's ''media elites''
are so clueless as to what's really on America's mind. It is why voters
get congressional gridlock when they want action, and congressional
action when they want nothing in particular. In a typical indictment,
one columnist recently called some piece of Washington
policymaking ''too secret, too expert, too Beltway.''

The solution, some observers say, is simple: use information
technology to break through the Beltway barrier. Ross Perot
champions an ''electronic town hall,'' a kind of cyberdemocracy that,
via push-button voting, would let people make the wise policy
decisions their so-called representatives are failing to make for them.
And now, vaguely similar noises are coming from someone with real
power -- inside-the-Beltway power, no less. Speaker of the House
Newt Gingrich, who last week spoke at a Washington conference
called Democracy in Virtual America, is trying to move Congress
toward a ''virtual Congress.'' He envisions a House committee
holding ''a hearing in five cities by television while the actual
committee is sitting here.'' He's also letting C-SPAN's cameras, the
electorate's virtual eyeballs, peer into more congressional hearings.
And under a new program called ''Thomas,'' after Thomas Jefferson,
all House documents are being put on the Internet for mass perusal by
modem. Thomas, says Gingrich, will shift power ''toward the citizens
out of the Beltway.'' It will get ''legislative materials beyond the
cynicism of the elite.'' And as this online material sparks online
debate, Americans can ''begin to have electronic town-hall
meetings.''

This may sound visionary, but it's nothing compared with the vision
sketched by Gingrich's favorite futurists, Alvin and Heidi Toffler, in
their book Creating a New Civilization. The Tofflers view the
old-fashioned, physical Congress as suffering from a progressive
erosion of relevance that calls for a wholesale rethinking of the
Constitution. ''Today's spectacular advances in communications
technology open, for the first time, a mind-boggling array of
possibilities for direct citizen participation in political
decision-making.'' And since our ''pseudo-representatives'' are so
''unresponsive,'' we the people must begin to ''shift from depending
on representatives to representing ourselves.''

One problem with all this enthusiasm about electronically wiring the
citizenry to the Washington policymaking machine is that in a sense,
it's already happened. Politicians are quite in touch with opinion polls
and have learned not to ignore the Rush Limbaughs of the world, with
their ability to marshal rage over topics ranging from Hillary to the
House post office. Public feedback fills Washington fax machines,
phones and E-mail boxes. From C-SPAN's studios just off Capitol
Hill, lawmakers chat with callers live -- including callers who have
been monitoring their work via C-SPAN cameras on Capitol Hill.
More messages from the real world pass through the Beltway barrier
than ever before. And contrary to popular belief, politicians pay
attention. What we have today is much more of a cyberdemocracy
than the visionaries may realize.

The other problem with all the plans for a new cyberdemocracy is that
judging by the one we already have, it wouldn't be a smashing success.
Some of the information technologies that so pervade Washington life
have not only failed to cure our ills but actually seem to have made
them worse. Intensely felt public opinion leads to the impulsive
passage of dubious laws; and meanwhile, the same force fosters the
gridlock that keeps the nation from balancing its budget, among other
things, as a host of groups clamor to protect their benefits. In both
cases, the problem is that the emerging cyberdemocracy amounts to a
kind of ''hyperdemocracy'': a nation that, contrary to all
Beltway-related stereotypes, is thoroughly plugged in to Washington
-- too plugged in for its own good.

The worst may be yet to come. The trend toward hyperdemocracy has
happened without anyone planning it, and there is no clear reason for
it to stop now. With or without a new Tofflerian constitution, there is
cause to worry that the nation's inevitable immersion in cyberspace,
its descent into a wired world of ultra-narrowcasting and online
discourse, may render democracy more hyper and in some ways less
functional. We have seen the future, and it doesn't entirely work.

''Electronic town halls'' featuring push-button voting have always
faced one major rhetorical handicap: the long shadow of the Founding
Fathers. The Founders explicitly took lawmaking power out of the
people's hands, opting for a representative democracy and not a direct
democracy. What concerned them, especially James Madison, was the
specter of popular ''passions'' unleashed. Their ideal was cool
deliberation by elected representatives, buffered from the often
shifting winds of opinion -- inside-the-Beltway deliberation.
Madison insisted in the Federalist Papers on the need to ''refine and
enlarge the public views by passing them through the medium of a
chosen body of citizens, whose wisdom may best discern the true
interest of their country and whose patriotism and love of justice will
be least likely to sacrifice it to temporary or partial considerations.''

Madison would not have enjoyed watching how the ''three strikes and
you're out'' provision wound up in last year's crime bill. The idea
first took shape in California, where 18-year-old Kimber Reynolds
had been murdered by a career felon. It was electronic from its very
inception: the legislation was co-authored by talk-radio host Ray
Appleton from Fresno who knew the victim's father and had fielded
outraged calls after the killer's lengthy criminal record came to light.
As the idea gained ground in California, it spread east. Its popularity
was electronically catalyzed -- on talk radio, especially -- and
electronically expressed in telephone polls, on the airwaves, by fax.
President Clinton, with the support of Congress, complied promptly
and cheerfully with the people's will. A push-button referendum
would not have worked more effectively.

And as Madison might have guessed, the result was more gratifying
viscerally than intellectually. ''Three strikes'' was notable not only
for the shortage of politicians eager to loudly denounce it but also for
the shortage of policy analysts who enthusiastically embraced it.
While liberals deemed it draconian, many conservatives found it a
constitutionally dubious exertion of federal power, as well as a sloppy
form of draconianism. The law does nothing to raise the cost of the
first two strikes, and meanwhile spends precious money imprisoning
men past middle age, after most of them have been pacified by ebbing
testosterone, free of charge. Of course, on the positive side, the law
does have a catchy title. (How would the crime bill read if baseball
allowed each batter five strikes?)

That policy ''elites'' aren't wild about something does not mean it's a
mistake. But whatever the merits, the process that produced ''three
strikes and you're out'' reflects a shift in American governance since
the republic's founding -- the growing porousness of the supposedly
impregnable buffer around Washington. This was
outside-the-Beltway politics, and is typical of our era.

