Capitol Ideas / Electric Windmills / D.O.E. Ad Lib / Troopers (Storm Variety)
Bethell, Tom
CAPIT0L IDEAS ELECTRIC WINDMILLS/D.O.E. AD LIB/TROOPERS (STORM VARIETY) by Tom Bethell X stopped my car beside the Mall, because I was curious about the overflight appearance of some quaint little...
...Importance of coalition-building, resource-recovery noted...
...With a Department of Education, things will get far worse...
...First we wrote proposals for funding from the National Science Foundation, National Center for Appropriate Technology, HUD, Department of Labor, Department of Energy, Department of Commerce, and the Community Services Administration," he said...
...This was the Small-Is-Beautiful Crowd...
...If you stand in front of the solar collector, you stop the music...
...And so I found myself amidst the stars: rock, film, and falling (e.g., Gov, Jerry Brown, who showed up by himself...
...Prospect of shinnying up mast to repair worn-out bearings not enticing...
...Reading further I learned that the fair, "a self-reliant, environmentally clean and democratically governed instant community, will simulate the sights, sounds and other sensations of a real comrtmnity...
...Puff Puff...
...Hippies and layabouts lolled on grass listening to rock music...
...I have no idea {continued on page 30...
...Plainly I was contemplating a rich man's toy...
...It seemed, on closer inspection, to be a fair of some kind...
...If you have been around high elected officials, you will know what a difficult achievement that is...
...Anyone who comes to Washington and can master the art of ad-libbing this verbal emptiness at the microphone has a lucrative future awaiting him/her...
...After the Soviet Union...
...I reached the foot of the windmill and the upper-class Ver-monter who was explaining the thing told me it cost about $4,000 to buy and install...
...I asked for the "boss" and several people turned sharply to stare at this interloper...
...The present movement, which is more widespread than the Carter administration appreciates, to withdraw support from public education will in the years ahead become far more powerful...
...A new Department of Education would be a big help, she said, ''because we want to reduce the amount of time to get the regs out...
...I asked Bob where Michael Duber-stein was...
...Jerry is really quite a likeable fellow and I wish him luck in his efforts to depose Carter...
...I could not figure out, and still cannot, why the AFT opposes this idea...
...Using his figures, I concluded it would take at least 20 years to pay off the investment-if it didn't break down at all in that time...
...AD LIB/TROOPERS (STORM VARIETY) by Tom Bethell X stopped my car beside the Mall, because I was curious about the overflight appearance of some quaint little buildings, huts, and wigwams...
...As for the notion that a Department of Education will encourage more "confidence" in education (as was foolishly suggested by Mary Berry), what about the Department of Energy, the questioner wanted to know...
...Eventually I reached the Administrative Tent...
...Tsongas...
...We have a core staff of five people...
...This was followed by a lot of terrible nonsense about "civil rights," which is more and more becoming a kind of code phrase for the transfer of power from the individual to the state...
...I see no obstacle...
...Make of that what you will...
...But why couldn't such a department be made large enough to accommodate both unions...
...And let us not deceive ourselves, there is no hope of rolling government back one inch until a major disaster of this kind burns itself into the consciousness of every big spender in America...
...It wasn't demonstrating the production of electricity...
...Public education, already a fiasco, will become a disaster so conspicuous that even the liberals will sit up and begin to ask: Really, is more government always a good thing...
...We hired Michael Duberstein in October to begin planning and logistics...
...Someone handed me a press release...
...Post-patriarchal responses to the world predicament considered...
...The spirit of E.F...
...I managed to slip backstage while the guards were understandably distracted by some full-volume microphone-yelling by Bella somebody-or-other...
...Who wants to speed them up, really...
...Somehow at that moment, the sur went in...
...Ten years ago, daddy's credit card paid for everything...
...Slanting solar collectors were dotted about...
...A few days later I went to a hotel-ballroom meeting sponsored by the American Federation of Teachers (Albert Shanker's lot) dealing with the proposed Department of Education...
...The propeller was churning around merrily although there was little or no wind...
...I strolled out into sunshine, which was energizing a solar collector, which in turn provided power for a record-player...
...The Baltimore County CETA Consortium made the building facades...
...But how about practice...
...Then we got numerous other grants: $15,000 from the Economic Development Administration, $15,000 from the National Endowment for the Humanities, $15,000 from the National Center for Appropriate Technology, $5,000 from the Small Business Administration, $2,500 from HUD, and a lot of in-house from the National Park Service...
...At about this time I attended the famous "anti-nuclear" rally on the steps of the Capitol...
...Now they think the sun is going to make them independent...
...Then I asked him another question and he agreed with me again...
...In any event she remarked, and I quote: "HEW is the third largest country in the world...
...I kept a wary eye open for Barry Commoner, ready to make a dash for cover if he should appear on the scene...
...Berry has adapted to the new party line...
...It's plugged into the power outlet...
...She spoke for about ten minutes like a true Washington hustler, stringing together a series of cliche-ridden sentences whose precise meaning was always blurred but nevertheless important-sounding...
...Then we heard from Mary Berry, the exciting assistant secretary of HEW, who is perhaps the best known (but not the only) Mao-lover in the Carter administration...
