Correspondence: Y2K, Vermont, Texas, &c.
CORRESPONDENCE Trigger Happy Five words on the passing of Roy RogersM !! (The Continuing Crisis, TAS, September 1998)1 am absolutely shocked. Because if ever there was the epitome of a right...
...Even the original Mac OS from 1984 could handle the transition to 2000 with no problems...
...Among the Dead I was disappointed to see the most telling of Al Gore's gaffes missing from Byron York's "Dan Gore" (TAS, August 1998...
...I do know something of inconsistency, however, and Mr...
...We may not have done everything right, but at least we knew the century was going to end...
...Let's start with a more accessible orbit, fewer assembly flights (the original design (Continued on page 85) Correspondence (Continued from page 13) needed 16, vs...
...RICHARD W. FULMER Houston, Texas I just finished reading the piece on the Y2K problem in the August 1998 issue...
...WILLIAM F. SCHRODER via the Internet Wrong Way As a committed pro-life person, I am very appreciative of Ben Stein's stance against the merchants of intrauterine death, and I'm equally appreciative of your willingness to give him a forum...
...Meantime, NASA's astronomical science remains extremely dubious while its PR about ETI is robust and well aimed...
...When I criticized his choices, he replied that he was going to live his life "his way" (and to hell with what I, his firstborn son, thought about it...
...The possibilities are endless...
...I thought that those efforts were misguided and made my position clear at the time...
...Instead, judg88 October 1 9 9 8 • The American Spectator ing from his letter, Burris regards them with active hostility...
...To this day, my father has never admitted that he made a terrible mistake when he chose to abandon his moral values...
...If the commuting parents spent more time with their kids and less time in their cars, the vast majority of their educational "problems" would solve themselves...
...Microsoft may well lose its market dominance, putting the Justice Department out of a job, when millions of people defenestrate their now useless PC's, and buy Apple...
...it was always about taxes...
...You also state that "a surprising number of Democrats when confronted with White House cover-up have cooperated with the cover-up...
...PETER SYLVES Somerville, Massachusetts John B. Roberts II replies: Messrs...
...though the bill will inevitably increase taxes...
...Anyone is permitted the occasional error, but as I said in my review, No-Fault Politics is riddled with them, some serious, and this flaw combines with unsubstantiated claims and undisciplined argument to make a weak book...
...A severe Y2K impact, however, might do the opposite...
...Fifty...
...Hopefully, the government's computer systems will be in such disarray as to limit any presidential power plays...
...You may or may not have been a TAS subscriber, but you lived like one...
...Oblivious of the private school option, they will spend "years of their lives" commuting to work so that their children can go to a better school...
...Sanders wins because poor and working people support him in large numbers...
...He says I am wrong in my "overly adoring" (how does one answer that...
...Chapman also feigns not to understand what McCarthy means when he says that special prosecutors don't by nature end investigations by saying "no violation of law or morality has been found...
...That would make 21 million people in Iraq, which I find in no reference work...
...Norman has it pegged...
...Confronted by congressional demands for answers, the makers of this money pit could not even guess how much it will ultimately cost...
...His argument is, apparently, that going from $11,000 per pupil to $8,000, for instance, will do terrible damage, but increasing from $3,000 to $5,000 per pupil won't help...
...But I'm afraid the writer has touched only the tip of the iceberg as concerns NASA's exorbitant past, present, and future plans and expenditures of taxpayers' money...
...TOM PAUKEN Former Republican State Chairman, Texas Dallas, Texas Sam Dealey replies: It's good Mr...
...JOHN CSEREP Valparaiso, Florida In On the Act Sneaky Geoffrey Norman ("Vermont's Class Act," TAS, August 1998...
...I assumed Burris and McCarthy were merely careless with facts...
...The recurring problem is that Burris and his author think they are entitled to make assertions without any basis...
...It will be a national exercise in self sufficiency and charity...
...Far more damage can be done by government attempts to "solve" the problem, than by the problem itself...
...Worldwide, there are between io and 25 billion such systems...
...Bob Livingston (R-LA) could defeat him in a race to succeed Newt Gingrich as Speaker (On the Prowl, TAS, August 1998...