This constant canvassing of public sentiment, one of two basic kinds
of hyperdemocracy, is a straightforward outgrowth of information
technology. The second basic kind -- the one more specifically linked
to gridlock and to the budget deficit -- is a bit more subtle and more
pernicious. And like the first one, it ultimately gets back to Madison.
In addition to his dread of mass ''passions,'' Madison had a second
nightmare about ''pure democracy'': it ''can admit of no cure for the
mischiefs of faction.''

He was mostly worried about oppressive majority factions. The
modern special-interest group was a species unknown to him. Still, he
had a fundamental insight that explains the subsequent origin of that
species and its growth. The beauty of a large country, he noted, is the
damper it places on factionalism. For when people are dispersed far
and wide, even if some of them have ''a common motive,'' the
distance among them will make it hard for them to organize -- ''to
discover their own strength and to act in unison with each other.'' The
history of communications technology over the past 200 years is the
history of those words becoming less true.

Technologies ranging from the telegraph to the telephone, from
typewriter to carbon paper have all made mass organization easier and
cheaper. And since the 1960s, the technologies have unfolded
relentlessly: computerized mass mailing, the personal computer and
printer, the fax, the modem and increasingly supple software for
keeping tabs on members or prospective members. The number of
associations, both political and apolitical, has grown in lockstep with
these advances. One bellwether -- the size of the American Society of
Association Executives -- went from 2,000 in 1965 to 20,000 in
1990. As for sheerly political organizations: no one knows exactly
how many lobbyists there are in Washington, but the Congressional
Quarterly estimates that between 1975 and 1985 alone the number
more than doubled and may even have quadrupled.

There was a second impetus to interest-group growth: in the 1960s,
just as the technology of computerized direct mail was emerging, a
proliferation of government programs created fresh issues to get
interested in. Combined, the two factors were explosive. The
American Association of Retired Persons, founded in 1958, did its
first lobbying in 1965 with the arrival of Medicare. Over the next 25
years, its membership grew from a million to more than 30 million.
Today it sends out 50 million pieces of mail a year. And when its
members talk -- especially about Medicare or Social Security --
Congress listens.

Information technology has also revolutionized the form such talk can
take. Meet Jack Bonner, voice for hire. On behalf of an interest group,
Bonner and Associates can spew 10,000 faxes a night. But Bonner is
better known for applying a more personal touch. When he works on a
piece of legislation, he first isolates the likely swing votes, then has
his software scan a database of the corresponding congressional
districts, seeking residents whose profiles suggest sympathy with his
cause. When influence is in order -- after, say, a sudden and
threatening development at a committee hearing -- his people call
these sympathizers, describe the looming peril and offer to ''patch''
them directly through to a congressional office to voice their protest.
''But only in their own words,'' stresses Bonner, mindful that
congressional staffs are getting better at spotting pseudo-grass-roots
(''Astroturf'') lobbying. Bonner charges $350 to $500 per call
generated.

The striking thing about many modern special interests is how
unspecial they are. Whereas a century ago lobbying was done on
behalf of titans of industry, the members of, for example, AARP are
no one in particular -- just a bunch of people with an average income
of $28,000 who happen to have gray hair. Indeed, they're so common
that they account for one in six American adults -- maybe you,
maybe your mother, certainly someone you know. And if you're not
in AARP, perhaps you are in the National Taxpayers' Union, the
National Rifle Association or, less probably, the Possum Growers and
Breeders Association. Or the American Association of Sex Educators,
Counselors and Therapists. Or the Beer Drinkers of America --
190,000 members strong and devoted to low beer taxes. ''Almost
every American who reads these words is a member of a lobby,''
writes Jonathan Rauch in his recent book Demosclerosis. ''We have
met the special interests, and they are us.''

That lobbying has embraced the middle classes hardly means it's now
an equal-opportunity enterprise. Wealthy people can still afford more
of it, and the poor are still on the sidelines. Housing projects aren't
leading targets for direct-mail solicitations. Still, lobbying has gotten
more egalitarian, more democratic, as technology has made
mobilizing groups cheaper.

On its face, that seems fine. If we must have lobbyists, they might as
well represent regular people, not just oil barons. The trouble is that
regular people, like oil barons, are usually asking for money, whether
in the form of crop subsidies for farmers, tax breaks for shopkeepers,
Medicare or Social Security payments, or various other benefits. So
the increasingly ''democratic'' face of interest groups means the
American government is asked to pay more, which means finally
Americans of all classes are too. And the ultimate cost could be larger
still. The budget deficit is not only a grave problem in itself, a theft of
resources from the next generation, but also one reason politicians feel
too strapped for cash to earnestly confront the other leading contender
for gravest problem: the existence of an urban underclass. This sort of
predicament is what the Founders designed representative democracy
to solve. ''They saw the public interest as a transcendent thing that
enlightened people would be able to see and promote. It wasn't just a
question of adding up all the interests,'' says historian Gordon Wood,
author of The Radicalism of the American Revolution.

American University political scientist James Thurber, author of the
forthcoming book Remaking Congress, calls politics in the
information age ''hyperpluralism.'' He remembers sitting in
congressional hearings for the 1986 tax-reform law as lobbyists
watched the proceedings with cellular phones at the ready. ''They
started dialing the instant anyone in that room even thought about
changing a tax break.'' Their calls alerted interested parties and
brought a deluge of protest borne by phone, letter or fax. ''There is no
buffer allowing Representatives to think about what's going on,''
Thurber says. ''In the old days you had a few months or weeks, at least
a few days. Now you may have a few seconds before the wave hits.''

