more on Fiber-Optic Illusion

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Steve Lamont <spl () ncmir ucsd edu>
Date: October 16, 2004 3:37:13 PM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Subject: Re: [IP] Fiber-Optic Illusion

> Nonetheless, Tom Ammiano -- like his colleagues, loath to
> let a local constituent group go unpandered to -- took up
> the cause of Noe Valley Families, and the church and the
> cell phone companies canceled their antenna plan.

How awful.  How perfectly dreadful that an elected official should
"pander" to (GASP!) constituents -- the people who *voted* for him.
What a bizarre concept!

Doesn't this bozo know that he's supposed to pay *lip service* to
constituent concern and then vote the way the lobbyists and corporate
donors tell him to vote?

Goodness gracious.  If this heresy spreads, the next thing you know we
might have state legislators and a Congress that actually responds to
the will of the people instead of the will of big money and corporate
interests.

Gosh, if this kind of pandering runs *really* wild, we might even end
up with an Executive Branch that represents normal working Americans
instead of Halliburton, Bechtel, Lockheed-Martin, Enron (no, scratch
that), Arthur Anderson (uh, no, scratch that, too), well, you get the
idea.

And then where would we be?

Fortunately most cities and towns aren't run that way.  Down here in
Southern California our elected officials are so deeply in the pockets
of the developers and business interests that they cough up lint
balls.  And that's the way business likes it.  Even if the citizens
don't.

People make all sorts of noise about local control and devolution of
authority from "faceless Washington bureaucrats and regulators" but
when local people actually attempt to assert some of that control,
then they become a "local constituent group [to be] pandered to".

If the Noe Valley Families don't want cell phone transmitters in their
community, even though they may be wrong in their reasoning, isn't
that their right?

                                                        spl

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