...Deep down, he longs for his suburban cul-de-sac and the innocence of an era gone by...
...43 for ISS), privatized operations, less expensive launchers and, frankly, as few foreign partners as possible...
...They are concentrated in the transportation, oil, mining, and manufacturing sectors...
...the CIA's World Factbook says 22.2 million...
...But what is he on about...
...There is a bottom line below which it is very difficult to provide a quality education...
...When we stood for principle, ultimately we prevailed against great odds and changed the world...
...In fact, depending on circumstances, this can be true...
...Chapman objects to the meandering and to the book's not being a ponderous treatise...
...On the other hand, Mr...
...It bears remembrance, as does the fact that the Luftwaffe met their Waterloo over England...
...My account of the coup corresponded to previous news accounts which, to my knowledge, hadn't been challenged by Mr...
...He saves that sort of attack for the other side, where it is deserved...
...Instead, the station will be at least twenty years in the making, and the GAO projects that costs will hit $100 billion—this, before construction has even begun...
...It is now up to $35 million...
...Imagine some of the other benefits: renewed interest in arithmetic, when thesupermarket cashier will have to add your total manually, and you will do it in your head to double check it...
...A conservative estimate of failure rates yields zo million system crashes...
...He is happily removed from knowledge of such unpleasantness...
...Hence, I'm not exactly paralyzed with grief at the news of the demise of 01' Blue Eyes...
...In fact, most of the expense of ISS still awaits us, in the form of launch and support costs...
...I worked hard at editing it and I've long admired Chapman...
...How long will our press and Congress continue to be dazzled and misled by NASA's repeated pop-sci discoveries of "signs of life" in the Solar System...
...Roberts predicts will not only transfer money into trial lawyers' pockets, it will also slow down the cleanup effort to the extent that systems managers and analysts are forced to spend their time in court rather than on the job...
...arguing that people in rich neighborhoods have some kind of God-given right to public school funding at triple the level of other districts might...
...now, ISS could truly crowd everything else out of NASA's budget...
...Burris's letter only supports my case...
...If the IRS goes haywire, and the entitlement programs shut down, we will have instant Libertarianism—and I am sure that it will be a valuable learning experience for many, if we can ignore the howling press for a while...
...Congressman from Vermont, Bernard Sanders...
...That sounded an awful lot like Frank to me...
...First, the benefits of "economic cleansing" in which inefficient firms either fail or are taken over by more efficient firms should be visible by Fall 2000...
...As more resources are devoted to deal with the bug, there will be an increased cadre of IT specialists and an increased management attention to IT problems...
...However, conservatives appreciate the fact that with Bob Livingston, what you see is what you get—and Republicans of all stripes and stations like what they see in him...
...The bill was never about education...
...And, to the extent that the private sector is not ready, it will recover faster...
...So what does your reporter suggest conservatives ought to do in 2000—getbehind George W. Bush for president because "conservatives know he is their best chance against this administration's heir...
...The only Independent ever to win 4 consecutive terms to the U.S...
...As Charlie Brown runs up to kick the football, Lucy pulls the ball away at the last moment...
...For example, I'm not sure that anyone knows how many people live in Iraq, including Chapman...
...We all know about the "yobbo" —they are ubiquitous—but to tar an entire nation is ludicrous...and the ugly spirit, of which Steyn speaks, has proven most of benefit to civilization in such conflicts as the battle of Trafalgar, which mauled the French and Spanish fleets and helped the Royal Navy to guard America, as she grew up, and could build her own navy...
...They can always send their guest astronauts and experiments later...
...introduction to claim that McCarthy was ahead of Nixon in the polls when the Democratic National Convention nominated Hubert Humphrey for president in 1968...
...Sending more money to poor school districts is just not going to pass the class warfare test...
...Fridman that they may be positive political side-effects to moderate Y2K problems, especially if crashing computer systems impose a collective sense of proper limits to the size and intrusiveness of government...
...LAWRENCE A. GORDON Ernst 6 Young Alumni Professor of Managerial Accounting -MARTIN P. LOEB Professor ofAccounting Robert H. Smith School of Business University of Maryland College Park, Maryland As a systems analyst working on the year 2000 problem for a major oil company, I was happy to see the problem highlighted on the cover of your August 1998 issue...