The firms that orchestrate those waves from special interests often
describe themselves as nonideological. But it is inherent in
special-interest work that they will time and again be employed to
defend the budget deficit against brutal assault at the hands of fiscal
responsibility. When in February 1993 President Clinton proposed an
energy tax that was hailed by economists and environmentalists,
something called the Energy Tax Policy Alliance paid for a fatal
multimedia campaign. When he suggested in the same budget plan
cutting the business-lunch deduction from 80% to 50%, it was the
National Restaurant Association that stirred to action, sending local
TV stations satellite feeds of busboys and waitresses fretting about
their imperiled jobs. And the restaurateurs hired Jack Bonner to roll
out the Astroturf. ''I see it as the triumph of democracy,'' Bonner said
of his livelihood in a Washington Post interview. ''In a democracy,
the more groups taking their message to the people outside the
Beltway and the more people taking their message to Congress, the
better off the system is.''

Special interests are legendary for distorting facts and preying on fear.
The letter from the National Committee to Preserve Social Security
and Medicare that helped trigger the rapid-fire repeal of a 1988 law
to ensure catastrophic coverage under Medicare began with the words,
''Your Federal Taxes for 1989 May Increase by Up to $1,600 . . . Just
Because You Are Over the Age of 65'' -- even though 60% of all
seniors wouldn't have paid a dime more in taxes. The tone of cool
reason favored by the Founding Fathers is similarly lacking from this
Jerry Falwell mailing: ''American troops are again facing madman
Saddam Hussein in the Persian Gulf -- but the enemy here at home
may be much more dangerous! . . . Homosexuals are Bill Clinton's #1
allies.''

Still, special interests often do traffic in facts. Their stock in trade is
sounding alarms about legislative threats to people's interests, and
often they can do that honestly. This, in a sense, is more disturbing
than the cases of dishonesty or demagoguery. It means that the
corruption of the public interest by special interests is no easily cured
pathology, but a stubbornly rational pattern of behavior. The costs of
each group's selfishness are spread diffusely across the whole nation,
after all, while the benefits are captured by the group. Though every
group might prosper in the long run if all groups surrendered just
enough to balance the budget, it makes no sense for any of them to
surrender unilaterally.

Given that accurate information, rationally processed, often leads
people to undermine the public good, how excited should we be about
Gingrich's Thomas, the online data base of congressional documents?
Granted, there may not be a lobbyist manipulating the data flow. But
that does not mean interest-group politics won't result. In cyberspace,
technology may have finally reached a point where groups form
spontaneously; on the Internet, passing information to a neighbor of
like interest is a push-button exercise and can easily trigger a chain
reaction. The result is a mass mailing that requires neither a
centralized mass mailer nor the cost of postage and paper. And the
next step can be a genuine, unrehearsed protest -- grass roots, not
Astroturf -- that rolls into Congress or the White House via E-mail.
Gingrich promises that Thomas will take power away from lobbyists,
but if so, that may just mean Thomas has taken over their dirty work.
(And after all, why should lobbyists be exempt from technological
unemployment in the information age?)

Already the spontaneous formation of a single-issue interest group
has been seen on the Net. In 1993 the Federal Government announced
plans to promote the Clipper chip, which would have ensured the
government's ability to decipher messages sent over phone lines by
modem. The circulation of an anti-Clipper petition turned into a kind
of impromptu online civil-liberties demonstration, boosting the
number of signatures from 40 to 47,500.

The oft-expressed hope for cyberspace is that any tendency toward
fragmentation into contending groups will be offset by a capacity for
edifying deliberation. And decorous dialogue has indeed been seen
there. But cyberspace is also notorious for bursts of hostility that
face-to-face contact would have suppressed. And a perusal of the
Internet's newsgroups suggests that any tendencies toward
convergence will have some real gaps to bridge. There's
alt.politics.greens, alt.politics.libertarian, alt.politics.radical-left,
alt.fan.dan-quayle, alt.politics.nationalism.white,
alt.fan.g-gordon-liddy, alt.rush-limbaugh.die.a.flaming.death. In a
nation that has trouble fixing its attention on the public good and is
facing increasingly bitter cultural wars, this is not a wholly
encouraging glimpse of the future. There's no
alt.transcendent.public.interest in sight.

Not to worry. In the Gingrich camp, optimism runs rampant. Alvin
Toffler and a few other seers prepared a ''Magna Carta for the
Knowledge Age'' for the Progress and Freedom Foundation, which
supports Gingrich. The authors dismiss in Tofflerian language those
who fret about social balkanization in cyberspace as ''Second Wave
ideologues'' (that is, Industrial Revolution dinosaurs, not clued in to
the ''Third Wave,'' the knowledge revolution). ''Rather than being a
centrifugal force helping to tear society apart, cyberspace can be one
of the main forms of glue holding together an increasingly free and
diverse society.'' The key to a ''secure and stable civilization'' is to
make ''appropriate social arrangements.'' Unfortunately, they never
get around to specifying the social arrangements.

If there are ''arrangements'' that would indeed bring stability to a
cyberdemocratic society, they might be found by first dispelling all
residues of election-year rhetoric and acknowledging that
Washington, far from being out of touch, is too plugged in, and that if
history is any guide, the problem will only grow as technology
advances. The challenge, thus conceived, is to buffer the legislature
from the pressure of feedback.

One possibility is electoral reform. But limiting the number of
congressional terms, the current vogue, makes less sense than
expanding the length of terms. The incentive to vote for a responsible
budget that's healthful in the long run but painful in the short run
depends on whether you face election next year or in three years. 

There is another possible solution: leadership. Someone -- a
President, say -- could actually stand up and tell the truth: that
various public goods call for widespread sacrifice. But leadership is
harder in an age of decentralized media -- an age of
''demassification,'' in the Tofflers' term. In the old days a President
could give a prime-time talk on all three networks and know that he
had everyone's attention. But this sort of forum is disappearing as
conservatives watch National Empowerment Television, nature buffs
watch the Discovery Channel, sports fans watch ESPN. When Clinton
sought to address the nation last December after his party's debacle,
the networks, conscious of their competition, were reluctant. But they
finally gave him the midsize soapbox they can deliver these days. He
used it to promise a tax cut.

