Loka Alert 2-8 (Nov. 1, 1995) PLEASE SHARE AND POST WIDELY (where appropriate) LOSING THE PEACE...FOREVER Post-Cold War Science & Technology Policy in Human Terms You are welcome to reproduce this Loka Alert in its entirety. Exception: commercial reproduction requires prior permission. Friends and Colleagues: This is one in an occasional series of electronic postings on democratic politics of science and technology, issued by the Loka Institute. If you would like to be added to, or removed from, the Loka list, please send an e-mail message to that effect to . Although fate has moved us to issue this Loka Alert immediately on the heels of its predecessor (Loka Alert 2-7), we distribute Alerts _on average_ only about once per month. Cheers to all, Dick Sclove Executive Director, The Loka Institute, P.O. Box 355, Amherst, MA 01004-0355, USA Tel 413 253-2828; Fax 413 253-4942; Email: loka@amherst.edu World Wide Web: http://www.amherst.edu/~loka/ ***************************************************************** LOSING THE PEACE...FOREVER Post-Cold War Science & Technology Policy in Human Terms Copyright 1995 by Richard Sclove This memo reviews recent developments in U.S. science and technology policy from the standpoint of a concern with social needs, environmental sustainability, and democracy. (In part, the memo fleshes out themes treated cursorily in Loka Alert 2-7). I do so with some trepidation. The "Republican revolution" in Congress is seeking to destroy/accomplish so much so fast that it is extremely hard to stay abreast of the details, and harder still to grasp their broader significance. But it is vital to make the attempt. Even while the details continue to shift daily, I believe the snapshot presented here conveys a useful sense of Republican ambitions and momentum. (Note: if you find factual errors or important omissions, please let me know via e-mail to loka@amherst.edu; if these prove substantial, we will issue a corrected revision.) ***************************************************************** CONTENTS OF THIS ALERT I. Introduction (1 page) II. The New Playing Field (1 page) III. Some Details (8 pages) a. Worker Health & Safety b. Consumer Product Safety c. Environmental Protection d. Technology Assessment e. Basic vs. Applied Research f. National Labs g. Transportation h. Weapons & Defense Conversion i. Dept. of Commerce j. Telecommunications IV. Democracy Derailed (1 page) V. How to Participate & Help (1 page) VI. Bibliography (2 pages) ***************************************************************** I. INTRODUCTION Suppose Congress went berserk and adopted a macabre, dystopian vision for America's future: Deny funds for analyzing environmental problems, and prohibit the Environmental Protection Agency from enforcing laws. Quit investigating workplace hazards, and license corporations to sell defective products. Subsidize highways but not Amtrak. Slash funding for energy conservation and for wind and solar power research. Drive blind into the future by abolishing the U.S. Office of Technology Assessment. But don't stop there. Build an information superhighway with express lanes for advertizing and for exporting jobs to low- wage countries, but no on-ramps for the poor. Make it harder for students to get a loan or for unemployed workers to learn new skills. And, oh yes, to ensure that none of this lowers taxes or the deficit, spend extravagantly on B-2 bombers the Pentagon doesn't want plus an ineffectual Star Wars system that will undermine vital peacekeeping treaties. Is this science policy as fantasized by Beavis and Butthead? A David Letterman parody? No, it is real-world science and technology policy as embodied in actual bills now working toward the President's desk. For instance, Congress has endorsed a plan to slash federal support for nonmilitary scientific research by 35% over the next five years. Spending bills wending their way through Congress translate that ambition into concrete terms. While the Pentagon wins a 5.9% hike in its research and development (R&D) budget for the coming year, the House has voted to cut research oriented toward civilian needs by 7.9% overall. And the cuts go much deeper in specific areas, such as research on global environmental change and on renewable energy sources (which drop 32% and 38%, respectively, under House appropriations for FY 1996). (AAAS 1995; NRDC 1995b; Brown 1995). The bottom line: if Congressional Republicans have their way with science and technology policy, we are going to find ourselves living in a nation (and upon a planet) that is less healthy, safe, secure, sustainable, just, civic-minded, or democratic. In narrow material terms, the U.S. could remain prosperous. But that prosperity will represent a statistical artifact. Many, arguably most, Americans will suffer a decline in their standard of living as recent trends toward deteriorating job quality, lower wages, and inequality deepen. (This policy review is not, however, partisan. True, Republican science policy promises to do great harm. But Democratic policies were better primarily in comparison, not in absolute terms.) II. THE NEW PLAYING FIELD In the aftermath of the Cold War, Democrats and Republicans quickly reached a consensus that science and technology should be directed to advancing American