...But maybe not...
...Having read the article before the British Open golf championship, I was mightily uplifted by the orderliness and general bonhomie of the quarter-million spectators at that event, which gave much credence to the enclosed piece from a more sober correspondent of the San Francisco Chronicle, more normally bent on the irrational, as is Steyn...
...I am sorry Stephen Chapman didn't like Eugene J. McCarthy's book, No-Fault Politics (TAS, August 1998...
...The result could be a shift in 10 October 1998 • The American Spectator power from the government toward the free market...
...However any close examination of his electoral support shows that Mr...
...The article states that "personal computers and small businesses will not be immune," and goes on to mention that Microsoft posted a notice stating that not all of its systems are compliant...
...Although full of facts, your articles make no distinctions between important facts and unimportant ones...
...The sooner ISS is canceled, the sooner we can start making one, by applying the lessons of how not to build a space station...
...This is like saying Russell Baker is not Hannah Arendt, so read Hannah Arendt...
...And he outlines in this book how he would handle presidential succession without a vice president...
...We also have a new permit requirement to cut trees on your own land...
...As for what conservatives ought to do in 2000, I merely reported that while the delegates I sampled do not consider George W. Bush a true-blue conservative, they do find him preferable to either Dole or George Sr...
...As Mr...
...Go with God, Cowboy...
...JAN MOSIER Muskogee, Oklahoma A Faulty Review...
...The current Macintosh operating system is designed to accommodate dates up to 29,940 A.D...
...For example, let's look at "Dining Out" by Benjamin J. Stein (TAS, July 1998...
...So he began drinking heavily—a practice which eventually led him to become a pathetic alcoholic —and he abandoned my mother for a younger woman, who eventually left him when she got tired of finding him face-down in his own vomit...
...Frank Sinatra may not have had a predilection for lyrical filth, the way that 2-Live Crew does, but his signature song "My Way" exalted selfishness as though it was a virtue, and it laid a philosophical foundation for all the moral degeneracy which followed it...
...The following year Lucy tells Charlie Brown that he can trust her this time to hold the ball for him only to play the same trick on him again...
...In some ways Chapman seems to just "not get it...
...NASA promised President Reagan in 1984 the station would take less than ten years and $12 billion to build...
...On a couple points, Chapman seems so schoolmasterish that one has to suspect bad faith...
...Apple's engineers showed foresight lacking in the alleged forward-thinking engineers and programmers at Microsoft and other companies that will feel the sting of Y2K non-compliance...
...PHILIP FIERMONTE Burlington, Vermont Geoffrey Norman replies: For the record, I have lived in Vermont for twenty-one years now, four of which I spent on my local school board...
...ALAN LOCKE Newark, California Deconstructing Tyrrell I am currently taking a class in Critical Thinking at Oklahoma City University, and for the final exam we were given an article to read and critique...
...It reminds me of the "Peanuts" cartoon strip where Lucy is holding the football for Charlie Brown...
...The reason why I was asked to serve as chairman of the delegation is that Texas conservatives wanted to make sure that our Texas delegation stood firm in preserving a conservative platform at the national convention...
...In addition to Act 6o, we also have Act 250, ostensibly an environmental protection law that has been successfully used to thwart development which the local people support...
...The media systems could go haywire, and we won't be able to watch much network TV...
...When a D.0 cabby from Kuwait tells him about the widespread sexual abuse of young girls in a Middle East country, he shrugs off the information and gets out of the cab to hit the next party...
...In particular I apologize to Mr...
...Roberts did a fine job with his article, but I'd like to add to his list of Y2K's potential impacts...
...But Keith Burris is unable to distinguish between "vengefulness and bile" and honest criticism...
...In fact, as I pointed out, McCarthy trailed Nixon by then...
...The socialists are doing all they can to make private property worthless...
...the 1997 edition of the World Book Encyclopedia says 21.9 million...
...Finally, we can expect that industry will, in general, be better prepared for the century date change than will government agencies...
...It's not a perfect book or an equal to Plato's Republic, mind you...
...Chapman says McCarthy's 12 million "is low by about 9 million...
