Path: bloom-picayune.mit.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!americast.com!americast.com!americast-post Newsgroups: americast.forbes From: americast-post@AmeriCast.Com Organization: American Cybercasting Approved: americast-post@AmeriCast.com Subject: Fact and Comment Date: Fri, 6 Nov 92 11:08:08 EST Message-ID: "Copyright 1992 Forbes, Inc. Any further reproduction or redistribution without the express written permission of Forbes and ACC is prohibited." Fact and Comment ''With all thy getting get understanding'' By Malcolm S. Forbes Jr., Editor-in-Chief ELECTION FORECAST: CLINTON WILL BEAT BUSH GEORGE BUSH could have won reelection by a land- slide even in the face of a sluggish economy. The Democratic platform is, for all the talk of change, the same toxic brew of more taxes, more spending (now called investments), more regulation and a reactionary resistance to genuine reform of our schools and our increasingly destructive, lottery-like tort system. Too late, the GOP attacked this platform, as well as Clinton's gubernatorial record. Too late, the President stressed the truism that the end of war, including a cold one, always brings temporary dislocations. The rest of the industrial world is, in fact, going through a more difficult time than we are. Too late, the President hammered the point that our slowdown was made worse by the 1990 budget agree- ment, repeating his convention confession that this was his biggest mistake. The agreement raised taxes, especial- ly on the rich, and raised spending. Bush has learned the error of his ways; Clinton has not. The Bush Administration has proposed a number of far-reaching reforms: economy-reviving tax cuts, term limits, school choice, the line-item veto, as well as return- ing sanity to our courts. But the Administration never brought these ideas together in a coherent package, much less systematically advocated them. The President repeat- edly passed up opportunities to take bold action, such as indexing capital gains by executive order. I haven't been wrong on a presidential prediction since I started following these elections as an adolescent in 1960. I fervently hope this will be the first time. RESURRECTING CONGRESS' REPUTATION--AND EFFECTIVENESS FOURTEEN STATES will be voting on referen- dums to limit the terms of U.S. representa- tives and senators and, in some cases, state lawmakers as well. Convincing passage of these initiatives would have a profoundly positive impact on our increasingly disreputa- ble political life. The expanding role of government has given rise to a new phenomenon--the en- trenched incumbent. Legislators in Washing- ton, and now in our states, have exploited a panoply of devices that make it difficult to challenge them effectively on Election Day. Incumbents get to send millions of thinly disguised campaign pieces to voters at taxpayer expense. They have a virtual monopoly on contributions from nu- merous interest groups desiring ''access.'' Legislators can hire what is, in effect, a swarm of reelection workers (at taxpayer ex- pense) whose job it is to get their boss access to local media and to court influential people in the district. Congressmen have an array of presents and pork to give away to constituents. Nearly 20% of those running for reelection for the House had no opposition in 1990. Common Cause estimates that only 23 of the incumbents faced competitive races. Cleaning House, by former Congressman James Coyne and Wall Street Journal editorial writer John Fund, makes clear why Congress is so prone to such stumbles as the bouncing-check scandal and why voters are so disillu- sioned. The book sharply, pungently, convincingly cata- logs the ills of the House of Representatives and the Senate and explains why the only effective reform is term limits. Term limits would break the grip of lawyers. People from different walks of life who don't wish to spend all their professional lives in politics could still serve effective- ly. It would insure against representatives' identifying more with the power and perks of their institution than with the needs of their constituents and their country. Studies show that the longer someone is in office, the more likely he or she is to vote for tax and spending increases. The arguments against term limits don't hold up. A person of average intelligence can learn the ropes of legislating in a few short years. Term-limited lawmakers will not be prisoners of legislative staffs, since they will be the ones hiring and firing those staffs. Legislative employ- ees--there are over 20,000 on Capitol Hill now--are not covered by civil service laws. Nor would term limits necessarily curtail the services of popular statesmen. In the last century it was routine for politicos to serve short periods in a variety of offices. Will Congress pass an amendment limiting its own terms? Not now. But most of these referendums have found a way to do it via the back door--after serving a certain number of years, congressional incumbents could not appear on the ballot. The only way they could get reelected would be through write-in votes. Coyne and Fund believe this provision will pass constitutional muster. The authors have come up with another idea that is the twin of term limits--None of the Above. If it polled more votes than the actual candidates, then there would be a new election with new candidates. Not since the turn of thwe century, when we won the right to pick party candidates via primaries and we passed a constitutional amendment permitting the direct election of U.S. senators (previously picked by state legislators), has there been a political reform as needed as this one. SNUFF OUT EUTHANASIA CALIFORNIA MAY WELL approve a referendum that will make it legal for doctors to kill terminally