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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: May 13, 1998
Contact: Jenny Louie, media@womenvote.org, 202-728-0800

First National Online Women's Voting Guide Unveiled Aim Is To "Bring American Democracy into Digital Age"

Washington, D.C. -- The Women's Voting Guide, an innovative, interactive, nonpartisan web site, was unveiled recently at a reception in the nation's capital co-hosted by Sarah Brady and Victoria Reggie Kennedy.

Designed to "Bring American Democracy into the Digital Age," the site -- www.womenvote.org -- will provide visitors with a personalized voting guide matching their own views to those of the candidates for U.S. Senate and House in their area. The site currently contains the positions of all U.S. Senators on more than 150 issues ranging from Balanced Budget to Work. The information is based on roll call votes cast since 1995.

The Women's Voting Guide is a project of the Women Leaders Online Fund, a new, nonpartisan educational organization created to educate women about current issues in government, society, the economy, the media, and cyberspace.

The first phase of the online guide -- the voting records of incumbent U.S. Senators -- was unveiled on April 21 at the historic Sewall-Belmont House in Washington D.C., which celebrates the campaign for women's suffrage which began 150 years ago, in 1848. In the coming weeks, voting records of the U.S. House of Representatives will be added, and t

he positions of 1998 general election candidates in U.S. Senate and House races will be available on the site in the Fall.

According to Antonia Stolper, founder and Chair of the Women Leaders Online Fund, "The Women's Voting Guide uses 21st Century technology to finally realize the 19th Century dream of educating women to participate fully in the political process. Our courageous foremothers would be thrilled about what we are doing today," she said.

According to Co-host Sarah Brady, "The Women's Voting Guide is an exciting resource that will help to educate women across the country about the positions of those who seek to represent them in Congress. It neither promotes candidates nor advocates positions on issues, but provides the information and tools for women to vote their values."

"For the first time in history, women will have easy access to specific and meaningful information on the positions of candidates -- undistorted by negative attack ads and political rhetoric," said Project Director Gail Hoffman.

One aim of the voting guide is to encourage more women to get involved in the political process. Hoffman noted that in 1998 -- 150 years after women first began to organize for the right to vote -- they are still vastly underrepresented in state houses and on Capitol Hill. "We know that women are not equally represented in policymaking positions and are concerned that their views often are not represented."

A survey of women by Lake Sosin Snell Perry & Associates and American Viewpoint, for the Women's Vote Project of the Council of Presidents of Major Women's Organizations, found that 90% of those polled said that receiving a nonpartisan voting guide before election day would encourage more people to vote.

"The Women's Voting Guide will help revolutionize the way women vote in this country," said Antonia Stolper. "For the first time, women will be able to hold their elected representatives accountable for their votes in Washington, and women will be able to cast their votes with full knowledge of where the candidates stand on issues of importance to them," she added.

Not Everyone Loves Wally...

Hiss, boo!

The new sports column sucks.

Sorry to be so blunt. But it sucks! And What's This will all the apostrophes scattered through the column, i.e. Pacer's, etc. Since when does one use apostrophes for such instances. Not only incorrect, but downright stupid, and makes G21 look silly.

I realize it's 4 a.m. on the East Coast as I type this, but I gotta be true to my self. Reading this lame column upset me no end. Boooooooooooooo!!!!!


ROD RESPONDS: I did forward your e-mail on to Wally Worts, but my experience has been that he's slightly e-mail impaired. You might have better luck writing to him at the Message Board, which he appears to be taking over.

More Huzzahs for Adam Smith...

What can my small self do? You have the horrible problem in a nut-shell: Prohibition produces crime, psychological infirmity, organized crime. Taxes and EDUCATION are what's needed. I feel myself at the bottom of a pit, y'know?

- John R.

BR> FROM Bill N., Los Angeles, CA, USA:

What happened to ON DRUGS, I've read every one of Adam J. Smith's columns, but didn't see him in your "Mothers" issue? Does he still write for G21?


ROD RESPONDS: Yes, Bill, Adam does indeed, as you'll see from tonight's column.

The fault was not his, but our aging Editor's. It seems that the Editor omitted to include Adam's last column, which will be printed in the Sunday, 24 May issue. I apologize for the oversight.

Okay, Maybe I was a little Rash.....

[EDITOR'S NOTE: Though most of our readers are unaware of its existence, there has been an e-mailed, text-only version of GENERATOR 21 which has gone out to subscribers, primarily in Asia, for a number of months. As you might imagine, this was an additional burden for me. Since I never received any feedback from these readers, I sent out a message saying I would suspend it.]