competitiveness in global markets. This is, of course, a version of trickle-down theory: if U.S. businesses do well in world markets, so the story goes, Americans generally will benefit. Apart from the likelihood that only a _narrow spectrum_ of Americans will benefit (Rattner 1995), this theory dwells exclusively on economic considerations, neglecting entirely ancillary social, political, and environmental impacts (Sclove 1995b). Where the two political parties disagree is not on the ends, but on the means. The Clinton Administration has envisioned the federal government as an active partner with business in undertaking research and in promoting innovation. In contrast, the basic Republican strategy involves reduced overt government expenditure, while using deregulation and tax incentives to foster aggressive, market-driven innovation. (Neither approach sees any need for worker, community, or public-interest group representation in science and technology decisions.) The major exception to the aforementioned rule-of-thumb concerns the military. Since 1993 the Administration has been working toward a 50:50 ratio of federal military to civilian R&D expenditure (down from the Reagan-Bush highpoint in 1988, which favored the military 2:1). The new Republican Congress is now attempting to reverse the Clinton trajectory, augmenting the Pentagon R&D budget while paring back civilian R&D budgets. But deeper perniciousness lurks in the details. The basic state of play is this: During the first 100 days of the Republican Congress, the House and/or Senate passed a number of bills seeking to implement portions of House Speaker Newt Gingrich's "Contract with America." Relatively few of these have made it through House-Senate conference to the President's desk for signature or a veto. For instance, in February the House approved a bill requiring agencies to perform elaborate cost- risk-benefit analyses prior to promulgating any new environmental or health regulations. This requirement would make it extremely difficult to adopt regulatory safeguards, and would further empower large corporations with the ability to hire their own expert analysts. A companion Senate bill has been stalled; however, Democratic Senator Charles Robb has recently begun negotiating its passage with Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (NRDC 1995c). Meanwhile, the Republican Congress is pursuing many substantive policy changes via the annual appropriations process. Thirteen spending bills and a gigantic budget reconciliation bill (which adjusts approved government expenditures to available revenue) are now working their tortuous way toward enactment. Only three have made it through joint House-Senate approval; the President recently vetoed the one that pays for Congress's own operation, while signing into law the appropriations bills for military construction and for Department of Agriculture programs. The remaining bills are still caught up in various stages of Congressional process, with the House often (but not always) ahead of the Senate in supporting radical policy shifts. III. SOME DETAILS: a. WORKER HEALTH & SAFETY: The House Appropriations Committee has approved FY 1996 cuts in the Office of Safety & Health Administration (OSHA) budget of 15.5%, while slashing the agency's critical enforcement programs by 33%. The bill also restricts OSHA's ability to carry out its mandate to protect workers, prohibiting action on ergonomics standards. The Safety and Health Improvement and Regulatory Reform Act of 1995 would force OSHA to close roughly half of its 104 offices nationwide. The Act would also curtail the agency's power to penalize workplaces that fail to meet federal health and safety standards, shifting its emphasis to consultation. The National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) would be abolished, and the Federal Mine Safety Health Act (MSHA) would be repealed (Maraniss and Weisskopf 1995). Apart from the immediate cut-back on enforcing workplace safety standards, over time these changes would mean less business incentive to invest in research or technologies that protect workers' health. b. CONSUMER PRODUCT SAFETY: Congressional Republicans are seeking to place strict caps on the punitive damages that can be awarded in product liability lawsuits. The Senate has passed a bill that would limit punitive awards to twice the amount of compensatory damages in lawsuits involving products such as drugs, cars, toys, and medical devices. A companion House bill is even more far-reaching: it would apply to all civil litigation, including medical malpractice. No date has been set for a House-Senate conference, because Newt Gingrich has said he will not compromise (Weiser 1995). Under either bill, the U.S. legal system would lose much of its longstanding ability to deter corporate malfeasance. Manufacturers' incentive to produce safe and reliable products or to take unsafe products off the market would be severely reduced. Instead, firms will be able to anticipate possible legal damages and factor them into their financial planning as a routine cost of doing business. c. ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION: Stand aside if you care about a healthy environment for yourself and generations to come. For example: If the House has its way, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) budget will be cut 1/3, while new legislative language will bar the EPA from implementing key provisions of environmental laws such as the Clean Air Act, the Federal Water Pollution Control Act, and the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act. The Senate Appropriations Committee has passed a bill reducing the EPA budget 23% and including similar restrictive language (Kripke 1995). A House-Senate conference recently completed negotiations on a Department of Interior spending bill in which "numerous provisions favor the development of natural resources on public lands over conservation programs," reports the New York Times. A broader omnibus budget reconciliation bill on which Congress has just voted would open the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska to oil and gas exploration. In addition, the bill (as formulated several weeks ago) greatly reduces Department of Energy (DOE) conservation programs (such as financing for low-income home weatherization), prohibits DOE from issuing new standards for energy efficiency in appliances, cuts the budget of the National Biological Service, and places a moratorium on listing new species under the Endangered Species Act. Back in March 1995 the House approved a bill requiring the federal government to pay landowners to comply with the Clean Water Act's wetland protection provisions and with the Endangered Species Act. On Oct. 18 the Senate Judiciary Committee held hearings on a bill (S. 605) that would require the government to pay polluters to stop. Meanwhile, ten states have already enacted "takings" laws requiring taxpayers to compensate property owners if environmental restrictions reduce their property's market value. In today's climate of fiscal austerity, such laws produce a chilling effect on environmental protection. (NRDC 1995c; Schuchat 1995). Three scientists just won the Nobel Prize for their research elucidating the role of CFCs (chloroflourocarbons) in depleting the earth's atmospheric ozone shield. Meanwhile, U.S. Representative John Doolittle (R-CA) has introduced a bill to postpone a ban on CFC production, arguing that "there has not been a sufficient showing of scientific evidence to justify" the ban. Representative Tom DeLay (R-TX) has introduced his own bill that would repeal the ban altogether. The names of the two sponsors of these bills say it best: "Doolittle" and "DeLay." As to research on global environmental issues, the House has voted to cut funding in the coming year 37% for NASA's Earth Observation System, 30% for the Dept. of Energy's global climate change research, and 21% for climate and air quality research at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency, while banning the EPA altogether from conducting research on long-term global climate change. (Representative Dana Rohrabacher's (R-CA) charges that global warming is at best "unproven and at worst liberal claptrap.") The Senate on the other hand, has almost met the President's requests for funding such research. (AAAS 1995; Cordes 1995; NRDC 1995a and 1955b). The Administration has threatened to veto bills rolling back the nation's commitment to environmental protection. However, Congress is attempting to force the President's hand by presenting him with an anti-environmental budget bill that also includes the money needed to keep the EPA in operation. None of this is to say that the nation's previous environmental policies were perfect. But the current Republican overhaul has nothing to do with learning from mistakes or improvement; it represents a wholesale assault on the basic concepts of environmental protection, restoration, and sustainability. Over the long run, the weakening of environmental programs means that companies will have less incentive to invest in clean technologies or in environmental clean-up. Today's children and their children will inherit a technological world hard-wired for unsustainability. d. TECHNOLOGY ASSESSMENT: For two decades, whenever you (or your Congressman) wanted to know what lay ahead in socially significant technological development, you could count on finding useful background information in reports issued by the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment (OTA). No more. Congress shut the OTA down at the end of September. Among other things, this reveals starkly the cynicism of Republican attempts to mandate cost-risk-benefit analysis for new regulations; a Congress seriously committed to sound analysis wouldn't start by killing off its most talented analytic agency (especially not an agency that cost just $23 million annually--about 1% of the price tag for a single unneeded B-2 bomber). Of course, OTA could have done a better job of exploring participatory approaches to technology assessment. But OTA's shortcomings in this regard played no role whatsoever in the decision to abolish it made by a Congress that has shown itself utterly indifferent to expanding popular participation in governance. (20 of OTA's professional staff members have formed an independent nonprofit corporation, the Institute for Technology Assessment, in a brave bid to preserve some national capability for conducting technology assessments. The chances of finding financing