Notes
Senior Fellow Tibor Machan has returned from his semester of teaching at the State University of New York, Fredonia, New York. In addition to his research and conference direction at the Reason Foundation, he teaches in the Economics Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Machan has completed a chapter on pollution and political theory for a book on environmental ethics to be published by Random House. His review of F.A. Hayek's Law, Legislation, and Liberty, vol. 3, appeared in the September issue of the Philosophy of the Social Sciences. He has also written a paper on individualism and political authority for the Monist, a journal edited by our contributing editor John Hospers.
Other REASON people have been busy of late. A collection edited by Foundation trustee M. Bruce Johnson, Resolving the Housing Crisis, was published last fall and won praise from the San Francisco Chronicle. Spotlight columnist Patrick Cox has had two op-ed pieces in Gannett's new USA Today, one on the drug laws and crime and the other on social security. Executive editor Marty Zupan's December editorial on welfare has been reprinted by the Warner Robins Independent. And frequent contributor John McClaughry, a former White House staff member, has been named a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation.
A boondoggle has been resurrected. NASA's much-criticized project, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI), is back, with $1.5 million in the FY 1983 budget. Reporter Robert Sheaffer revealed in our August 1981 issue how NASA had buried the project in its budget under another name and slipped it past Congress after SETI had once been denied funding. This revelation led Sen. William Proxmire (D–Wisc.) to get it axed once again from NASA's budget in 1981, but Sheaffer reports that this time around NASA did a slick sales job on Congress, neutralizing even Proxmire's opposition. As we've said before, we're not against exploring space, but we hate to see the taxpayers' money being used to gratify a few scientists' dreams. In a separate development, Sheaffer and fellow REASON contributor Robert Steiner have announced the formation of Bay Area Skeptics, whose aim is to debunk pseudoscience.
Jack Anderson has picked up on a REASON story. One of his syndicated columns in November contained three paragraphs in support of Joan Bowden, the heroine of our October 1981 article "CETA Fires a Whistleblower." Bowden has sued the government for firing her after she reported questionable practices in the Atlantic City CETA office. She's still fighting the case, acting as her own attorney.
Another big winner was our November cover story, "Cops, Inc." Besides several newspaper write-ups, it's being reprinted by the Department of Housing and Urban Development for distribution to city governments and by the International Communications Agency for distribution overseas. And the Oklahoma State Trooper magazine is also reprinting it.
David Brudnoy's December article, "The Missionary's Position on Sex," has led—predictably—to several subscription cancellations. But it is also being syndicated by Network News to newspapers across the country. Meanwhile, Sam Blumenfeld's "The Victims of Dick and Jane" (Oct.) is being reprinted in the Education Digest and by the Social Issues Resources Series for high school use. Blumenfeld has also done a number of radio interviews as a result of the article.
In November I journeyed to San Francisco, where I spoke before the League of Women Voters on privatization of city services and at the Economics Roundtable on deregulating urban transit. Also in November I addressed the Fullerton Chamber of Commerce on privatizing fire and paramedic services. December found me in Keystone, Colorado, addressing a Shavano Institute conference. I also did a radio interview with San Francisco's KCBS on the 5-cent gasoline tax increase, the subject of my editorial in the last issue.
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