This was widely viewed as shameless pandering, not to mention a
cheap imitation of Republican pandering. But it wasn't viewed as
surprising. Politics is pandering in a hyperdemocracy; to lead is to
follow. Henry Aaron of the Brookings Institution sees this as one of
the great social costs of modern information technology: in a kind of
Darwinian process, hyperdemocracy weeds out politicians with the
sort of strong internal principles that defy public opinion. ''The
advantage enjoyed by people willing to trim their views to the tastes
of the electorate was smaller back when you couldn't find out what
the electorate thought,'' Aaron says. Today, ''few of those with core
principles survive.'' If you don't obey talk-radio or public-opinion
polls, you're ushered offstage.

Perversely, though, politicians are also punished if they do obey. The
classic complaint about President Clinton is that he stands for nothing.
Which is to say, he's willing to do just about anything to satisfy
voters. Since the 1960s, the number of Americans expressing trust in
Washington has dropped from around 70% to near 20%. This is
commonly interpreted as a judgment against the growing power of
special-interest lobbyists. But it could also be a reaction against the
increasingly abject spinelessness of politicians, a byproduct of the
very same trend. Indeed, the one clear exception to the number's
downward drift are the Reagan years. Aaron says, ''Even Democrats
like me, who believed Ronald Reagan was a malign force, respected
him, because, damn it, there were things he really stood for.''

President Clinton, being inside the Beltway, periodically gets accused
of being out of touch, of not ''getting it.'' But he has shown that he
''gets'' the basics: that voters are worried about crime, for example,
and that they hate to pay taxes. If there's anything major he doesn't
''get,'' it's that in a hyperdemocracy, ''getting it'' can be
self-defeating. The voters demand slavish obedience, but the more
they receive it, the less they respect it. Has this sort of disrespect
reached such a level as to be actually auspicious for a politician who
leads rather than follows? It is hard to say. Few politicians seem
inclined to conduct the experiment. 

With reporting by Wendy Cole/Chicago, John F.
Dickerson/Washington, and Edwin M. Reingold/Los Angeles

Copyright 1995 Time Inc. All rights reserved.

            <<< Note 176.25 by SUBPAC::SADIN "caught in the 'net" >>>
>      -< Time Magazine article...(too much citizen influence in govt???) >-

	Very interesting that Time Magazine would come out with an
	anti 1st Amendment stand. The right to petition the government
	and the right to freedom of the press are covered in the same
	sentence.

	Do the editors of Time wnat the entire Amendment scrapped, or
	only those parts of it that they view as "unpleasant"?

Jim

    	And to think, it wasn't that long ago that the press was
    complaining about the inactivity of people in politics.
    
    	But that probably was before the days of Rush, et al.
    
    ME

Don't know where else to put this but...

These came in the e-mail for me:

From the GovAccess listserv:


Questions Questions Questions - While We Are Still Permitted to Ask

In 1994, with almost no hearings and by voice or unanimous vote, Congress
passed HR 4922 - introduced on the exact 20th annaversary of Nixon's
resignation after attempting to bug his political opponents in their
Watergate headquarters.  HR 4922 requires that all of the nation's public
telephone systems implement the National Wiretap System within three years,
and authorizing $500,000,000.00 to pay for it.  At the time, the FBI
refused to release its statistics on the number of court-ordered wire-taps
- that might justify such a massive expenditure.
        The Electronic Privacy Information Center (info@epic.org) filed a
Freedom-of-Information-Act demand for those statistics.  More than half a
year after the bill was passed, the Administrative office of the U.S.
Courts finally reported that there were a total of 1,154 court-authorized
wiretaps in 1994, of which only 1,100 were installed - 876 being for drug
surveillance.
        Question:  Is $455,000 per wiretap law enforcement's version of the
Department of Defense's $800 toilet seat?  (multiple analogy intended)

===
From GovAccess Listserv:


Paranoics, Telecom Techies, Phone Phreaques ... Alert!  What's This All About?

In March, I received a snailmail query from a woman in Maine.  Seems
someone had given her and her husband a note indicating that, if one dials
a series of 16 numbers, 1 0 7 3 - 2 1 4 0 - 4 9 8 8 - 9 6 6 4, that a
computer would then list off a series of 9 digits, most of them zero.  The
note stated that part of their meaning was:
        000 000 000 - no wiretap installed
        000 000 001 - wiretap installed and being monitored
        000 000 002 - wiretap installed by not currently being monitored.

I tried it.  The computer voice read back my phone number to me and gave me
eight 0s and a final 1.

At risk of being ridiculed as being incurably naive, I suspect this is
probably some innocent circuit-testing tool.

Does anyone have *authoritative* information - perhaps including a citation
to some page in a Bellcore manual?
===============================================================
===============================================================

	Can anyone verify these things for me?  Thanks.

ME

>In March, I received a snailmail query from a woman in Maine.  Seems
>someone had given her and her husband a note indicating that, if one dials
>a series of 16 numbers, 1 0 7 3 - 2 1 4 0 - 4 9 8 8 - 9 6 6 4, that a
>computer would then list off a series of 9 digits, most of them zero.  The
>note stated that part of their meaning was:
>        000 000 000 - no wiretap installed
>        000 000 001 - wiretap installed and being monitored
>        000 000 002 - wiretap installed by not currently being monitored.

732 is the access code for some long distance company. 404 is the Atlanta
area code.  It's a long distance call to Atlanta.

10732 is AT&T's SDN (Software Defined Network).

Although 404 is the area code for Atlanta, this particular number is
aliased in AT&T's switches, and the call never actually goes to
Atlanta.  And it never returns off-hook supervision, so there isn't
a charge.

The business about it telling you whether there is a wiretap or not
is a bogus urban legend.  Why would AT&T (just one of many long distance
carriers, and a company not at all involved in providing local phone
service) have a database of whether numbers are wiretapped?

The digits that are supplied after your telephone number are the
index into AT&T's SDN table for your number, plus a few other random
status bits in AT&T's database.

