'Computer politics'
Baruch, Jeremiah
diplomatic initiatives. On the Soviet side, the suspicion is so deep that any American move may be perceived as nothing but propaganda -- and who knows what progress can be made in view of...
...Backed by a battery of sophisticated analysts, each regional group is able to identify commonalities among their states and formulate strategies in their "interest...
...Washington report 'COMPUTER POLITICS' WARS BETWEEN THE BELTS T HE STAMINA of the hardiest of flora and fauna is tested in Washington in December...
...though destined to be burned throughout history, would never be consumed by history...
...He then told her to take care of herself, raise her son well, and help oul around the house...
...When adjusted for inflation, fiscal 1984 aid is actually below that of 1982...
...Of course, no matter what the formulation, regions are not readily bounded by a statistical set, without exceptions hamCommonweal: 6...
...On the Soviet side, the suspicion is so deep that any American move may be perceived as nothing but propaganda -- and who knows what progress can be made in view of Andropov's illness...
...The resulting competition has led some thoughtful members of Congress, such as Rep...
...Sunbelt economists and politicians continue to note that the South's per capita income level is well below the national average while the Northeast's is well above that average...
...In the Bible, when God appeared before Moses in a burning bush that fire could not consume, he seemed to be saying that Israel...
...A wooden cross was raised up outside the cathedral...
...Reducing the risks of nuclear war is not easy, but the effort should be relentless...
...But in today's Chile, to cut doww one cross is to raise up another...
...in any case, there is no reason to resign ourselves to the current stand-off...
...While four percent higher than fiscal 1983 and eight percent higher than 1982, it is still $6.3 billion less than the fiscal 1981 federal grant level of $105 billion...
...During the same period, federal aid to the Southwest grew 18 percent and to the Rocky Mountain states almost 24 percent...
...It is not only that the federal pie is getting smaller, it is that federal aid is seen as a pie at all -- with each state and region aware of the limits to such aid and quite conscious of the slice given to each...
...That Washington is increasingly becoming the battleground for these rivalries is indicated by the decision of the Southern Governors' Association to move its headquarters from Atlanta to Washington this year in order to be closer to the heat generated by the friction of the frostbelt states attempting to stave off further decline while the sunbelt states attempt to maintain their growth...
...One day it's sunny with picnics on the Capitol grounds and frisbees on the Mail, the next morning one is scraping off frost and bundled against wind that singes the remaining roses to a crisp -- only to find, two days later, that the temperature has bounced up again tc the high 60s...
...The frostbelt economists and politicians point out that if the cost of living differential is taken into account, the "real" adjusted per capita income level of the Northeast drops below the national average and that of the South and West rises above...
...Protest in Chile A PUBLIC BURNING DESPAIR & REDEMPTION O N A DAY last November in Concepcion, Chile, Sebastian Acevedo, a fifty-year-old worker, burned himself alive to protest the political disappearances of his son and daughter...
...By these terms he describes the potential manipulation of the formulas that have been used to allocate federal funds in grant programs according to an "objective" criterion of need -- a criterion that can readily be seen to change according to the eyes of the beholder, depending on whether they are covered by sun glasses or a snowmask...
...The mothers who gathered in Buenos Aires's Plaza de Mayo resisted the authorities by returning week after week to the threshhold of power, refusing to disappear until they learned the fate of their sons and daughters...
...In these days of mass rallies in Chile, with the beating of empty pots and pans to symbolize the hunger of the poor and with the confktent singing of "Y va a caer...
...In addition to the decline in federal aid, according to the National Journal's Neal Pierce and Jerry Hagstrom, the rise of the "new regionalism" results, in part, from "the development of stronger indigenous regional organizations" such as the Northeast Midwest Congressional Coalition and Institute, the Southern Growth Policies Board, and the Western Governors Policy Office...
...Federal aid to states in fiscal 1984 will be $98.7 billion...
...Y va a cacti" (He will fall...
...Dilger predicts that with Reagan administration efforts to replace categorical grants with formula-based block grants, "it is most probable that formulamanship will soon completely dominate the intergovernmental field...
...He asked her forgiveness and explained that he did what he did for the sake of parents everywhere whose children were being detained...
...Those rivalries were acutely evident in a joint study released in December by the National Governors' Association and the National Conference of State Legislatures...
...For the families, there is the dread of unknowing, the torture chamber of imagining, the rage of confronting the sadistic shrugs of bureaucratic denial...
...At an ever accelerating pace, there are an increasing number of political decisions based on formula allocations...
...He observes a longerterm impact of this development is that outside sources, particularly regional groups, have the capacity to provide complex formula alternatives to members of Congress, who are then able to challenge the delicately balanced bargains struck in committee -- if the alternative can be drawn to gain a winning coalition on the House or Senate floor...