...But some of the other "errors" Chapman so studiously documents leave the impression of someone who has already made up his mind and is trying to gather evidence against his target...
...Are we really to believe it is twice as hard as the entire Apollo program...
...Let's get back to the principle of doing what is right in politics...
...MIKE RYND Bethesda, Maryland Being English Being English, I was most disappointed to read of the total run-down of my country, in your August issue (Mark Steyn, "Hooligans of Leisure...
...For TAS to give no more mention to a man of such morals than five words in a throwaway paragraph is a stunning lapse...
...On the plus side of the ledger, if the IRS can't change their systems in time, Congress may be forced to enact real tax simplification...
...Meanwhile, his likely electoral strength speaks for itself: Texas + (brother Jeb's) Florida + (latino) California 41 percent of the electoral vote...
...No wonder it takes an outside consultant to explain the bill, and probably that won't be enough...
...Like everyone else, I know nothing about the details of this particular tax plan...
...Burris responds by accusing me of being "schoolmasterish" and acting in "bad faith," though he admits I am "literally correct...
...He has to know better...
...Buchanan hurt his credibility on the issue, however, during a recent edition of The McLaughlin Group when he stated that the impact of the Year 2000 problem would be minor, and might even be beneficial to the economy...
...CHRISTINE KELSAY Blue River, Oregon Speaker No III The current House Majority Leader apparently thinks Rep...
...First of all, let me address some of the factual errors in Dealey's story...
...How many times do conservatives have to be fooled before we wake up and decide to support a candidate for president because he is a principled conservative...
...Because if ever there was the epitome of a right thinkin' and livin' person, it was this King of the Cowboys...
...If this is true, why doesn't he name the special prosecutors he is referring to...
...Fulmer undoubtedly knows, a typical offshore oil platform can contain up to io,000 embedded control systems...
...McCarthy wasn't saying some special prosecutors don't prosecute butthat when they don't, most conclude that bad guys got away with something, not that the investigation wasn't merited...
...The book presents itself frankly as a meandering and whimsical series of short essays stitched together by the general theme of the failure of political reform...
...One is that President Clinton has yet to miss a chance to turn any crisis, real or imagined, into an excuse for increasing government's power, and I have no doubt he'll milk the "Millennium Bug" for all it's worth...
...KEITH C. BURRIS Editor, No-Fault Politics Editorial Page Editor Journal Inquirer Manchester, Connecticut Steve Chapman replies: I doubt any fair-minded reader would accuse me of malice in my review, which had many admiring words for Eugene McCarthy...
...No, Livingston would be elected Speaker by his peers because, unlike the Leader's unnamed adviser whom you quoted, he does not go around accusing Republican colleagues of being "tax-and-spenders...
...Maybe the telephone service will be disrupted, sparing us from telemarketers and distant relatives...
...The problem is not so much that parents (and taxpayers) are "put upon" under Act 6o...
...Clearly Mr...
...We can do so again...
...He suggests that we read Daniel Patrick Moynihan instead...
...He is a child who wishes to remain ignorant of the full picture...
...The other point of interest is that shortly after its passage, an outside company was called in to explain to the Vermont lawmakers what it was that they just passed...
...Clement Stone for the book's announcement that he had passed on when he had not...
...CAROLE SIEMENS Tustin, California The American Spectator • October 1998 89...
...There are other weird spots in Chap-man's review that are either instances of severe obtuseness or sheer malice...
...But there is roughly as much practical wisdom and originalwit in No-Fault Politics as there is vengefulness and bile in Chapman's review—and that's a lot...
...The problem is a loss of local control and the fiction that the state can somehow fine tune the taxing and spending machinery to achieve some kind of blissful state of perfect fairness The result is a monstrosity of legislation that is not understood even by the people who wrote and passed it (perhaps least of all by them) and that gives rich people in poor towns a break while it sticks it to poor people (who have property) in rich towns...
...Moreover, Livingston would win because he is a true conservative but also one who can hold together the disparate factions in the Republican caucus, leading them to sorely needed victories...
...Chapman wonders how McCarthy could not notice the ill effects of direct The American Spectator • October 1998 87 election of senators upon the Senate as a deliberative body...