/john

BTW, if too many people start calling this number, it's going to disappear.
Although it's handled locally in the nearest AT&T switch, it only handles
a few callers at a time in any particular area.  If AT&T can't run their
business because of people playing with it, it will be changed.

There was an AT&T 800 number which did the same thing; as soon as someone
sent it out on the network it disappeared.  MCI also had a similar 800
number, and it disappeared shortly after it got publicized.

/john

    But the number was 1073, not 1072.  Is there a difference?  FWIW, my
    work phone line gets the "1" code, whatever that may be.  8^)

No it isn't.  It's 10732.  Read the message, and ignore the dashes; they
are in the wrong place.

/john

Dialing the last 7 digits 988-9664(I'm in Atlanta so it's a local call!) puts
you through to THE FBI!!!!







































NOT!!!

:-}
Mikey

Harry Browne for President, taken from http://www.rahul.net/browne. I have 
removed any solicitations. It is long reading. But, IMO worth every minute.

...Tom
    ===========================================================================
    
Why I'm Running for President.

For a century and a half, government has grown ever larger and more powerful.
But the tide may be about to turn. For years, public opinion has been moving
in a new direction -- toward less government, and toward more freedom for
each person to control his own life. Despite the talk of widespread
anti-Clinton and anti-Washington feelings, the underlying sentiment is simply
anti-government. The complaint isn't against the way things are being done or
the politicians who are doing them. The issue is government itself.
Government doesn't work. If you ask people -- store clerks, barbers, taxi
drivers, anyone -- whether they want more government, less government, or
what we have now -- at least 7 out of 10 will say they want less.  Their
reasons and hopes may be different from ours in some ways, but they want to
move in the same direction.

Why the Tide Is Turning. 

The desire for less government isn't a passing fad -- prompted by revelations
of Bill Clinton's philandering or his shady dealings in Arkansas -- nor were
the Congressional elections of 1994 the first evidence of that desire.
Anti-government feeling has been building for a long time, encouraged by
two factors. One is the educational campaign of the past 20 years or so. The
Libertarian Party, the Cato Institute, the National Taxpayers Union, the
Reason Foundation, the Heartland Institute, and hundreds of other
organizations have pointed out the failures in government programs and
explained free-market alternatives. Magazines such as Reason and Liberty have
exposed the many ways in which government isn't working, and much of this has
been finding its way into the mainstream press. And today more libertarian
books are published in a single year than were published in the entire 1950s
and 1960s. These educational activities are bearing fruit -- as more
Americans join the movements toward term limits, school choice, and
privatizing government services; as voters turn down bond referendums and tax
increases; as millions of Americans begin to realize that government isn't
the way to get what they want. Another factor in the changing sentiment is
that government has become too large and oppressive to help one group without
visibly harming several others. Until recently, the harm was diffuse and easy
to hide. A government program typically would provide a large benefit to a
small group of people -- say, a million or so -- while spreading most of the
cost thinly over 200 million others. The beneficiaries would lobby for the
special privilege -- while those paying the bill barely noticed the program or
its cost. Now government is so big that it runs into itself coming and going.
It has reached the point where new programs provide relatively little
benefit while the costs are conspicuous and the impositions intolerable.
Health care "reform" was an obvious example. Every proposal benefited only a
small group, while it jeopardized existing health-care arrangements for tens
of millions of Americans who, on the whole, wanted to keep what they had. Not
surprisingly, resistance was widespread. Government has lost the room to
maneuver.  And as government has become bigger and further extended, it has
become more self-evident that it doesn't deliver on any of its promises. And
so the simple statement "Government doesn't work" strikes a responsive chord.
Ten years ago it required philosophical abstractions to explain the problems
and dangers of government.  Today it's necessary only to point to the obvious
-- that government can't keep the streets safe, can't educate our children,
can't deliver on anything it promises. Its War on Poverty is a recruitment
program for welfare. Its War on Drugs fosters gang wars, drive-by shootings,
and a growing criminal class -- even as drug use continues unabated. Most
people can see for themselves that government doesn't work. Taking Advantage
of this Trend In short, our time has arrived -- if we take advantage of it.
So far there is nothing on which the rising tide of anti-government sentiment
can focus -- something to which the average person can point and say, "I want
that because it will reduce government." The political issues -- health care,
welfare reform, crime control, and the like -- are all framed in ways that
ignore less-government alternatives. Even "free market" politicians seek only
to make small cuts and reforms.  There are no proposals that would reduce
government significantly. A Libertarian presidential campaign can overcome
this.  The right candidate could be a lightning rod for all the
anti-government feelings. He could offer a clear-cut choice by standing for
less government on every political issue. He could refuse to concede the
merit in any government program, and promise to veto any bill that would
increase the size and power of the federal government. He could pledge to
"just say no" to Congress, to force Congress to forgo any new government
program that couldn't muster a  two-thirds majority to override his veto.
Even more, he could use his veto as leverage to compel Congress to move in
the other direction -- to reduce or eliminate taxes and abolish government
programs. The presidency is the single place where one person can make a
difference -- where one person can rally all the anti-government sentiment,
and where one person can actually reverse the direction of government. 

The Candidacy Over the past two years.