...Ominously, the cross that was raised up in commemoratior of Acevedo was later cut down by three masked men claimin[ to be members of the Comando Antimarxista de la Muerte (th~ Anti-Marxist Death Squad...
...Mo Udall of Arizona, to conclude, "There is an increasing feeling of antipathy beween regions of the country...
...Official silence can be a torture almost as terrible as the rack...
...is not fighting a war in Chile there were no network cameramen to record the event for American TV...
...Acevedo was given a church burial, and the spot in front ol the cathedral where he immolated himself became a kind ol shrine to which people came to place flowers, pray, pay homage...
...To torture a person," said Chilean author Ariel Dorfman, "to cause a person to disappear, are the worst things you can do to someone...
...In Chile, as in Argentina of the generals and in Stalinist Russia, political disappearances epitomize state terror at its worst...
...And, by extension, to someone's family...
...ROBERT HIRSCHFIEL[ (Robert Hirschfield has published both articles and poetr2 in Commonweal...
...Pinochet will fall), Acevedo's lonely act of self-extinction in Concepcion is all the more compelling...
...The second cause involves the effects on federal formulas of the population and income changes reflected in the 1980 census...
...want the CNI to return my children...
...On the American side, there is not only distrust of the Russians but of the negotiating process itself...
...The traditional route of congressional decision-making is thus circumvented with the consequence that fewer members are willing to rely upon the expertise of congressional committees and the norm of specialization which, in turn, has implications for greater independence by junior members and more headaches for party leadership...
...For all intents and purposes it has yet to reach here...
...Acevedo's act, while despairing and self-consuming, also brought a redemptive message inscribed in the flames: Pinochet may ravage the body of Chile, but its freedom-loving spirit will never be consumed...
...A state-by-state analysis of virtually all federal grants-in-aid for state and local government revealed that assistance to New England increased less than 0.4 percent and to the Mid-Atlantic states less than 3 percent over the last three years...
...13 January 1984:5 The founding fathers had the prescience to situate the country's capital at the very end of the frostbelt and just before the beginning of the sunbelt, so that the regional rivalries which beset the fledgling nation would continue to find their sharpest edge in Washington...
...Still, the White House may be learning -- witness the president's admission in Time that he would not now repeat his "focus of evil" remark about the Kremlin...
...and the quicker payments in mineral leasing shared revenues...
...Just ~ before immolating himself, the worker cried out, "I want the CNI (Central Nacional de lnformaciones) to return my children...
...God forgive them and also forgive me for this sacrifice...
...He will fall...
...Acevedo's immolation, the first protest of its kind against the fiendish phenomenon of disappearances that plagues Latin America, immediately brought to mind the immolations of Buddhists in Vietnam two decades ago...
...Clearly, the optimism of the mass rally ran counter to Acevedo's grief, was unable to cradle its lacerating vastness, or make him less alienated in a society whose rulers can snatch children from parents as though they were wrist watches...
...the significantly altered relative allocations of the 1983 emergency jobs bill...
...And the church itself in Concepcion called for the dissolutior of the CNI, Pinochet's secret police...
...Moreover, the frostbelt advocates insist that state and local taxes as well as federal transfer payments be taken into account...
...In an instant, a person becomes a non-person, a cipher to be either destroyed or detained as his captors see fit, stripped of human identity and of recourse to human rights...
...They argue that unless real purchasing power is measured -by considering the geographic variations in cost of living -real economic need will not be identified...
...Acevedo resisted by disappearing in flames on his own terms, the autonomy of his agony a stark commentary on a government that has inflicted so much pain on the innocent as well as the guilty...
...and state governors and legislators, members of Congress, and the administration are fully aware that, depending upon the alternatives, some states "lose" and others "win...
...The families, tainted by association, find themselves entrapped in the implacable machinery of retribution...
...The result of these disputes has been characterized in The Sun Belt~Snow Belt Controversy by political scientist Robert Jay Dilger as "formulamanship" and "computer politics...
...The regional shifts derive from two causes -- first, the formula changes in highway, mass transit, and job training programs...
...Suffering has always traveled slowly from south to north along the gloomy spine of the Andes...
...The sunbelt counters that adjustments for state and local taxes in the cost of living differential reinforce the "overdeveloped" public sectors of the North, providing an indirect federal subsidy for what is viewed as the region's excessive level of state and local government services...
...Immediately following his immolation, Maria Candelaria, his daughter, was set free and spoke to her father by phone as he lay dying in a Concepcion hospital...
...But since the U.S...
Vol. 111 • January 1984 • No. 1