...In the post-Reagan period, conservatives repeatedly have been asked to support pragmatic centrists for president like George Bush and Bob Dole on the theory that they stood the best chance of winning...
...The 1997 edition of the World Almanac says Iraq has a population of 21.4 million...
...When ISS was last threatened in Congress, NASA had virtually abandoned every pretext for the project save a new one: the alleged foreign policy benefits of using ISS to embrace the new Russian regime...
...The Majority Leader is an asset to the GOP of course...
...Finally, I suppose Bernie Sanders does, indeed, stand up to corporate America...
...Apparently he thinks some higher truth can be achieved by misrepresenting the historical record...
...Maybe Chapman is just humorless, which would make McCarthy a hard read for him...
...A realization that the public schools have been hijacked by special interests (i.e., the NEA), and have thus become irrelevant to their primary mission (private schools can pass along the three Rs) of instilling a sense of America's social contract in its youth, would also be useful...
...This estimate has been rising remorselessly since the program began, and grows with every additional delay—either from Russia or prime contractor Boeing...
...Norman has not spent much time in this state...
...It's as if your authors lack the real life experiences necessary to evaluate events in terms of their relative significance...
...The second point stems from the first...
...In this respect, he brings to mind the so-called pundits of the 70's oil "crisis" who, neglecting the responsiveness of market forces, predicted that our country would soon run out of oil...
...Let's not forget that the Great Depression spawned the New Deal...
...As Oberg shows, it is hard to imagine how Russia could have been more adversarial toward America's interests ever since becoming our space partners...
...They seem to prefer this passionate and hawkish Navy veteran, the law-and-order former prosecutor, the gentleman from Louisiana...
...HOWARD DACHS Westford, Vermont As a native Vermonter I was amused to see Geoffrey Norman's thoroughly inaccurate description of the Vermont conThe American Spectator - October 19 9 8 85 stituency that supports the leftist independent U.S...
...In repeating some of the most outrageous scare stories of the Y2K doomsayers, Mr...
...Roberts overlooks the probable beneficial economic effects of Y2K that are generated in a resilient and dynamic free market economy...
...Your news articles are terribly two-dimensional, verging on a simplistic black-and-white view of the world...
...And he marvels that McCarthy, who says the vice presidency should be abolished, has not noticed how many vice presidents in this century have become president...
...Norman complains of his critics' inconsistency: they argue, he says, that, while throwing money at schools won't fix them, cutting budgets can hurt them...
...I don't think you boys have grown up much since then...
...But he pounces upon McCarthy's "error" as if it is final "ah ha" proof that McCarthy is guilty of "lazy thinking and general sloppiness...
...neighborhood, just outside his party-circuit...
...Who Is George W. Bush...
...Hence Chapman's number may be soft too...
...I put the magazine down, went outside into the bright sun of a beautiful summer day and made a vow to myself that I would spend the rest of the problem-solving portion of the day in the company of people offering solutions, not just complaints...
...As a retired military officer I think this exposes what a phony he is...
...MARK PETTIGREW Chicago, Illinois Mad About You When I received my first issue of The American Spectator, I thought it bore an uncanny resemblance to Mad magazine...
...The ISS isn't supposed to require any technology breakthroughs, and the launch vehicles already exist...
...Just be sure to stock up on canned food and ammunition, and stay off the roads for a while...
...Thus, one can expect this to result in innovative solutions to other IT problems (e.g., better cost management systems...
...However, you stated in the article that the Clinton administration has attracted more independent counsels and more congressional inquiries than any previous American government, yet you offered no facts to support that claim...
...When McCarthy employs hyperbole to compare the armed troops in Chicago 1968 with the armed troops in Prague that year, it is self-consciously hyperbole—for the purpose of shock and shame...
...Hence, by November 2000, the market's invisible hand may very well provide the Democratic standard-bearer with a welcome gift...
...and deserve a reasonable station—as do we...
...TYLER S. POSEY McLean, Virginia The Big Bang Theory Given the record of The American Spectator of championing market solutions over government solutions, we were surprised by your choice for the August 1998 cover —"Whose Problem is 2000...
...The latest such nonsense is focused on our own barren Moon and a forbidding satellite of one of the gaseous Outer Planets...
