topic meeting body count reaches two

[perrmj02 at wfu.edu]

It's taken a while to feel comfortable saying this, but i agree with judd :)

I understand how difficult and thankless of a job the topic committee has.  In 
backchannel I was explained some of the problems they had been having working 
with very rough, underdeveloped topic wording proposals given their time 
constraints.  I admire their dedication and service to the community.

Now, I do think there is a distinction between what Mike Eber characterizes 
as "the zillions of random ideas tossed at them" and what I consider to be a 
well developed, well supported wording suggestion.  The efforts to produce what 
has been branded "the broad topic" have actually been quite substantial.  
Rayburn's initial post offered compelling (and topic specific) reasons why the 
goal of a resolution that would allow and force "big" affs.  Others echoed this 
call.  Of course, the initial suggestion of "overhaul" was heavily 
scrutinized.  Most of the disagreement centered on the ability to craft a topic 
wording that would acheive the accepted goal of forcing big 
affs.  "Comprehensively reform" was offered as a possibility, and then Doyle 
Srader cut some great t cards that seem to suggest that this wording may do the 
trick.  Here are two examples (I suggest rereading his post for some more):

___. Comprehensive reforms are uniform and systematic 
Alberghini, CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY LAW REVIEW, Fall 1985, p. 207 
Although the Act makes some far-reaching changes and improvements to 
existing federal criminal statutes, it has been criticized for failing to 
provide the comprehensive reform that Congress set out to achieve when it 
undertook the code reform initiative more than a decade ago. This criticism 
points out that the new law has adopted a "piecemeal" approach to code 
reform and, in this respect, has fallen short of providing a uniform and 
systematic restructuring of the federal criminal law. 

___. Comprehensive reforms distinct from incremental reforms
Wardle, CASE WESTERN RESERVE LAW REVIEW, Winter 1986, p. 556 
Because it is unlikely that Congress will pass any comprehensive reform in 
the near future, the best approach for legislative campaign finance reform 
is incremental reform. Incremental reform is more desirable than 
comprehensive reform because the former is more workable, n165 more 
realistic, n166 and can serve as the basis for truly comprehensive change 
later. n167 An incremental approach would allow the modification of a known 
system rather than the creation of an unknown one. n168 The faults and 
weaknesses of our current system become more evident with each election. An 
incremental approach resolves identifiable problems while hopefully 
preserving the predictability of the outcome of such reforms. 

IMHO, this extended community dialogue--as a whole--represents a high level of 
depth and careful consideration.  These efforts aren't as tangible or polished 
as the exceptionally well written federal recognition topic paper, but they do 
offer a viable, literature-supported, peer-reviewed topic wording alternative.

Mike




judd wrote:

mike, i thought you and rayburn's only disagreement was largely over the 
question of direction, the simplicity of both your suggestions is lost in the 
wordings seemingly under consideration in the topic committee's consideration: 
there is no "R:t the USfg should substantially (or completely) restructure (or 
reform, overhaul ...) its policy toward Indians, Native Americans." The 
resoltions seem to invite tinkering! judd 

--
On Sat, 9 Jun 2001 09:16:44   
 Mike Eber wrote:
>I'm not in Tahoe and not on the topic committee but my opinion on all of this 
is that you should stop whining because your particular favorite didn't make 
the cut. Thats the job of the topic commitee: to examine the zillions of random 
ideas tossed at them and try to whittle them down to
>the best. Edebate discussions, however energetic you perceived them to be, 
were hardly conclusive. No one really did any work to hammer out a legal topic. 
Initial ideas do not a finished and workable topic make. I also disagree with 
your premise that a broad topic has been abandoned. Have you read the 
appropriations topic? Thats not exactly tiny. Maybe it doesn't allow for the 
same *kind* of cases as an overhaul topic - as bad as that topic would be. (I 
mean really, when Corey Rayburn couldn't even get Dallas to vote for him on 
that one you know he must be wrong). Your tone makes it sound like the 
committee sat down and said "no broad topic, ok? All in favor....good. Done" 
when I suspect the situation was more like hours of very smart people doing
>their best and trying to make it work.
>
>In continuation of my recent quest to get Josh Hoe to always vote for MSU I 
want to echo two comments that probably originated from him:
>
>1) The topic committee should act as a gatekeeper - Its role should not just 
to survey the unrepresentative messages from edeabte, crunch the numbers and 
settle on what they think might be a bad topic. Their job is to make some tough 
decisions on our behalf - then we get to choose the final product.
>
>2) Its mesages like yours that make other smart people either never try to 
join the topic committee or to quit. Lets try not to make difficult work on the 
topic a totally thankless job.
>
>Mike
>
>
>
>
>
>> > 1. the first topic committee
>report announces the "abandonement" of any > courts/legal topic
>> 2. the second report seems to have indicate that any attempt at a broad topic
>
>> has also been abandoned
>>
>> The topic discussion on edebate seemed to be far richer and more energetic 
than
>> usual, yet most of the explorations and conclusions (except the MSU paper)
>> developed over the past few weeks seem to have been lost. Am I missing
>> something?
>
>
>
>
>
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