COMMENT
Comment The Citizens' Revulsion Rarely in the 215-year history of this country have American citizens looked upon their elected officials with more anger, bitterness, disenchantment, disaffection,...
...Global warming is a plague that will be visited upon our children, just as we are now experiencing a thinning ozone layer above our continent...
...There's no telling what might happen if citizens were to find out what's going on...
...Auto fuel-efficiency standards should be increased to at least forty-five miles per gallon by the year 2000, and gas taxes need to be raised...
...Crime on the Hill No one who lives in the United States is unaffected by violent crime...
...But it's crucial...
...Heaven forbid that the people should learn anything of significance about their own business...
...Who would have thought that sexual harassment could become a major national issue...
...The Democrats did no better in the confirmation hearings of Robert Gates to head the CIA...
...It would not ensure a more democratic politics, and it would do nothing to advance any alternative set of ideas or policies...
...And there's no guarantee—not even a likelihood, really— that term limits will bring about a more responsive legislature...
...A free flow of information obviates the need for leaks...
...However, abandoning more than two centuries' worth of concern for the rights of a person accused of a crime—possibly the wrong person—is not the way to create a safer society...
...Their everyday concerns are not being met in Washington no matter who is elected every two or four or six years...
...We need to make this access democratic, and the best way to do that is to compel television and radio stations to offer a minimum of free advertising time to every qualifying candidate...
...Have I ever...
...about dissimulation and outright deception by a Presidential nominee testifying under oath...
...The entire political process appears remote, unresponsive, and inaccessible...
...People in smaller communities, whose attitude used to be "it can't happen here," have learned that it can...
...The chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, David Boren, Democrat of Oklahoma, was Gates's chief supporter on the panel...
...But it will do no good just to offer free time to Republicans and Democrats...
...Reconstituting such a political culture, reinventing such a political practice, may be the hardest task of all...
...To impose a term limit is to interfere with the voters' fundamental right to make a choice...
...Then they refused to ask Thomas any tough questions...
...Another proposal being bandied about is to give voters a choice of casting a ballot for "none of the above," allowing them to condemn a whole slate...
...Instead, it lags sadly behind...
...The revulsion at large might signal the possibility of a Twentieth Century populist revolt...
...And for once, they are making the boss sit down and listen...
...But like the populist revolt of the Nineteenth Century, this one could have reactionary as well as progressive prospects...
...But term limitations are no solution...
...It is the price of media advertising that corrupts the political process most directly, for only the well-heeled can get their message across to the voters...
...For too long, the media and such civic groups as the League of Women Voters have conspired to exclude from the debate all candidates who offer different perspectives...
...They know they're being ill-served by an enfeebled two-party system and by a plutocratic Congress stuffed with corruption and hot air...
...Solar, wind, geothermal, and bio-mass technologies can provide a substantial portion of our total energy use...
...Thus, David Duke of Louisiana mines the lode of populism—and mixes in the familiar raw materials of racism—to further his vile career as Klansman-turned-politician...
...More punishment for the ones who are prosecuted won't help...
...Finally, there is the death penalty...
...First they sat on Anita Hill's allegations...
...And before the entire political system can become responsive, citizens in this country need to reassert the politics of mobilization...
...Finally, they're saying they won't stand for it any more...
...In one instance, at least, Kennedy himself turned out to be the source of the leak that had infuriated him...
...about grave charges of sexual harassment...
...There are no short cuts...
...Residents who try to get help from police don't get it...
...He delayed or canceled several high-level appointments because word of them leaked to the press ahead of time...
...There are some differences between Democrats and Republicans, but precious few distinctions...
...For most Americans, it not only doesn't seem to matter who gets elected, it actually doesn't matter...
...Second, we must break the tyranny of the two-party system...
...Women now have some recourse when they are being harassed—whether the boss thinks it reasonable or not...
...And why should they...
...We need to organize, march, rally, demonstrate, lobby, engage in civil disobedience on a massive scale as was done in the 1930s, and force the politicians of whatever party to respond to our demands...
...But by definition, sexual harassment does not depend on what a man understands as reasonable...
...The World-watch Institute estimates that global carbon-dioxide emissions need to be cut to one-sixth of the current level to stabilize the climate...
...The Bush Administration claims that the cost of decreasing fossil-fuel dependence is too high...
...This makes Senators and Representatives feel good, and allows them to go home and claim they have done something about drugs...
...And we don't have much time...
...We must reinvigorate the politics of everday life so that citizens view political action not as merely casting a ballot, but as actively engaging in the process of self-government...
...Big business and the Bush Administration cannot hide behind the facade of scientific uncertainty as they like to do...