ill patients who request to die. This euthanasia measure is pat- terned after one rejected by the state of Washington last year, but with supposedly tighter safeguards. The measure should be emphatically rejected. It would undermine one of the pillars of Western civilization-- the prohibition against killing the dying. The initiative is prompted by growing concerns over how technology can keep people alive long past the point of any possible hope of recovery. Patients either vegetate on a respirator or, if conscious, suf- fer grievously during their final days. Proponents por- tray it as a humanitarian approach. But most states now allow patients to sign ''living wills'' that bar ''heroic'' measures to keep them alive. That's very different from actively killing people. California's safeguards are more apparent than real. Requests could be oral, with no written record or wit- nesses to the patient's soundness of mind. Patients would not be eligible for doctor-assisted suicide unless they had only six months to live. But there is no science yet that determines how long a person may survive. The California initiative is, at heart, antilife. It will put us on the slippery slope that the Netherlands is already on. The Dutch practice euthanasia. A government study there found that doctors now kill over a thousand patients each year who did not give consent. Their attitude: Why bother to keep these people alive? Of what use can they be now? Why waste our time and resources on hopeless cases? Sick people will find them- selves under pressure from heirs and relatives fearful of the ex- pense of keeping them alive. There are more humane ways to control rapidly rising health care costs than murdering pa- tients. Do we really want a culture where people are seen as disposable, like cars or furniture? Where they are encouraged to allow doctors to put them out of their misery the way veterinarians do old dogs and cats Suffering people may choose to take their own lives, but they should be counseled that there is dignity in refusing to succumb to death without a struggle, that their willingness to fight on in the face of adversity provides an inspiring example for the rest of us when we face life's inevitable blows. RESTAURANTS--GO, CONSIDER, STOP Here is the distilled wisdom of brothers Bob, Kip and Tim, and other FORBES eatery experts Jeff Cunningham and Tom Jones. *Aquavit--13 West 54th St. (Tel: 307-7311). Strik- ingly contemporary setting. Food, excellent. Smoked juniper salmon with nettle sauce served with trout roe and wild leeks is splendid. Service, though, distractingly slow. *Quatorze--240 West 14th St. (Tel: 206-7006). Delightful food, dreadful service. *Les Halles--411 Park Ave. South, near 28th St. (Tel: 679-4111). Food is basic, well prepared and good. Lentil and bacon soup, spicy and delicious. Cod broiled in a red wine sauce excellent; onglet grilled to perfection. The butcher shop that greets you as you enter transports you out of New York, and the cavernous dining room hum- ming with excited conversation suggests someplace else. *Oceana--55 East 54th St. (Tel: 759-5941). A bit noisy, but food and service make it worthwhile. The caramelized bananas with coconut ice cream tastes every bit as good as it sounds. *Gibbon--24 East 80th St. (Tel: 861-4001). This pioneer of Japanese/French cuisine has survived and thrived to become a classic. Superb Continental fare (of the nouvelle variety) shares menu space with Japanese classics (sushi, sashimi, tempura). Decor also a mixture of East meets West; traditional Japanese bar setting down- stairs, Tokyo-cum-Versailles upstairs. REACHING OUT TO CHINA Statement from Malcolm Forbes Jr. before the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, for the hearings on The Radio Free China Act, Sept. 15, 1992. The history of the last 40 years demonstrates that the cheapest and most effective way of influencing internal events in totalitarian countries is radio broadcasting. Through radio broadcasts, you interact with many millions of listeners each and every day. As you know, Radio Free Europe (RFE) and Radio Liberty (RL) practice what is called surrogate or home service broadcasting. That means we focus primarily on the internal events and issues in each targeted country. No other radio broadcasting entity in the international broadcasting sphere practices surrogate broadcasting to the extent that we do. I think the best way to illustrate the differences in the way we approach our missions and the way the Voice of America (VOA) and the BBC approach their missions is to contrast the programming emphasis of our services in a couple of countries we serve. A few months ago we conducted a survey in Hungary Aside from the news of the hour, almost 50% of the features broadcast on RFE/RL were on events within Hungary. The VOA's broadcasts consisted of around 4% to 5%. A few weeks ago we looked at Poland and Russia. In Poland over 50% of our broadcasts were on events in Poland, with another 22% on events in neighboring countries or in the region of the so-called former Eastern bloc. By contrast, on VOA only 13% of their Polish service broadcasts dealt with events in Poland. And only 4% were on other events in the region. In Russia 80% of our programming was on events in Russia or the region. VOA's coverage of such events was around 35%. Two Distinct Missions This in no way says the VOA is not doing the job. Its job is not to concentrate primarily on events within these coun- tries. Its mission is to be what it is called, the Voice of America. While RFE/RL talk about labor strife in Ukraine, Russian-Ukrainian relations or events in Georgia, VOA concentrates more on items such as Hurricane Andrew or doing a profile on a singer such as Annie Lennox. The most graphic way to