for such an enterprise are not especially high.) e. BASIC VS. APPLIED RESEARCH: One tenet of contemporary Republican science policy is that industry should take the lead doing _applied_ research, while government concentrates especially on conducting or funding _basic_ research (which industry will underfund because it is speculative and hard to appropriate commercially). For this reason, federal agencies most closely identified with conducting basic research--the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF)--are faring relatively well in Congressional appropriations. The House has voted to cut NSF's budget just 2.3% for FY 1996, while awarding NIH a (relatively) whopping 6.2% increase. The Senate Appropriations Committee has weighed in more modestly with a proposed 0.9% cut in the NSF budget, and a 3.2% increase for NIH (AAAS 1995). There are many ironies and inconsistencies in relying heavily on the basic/applied distinction in science policymaking. For instance, the House is out to savage research on global environmental change, even though industry is obviously not going to rush in and pick up the slack. Second--a point that scientific leaders do not usually discuss in public--the preponderance of scholarly research on the relationship between basic science vs. applied research/ technological development has found that the distinctions are increasingly meaningless in practice or--when they are not--there is more evidence for new technology driving basic science than vice versa. This suggests that if Republicans want to accelerate innovation (something I don't advocate, absent real democratic processes for considering the social consequences of alternative technologies), they've got their policy approach backwards. For more technological innovation _and_ more basic science, they should be most concerned with encouraging or funding direct investment in technological development, not basic science. Third, consider that big budget increase for NIH. This is not the worst idea in the world. For instance, by augmenting President Clinton's NIH budget proposal across the board, the House winds up boosting the budget 6.9% for AIDS research and 9.0% for minority health and alternative medicine. On the other hand, the House is paying for the NIH increase with deep cuts in federal education and training programs. Is their overall objective really to improve national health? If so, why would Congress gut environmental and worker safety programs (which will invariably increase disease and injury rates), heroically defend the tobacco industry, and go gunning aggressively for Medicare and Medicaid (which deliver essential health services to the poor and elderly)? It is common knowledge that prevention is the best medicine, but this Congress is tossing prevention to the lions, and jabbering on about capping medical costs while ignoring the role of health R&D in driving up those costs through preoccupation with capital-intensive, non-preventive medical approaches. f. NATIONAL LABS: With the end of the Cold War, the national weapons labs and multipurpose labs funded by the Energy and Defense departments have become, in the apt words of Rep. Todd Tiahrt (R-KS), "programs in search of rationales." Downsizing is already in the works, but the political will is lacking to radically reconsider the labs' size, structure and purpose (Lawler 1995; "DOE Labs" 1995). Given that the nation spends about $25 billion a year on more than 700 national laboratories of all sorts, the end of the Cold War should have occasioned a serious popular reexamination of the need, structure and purpose of a national lab system. But neither the President nor Congress (which is delighted to wax radical when it comes to unraveling the nation's social welfare net) has shown any stomach for tackling this golden opportunity to ferret out anachronistic waste and pork on a monumental scale. Some Republicans have, to their credit, urged the President to shut down the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, consolidating nuclear weapons research at the Los Alamos and Sandia national labs in New Mexico. But Mr. Clinton rejected this sensible first step toward adjusting to post-Cold War realities. (The President presumably has his eye on California's 1996 electoral votes, which might be jeopardized by killing off a major California national lab. Informed rumor also has it that he may have cut a backroom deal with the weapons laboratories to ensure their public support for an upcoming international treaty banning all nuclear weapons' tests. Ironic, isn't it, that the President of the United States apparently has to bribe scientists in U.S. national laboratories to testify truthfully before Congress?) g. TRANSPORTATION: The House and Senate have recently decided to reduce funding for passenger rails (i.e., Amtrak) by a minimum of 21.8 percent in FY 1996 and approximately 34 percent from Amtrak's FY 1996 request. While funding for efficient, low- polluting railroads is thus pruned back severely--as is funding for other forms of public transit--nearly $20 billion of the Department of Transportation's $37 billion budget is allocated to increased spending on highway projects (NARP 1995; AAAS 1995). h. WEAPONS & DEFENSE CONVERSION: A New York Times editorial this summer