...Congress, Sanders has won the respect and votes of native Vermonters who appreciate an honest politician who tells it like it is and stands up to the power of corporate America...
...Such press releases are intended by NASA to pave the way toward more investments in space fantasies...
...And maybe this explains why there are no good jobs for local Vermonters and the state is reduced to taxing second homes to pay for education...
...Pauken wants to set the record straight on what transpired at the '96 convention...
...McCarthy's book is about American politics...
...Given European indifference to manned space, it is hard to imagine them greeting ISS's cancellation with anything but a sigh of relief...
...The truly unpredictable problems will occur with microprocessing chips in embedded control systems...
...Adult women don't want to get their news from the perspective of an immature, pre-adolescent boy...
...Stone and his influence on Richard Nixon, among others...
...cocktail parties and receptions...
...However, I must take issue with another article, written by Mark Steyn, in your July 1998 issue ("Under My Skin...
...While I confess to not reading the whole issue, surely the most all-encompassing bitching has to come from Wladyslaw Pleszczynski, who has found the whole culture lacking...
...I had the opportunity to peruse the magazine today and I 86 October 1998 • The American Spectator was struck by the sense that whining was the predominant tone of each article I read...
...The YzK crash, if it happens, may be lots of fun...
...There never was any move at the convention to prevent Governor Bush from going to the San Diego Convention as a national delegate...
...We were successful on that front...
...The convention delegates voted to include Senator Hutchison as a delegate...
...Good to know even the yobbos have learned of the French cowardice and duplicitousness, especially in WWII...
...He's so right, but not for the stated reason that Livingston is chairman of the monied House Appropriations Committee, a position the Speaker prevailed upon him to take, by the way...
...I was GOP state chairman and presided over the 1996 state convention...
...You neglected to mention anywhere in this article that one particular personal computer is, and has been since its introduction, Year z000 compliant—the Macintosh...
...I have had the distinct pleasure of reading your article, "The Party of Corruption," in the July 1998 issue of The American Spectator...
...That was enough for me...
...Twenty...
...Killing this space station would disappoint some international partners, but that didn't stop us from canceling the similarly out-of-control Superconducting Supercollider...
...Pauken...
...Norman...
...Stein is an anti-abortionist who appears to spend most of his time attending D.C...
...Enough Is Enough In "NASA's Russian Payload" (TAS, August 1998) James Oberg has corralled shocking facts concerning Mr...
...But Humphrey was trailing Nixon by 16 points...
...We didn't get behind them because we thought they were going to win, but because we thought that they were men of integrity who would try to do what was best for America...
...What factors are most closely correlated with intellectual success...
...It's a shame your magazine is so simplistic...
...While temporary Y2K glitches would not be surprising, there are good reasons to believe that by election day Y2K, most voters will have observed that the "Millennium Bug" has led to increased prosperity...
...Although this is true, it's not completely accurate...
...Gordon and Loeb are correct that free markets separate winners from losers and that the net effect is beneficial...
...For whatever reason, Chapman seems to have been too busy playing "gotcha" to read the book or to read all of it...
...The most important of which is that people will be forced to learn how to live without the Mommy State, if only for a few months...
...Ever since Sanders won the Burlington, Vermont Mayoral race in 1981, critics have tried to portray his political success as a result of college students and hippies...
...Sam Dealey's article in the August TAS on Texas Republican politics ("Bush-whipped") not only is factually inaccurate when it comes to his rendition of what transpired at the 1996 Texas GOP state convention, but, more importantly, Dealey misreads the mood of independent Texas conservatives about presidential politics in 2000...
...GARY BROWN Omaha, Nebraska Geoffrey Norman's feature concerning Vermont's Act 6o was right on the money—well maybe not, for just recently, more than likely after the August issue went to press, Vermont's Education Department announced that the $5 million administrative "vigorish" was computed incorrectly...
...But it is not painless...
...Whenever I think of the song "My Way," I think of my father...
...I apologize for any factual errors in the book...
...That's not only unfair to the author but unfair to readers who might prefer irony to homiletics...
...His argument was that, like the fires in Florida, the cleanup effort will create jobs (as if expending labor and material just to get back to where we were is somehow better than using those resources to move ahead...