FROM Ly L., [No City Provided], Vietnam:

Dear Rod Amis,

I am still a loyal reader of your journal. I don't contribute much to G21 because my English is terrible. You know, it's my third language. Reading is OK, but writing takes me lots of time checking up the dictionaries (even though, the dictionaries never tell me whether my writing is understood or not!)

I appreciate you a lot for the email version. I really find it interesting. I hope it go on

Best wishes
Ly L.

FROM Nguyen D. H. [No City Provided], Vietnam:

Dear Mr. Rod Amis,

I've been receiving the e-mail version of G21 for nearly 2 months. I found many of the article posted useful to me. In fact, I used to wait until Saturday, the day when G21 would arrive at my post box. However, I couldn't send anything to contribute or any comments about G21 as my writing in English is not good enough to send one. Moreover, I didn't think that if I send something to contribute, then it will be valuable enough to appear on G21.

In short, what I want to say here is the E-mail Version of G21 is important to me, don't suspend it, will you?

THOMAS HART NEEDS HIS OWN DOMAIN NAME....OR NIAL C DOES....[OR: Wait a minute! Are we being Kazinski'ed!!! Eee-yeww!]

FROM Nial C., San Diego, CA, USA:

9:23 PM 5/17/98 "The Postal Theme:

You admit then that you and your staff are youngsters. This is so by the tone of your response to my comments concerning "Wilkie" the Postal Theme neighbor and the ensuing posted "conversation with Wilkie" dialog. No harm done. I was young once myself.

Now I am just young at heart. I know Wilkie must reflect what you hotshots think of as a "postal person". Poor Wilkie. I'll bet Wilkie has his butt up and his head down, picking carrots (money) to support his family, pay the mortgage, car payments, insurance, school books, put food on the table and a host of other bills. All to keep body and soul together, just a millions of other Americans are doing every day. The sweat of his brow waters his suburban lawn. It has been ever thus.

G 21, your staff writer,and his (their) article, "Good Enough for Government Work" wherein that term is called an "ethic" that permeates our society is presented as "evidence" that supports the evils in our society.

Let me hasten to remind you that the first lesson of "Evil" is that evil is good. So said Emerson (remember him?). As to the consequences of your observations of our so-called "postal society" I refer you to what that famous bard Shakespeare said about it. "There is some soul of goodness in things evil, would men observantly distill it out".

Perhaps you, as a group, ought to remember that--while "there are thousands hacking at the branches of evil to one who is hacking at the roots" [Thoreau]. So much for sloth and self-improvement in our day. You must be hacking at the branches, as I do not see you offering any solutions to the [sic]: Postal Society. But maybe someone has already has disproved your observation: See: FEDEX and UPS for example, supplanting the Post Office.

Your reply this week mentions "negative response" record. What do you mean by that?. You apparently have a closed mind, and a fixed opinion, as expressed in your article on the state of the nation. You have my dander up!

You did make me smile (the whisper of a laugh) putting that stuff out as gospel. Sloth you say has ruined us Yet we are at the peak of our accomplishments as a nation.

We (literally) rule the world. Now with Windows 95-8 as a universal operating system (allowing you to do what you, and I are doing) and all of it's e-mail attachments has made english a required universal language. A language that is all of 300 years old (as we know it).

Now, I cannot see sloth visible in the American spirit as you hint in that unfortunate article "Good Enough For Government Work". You ought to try to live up to one of those Government contracts-if you have ever seen one. No pal, "say it ain't so" . There is an American spirit, alive and well. I implore you, take counsel of Cato, who rightly observed, "flee sloth, for indolence of the soul is the decay of the body" (and I might add), "stay away from the wine".

Now, about the "plutocracy" you claim we have created and deplore. What? Old B. Franklin (I think) said when asked what kind of government the assembly had created and he replied in kind "we have given you a republic - if you can keep it!".

Socialism: Do you recommend it? I think you rather favor it. With your concern for the street people. Consider; It reads like this: The agrarian like the communist, would bring all above him down to his level, or raise himself to theirs, but is not anxious to bring those below him up to himself....an observation made in the last century by a guy named C. Simmons. These days, your professors do not bring that to your attention.