began: Pentagon officials can hardly believe their good fortune. While furiously cutting domestic programs to balance the federal budget, Congress is showering the Defense Department with billions the generals did not request. It is a disheartening exhibition of political self-interest devoid of any plausible national security justification. ("Pentagon Jackpot" 1995) During the 1980's the Reagan administration spent $38 billion on Star Wars development; this expenditure is widely acknowledged to have accomplished virtually nothing. Yet a House-Senate conference report awards the Pentagon $9 billion more than the President requested, including extra money for unneeded B-2 bombers and a 25% increase for a Star Wars program-- "Ballistic Missile Defense"--that harbors negligible potential to protect the U.S. from real military threats, but that does risk undermining the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, the START II weapons reduction treaty, and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation (NPT) Treaty (Keeny 1995). (The House rejected this conference report on Sept. 29, so the outcome is still in doubt.) As to the B-2, a July 1995 draft report from Congress's own General Accounting Office found that the 2.2 billion-dollar plane has, in the words of the NY Times, "radar that cannot distinguish a raincloud from a mountainside, has not passed most of its basic tests and may not be nearly as stealthy as advertised" (Weiner 1995). Republican support for outlandish defense expenditures is partly a matter of theology, but also reflects both Democratic and Republican legislators' longstanding commitment to procuring funds for defense contractors located in their home districts. Defense pork is, in effect, a high-end jobs maintenance program...except that because military production is unusually capital intensive, it represents an extraordinarily _inefficient_ form of jobs maintenance. Moreover, the resulting unneeded weapons do absolutely nothing to address the nation's urgent unmet social needs (e.g., for better pubic education and public transit, more affordable housing, preventive medicine, environmental clean-up, and so on.) The straightforward route out of this political boondoggle would be to adopt a serious national program for converting our bloated military-industrial base to socially responsive civilian production. But defense conversion is not a concept that government officials have found easy to grasp. For instance, the Pentagon's Technology Reinvestment Project (TRP) is a $500 million/year effort to help integrate the military's technology base into the civilian economy. The TRP was at one time advertized as a "defense conversion" program, but in reality 80 percent of TRP funds to date have gone to support projects with clear military applications. The House has nevertheless voted to abolish the TRP, on the theory that is not defense-oriented enough. A House-Senate conference report "compromises" by slashing TRP's FY 1996 budget to $195 million, but the House has rejected this report (NCECD 1995). i. DEPT. OF COMMERCE: A bill to eliminate the Department of Commerce was drafted by 40 Republican freshmen and the plan is shared by both the Senate and the House. Republicans have been eager to eliminate a cabinet-level department, in order to demonstrate their commitment to shrinking the U.S. government. However, it is proving easier to erase a department on paper than to actually eliminate its functions or cut costs (Sanger 1995). Mr. Clinton has vowed to veto any attempt to dismantle Commerce. Under amendments proposed by Rep. Robert S. Walker (R-PA), Chair of the House Science Committee, the Commerce Dept.'s National Institute of Standards and Technology and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency would be transferred into a new, independent Science and Technology Administration. Some see this as a first step toward fulfilling Walker's fervent wish to create a cabinet level Department of Science (Munro 1995). Although many find dubious Walker's proposition that a new Department is needed to rationalize federal science policy making, wouldn't it be a fine way to augment the power of his own Science Committee (which would win primary Congressional jurisdiction over the new department)? Not that there is anything unusual about Congressmen seeking personal aggrandizement, but it is always healthy to lift the veil of hypocrisy in which they are wont to cloak such moves. It is difficult to see why Republicans, if serious about wanting to shrink the federal government, would use the occasion of killing off one department to begin immediately establishing another. Walker has also introduced H.R. 2405, the Omnibus Civilian Science Authorization Act of 1996, which cleared the House on October 12. H.R. 2405 eliminates all funding for the Commerce Department's Advanced Technology Program (ATP). The ATP manages a program of government/corporate cost-sharing for civilian technology development. Republicans see the ATP as an exemplary instance of "corporate welfare," and in this case they have a point. If the ATP, a beloved Clinton initiative, had provided incentives for worker or community participation in R&D, then the program could have been justified for its role in promoting economic