...Goldin's boondoggle in Houston...
...For example, as companies go under and unemployment mounts, we can expect to hear Gephardt and Buchanan demanding that we shut off imports in an effort to "stop exporting jobs...
...That's what we did when conservatives supported Barry Goldwater in 1964 and Ronald Reagan in 1976 and 1980...
...Should they get their way, we could very well see what should be a six- to twelve-month "blip" turn into a decade long worldwide recession...
...What have conservatives got to show for all of that support—a Bush presidency which was a great disappointment to conservatives and poor campaigns run against Bill Clinton by both George Bush and Bob Dole...
...Unfortunately, Bob Dole, our presidential nominee, quickly distanced himself from his own party's platform...
...As Douglas Adams, author of Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy and long-time Mac user, recently pointed out: "Macintosh...
...John Corry's contribution to the cryfest is that Barry Goldwater was inappropriately co-opted in death by people whose main crime appears to have been liking him...
...Harvey Keitel is not good looking enough for Joe Queenan...
...Norman's put-upon parents also seem clueless...
...And all through the summer McCarthy had led Nixon in the polls while Humphrey was neck-and-neck or behind...
...Even those who minimize the seriousness of the Year z000 problem—such as the Federal Reserve Governor Edward Kelly, whom I cited in my article—say there will be a modest negative effect on growth...
...There was the same juvenile sense of satire and the same pre-adolescent "girls are icky" attitude...
...Giving McCarthy the benefit of the doubt, I used the lower of the three numbers...
...ISS interests urge Congress to show "courage" by overlooking all the above,but in fact the continuation of a fiscally disastrous pork-barrel program would be all too routine...
...The fix is usually limited to finding and changing the lines of programming language with date conflicts...
...Norman complains that the "good" districts will face budget cuts, while there is no evidence that more money will fix the "bad" schools...
...That is in part because the $600 billion our economy is diverting to Year 2000 software remedies doesn't involve improving either the software programs or bridging the knowledge barrier between a firm's senior management and its information "techies...
...Moreover, on the eve of the convention the Chicago Sun-Times published a poll showing McCarthy beating Nixon in Illinois while Humphrey trailed by 10 points...
...Second, the Millennium Bug provides an impetus for the acceleration of the information technology (IT) revolution...
...Mark Steyn found the English soccer fan's diction lacking...
...Ben Stein's airplane was too hot...
...There was a glaring omission that I felt had to be acknowledged...
...A school spending $11,000 per pupil, as Vermont's richest districts do, is nowhere near that line...
...It is clearly time for Congress to appoint an independent panel of concerned citizens and objective scientists—i.e., those who do not write sci-fi about ETI or who have no connection with NASA—to open and closely examine NASA's books while also canvassing its exorbitant plans for funding "interplanetary travel...
...Chapman concedes the point but objects to the use of hyperbole and screams "moral equivalency...
...I happen to agree with your stated opinion of the current administration and the "Party of Corruption...
...Third, the litigation free-for-all that Mr...
...Incredibly, NASA is now researching and endeavoring to convince various Clinton Administration officials and members of Congress of the "wisdom" of colonizing the obviously hostile, other "worlds" of the Solar System while searching for (nonexistent) extraterrestrial life (ETI) that could cost over $100 billion dollars by early next century...
...I find one reference book that says 11 million and one that says 18, before the war...
...However, as he aged, he began to envy hip "swingers" like Frank...
...Stein from enjoying the free food, drinks, and introductions...
...The Iraq error, if it is one, would not seem a damning one, except to Stephen Chapman...
...Above the minimum, if more money helps good schools, it should also help poor ones...
...Problem Solver I feel compelled to comment on your August 1998 issue...
...The Japanese and Canadians may prefer to soldier on (has anyone asked them lately...
...I do agree with you, however, that "the Democrats of the 1990's may indeed go down in history as the Party of Corruption...
...In his introduction to the book, he said McCarthy led Nixon in the polls at the time of the Democratic convention...
...by John Roberts II...
...Claims offered with no support are unsubstantiated claims, and too many people take what they read at face value without any further probing or questioning...