...So it's hardly surprising that the point on which the President and the Democratic Senate seem to agree most emphatically in the wake of the tawdry spectacle of the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings is that we've got to put a stop to leaks...
...But prisons are bursting with people whose crimes are drug-related, and public housing is still plagued with drug dealers...
...they are, at best, just a quick fix...
...Rather, it takes into consideration the effect on a woman who feels persecuted and intimidated in the workplace...
...Listen Up In offices all over America, in factories, on construction sites, in restaurants, men are squirming in their chairs...
...It really does not get criminals off the streets.' -U.S...
...The average citizen has no clout and no voice...
...Thanks to feminist legal theorist Catharine MacKinnon, women now have the legal terminology to describe the everyday experience of being harassed and humiliated...
...In the long run, the price of promoting conservation and alternative energy is a wise investment...
...Let It Flow Among recent Presidents of the United States, none was more obsessed with secrecy—he called it "keeping my options open"—than Lyndon Johnson...
...Finally, leading Democratic Senators (Sam Nunn of Georgia, Fritz Hollings of South Carolina, Chuck Robb of Virginia) voted to confirm Thomas...
...That the Government is unresponsive is bad enough—a truly damning indictment of our so-called democracy...
...This is what has gone wrong: The silent subordinates in the workplace have gained a voice...
...Before a new party can succeed, it must have a constituency...
...According to a landmark decision handed down by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in 1980, it is illegal to demand sexual favors as a condition of employment, and it is also illegal to create "an intimidating, hostile, or offensive working environment" through sexual harassment...
...Who can blame the public when its representatives wantonly bounce checks, rack up exorbitant restaurant bills that they never have to pay, act as bag men for the savings-and-loan scoundrels, and then give themselves pay raises in the dark of night...
...But building a third party is not a panacea, either, and it may be putting the cart before the horse...
...The more women gain political power, the more we will have to confront the political oppression that has long been considered too "personal" to merit serious consideration—and the more the old boys will squirm...
...Citizens should be able to elect whomever they wish—and for as long as they deem appropriate...
...Even as many continue to argue that such "private" matters as sexual harassment are better kept out of the political arena, it is too late to mourn the tidy politics of a world run by and for men...
...The vast majority of scientists have concluded that global warming is real and imminent...
...But the House voted no...
...They do not stand for anything...
...John Kennedy and Richard Nixon launched massive Federal investigations of unauthorized news leaks...
...No wonder half the citizenry chooses not to vote even in Presidential elections, and a large majority sits out Congressional races...
...They offer no alternative...
...We must move forward, not backward...
...Other aspects of the bill are not necessarily unconstitutional, but just wrong-headed...
...Leaks make a difference only when they have been preceded by an attempt to keep people from knowing what they have a right to know...
...We don't have the luxury of waiting around for more studies...
...The Clarence Thomas hearings forced the whole nation to confront the issue...
...The real issue, said President Bush, is "who leaked what and for what reasons," and the Senate Democrats scurried to launch an investigation...
...But to add to that the corruption, greed, and nest-feathering so prevalent today in Washington is to make a mockery of our entire system of governing...
...Despite criticism from the pundits, NOW has been leading the way over the last two years toward a fundamental break with the Democratic Party—a grand departure for NOW, which only eight years ago was among the first and most fervent recruits to the Walter Mondale campaign...
...This is a the Progressive 'There are political changes going on all around us—why just in Europe...
...Whether the courts agree or not, the death penalty is cruel and unusual, and to reinstate it—as both bills do—for about fifty types of Federal crime, including some in which no victim has died, is absurd...
...The House took up a measure to ban the sale and manufacture of automatic weapons the day after the massacre at Luby's Cafeteria in Killeen...
...The politicians seem to care about nothing more than getting re-elected, so they cater to the wealthy contributors and corporate sponsors who underwrite their campaigns...
...Congress that has gone berserk...
...To call this barbarous is too mild...
...Some patronizing commentators argue that the "hostile work environment" concept degrades and undermines the cause of combating real harassment (unwanted physical contact or the loss of a job for refusal to grant sexual favors)—that is, harassment in the terms most men can readily understand and accept...
...To brand as barbarous the whole approach to crime by this set of lawmakers is also too mild...
...One issue that Congress could actually do something about is gun control...
...The Heat Is On Next summer, world leaders will convene in Brazil for the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development...
...These latest Democratic blunders are all of a piece...
...The Fourth Amendment bars police from search and seizure without a warrant...
...This ratio should be reversed...
...Those who control (or aspire to control) the flow of public information regard leaks with fear and loathing...