describe the difference is to define the word ''we.'' When VOA says we, it means we Americans. When RFE/RL broadcasters say we, they mean we Poles, we Romanians, we Russians, we Hungar- ians. Listeners in our target countries regard our broad- casts as their broadcasts. They do not regard the broadcasts as an entity of another government. They see the Radios as a service that is really geared to their own countries. The impact that surrogate or home service broadcast- ing has had over 40 years is hard to overstate. In 1980, as the Solidarity movement took off with the strike in the Gdansk shipyards, the leaders had Radio Free Europe broadcast throughout those facilities. Three years ago Lech Walesa was asked what kind of impact Radio Free Europe had had on the events in Poland. He responded with ''What is the earth without the sun?'' During the years that the Radios broadcast to totalitar- ian governments, it came as no surprise that they were unpopular and vilified by the governments in the target countries. However, it is important to remember--espe- cially now when we are discussing a Radio Free China, and with certain factions here worried about offending the leadership there--that surrogate broadcasts are hailed by the countries' true democrats, by the Lech Walesas, the Vaclav Havels and the Jozsef Antalls. Let me explain some of the other characteristics of surrogate broadcasting. One is cross reporting. We are very sensitive to stories in other countries that might have resonance within a target country. One graphic example of the effectiveness of cross reporting occurred in 1988. Lech Walesa was making a comeback, and the commu- nist government in Poland wanted to discredit him. They set up a debate between him and a very urbane, sophisticat- ed government minister, thinking the minister would make mincemeat of Walesa because of his educational background. So the debate was carried over Polish radio, nationwide. The plan failed. Walesa was superb, and the government was made mincemeat of. RFE/RL took that debate, transcribed it into Russian, had two broadcasters play the roles of the minister and Walesa and broadcast it throughout the Soviet Union. That raised a number of issues that had impact throughout the country. That is cross reporting--taking an event such as citizen- ship for Russians in Lithuania and broadcasting it to Latvia and Estonia. Issues that have interest in one part of the country have interest in another part of the country--or in another country entirely. Another thing we do in repressive climates is to keep alive indigenous cultures and make listeners aware of their country's artists. During the dark years of communism in Eastern Europe and the U.S.S.R. we were the only international broadcaster to read in its entirety Solzheni- tsyn's The Gulag Archipelago. We were also one of the few who repeatedly read Vaclav Havel's novels and plays and made him a household name in Czechoslovakia, even though he was being hounded by the communist regime. Key Resources Very basic to successful home service broadcasting is having extensive research and archival facilities. This en- ables us to do the research and analysis needed for material that goes beyond broadcasting daily news--to give depth and resonance and to put events in perspective to an extent that cannot be done without this kind of resource. For example in 1986, at the time of Chernobyl, our archival service was the one to discover that an obscure Russian engineering publication had done an article ''for limited eyes only'' on how bad the Soviet Union's nuclear program was. That got a lot of play in the Western press. A good archival service and research institute becomes a center for underground material, what is called samizdat in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. We have extensive biographies on all the key figures in the countries and regions we service. The State Department often calls our headquarters in Munich and asks if the Department's biographies of these officials are accurate and up-to-date. Another part of the service is monitoring--looking in obscure publications or listening to all those radio broad- casts. It is amazing, even in a totalitarian regime, how much information is written and broadcast within a country. A good monitoring service enables the Radios to issue quick responses to government statements and broadcasts. Independence and Pluralism Insure Integrity Most basic of all is the structure, which is essential for successful long-term surrogate broadcasting. The Board for International Broadcasting (BIB) is an independent agency with a bipartisan board. RFE/RL is a private corporation that receives its funding from the BIB, which in turn receives its funding from the federal government. As for the BIB's board, there are probably no two individuals who differ more on domestic issues than do Lane Kirkland and I. He is the senior Democrat on the board. But we do agree on the importance of an indepen- dent board and on getting across the values of pluralism and democracy to the areas that we service. We also are able to provide a fire wall against the pressures of any kind of influence, whether it is from the State Department, the National Security Council or anyone else. There have been a number of instances where, directly or indirectly, ambassadors, diplomats, secretaries of state, assistant sec- retaries have wanted punches pulled. When a communist government like Poland com- plained, as it frequently did in the 1980s, about our broadcasts, often an embassy or a State Department official would say that RFE/RL was getting in the way of the U.S.' desire to have better working relations with these coun- tries. Well, instead of being able to go to the broadcaster directly, the officials had