...Contrary to Dealey's assertion, I was not involved in any attempt to prevent Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison from serving as a Dole delegate to the national convention...
...I agree with Mr...
...Things like number of books in the home, amount of television (not) watched in the home,educational level of the parents, etc...
...He attempts to incite class warfare, and then points the finger at his opponents...
...I also understand about private schools and vouchers, since we have a modified plan here that enabled my children to attend private school once they reached the 9th grade...
...Sounds familiar...
...This should surprise no one, especially in a state with districts disparate enough to drive parents to desperate measures to enroll their children in "rich" districts (according to Mr...
...When I was young, he practiced total abstinence from alcohol, and I admired him for sticking to his convictions...
...The space shuttle almost smothered the space program with its disastrous cost performance...
...Stein has no awareness of reality for women, and could care less...
...Although we Mac users are a minority, we do count— especially among those who will not experience catastrophic crashes or devastating data loss on our systems...
...Burris claims he has sources giving lower figures but doesn't tell us what they are and thinks it unimportant that none of those he cites actually matches the one used in the book...
...In his book McCarthy says 12 million...
...Fulmer and Mr...
...But McCarthy has written and spoken extensively through the years about the decline of the Senate and always said, just as Chapman does, that direct election of senators was the start of the deterioration of that body...
...MOSES FRIDMAN Cleveland, Ohio Looking forward to your January 19oo issue...
...At a ceremony honoring war dead at Pearl Harbor, and pronouncing the word bow as one would in "bow and arrow," Gore talked about the "historic event that took place on the bow of the aircraft carrier [sic] Missouri...
...Although many of these events are hosted by Democrats, this doesn't stop Mr...
...LEIGH BLANKENSHIP Huntington, West Virginia Like many things, the year 2000 bug, if it causes the dire situation that your article predicts, will also have some positive effects...
...Vermont has instituted a tax plan that will redirect money from rich public school districts to poorer ones, with the goal being an equal amount of per-student spending in every state district...
...I loved him—from my childhood in the fifties, when the good guys won in the movies, and for a long time after—watching him through the decades remain upright, honest, trustworthy, faithful, loyal, and true...
...Without Frank's influence, I might have a real father today,instead of a physically alive but spiritually dead facsimile of the same...
...Moynihan is a great man, but he has his own methods of meandering...
...Economists like Barron's Gene Epstein now believe that the Year 2000 problem may well give us a return to 1970's-style oil shortages and massive layoffs in mining, manufacturing, and transportation inustries by the second quarter of z000...
...Those who make the repellent argument that most of the money for ISS has already been spent (implying, so we might as well waste the rest, too) are best answered: If only it were so...
...Since Chapman knows so much, he must know all this...
...So I know first hand about the NEA...
...ALBERT L. WEEKS Sarasota, Florida 12 October 1998 • The American Spectator In "NASA's Russian Payload" (TAS, August 1998), James Oberg focuses on the scandalous Russian role in the International Space Station (ISS), but the Made In America rip-off of the taxpayers is at least as outrageous...
...There seems to be some uncertainty...
...Which of these are affected by education spending...
...Moreover, he was clearly perceived as a unifier at the convention...
...But as Chapman notes, Senator McCarthy has good things to say about Mr...
...The national delegates did elect me to serve as chairman of the Texas delegation while simultaneously choosing Governor Bush to be Honorary Chairman, a position he later rejected...
...Real courage would lead Congress and the administration to say about such a project, Enough is enough...
...He mumbles under his breath about his opposition to abortion, but doesn't seem to know diddly squat about the realities of life for a girl living in a typical sexually-predatory D.C...
...Chapman is literally correct that Harris and Gallup actually had McCarthy behind Nixon by 5 points at the moment of Humphrey's nomination...
...How many is a surprising number...
...Even if every line of computer code were to be fixed in time (and they won't be), finding and replacing non-compliant embedded chips remains a Herculean challenge...
...He uses a similar approach when he insists that special prosecutors who decline to indict nonetheless accuse people of behaving badly...
...Rest in Peace, Roy Rogers...
...This white elephant already vacuums up all extra space money in sight, starving the parts of NASA which actually produce results...
Vol. 31 • October 1998 • No. 10