Home, of course, is the first part of less, if you do not have one. Or, if you like "homeless" is the first part of "poor", meaning street people, wanderers, tramps, bums, hobos, dope heads, and others of the same ilk. You must refer to those who seem to be "unjustly' homeless. There is no cure for this in a society based on currency (money-hard or soft) managed society. No one has invented a society yet that can do away with bartering one thing for another. Butan, may come close, but there they are still agrarian. No, the poor and the unfortunate will always be with us, and some will be homeless, unless we are all forced back the the forest by the bomb. There everyone had a home, be it ever so humble, under the protective brarches of the nearest tree (close to water) the staff of life), and a flint stone is handy. It takes currency to have a home, be it an apartment, condo, or a tent in the desert. See the Forest Service first, they now charge rent too.

Getting a home usually starts with an education, a skill or a trade, or good fortune in parents, or luck at the Lotto. To get one otherwise you must carefully husband your resources (not for dope). Do you, in deploring the homeless situation, suggest Karl Marx was right? He never had a home and depended on others for sustenance. Maybe that is why he was disgusted with the world as he saw it, even to the extent of renouncing his German citizenship.

Maybe you want to suggest a principle that sets a precedent that embalms a cure to homelessness! Start a new political dialog and then live according to that political precept? Give up your house (condo-apartment) or whatever you live in (abandoned car?). No, I do not think so! I think what you complain of is the lack of "transient camps". Keep them out of sight! They bother my conscience! I am living to well! Come on Pal, many of these "homeless" have government checks in their pockets each month. Many of these homeless are self-condemded souls. Where is our obligation to those people?

Now let us examine those remarks about class warfare of the past 30 years. 1998-back down to 1968. Was that not the year of the demise of the Studebaker? That "class warfare stuff" isn't that what has sent all our wealth to the top. The wealth of nations squandered on the undeserving? What happened the Adam Smith? Come on you sound like a campus radical. Or perhaps you are the product of some college (University) professor (the true socialist-as he has tenure) who aspires to the "Berkeley theme" of political thought. Whispering after Eldrege Clever, or Patty Hearst, or dropping political iodine into the brains of his students, because he is a follow along parrot of the radical left. Caw! Caw! down with the government! We know the way and the light.

I just had to take the time to answer this left-hip pistol shot, because you magazine is available to many who do not know history, and listen with deaf ears. Would you go back to the "divine right of Kings?". Those on the campus who speak from the book of Marx? This is particularly so because I see reference to this "so called God fearing nation" that "I attempt to describe" as you put it. The "attempt" part got to me lest you asign me to the literate class or unschooled.

Does not our currency ascribe our circumstances to a plainly stated position of "In God We Trust?" Our President (so far) takes his oath of ffice on a christian bible does he not? The churches abound in our country, almost on every corner. Our courts intone "so help me God". To whom are they seaking? Unless of course you now "affirm" what ever that means.

Specifically, you are wrong, dead wrong. We are founded in christianity, operate on charity, and lead the world for good works.

As to "Arms Merchants". Yes there are arms merchants. Marx invented them with communism. Have you never heard of "Bolshevik" and "Menshevik"? Bolshevick ment "yes" we agree with Marx in armed revolution, Menshevick ment "no" we will prevail by peaceful means in the revolution. Communism was to go forward begining in (1915?) I think, on the principle of "Bolshevism" under the banner of the "International", overthrowing of all existing governments by force. Hence the rise of Stalin and terror throughout the World. Out of night came the monster who created the "Arms Race' and "Arms Merchants".

It took us from 1920 to the fall of communism six years ago to prove this to be a political pestilence on the world. Otherwise the so called "Arms Merchant" term would never have been invented.

Yes, one or two make a "bundle" ($) in surplus arms. Yes, they sell them to "third world" countries. Those desperate leaders of those countries, struggling to stay in power subdue the populace and use arms to spread terror, no question. For those nations whom we generously give our military urplus arms, it might be well to remember that; "mankind is not disposed to look narrowly into the conduct of victories when their victory is on the right side. Hence the death of communism in some of those "Third World" countries we have helped.

That there are very serious penalties for all Americans who deal in arms without a permit is a fact. So the question is, who do you refer to by the term "arms dealer?" You mention no names so it is a shotgun blast at a practice you disapprove of for sure. I suggest you wave a flag without a flagpole to put it on.