...The European Community and Japan favor reduction of carbon-dioxide emissions, but the United States says too little is known about global warming to take action...
...The Senate version would double, and the House would triple, penalties for dealing drugs in or near public housing...
...The people are sick of being taken for granted and taken for a ride by Washington...
...But as the oil supply diminishes, increased prices could send our country into economic rigor mortis...
...The United States, as the world's second-largest per-capita user of energy (behind Canada), should lead the way in reducing carbon-dioxide emissions and ecological destruction...
...In formulating the "hostile-environment" provision, MacKinnon defined the intolerable working conditions many women have had to cope with for years...
...With only 5 per cent of the global population, the United States consumes 27 per cent of the world's oil supply...
...To broaden the public discourse—to give citizens a genuine choice—stations must grant access to independent and third-party candidates who have met some minimum standard of popular support...
...Almost every energy program instituted in the 1970s has suffered from severe cutbacks in the 1980s and early 1990s...
...Facing this crisis of democratic representation, many see the answer in technical changes, including limiting the terms of elected officials, a reform that has already been enacted in several states...
...Federal funds for transportation currently favor highways over mass transit eight to one...
...What, then, is to be done...
...Comment The Citizens' Revulsion Rarely in the 215-year history of this country have American citizens looked upon their elected officials with more anger, bitterness, disenchantment, disaffection, and disgust than they do today...
...As was the case during the deplorable Iran-contra hearings, the Democrats pulled their punches and ran for cover...
...The Democrats present not even a pale imitation of an opposition party...
...And third, we must reconstitute an active, grass-roots political culture...
...Tax incentives and research money must promote renewable energy alternatives...
...More attention to the reasons why people turn to drugs is the only thing that will...
...At worst, they are an end-run around democracy...
...As Nina Totenberg, the enterprising National Public Radio reporter who broke the story of Anita Hill's charges against Thomas, pointed out, there would have been no leak (and no cause for leaking) if the Senate Judiciary Committee had, in the first place, properly addressed its responsibilities in weighing the Thomas nomination...
...why, we might even have democracy...
...People who live in big cities have long known it to be part of their environment...
...Indeed, they could have just the opposite effect, since politicians who know they won't have to face the voters again will have an incentive to ignore them...
...To begin to address the undemocratic nature of politics in America, at least three serious changes need to be made...
...Among Western industrialized nations that call themselves democracies, only the United States still sanctions such savage punishment...
...Why not here?' —Dolores Huerta of NOW and the United Farm Workers...
...Now, it is the U.S...
...Nixon's Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, himself a notorious leaker when it suited his purposes, ordered wiretaps on members of his own staff to find out who was issuing leaks he didn't like...
...Never mind substantive questions about who is or is not qualified to sit on the nation's highest tribunal...
...Americans no longer have a say in what goes on...
...The citizens are right...
...Representative James Sensenbrenner, Republican of Wisconsin, on the crime bill...
...But the bill in conference says evidence seized illegally may be used if the police acted "in good faith...
...They have reason for concern...
...vacuous idea, however, which would only serve to quantify discontent...
...They failed to call such corroborating witnesses as Angela Wright, who would have helped establish the pattern of Thomas's mistreatment of women...
...the laws already on the books aren't enforced...
...Praise goes to the National Organization for Women (NOW) for endorsing this option...
...Across desk tops and lunch tables, in the back room, they ask each other, "Have you ever...
...First, we must redress the gross advantage incumbents have in campaigns...
...The last time we checked, the Supreme Court had not yet completely dismantled the Bill of Rights, but Congress is about to produce a crime bill that will serve up opportunities galore...
...Just ask the citizens of Killeen, Texas, or the college students in Gainesville, Florida, or the folks in one of those small Midwestern towns where a foreclosed-upon farmer went berserk and shot up the local bank...
...Duke is no oddity of the bayous...
...he represents the right-wing potential that exists all across the country, waiting to be tapped...
...Their hapless and helpless performance during the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings was a disgrace...
...On one occasion, he suspended plans to send emergency food aid to India because a newspaper published the story before Johnson could make his official announcement...
...And what has gone wrong with our political process, some editors and columnists are demanding, when something so embarrassingly personal, so sordidly sexual, as a man talking to a woman about pornography or the size of his penis, could become a topic for televised Congressional debate...
...The Left desperately needs an independent political structure that could serve to articulate our views, to organize at the grass roots, and to run candidates across the country...
...Well, every profession has its zealots.' —John Sununu, on being asked why many scientists believe the greenhouse effect is real...
Vol. 55 • December 1991 • No. 12