My wife Pamela and I discussed whether I could achieve anything by running 
for president as the Libertarian Party's candidate. On August 14, 1994, I 
decided to run.  This is what I intend to accomplish: 1.  Victory: I want to 
win the presidency. Of course, this is a long-shot, with odds of perhaps 100 
to 1 against. But it isn't impossible. In fact, I wouldn't run if I thought 
there were no chance of winning. Most people are on our side; the challenge 
isn't so much to persuade them that our alternative is right as it is to let 
them know our alternative exists. Whether or not I win, I have three other 
goals. 2.  Change the political lineup: I want the Libertarian Party to be the 
third major party, rather than the first minor party. The Democrats will
continue to propose new programs to reduce our freedom, and the Republicans 
will continue to make their wimpy responses. But I want the press to be 
obligated to also report the Libertarian view -- that, whatever the social or 
political problem, it was caused by government and that only a reduction in 
government will cure it. 3. Change people's view of government: After this 
campaign, I want millions of Americans to see government in a new light. When 
a politician says they have a right to some benefit, they'll know immediately 
that he's planning to take more of their freedom and more of their money -- and
that the benefits are only a come-on. And I want future political discussions 
to be over how much government to cut -- not whether new programs are needed. 
4. Have a good time: I want the campaign to be fun and exciting -- for myself 
and for everyone who joins me. Libertarians are the party of prosperity and 
joy-not of sacrifice. So I don't want anyone participating out of duty -- but,
rather, because we'll enjoy discussing our  ideas for a change, instead of
getting bogged down in arguments over whether a new government program should
take two pounds of flesh or only one. This last objective is important.
Collectivist organizations are the least efficient way to achieve anything
complicated. And it's the essence of collectivism to say that "If we all
sacrifice for the cause, we'll all be better off someday."  I want you to
participate for the joy and satisfaction you will get now -- no matter
whether the national goals are achieved -- because that's the only way the
national goals will be achieved. One reason for satisfaction is that, at last,
we'll be on the offensive -- talking about reducing government -- instead of
trying to head off new government programs. Finally, you'll see someone on TV
saying the things you've been shouting at your set for the past decade. When
an interviewer like Larry King says, "Doesn't it bother you that America is
the only country in the world that doesn't guarantee health care for all its
citizens?," I will say: Not at all. Apparently it bothers you that America is
the most productive country in the world, because you seem to want us to be
like less prosperous countries. Let's talk about the ways government has run
up the price of medical care and made health insurance unaffordable for so
many people, and how reducing government could improve health care and make
America even more productive and prosperous. 

Campaign Themes. 

Every campaign theme should strike a responsive chord with the public: 
Government doesn't work. You know it, I know it, everyone knows it. So I 
promise to get rid of as much government as practical -- to transfer as many 
of its functions as possible to realistic private agencies that do work -- so 
you can have your life back, so you can use the money you've earned. 
Politicians and bureaucrats think they know how to run your life better than 
you do. They think they can spend your money better than you can. They think 
they can run your business better than you can. They fail over and over -- but 
you have to pay the bill. If we don't stop the politicians now, how much more 
of your money will they take in the next four years? How much bigger will 
government be at the end of the next presidential term? How many more of your 
freedoms will they take away? Let's make this a free country again! The last 
theme is an important one: In a free country, the government doesn't go rifling
through your bank account looking for evidence with which to hang you; In a
free country, the government doesn't keep life-saving medicines off the market
for years while bureaucrats pose as your protectors; In a free country, the
government doesn't pile costs on the producers and sellers of goods and
services -- running up the price of everything we buy; In a free country, the
government doesn't load costs and mandates on your employer -- preventing you
from getting the raises and benefits you've earned; In a free country,
government at all levels doesn't take 45% of national income and parcel it
back to us as though we were children. 

The Income Tax.

The income tax should be a key issue in the campaign. We must get rid of 
hundreds of federal programs, but we can't remove them one at a time, because 
each program has beneficiaries and supporters who will fight us. We can 
overcome their resistance only by combining all the spending cuts into a 
single package that includes the largest tax cut in American history. That way 
most people will know they'll save far more in taxes than they lose in 
subsidies. The income tax is the biggest single intrusion suffered by the 
American people. It forces every worker to be a bookkeeper, to open his records
to the government, to explain his expenses, to fear conviction for a harmless
accounting error. Compliance wastes billions of dollars. It penalizes savings
and creates an enormous drag on the U.S. economy. It is incompatible with a
free society, and we aren't libertarians if we tolerate it. In a new book, Why
Government Doesn't Work, to be published in September 1995, I will introduce
a plan to reduce the federal government to about a third its present size.
The details are yet to be finalized, but the plan will repeal the personal
income tax, estate, and gift taxes.  We will abolish the 15-39% personal
income tax and replace it with a simple 5% national sales tax. No individual
would ever again have to file an income tax return or have to deal with the
IRS. This can be a dramatic weapon.  Every voter will know that the cost of
keeping today's federal programs is to continue paying an income tax.  Every
voter will know exactly how much it costs to support the package of programs
we want to eliminate. With adequate publicity, the plan can put the Democrats
and Republicans on the defensive -- forcing them to justify each current
program, the income tax, the IRS, the billions of dollars the government
spends to collect the tax, and the billions of dollars taxpayers spend to
comply with the tax laws. 

Direction, Not Destination. 

