Report Card
Corson, Ross
REPORT CARD Ross Corson An Old Deal THE REAGAN EXPERIMENT edited by John L. Palmer and Isabel V. Sawhill The Urban Institute, 2100 M Street NW, Washington, DC 20037. $12.95 plus $2.00...
...Military Democracy HUMAN RIGHTS IN THE TWO COLOMBIAS: FUNCTIONING DEMOCRACY, MILITARIZED SOCIETY by Aryeh Neier Americas Watch Committee, 36 West 44th Street, New York, NY 10036...
...Lives saved, injuries averted, and medical costs avoided are no longer the NHT-SA's guiding principles...
...Neier concludes that "civilian supremacy must be established if human rights are to be protected in Colombia...
...The Reagan Administration," the report concludes, "is committed to revoking regulations, at any cost, even if the regulations save lives, are cost beneficial, and have strong public support...
...The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) was established in 1966 to reduce traffic accidents and save lives and limbs...
...Such statistics appear in newspapers and on television all the time, more often numbing the mind and producing public indifference than eliciting concern for the recurring losses...
...Despite those 140 deaths a day, the record shows NHTSA has improved highway safety...
...That amounts to the same number of people who would be killed were a major airplane crash to occur every day...
...The President's budget and tax cuts, the editors observe, have produced "no significant overall change in the purchasing power of those with incomes below $15,000, modest increases for the broad middle class, and substantial gains for higher-income families...
...Public Citizen, 2000 P Street NW, Washington, DC 20036...
...According to Aryeh Neier, vice chairman of the Americas Watch Committee, "The two Colombias—the functioning democracy concerned about human rights and the militarized society in which human rights are grossly abused—exist side by side...
...This detailed, comprehensive—and, admittedly, dry— report shows Reagan's role in exacerbating the inequalities among economic classes and geographic regions...
...Neier also calls for an end to American military aid for Colombia, suggesting as an alternative that the United States assist in strengthening democratic institutions, particularly the civilian courts...
...Throughout his two years in office, President Reagan has tried to lead an economic, political, and social counterrevolution in America...
...embassy in Bogota...
...About 140 Americans are killed daily in traffic accidents...
...This report, the first of a two-part series on "changing domestic priorities," contains heavy documentation and dozens of statistical tables...
...In addition, the report notes, the White House is seriously damaging the agency's institutional structure by reducing and demoralizing its staff...
...12.00...
...But according to this report from Ralph Nader's public-interest group, the current Administration seems determined to reverse the limited progress NHTSA has managed to achieve...
...The editors would do better in part two to leave their Washington offices for some field observations...
...The cuts to date in benefit payments and other grant programs disproportionately affect those below the average income level," the study says...
...AUTO SAFETY PROGRAM by Joan Claybrook, Jacqueline Gillan, Anne Strainchamps...
...The Reagan Experiment provides statistical documentation of the adverse effect the Administration's policies have had on the nation's poor...
...Collision Course REAGAN ON THE ROAD: THE CRASH OF THE U.S...
...For all the study's focus on economic and budgetary considerations, little is said about the Administration's military and foreign policy priorities, or about such social issues as school prayer and abortion— matters that apparently helped Reagan capture the White House in 1980 to launch a counterrevolution...
...Indeed, the Reagan Administration seems to be a glaring example of the paralysis induced by statistics...
...To this end, he recommends that all police functions currently in the hands of the military be turned over to civilian agencies and that "all legal proceedings, except matters of strictly military discipline in which civilians are not involved, should be under the jurisdiction of civilian courts...
...Their report details how the Reagan Administration is crippling the NHTSA by openly attacking or covertly neglecting three major life-saving programs—motor vehicle safety standards, motorcycle safety, and the fifty-five-mile-per-hour speed limit...
...Although President Belisario Betancur has moved swiftly to improve human rights and strengthen democratic government since he took office last August, the Colombian armed forces still hold enormous power, "answerable only to themselves...
...Colombia, he reports, is afflicted with violence and crime as well as with a military that exploits the situation to amass power...
...12.95 plus $2.00 shipping...
...The study also indicates that domestic spending cuts have most seriously hurt the Northeast, Middle West, and poorer sections of the South—all heavily dependent on Federal assistance—and least affected the Western and "New South" states...
...According to the editors of this book-length study from a Washington think tank, "The Administration's rejection of an active economic stabilization role for Government and its 'new federalism' proposals would restore economic policy and intergovernmental relations to their status before the New Deal...
...Sadly, the discussion of the impact of Reagan's policies is needlessly abstract...
...Neier visited Colombia in September, and interviewed, among others, top government officials, judges, attorneys, religious leaders, journalists, labor leaders, victims of torture, relatives of persons who have mysteriously disappeared, and a representative of the U.S...
...A state of siege has prevailed in Colombia almost constantly for thirty years...
...Rather, the touchstone for NHTSA policy is conformity to a rigid political ideology and subservience to Detroit," argue Joan Claybrook, NHTSA administrator in the Carter Administration, and her co-authors...
Vol. 47 • January 1983 • No. 1