Now, about this "class warfare" of the past 30 years you accuse (who) of conducting so vaguely. Campus rhetoric, I am afraid. where is the historical proof,the, visual embodiment of it? Today more Americans own stock, and mostly in the middle class, pension plans, and homes, than every before. Our nation this very day is the most prosperous nation in the world. Employed capital is best left in the hands of those who are outside of government. In the hands of private citizens who know how to employ it, and put it to work. Far better than the government whose only product is paperwork, and law, if you will, and files on the rest of us. Do not forget, fifty per-cent of a gallon of gas goes to the government. Do not forget that the graduated income take (Marx's secret weapon) levels us all, and if not the inheritance tax will. Hence the proliferation of the non-profit foundations. Every Corporation has a 50% partner beyond the level of refreshment of assets to continue business, and distribute benefits to the investors, mostly small people.

VOX POPULI to you and keep up the good work with you magazine. I suggest you renew your faith in America. Continue to live well in the atmosphere created for you by your peers. Enjoy your quiet pleasure in your software, created by a profit motive man named Bill Gates and his cronies. Now, one more word of advice. Eat a light supper, least tonight you suffer a restless night from my analysis of you rambling thoughts about the catastrophe hovering over our plutocratic (your name) society. Heavens I thought it was a REPUBLICAN society.

In closing about your answer to me: God be praised, who to believing souls, gives light in darkness, and COMFORT in despair.

About Sophistry.

"To reason justly from a false principle is the perfection of sophistry, which is more difficult to expose than to refute false reasoning--The proper way to expose its errors is to show that just and conclusive reasonings have been built on some false or absurd PRINCIPLE'' Emmons.

Nial C. in sunny San Diego.


THOMAS HART RESPONDS: Nial, have you ever considered just not reading my column, since it appears to "get [your] dander up"?

That's what I have to keep asking myself whenever Rod, our Editor, sends me my "fan-mail." Hell! This is the web! You don't like my opinions, click over to someone else's column here who you can agree with! I'm not force-feeding you this stuff! --- Just DON'T leave the G-21! (How was that, Rod?)

Seriously, sir, your opening makes me think you believe it is somehow a crime to be less than 50 years old. That's news to me, and not news that I think most of our readers would agree with. Your e-mail was so long that my coffee got cold just reading it! I suspect that Rod won't give me the space I need to respond point-by-point, so I'll try to respond "in overview."

The accusations fly fast and furious of your indictment of me and my article. You accuse me of:

• Making fun of my neighbor here in Bubba Land, Wilkie
• Being unfamiliar with Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau
• Being a Socialist
• Being a [University of California at] "Berkeley" grad
• Not recognizing that the USA "rules the world" and is a "REPUBLICAN" society

An uninformed person reading this, pard', might conclude that you know me better than my Mama, and that just ain't so!

I was not making fun of Wilkie. As he noted, I tend to crack wise.

I was force-fed Emerson and Thoreau in high school College Prep courses, and through most of my required courses at the University of TEXAS, at Austin, of which I am a proud alumnus.

I am a registered member of the Libertarian Party.

Finally, gosh-darn, Mr. C., the USA "rules the world?" That seems like a little bit of stretch. I'm sure our *allies* in France, Japan, Germany and the UK will be *over-joyed* to learn from you that they have a ruler now and that they are no longer sovereign nations.... But I understand. You penchant for quoting Cato has everything to do with didacticism.... Did you know that the first Caesar, the person who established an empire that *actually* ruled the world, hated that fart? It's a matter of historical record. It took Augustus, of course, to finally deal with that gadfly troublemaker. (Just Kidding!)

As to being a "REPUBLICAN" society, I sure hope you don't mean as-in Republican party. Even the GOP is willing to admit that the founding fathers intended this country to be a DEMOCRACY. I can see Tom Jefferson doing cartwheels in his grave right now if he has a notion of what we ended up with.

Let me share a FACT(as Wilkie might say) with you, Mr. C: We are the one of the LEAST TAXED of any industrial society on the planet.... And our world-ruling, per you, nation has one of the worst educational records on the planet.

Maybe I'm being awfully YOUNG and awfully DENSE here, but I believe that there is a correlation between those two facts.

I would submit, sir, that if you spent less time with Bartlett's Quotations, and more time with the New York Times, facts like these would lead you to draw some of the same conclusions that I do about our (yes!) plutocratic society.

I would further submit that I've made no secret of the fact that I think the Reagan-Bush(REPUBLICAN HOORAH!) era implemented the drain of wealth out of the middle of our society up to the top. You celebrate people playing the stock market? Legalized gambling? Lest I puke, sir! Let me refer you back to the last middle-class stock splurge: can you say Great Depression.

Oh, and BTW, CONGRATS on producing the longest VOX POPULI page in the history of this magazine, I'm sure!

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