democratization. But without such a social agenda, the ATP essentially gave businesses grants to do things they are reasonably adept at doing without government assistance. (The Administration has defended the ATP as necessary to compensate for corporate underinvestment in long-range, high-risk R&D. But it is not obvious that existing R&D tax credits, which involve more money, aren't an adequate tool for that job.) Of course, most Congressional Republicans don't really object to "corporate welfare" per se (Morgan 1995); they object to _Democratic_ variants that might curry corporate favor for Democratic incumbents (a deeply endangered species). H.R. 2405 also eliminates all funds for the Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP), which is an industrial analog to the agricultural extension service. The MEP establishes outreach services in states to help small and medium sized firms adopt modern equipment and information and accounting systems, develop markets, enhance worker participation, and improve environmental performance. j. TELECOMMUNICATIONS: Whoopee! Fire-up your popcorn makers and get set for 500+ channels of home shopping, enthralling game show reruns, and pay-per-view videos! For the past several years, a coalition of public-interest groups has been advocating development of an information superhighway that would be universally accessible and affordable, protect privacy and freedom of speech, and support civic uses. The odds that this civic-minded agenda would prevail in the face of overwhelming corporate zeal for a commercially dominated, profit-maximizing info-highway never seemed particularly high. These odds have worsened considerably since the November 1994 election. The Telecommunications Reform Act, currently in House-Senate conference, is the first rewrite of the foundation of all current federal telecommunications policy, the Communications Act of 1934. The Reform Act has been crafted ostensibly to advance the public good by promoting competition and reducing regulation. However, in its current form it violates 1st Amendment rights by banning all "indecent" communication, repeals price controls on monopoly cable and phone rates, and permits greater concentration of ownership. There is no adequate public quid pro quo in this bill, and the President has threatened to veto it. The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), located within the beleaguered Commerce Department, is the President's principal advisor on telecommunications policy. The Senate voted on September 30 to cut the NTIA budget 82 percent. Although several NTIA programs are still standing, their survival is not assured. The Public Telecommunications Facilities Program (PTFP) stands an especially small chance. PTFP provides matching grants to assist non- commercial firms in planning and constructing facilities to extend public telecommunications services to as many people as possible. It also provides significant funding for children's programming. Surprisingly, the Senate voted at the last minute not to cut funding for the Telecommunications Information Infrastructure Assistance Program (TIIAP). TIIAP is the grant program that has supported nonprofit as well as state and local government applications of information technology. An earlier Congressional budget resolution called for eliminating both the TIIAP and PTFP. In this climate, much of the public-interest agenda has been shoved onto a dim and distant back burner. Moreover, that agenda--while admirable--has always been seriously incomplete. For example, it neglects sociotechnical dynamics whereby an information superhighway may: o Force many people to use it who might rather not (whether as consumers or workers), while facilitating job exports (Bradsher 1995); o By enabling more commerce to be conducted electronically, extract revenue from existing downtown and neighborhood centers. This is apt inadvertently to put many small businesses and local professional service providers out of business (a cybernetic "Wal-Mart effect"), in turn impairing local community and cultural vibrancy; o Further erode face-to-face social engagement at a time when many people yearn for more of it; and accelerate the pace of life, at a time when stress is already a major social complaint and health risk; and o Make people and localities ever more dependent on global market forces and on transnational corporations that cannot be influenced from the local level (Sclove and Scheuer 1994). IV. DEMOCRACY DERAILED The beauty--from a Republican standpoint--of using science and technology policy as a significant vehicle for pursuing their overall agenda is that there will be little popular recognition of the source of resulting social woes. (It is certainly unlikely Republicans will be blamed, if one takes as an indication their spectacular success in tarring "Big-Spending Democrats" with responsibility for a national debt that is, in truth, most directly the result of Reagan Administration tax cuts and military largesse.) And the substantive consequences-- because deeply embedded in technological hardware, irreversible ecological damage, institutional design, and arcane policy domains--will long endure. If we "won" the Cold War, we will have lost the peace...for many years to come. From a public-interest