to go through the BIB. We checked into the complaints to see if they had any validity. Our broadcasters know that we do not interfere in their own broadcasts; we do provide extensive oversight, but we do not write their scripts. We do not provide micro- management; we set policy. They know we are there as a buffer against political pressures on program content. We do conduct program reviews of the various services. We do scruti-nize the budgets. The fire wall we provide is essential if one wants true home service broadcasting that is not tainted, that has its independence. So if it is decided to go ahead with a home service to China, even if it is not given to the BIB, I would emphasize that to be a successful home service, a BIB-like independent structure must be set up for the long term. Now as to our source of news. People often ask how we get news from a totalitarian regime. That, of course, depends upon circumstances and how many people the service can get in to the target country or region. Even during the darkest days of the Cold War, we were able to provide news. We used the usual sources, the wire services. We monitored. We got a lot of information from visitors, from business people, from diplomats coming out. We were also given a vast amount of dissident material, which is always a rich source of information. A Crossroads Is Crucial This brings us to something that is of the utmost importance to a successful service--its locale. During the 40 years of the Cold War, Munich became a crossroads for East and West. Every leading official of the dissident movement, every writer of any sort usually made a trek, a pilgrimage--if he could get out--to Munich. There was a sense of having your finger on what was happening in countries despite the Iron Curtain. Regarding a radio service for China and other commu- nist Asian regimes, the worst place to put a headquarters would be in Washington. The best place probably would be on the West Coast, in Los Angeles or San Francisco, where a number of people from the target countries do pass through. A headquarters is needed where the true crossroads is and where there is not the inevitable influ- ence of the status quo of the government. As I said, the impact of home service broadcasting is enormous, but a lot of pressure is brought to bear on the government and its agencies by target countries' governments. In the 1970s, during detente, there was a period when a numbr of international broadcasters were not jammed, including VOA; however, Radio Free Europe, in most East European countries, and Radio Liberty, throughout the Soviet Union, were always jammed right up until the late 1980s. Why? Because those governments knew that our programming was not susceptible to diplomatic niceties. They knew that we were going to continue to hit and hit hard. And we did. If It Offends, It's Probably Working One comment concerning the idea that home service broadcasting will upset the leadership in the existing totalitarian government of China: It will. But if you talk to the democrats there, they will say that the process of democratization, liberalization, is helped by the pressure that ''free'' broadcasting brings, as well as the knowledge that names will be broadcast if somebody is arrested. That is the kind of sunshine that does eventually bring about a change in a totalitarian regime. Further, there is the argument that China is in an economic boom, so why upset things; why get the gov- ernment mad; why not let things flow? Democracy will eventually come anyway. History shows that this is not true. Late 19th-century Germany is the most graphic example that proves this point. It was a major industrial country that was making great economic progress. But instead of becoming a democracy, Germany became an authoritarian and militaristic regime, with consequences that are still with us today. The march of democracy is not inevitable, which leads me to my final point. Let's Not Repeat Mistakes Only twice in this century has the international situa- tion been as fluid and as promising as it is today: One time was after World War I; the other was after World War II. After World War I we retreated into isolationism. After World War II we took a proactive approach with the Marshall Plan, NATO and other programs, and through them we did save Western Europe. Today, even though we are a country with a GNP many times the size that we had in the late 1940s, we apparently cannot afford to implement a Marshall-type plan for Eastern Europe or for other countries throwing off totalitarianism. In this environment of budget tightening, I would urge this committee not to say that we can save $5 million, $3 million or $2 million if we do not do this or do not do that. If we look at the larger picture, we will realize that these radio broadcasts, while they are not the be-all and end-all, are an effective instrument for countering isolationism and a way for the U.S. to have influence in these countries. Because RFE?RL is a private corporation, we are able to react more quickly than a government organization. That is why we come in under budget rather than over budget. We have the speed and flexibility to make adjustments. Radio broadcasting is one of the best ways to help to create an environment for promoting truth, tolerance, pluralism and democracy. And home service/surrogate broadcasts are unmatched both in impact and cost effectiveness.  "This information is the property of Forbes, Inc., ACC takes no responsibility for its content, or the actions of any individual or institution, predicated on the information herin. Forbes Subscriptions are available to students and faculty members at the student/educator rate of $33 for one year, 27 issues. 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