...I have concluded, perhaps a little maliciously, that a Department of Education will in the long run prove to be a blessing in disguise...
...heard the word "retrofit" used several times...
...In September 1978 we got a $19,000 planning grant from the Department of Energy...
...The regulations "come too soon as it is...
...Next thing you knew, Ralph Nader himself would come striding down a path with a file folder under his arm, wearing his rumpled Sears Roebuck suit and patented conscientious frown...
...also a whirling windmill...
...Self-reliance is their watchword, their theory...
...Lovely...
...I stood in the back of one and listened for a few minutes...
...I therefore relish the prospect of this government striding forward so blithely into the quicksands that lie ahead...
...Electricity was demonstrating it...
...Schumacher hovered over the sward...
...In short, the Office of Education (the "E" of HEW) has been to date the best possible illustration of the argument that the government doesn't solve problems, it creates them...
...We held a very important meeting with Bill Holmberg from the Office of Consumer Affairs, Department of Energy, and he agreed to help us with a lot of in-house cost...
...No bosses here, I'm told, but someone called Bob Zdenck explained to me how the fair was put together...
...The graphs of test scores against dollars spent are really striking: one climbing, the other diving...
...She travelled to China in 1977 and on her return was effusive in her praise of that nation's egalitarian ideals and absence of testing in schools...
...Didn't know he was involved in this solar malarkey, too...
...This is because education is one of the very few government "programs" that people are prepared to scrutinize, since their own children are involved...
...An AFT member in the audience made a couple of sensible comments...
...Next I blundered into the Woman-Space tent...
...C 'mon man," they moaned, "give us a break...
...But the federal money, I am sure, still pours down on these artful dodgers of the 1970s, the residue of the counterculture, who have discovered that Big Daddy in Washington has the credit card now, and is ready to put it at their disposal until they decide what they want to do when they grow up...
...Tactically, big-government boomers would have done well to have stayed out of it entirely, because people expect results...
...It's not working off the wind," he said...
...I thought he might have taken up residence in Tanzania by now as Julius Nyerere's leading courtier...
...Worth a look...
...At present it takes 519 days on average...
...Semi-naked youths were strolling about and lounging in the grass...
...It is now well documented that since 1964 federal involvement in education (in dollar terms) has been inversely proportional to test scores...
...Having declined to pick up a "resource packet" at the desk, I found a seat and listened to a speech by one Marilyn Harris of the Senate Government Affairs Committee...
...The rock music stopped...
...I had stumbled on the Appropriate Community Technology Fair, ACT '79, a "celebration of old-fashioned American ingenuity...
...All the participants worked for one or another government agency...
...And we had a public service announcement on television in ten states...
...Coordinators, moderators, biodegradable resources, renewable coalitions, recycled neighborhoods, community-run revitaliza-tion...
...Federal tax credits make it less so, however, thus encouraging the diversion of capital into dubious channels...
...Were the Indians in town to put on one of their periodic Media Events...
...This is the union that supported Jimmy Carter in 1976, in return for which he, as President, supported a new education department...
...I jotted this down in my notebook...
...This was perhaps more revealing than she intended, the new bureaucracy under consideration constituting an excellent career "opportunity" for those who will work there...
...On the way I stopped at the "bio-gas demonstration," and was informed that the people here received a Community Services Administration grant of $150,000...
...By contrast, most government programs can proceed with impunity because they are so unimportant that no one cares about them one way or the other (except to the extent that they either waste money or provide jobs, depending on which way you look at such matters...
...She's quite a trooper (storm variety...
...Then we hired two outreach workers and an administrative assistant...
...Tasked him a question at one point and he agreed with me...
...A Department of Education, she concluded, "will improve the effective management of education "A new Secretary of Education will be "an exciting secretary, a new opportunity to instill new blood and new opportunity...
...But the Department of Energy is paying for others...
...Poverty and the Third World Woman...
...Things have changed in China since then, but I feel sure Ms...
...It would save about half your electricity bill if you live in a windy spot...
...I decided to take a look at the windmill, a large three-bladed propeller on top of a tall tower...
...I followed a footpath between tents, inside of which seminars were ' in progress...
...They were sitting in a row behind a table and talking about viable options and then taking meditative little puffs on their pipes...
...Showing Senator Tsongas round the fair," he said...
...I understand why their big rival, the National Education Association, supports it...
...I made my way past herb growers, people sitting in magical circles, tepee-dwellers, woman's community bakery, bio-gas model project, "Why-Flush" water quality...
...The department of ed is a viable concept," she said...
...No doubt he pushed through the tax credit...
...I asked the gentleman from Vermont why the blades were whirring around so smoothly in such still air...
...But education is taken more seriously...
...I listened to a lot of gushing about how Congressman Henry Reuss had one in his backyard...
...Did these people ever do a day's work in their lives, I wonder...
...Has that done anything to encourage confidence in federal participation in energy...
...The next thing was we got a $17,000 grant from ACTION...
...Not the Indians, but the hippies were back, evidently...
...Even as things stand, the public education fiasco is making more and more liberals think about the role of government as no other issue has...
...This would mean lots of Top Jobs for union officials, and, best of all, no more schoolchildren to worry about...
Vol. 12 • July 1979 • No. 7