Each of us has his own idea about how much government is needed or justified. 
But we would all welcome a government only a third the size of what we have 
today. And until we accomplish that, it would be foolish to throw away this 
precious opportunity by debating irrelevancies. I doubt that Bill Clinton and 
Al Gore argue over the limit at which they will stop adding to the size and 
power of government. So why should we waste our time and strength arguing now 
over when in the future we should stop cutting government? It's not only
irrelevant now, it could cost us the chance to achieve what we all agree we
want. Once government is a third of today's size, we can all meet in the
SuperDome for six months to argue over how far we want to go from there. Until
then, let's focus on the direction we want to go -- not the
destination. The Public Is On Our Side. If we focus on the direction,
and if we keep pointing to the obvious -- that government doesn't work --
there's no issue that isn't ours for the taking and no question we can't
answer. No one should feel threatened by our message. We're not taking
anything away from people, we're just giving back to them their own lives and
money. Even the most hostile questions will be opportunities to take the
offensive and tell our story our way. For example, suppose an interviewer
says,"Libertarians are extremists. I understand you people want to do away
with the police and the army:" Like any group, Libertarians have
many different opinions. But none of us wants to live in an unsafe neighborhood
or in a country that can be overrun by foreign marauders. Unfortunately, most
of us do live in unsafe neighborhoods, because government doesn't deliver on
its promises to keep our communities and schools safe. Plus it taxes us to
death so that we can't afford to protect ourselves. We need to find better
ways. We need to get rid of the welfare programs that breed crime; we need to
stop filling up the prisons with non-violent people who pose no threat to
society; we have to put an end to the Drug War that makes the drug trade
lucrative for criminals, fosters gang violence, and drives addicts to steal to
support their habits. Government isn't working -- so, wherever feasible, we
need voluntary arrangements that do work, that allow people to choose for
themselves how to participate -- replacing government programs that are
subverted by political pork and bureaucratic nonsense. The extremists are
those who refuse to change the system -- who will let innocent people die to
protect their political programs. "Don't you think the government
should protect children from pornography?" That's a worthy ideal,
but the fact is that government doesn't protect children. For as long
as I've been alive, government has had laws against pornography, prostitution,
gambling, drug use, and myriad other activities.And yet these  activities have
thrived. Government doesn't work; it makes big promises, but it never
delivers. If you want your child protected from pornography, it's up to you --
the government won't do it for you, with or with out a law. Unfortunately, the
government subverts family values with welfare programs, with anti-family
textbooks, and with an income tax that forces both parents to work. So we need
to get rid of the ways in which the government prevents us from raising our
children properly. "I understand you want to take Social Security
away from people. "No, I want to make Social Security secure for a
change. I want to transfer it to private companies that will guarantee their
contracts permanently. Today, every retiree is afraid each year that Congress
will take away some of his benefits or destroy the system by overpromising.
And every young person must fear another hike in Social Security taxes and the
addition of new benefits that could bankrupt the system before he retires. I
want to take politics and government out of Social Security, so that everyone
knows what he is paying and getting -- and can count on it. "Shouldn't 
government protect us from unsafe products and unscrupulous businessmen?"
Government doesn't protect us from these things. The savings and loan crisis, 
every financial scandal, every class-action law suit is a testament to the 
failure of government regulation. Government's war on drugs, its war on 
insider traders, its promises to clean up the environment or reduce crime 
always have the same result -- the innocent lose more of their freedoms and the
guilty slip through the net. Government doesn't work, and the money government 
has taken from us to provide this "protection" is money we could have used to 
take care of ourselves. So let's get the money back into the hands of the
people. 

Philosophical arguments are no longer necessary.  

Now that government has created such a mess, we are the ones who can use
the one-liners, and they must take minutes to explain how they will
somehow improve their failed programs. People can see for themselves that
government doesn't work, and we're the only credible party that recognizes
this and will act decisively. We are the mainstream now. Most people are on
our side, because they want more control over their own lives and they want to
escape the chaos and misery the government has inflicted upon them. There is
no reason to compromise what we believe, and no reason to threaten anyone. All
we have to do is tell our story honestly. 

Spoiler? 

A major challenge will be to convince voters that they will achieve more by
voting for me --even if they think that would help reelect Bill Clinton -- than
to vote for the Republican candidate. We need to point out that electing the
lesser of two evils merely assures that you will have to choose between two
evils again the next time. We need to tell the American people:If the Democrat
or the Republican wins the election, the next four years will bring bigger,
more intrusive government, more crime, and continued deterioration of schools.
The winner will help expand the government, and it will be eight more years
before his party can nominate someone who could turn the tide toward less
government. The most you can hope for is that one of these two candidates will
increase government control over your life at only 95% of the speed of the
other. But if the Libertarian wins, we will move in the other direction --
actually reducing government, giving you back control over your life,
increasing your take-home pay, and finally doing something positive to reduce
crime. We will end a 60-year trend and change the course of history. And if
the Libertarian loses but gets a large vote, this probably will pave the way
for the next Libertarian presidential candidate to be elected -- just
four years from now -- and he will change the course of history. So you have
to decide how you want to use your vote. Do you want to vote to slow the growth
of government by maybe 5%, or do you want to change the course of history
forever?

Campaign Strategy.

The Libertarian Party's nominating convention will be held July 4, 1996 -- just
four months before the general election. Obviously, a third party can't mount 
an effective campaign in only four months.So I hope that by the summer of 1995 
my nomination will be a foregone conclusion and I will be the party's 
defacto candidate. I can then direct 95% of the campaign toward the general
public throughout 1995 and 1996. I will give radio and TV interviews and
in-person speeches. We plan to produce one or more TV infomercials that local
libertarian groups can air on stations around the country or show to people in
living rooms. We will build support at first through the many social groups
that are on our side -- small businessmen suffering from government
regulation, gun owners appalled by the loss of their rights, property owners
chafing under high taxes and environmental regulations. We have started with
investment newsletter writers -- whose readers are strongly anti-government.
These newsletters are already publishing enthusiastic endorsements -- urging
readers to get involved and to contribute money. Forexample, Mark Skousen
told his 50,000 readers:"We already have a good man who has
decided to run for president on the Libertarian ticket: Harry Browne!
He's articulate, a great writer, and an intelligent thinker.I suggest you
contribute to his campaign by sending a donation (up to $1,000 per
person)." From these groups, we can work outward to the entire
public. My new book,"Why Government Doesn't Work", will be
published in September 1995. That will bring about further national and local
TV/radio interviews -- talking about the campaign and the book. At the same
time, we'll start an energetic campaign in New Hampshire to attract the
attention of the 2,000 journalists covering the primary there. I hope that
by the time the primary season is well under way in early 1996, I will have
sufficient name recognition that poll-takers will list me along with the
Democratic and Republican candidates. By the summer of 1996, we need to
have at least triple the present membership of the Libertarian Party, so that
our infomercial is being shown everywhere and the campaign is being talked
about.  And we need to have raised close to $50 million by then, so that we can
buy enough TV time to have an impact. That can be the leverage that gets me
into the campaign debates in the fall of 1996 -- so that our message will reach
millions of people. We can't expect to raise enough money to compete
head-to-head with the two old parties, so we will rely on originality and
media events to let people know there's an alternative to more government.
Some very creative people are already helping plan these activities. 