perspective, there was certainly much with which to be disappointed in the Clinton Administration's 1993 technology policy proposals, and even more with which to be dismayed in Newt Gingrich's "Contract With America" (Sclove 1994 and 1995a). However, in terms of democratic process, both at least had the modest virtue of being packaged in relatively accessible, coherent form. This created some opportunity for popular understanding and comment (albeit little real influence). In contrast, the subsequent strategy of the Republican revolution has been to pursue an awesome range of radical policy shifts via a bewildering array of near-simultaneous legislative initiatives and slick parliamentary maneuvers. The consequence is that in any given substantive policy domain, the only significant actors--other than Congress itself--become lobbyists from affected industries (to whom the Republican Congress are unabashedly partial) and a few oppositional public-interest groups (whose resources are in most cases immeasurably smaller than industry's). In a less fragmented and sweeping policy climate, the public-interest groups' resource disadvantage would be partially offset by the steady spotlight of media attention, galvanizing some supportive popular attention and involvement. However, the contemporary media are not equipped to come to terms with today's fragmented, swiftly moving policy agenda--that is, to put the pieces back together into a meaningful whole. As a result, industry is in many cases writing its own legislative ticket, with none of the checks and balances that are supposedly the strength of a pluralistic political system (Cushman 1995a; Miller 1995). [Aside: Compounding the problem with respect to science and technology policy is that it remains extremely difficult to get serious, critical discussion of science and technology issues into the mainstream media. In some cases, editors and producers are calculating that people simply don't want to hear about these issues. But the problem goes deeper.] [In the past few years, the news media have actually devoted extravagant amounts of coverage to new technology-- especially to information and telecommunications technology. But the overwhelming bulk of this reportage is hype and pablum--self-serving utopian fantasies masquerading as news analysis. (Just peek at the _New York Times'_ new media coverage in the Business Section on any Monday.) One national reporter informs me that his paper has begun publishing extra "fluff" articles about information technology simply to accommodate advertisers who want their ads to appear adjacent to info-tech reporting.] [Compound this with the fact that many major news outlets are owned by parent companies that are heavily invested in the telecommunications industry, and it is not hard to see why balanced reporting on science and technology is a scarce and dwindling resource.] * * * Irreversible environmental devastation, faulty and dangerous appliances, hazardous workplaces, the demise of technology assessment, more asphalt highways/fewer Amtrak routes, a remilitarized national research agenda, foolhardy weapons purchases, and the info superhighway as a civil-society- dismantling job-exports program and a winner-take-all commercial free-for-all. Is this the new American dream? It looks more like a perverse race backwards to try to match the kinds of social and environmental crises in which former Communist states are mired. A new, more participatory politics of science and technology would not admit of such perilous nonsense. In the face of this sweeping range of assaults on common sense and the common good, the Loka Institute persists in searching out ways to make a constructive difference. It is urgent that people whose taxes and purchases pay for science & technology and who experience the consequences (i.e., everyone) begin demanding--and winning--a say in making fundamental science and technology decisions. -------------------- Richard E. Sclove, executive director of the Loka Institute in Amherst, Massachusetts, is the author of _Democracy and Technology_ (New York: Guilford Press, 1995). Madeleine Scammell, a Loka Institute intern, provided important research assistance with the factual content of this Alert. _Democracy and Technology_ can be ordered from your local bookseller, or it is available in paperback for U.S. $18.95 (plus shipping cost) from Guilford Press, 72 Spring St., New York, NY 10012, USA. Within the U.S. call toll free (800) 365-7006. Contact Guilford Press also for information on distributors outside the U.S.: Tel. +(212) 431-9800; Fax +(212) 966-6708; E- mail . ***************************************************************** V. TO PARTICIPATE AND HELP To encourage President Clinton to resist Congress's skewed R&D priorities and to take steps to democratize science and technology decisionmaking, contact: Leon Panetta Don Baer Chief of Staff Director of Communication The White House and/or The White House Tel. (202) 456-6797 Tel. (202) 456-2640 Fax (202) 456-2883 Fax (202) 456-1213 Baer is responsible for the content of the President's public remarks; Panetta is responsible for the President's substantive actions. LOKA INSTITUTE WEB PAGE: To find out more about the Loka Institute or to help Loka in its work, visit our Web page (http://www.amherst.edu/~loka) or contact us via e-mail at loka@amherst.edu THE LOKA E-MAIL LIST: Traffic on the Loka Institute e-mail list (Loka-L)--which distributes Loka Alerts as a one-way news- and-opinion distribution service--is intentionally kept low (an average of one message per month), to protect overbusy people from unwanted clutter. To be added to, or removed from, the list, please send an e-mail message to that effect to: loka@amherst.edu TO PARTICIPATE MORE ACTIVELY in promoting a democratic politics of science and technology--or to discuss this Loka Alert with other list subscribers--please join the Federation of Activists on Science & Technology Network (FASTnet). 