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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: D. Long who wrote (36239)	8/7/2002 5:31:53 AM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

From "Reason", comments on the Fast Track given to Bush 2. Fast Tracking In a tiny step on the road to normalcy, Congress gave the president the "fast track" trade negotiation authority the chief executive has lacked since 1994. With it, President Bush has the authority to draft trade deals that Congress must still approve, but cannot change. Without that provision, negotiating trade agreements with the U.S. is pretty pointless, since you can count on a minimum of 535 changes before it's ratified. Farm state representatives, even Democrats, were eager to give Bush fast track authority. If he hacks out some deals, they hope, their constituents might cut into America's trade decline by shipping out some foodstuffs. This hints that a quid pro quo was at the heart of Bush's support for the bloated farm bill that committed the U.S. to billions more in farm subsidies over the coming years. After all, all that government cheese has to end up somewhere. Fast track and successful rounds of base closings (which featured lists that had to voted up or down in their entirety) both operate on the interesting premise that the only way to get Congress to do something is to get it to agree in advance to do nothing. Maybe it is time to try that with Social Security and the tax code

To: D. Long who wrote (36239)	8/7/2002 9:24:33 AM
From: JohnM	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Nonsense. Any analysis in decision theory requires valuation of rational and irrational judgements. Cost-benefit analysis, for one, ASSUMES rationality. Are you talking about the formal theory of cost benefit analysis or are you talking about what we all do in everyday life? If it's the former, then rationality has a specific meaning. Moreover, I'm not certain irrationality is a category in that theory; I think the opposite of rational is non-rational. But I'm only a critic of rational choice theory; don't read the stuff the better to protect my blood pressure. I will never forget debates as to whether it made cost-benefit sense to try to get more doctors into the inner city south side of Chicago in the 60s. It didn't. That was one of the many times I gave up on rational choice theory.