Dealing with Surprises There will be many surprises between now and November
1996.  New parties will spring up to exploit the public's disgust with the two
major parties.  Famous people may decide to run as independents. President
Clinton could resign, stripping his opponents of their
favorite issue. President Gore would have a fresh start and would command more
respect -- even if it isn't merited. We can't foresee these things. So we
must be ready to take advantage of whatever comes. To capitalize on the
unknown future, we must establish ourselves early with the press and
the public as the only authentic, credible party that can speak for those who
want less government. To do this, we need to get off to a fast start in
1995. So we need support right away. We can't wait for 1996. Am I
the Candidate? I believe I'm uniquely qualified to be the Libertarian
candidate. My philosophical and political views jelled about 35 years ago,
and I have lived most of my adult life as a libertarian. I have been writing
and speaking about government and individual liberty for over three decades.
Unlike most candidates, I don't need to be "prepped" for a debate or public
appearance; I know what to say, and I can answer any question. No one will
maneuver me into a position of conceding the need for any government
program. I've made hundreds of radio and TV appearances -- on national
networks and local stations. I focus on winning over the audience, not on
scoring debating points. I can think on my feet, and I know how to deal with
hostility, ignorance, or honest disagreements.

Compromise?

Most of all, my libertarian beliefs are unshakable. I've discussed libertarian 
ideas for over a quarter of a century -- and never felt the need to soft-pedal 
anything. Each of my books -- investment or otherwise -- has been a libertarian
tract. The philosophy is so deeply a part of me that there's no question for 
which I don't have an effective, persuasive answer. A political candidate often
softens his views as his prospects for winning improve -- trying not to offend
any voter or contributor. Even if he is running to further some principle, he
may believe he can do so only if he wins -- and that he can't win without
compromising. Once in office, seemingly libertarian candidates often go
over to the otherside. First, they make deals -- giving large concessions to
obtain small victories for their principles. Then they make bigger concessions
merely to stay in office. Always the rationale is, "I can't do any good if I
lose the next election." But I know that such temptations can be fatal.  As
a third-party candidate, my greatest strength is that I'm the only candidate
with a consistent, less-government message. If I compromise that in any way,
my message is meaningless, my strongest asset is lost, and the whole
enterprise is a waste of my time. If I stand for more government on even one
issue, no one can know for sure how I stand on other issues -- and the
campaign will collapse. We don't have to compromise. We are the mainstream
now -- the only credible group offering ways to reduce the cost and impact of
government. We must recognize the opportunity we have.  Our chance has finally
come, but to make the most of it we must be like no other political party -- we
must be 100% consistent. Only if we run the campaign on clear principles can
the Libertarian Party overcome the two old parties. I understand this, and so
I will never be tempted to compromise or trade a principle for a bloc of
support. Neither will I be tempted to shade my beliefs to make them palatable;
I have never been afraid to speak honestly, because honesty always brings me
more than it costs. Lastly, I have a wife whom I love very much, and who
loves me for what I am. If I became a glad-handing, compromising politician, I
would lose the most important things in my life -- her love and respect.
That's the greatest possible incentive to remain as I am. 

Should You Participate? 

I've undertaken this project because I wouldn't be happy
not doing it. I believe I have a unique opportunity to tell a wide
audience what I believe about government and about living freely in a civil
society -- and perhaps to change the course of American history. The next two
to six years will be an exciting time for me. 

Should you become involved? 

<removed due to solicitation>

The Opportunity.

A great deal has been said about Bill Clinton's philandering, arrogance, abuse
of power, waffling, policy reversals, lies, and trading of favors
for Congressional votes. But these attacks often miss the point. His sins
are merely symptoms of the weakness of government itself, and the sins have
become scandals precisely because people are fed up with government.
Mr.Clinton's arrogance and philandering are encouraged by the power
and insulation that government provides. His waffling, lies, and reversals are
necessary (tohim) because government has run out of room to
maneuver. People are sick of all this -- not just of the Clintons, but of
the whole political game. But up to now the Clintons have provided the
clearest target for their anger. Bill Clinton may be the last of a long line
of powerful politicians who have had their way with the American people for a
century or more. These people have assured their own reelections by rewarding
the politically powerful. They have been free to use their offices as lavish
endowments -- as though they were princes or viceroys. But that time is
passing. Government has become so big, so cumbersome, so incapable of hiding
its own costs and drawbacks, so useless that no one can keep a straight face
when calling politicians "public servants."  Now people see them as
self-serving manipulators who cost us money and freedom. All that's needed
is for someone to shout the obvious -- that the problem is government itself,
not the current cast of characters. And that's what I will do. We will suffer
in silence no longer. Whether I win the election remains to be seen. The
opportunity is many times greater than it would have been just a decade ago.
But the next two years will bring many surprises -- some helpful and some
hindering. So we can be certain only that we have a remarkable chance to make
an impact far beyond anything that's been possible before. Even if we don't
win this election, we can change forever the face of politics in
America. 

Two Generations of Freedom.

But what if we do win? Will it have any lasting benefit?If we succeed in 
reducing government to a third its present size and scope, we may gain the time
and opportunity to go much further -- to reduce government at all levels to a 
small fraction of its size today. But the tide might someday turn back against 
us. Government is a parasite -- a cancer that by nature tries to spread itself 
deeper into society. Those who want to run others' lives won't give up and 
start minding their own business. So it may be that after 20 or 40 years the 
cycle will begin anew, and government will resume its relentless growth. If 
that happens, will those few years of freedom have been worth the trouble we 
went to? I believe they will. The next two generations will have lived their
lives free of the crime-ridden culture the government promotes through welfare
programs and its no-win Drug War. They will be free to use their money to build
their own futures, free to choose their own retirement plans, free to get 
medical care from a greater array of choices than we have today, free from fear
of the IRS, free to make of their lives whatever they want. We will have given 
our children and grandchildren two generations of freedom. What they do with 
that will be up to them. But at least they will know an atmosphere freer than 
most of us have ever known. The prospect of two generations of freedom is 
enough to motivate me. It makes this the most exciting thing I've done in my
life. I  hope you'll join me.

    <---You were right.  That was worth reading all the way through.