James Q.Public Utilities Wilson and Louise Richardson, in Regulation (Seot./Oct. 1985). American Enternrise Insti-
. .
tute, 1150 17th St. N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036.
Publicly owned utilities are supposed to champion the needs of con- sumers. They should promote energy-saving measures and offer lower rates than their privately owned counterparts.
But they do not, say Wilson and Richardson, both of Harvard's depart- ment of government.
During the 1960s, economies of scale ruled the day in...
Ed-Prisons Are .. ---win W. Zedlewski. in Public Administration Cost-Effective Review (Nov. 19'85), American Society for
Public Administration, 1120 G St. N.W., Wash-ington, D.C. 20005
The odds that an American will report having been raped or robbed are three times greater today than they were in 1964. To cope with this criminal onslaught, the number of beds in US. state prisons has steadily risen, roughly from 243,000 in 1978 to 365,000 in 1983.
Yet the nation's penal system is still under...
Nelson Smith, in Thejournal of the Insti-tute for Socioeconomic Studies (Autumn 1985),Airport Road, White Plains, N.Y. 10604.
Homeless people can be found everywhere in America, but exactly how many there are, nobody knows. The Community for Creative Non- violence, a Washington-based advocacy group, estimates two to three million. Smith, a U.S. Department of Education consultant, believes that 300,000 to 400,000 is a more accurate count.
Although critics blame President Reagan's federal budget...
the homeless, says Smith.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has allocated $210 million in direct aid to 3,650 volunteer organizations. And January 1985, the Housingand Urban Development Agency had distrib- uted roughly $53 million in Community Development Block Grants to
U.S. cities. On Capitol Hill, legislation to create a National Endowment for the Homeless is awaiting Senate approval. Costing $160 million per year, the endowment would supplant FEMA in financing programs for the...
John
Wicklein, in Columbia Journalivn Review
Public P/ ('Jan./Feb. 1986), 700 Journalism Bldg., Co. lumbia Univ., New York, N.Y. 10027.
The US. Congress created America's public broadcasting network in
1967. The purpose: to free some of America's radio and television
airwaves from marketplace pressures.
Today the public broadcasting system costs almost $1 billion annually to operate; roughly 16 percent ($159.5 million for 1986) comes from congressional appropriations. Such financial support...
Roben 13.
--Bell, in Biography (Fall 1985), Dept. of Eng-
lish, Univ. of Hawaii, Honolulu, Hawaii 96822.
While visiting Beijing in 1921, Bem'and Russell fell gravely ill. "I was told that the Chinese said that they would bury me the Western Lake and build a shrine to my memory," wrote Russell (1872-1970). "I have some slight regret that this did not happen, as I might have become a God, which would have been very chic for an atheist."
Despite Russell's claims to godlessness,...
then the author of more than 50 books, including Authority and the Individual (1949), New Hopes for a Cfgangin World (1951). and Common Sense and Nuclear Warfare (1959)-was plagued a feeling of "desolate solitude." His numerous philander- ings and three marriages all failed. His theories of knowledge had fallen out of favor in the academic world.
"The sea, the stars, the night wind in waste places, mean more to me than even the hun~an beings I love best," Russell wrote in his...
the clergy is not only justified but necessary. Black churchmen are a good example, Reichley says. They championed civil rights during the early 1960s, when secular black leaders were scarce. However, he be- lieves that their politicalactivity should fade as secular blacks gain influence in Washington. --
Excessive meddling in civil affairs threatens a cl~urch's standing as a moral arbiter, transforming its leaders into just another advocacy group. And raising the emotional pitch of debates about...
1993.
Yet Van Allen, an astrophysicist at the University of Iowa, considers space stations, and the U.S.manned space program, to be wasteful. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), he argues, could get more for its money using unmanned spacecraft: "Apart from serving the spirit of adventure, there is little reason for sending people into space."
To date, NASA has spent some $30 billion on a Space Transportation System that now includes four manned space shuttles. This...
J. Allan Hobson, in The Sciences (Nov./Dec. 1985), The New York Academy of Sciences, 2 East 63rd St., New York, N.Y. 10021.
"Psychoanalysis, born amid doubt in 1900, could well be dead the year 2000."
So says Hobson, professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. He maintains that doubt about the legitimacy of Sigmund Freud's method of probing the mind through the free association of words now looms large in psychiatric circles-even among Freudians. As a result, psychoanalysis itself...