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PRINCIPAL SOURCES for Loka Alert 2-8 Apart from the works cited below, in preparing this Alert we benefitted from conversations with Elizabeth Bird (Center for Rural Affairs), Greg Bischak (National Center for Economic Conversion & Disarmament), George Perkovich (W. Alton Jones Foundation), as well as several journalists and government officials who shall remain anonymous. Of course, these good folks bear no responsibility whatsoever for errors of fact or interpretation in the Alert. [AAAS]. American Association for the Advancement of Science. 1995. _Interim Report on Congressional Appropriations for R&D in FY 1996_. Washington, DC: AAAS Directorate for Science & Policy Programs, Aug. 29 (and updated periodically on the AAAS Web page). Bradsher, Keith. 1995. "Skilled Workers Watch Their Jobs Migrate Overseas." _New York Times_, Aug. 28. Brown, George E., Jr. 1995. Letter to President Clinton, Sept. 7. [Congressman Brown is the ranking Democratic member and former chairman of the House Science Committee.] Cordes, Colleen. 1995. "Environmental Research Fares Poorly with House Budget Cutters." _Chronicle of Higher Education_, Oct. 6, p. A34. Cushman, John H., Jr. 1995a. "Industry Helped Draft Clean Water Law." _New York Times_, March 22, p. A16. Cushman, John H., Jr. 1995b. "Spending Bill Would Reverse Nation's Environmental Policy." _New York Times_, Sept. 22, p. A1. "DOE Labs Future Remains Unclear." 1995. _Science & Technology in Congress_, Oct., pp. 1, 4. Graham, Bradley. 1995. "Son of Star Wars." _Washington Post National Weekly Edition_, Sept. 11-17, p. 31. Keeny, Spurgeon M., Jr. 1995. "The Arms Race is On." Op- ed., _New York Times_, Sept. 12, p. A23. Kripke, Gawain. 1995. _Assault on Environmental Protection: EPA Under Attack in Appropriations_. Washington, DC: Friends of the Earth, July 17. Lawler, Andrew. 1995. Congress Split on Best Way to Reshape Network of Labs." _Science_, Vol. 269 (Sept 15), p. 1510. Leath, Audrey T. 1995. "Commerce Department Dismantling Bill Progresses in House." American Institute of Physics Bulletin of Science Policy News, No. 146, Oct. 17. Maraniss, David, and Michael Weisskopf. 1995. "Industry's Thumbprint on New OSHA Legislation." _Washington Post National Weekly Edition_, Sept. 4-10, pp. 8-9. Miller, George. 1995. "Authors of the Law." Op-ed, _New York Times_, May 24, p. A15. Morgan, Dan. 1995. "Taking Care of Business." _Washington Post National Weekly Edition_, July 3-9, p. 31. Munro, Neil. 1995. "Walker Pushes for Science Department." _Washington Technology_, Sept. 28, p. 10. [NARP]. National Association of Rail Passengers. 1995. "Passenger Rail Appropriations H.R. 2002, For Fiscal 1996." [NCECD]. National Commission on Economic Conversion and Disarmament. 1995. _Conversion Legislative Update_. Washington, DC: NCECD, Sept. 27. [NRDC]. Natural Resources Defense Council. 1995a. _Stealth Attack: Gutting Environmental Protection Through the Budget Process_. New York: NRDC, July. [NRDC]. Natural Resources Defense Council. 1995b. _Formula for Failure: Consequences of Proposed Federal Science Funding Cuts_. New York: NRDC, Sept. [NRDC]. Natural Resources Defense Council. 1995c. _Legislative Watch_. New York: NRDC, Oct. 27. "Pentagon Jackpot." 1995. Editorial. _The New York Times_, July 10, p. A12. Rattner, Steven. 1995. "Leaky Boats on the Rising Tide." Op-ed, _New York Times_, Aug. 29, p. A19. Sanger, David E. 1995. "G.O.P. Finds Commerce Dept. Is Hard to Uproot." _New York Times_, Sept. 20, p. A1, B8. Schuchat, Sam. 1995. "Unfit Stewards." Op-ed, _New York Times_, Sept. 20, p. A21. Sclove, Richard E. 1994. "Democratizing Technology." _Chronicle of Higher Education_, Vol. 40, No. 19 (Jan. 12), pp. B1-B2. Sclove, Richard E. 1995a. "Democratizing Science and Technology under a Republican Congress?" _Space Times_, Vol. 34, No. 2, March-April, pp. 9-11. Sclove, Richard E. 1995b. _Democracy and Technology_. New York: Guilford Press, 1995. Sclove, Richard E., and Jeffrey Scheuer. 1994. "The Ghost in the Modem: For Architects of the Info-Highway, Some Lessons From the Concrete Interstate." Sunday Outlook Section, _The Washington Post_, May 29, p. C3. Weiner, Tim. 1995. "B-2, After 14 Years, Is Still Failing Basic Tests." _New York Times_, July 15, pp. 1, 8. Weiser, Benjamin. 1995. "How Much Is Too Much?: Congressional Tort Reform Could Cap the Cost of Wrongdoing for Business." _Washington Post National Weekly Edition_, Oct. 9-15, pp. 6-7. Weisskopf, Michael, and David Maraniss. 1995. "Ruling Out OSHA." _Washington Post National Weekly Edition_, Sept. 4-10, pp. 6-7. ####