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The article focuses on comments of some educators to the report "A Nation at Risk," issued by the National Commission Excellence in Education. The education system in the U.S. seems to be deteriorating. The report recommends to raise standards in educations by recruiting qualified teachers. It is felt by some educators that the report would be successful, if it generates public opinion against accepting mediocre education being provided in American schools.

This paper applies grey forecast model to predict the number of foreign students coming from Asia, America, Europe, Oceania and other regions to Taiwan for higher education in the future. It also uses a viewpoint of service marketing to analyze the students' development in the future. The research outcomes can provide references of planning international alternating of higher education to higher education organizations and executive bodies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract This paper examines the drive for consensus from the perspective of the good government framework for federal advisory commissions in the United States. Specifically, the paper examines the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA) – the statute, its regulations, and case law. It shows that the FACA was intended to be an antidote to abuses in consensus-making processes, including the failure to fully include competing views on commissions. The index of suspicion in the FACA scheme rises when a group work product – including a consensus report – is to be the basis of recommendations to federal officials. Once FACA's requirements regarding committee composition are satisfied, the index of suspicion drops and FACA is indifferent to consensus-making; but the conditions for informed, meaningful participation apply to members who dissent from, as well as those who participate in, consensus. In negotiated rulemaking, the push for consensus and closure creates unacceptable tension with the good government goals of openness and accountability. Proponents of consensus-only bioethics commissions can learn from FACA-related legislative, agency, and judicial insights that consensus-seeking is not always desired by government officials; is rarely cost free; and that diversity and dissent enhance openness, accountability, and fairness. The burden of proof is therefore on proponents of a consensus-only standard for bioethics commissions to demonstrate that a drive for consensus furthers sound decision-making by government officials more than it sets back openness and accountability to a diverse public. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article advances an argument about two "imagined environments"--my term for the frameworks that human groups use to depict and dwell in more-than-human worlds. The first of these imagined environments arose around the US-Mexican Boundary Commission (1849-59): while failing to fulfill its official objective of building physical border monuments, this team of explorers and engineers still made media that helped two settler states conceptualize and control their borderlands. Against this increasingly efficient exploitation of both humans and nonhumans, a second imagined environment persisted in Mescalero Apache pictographs, Chihene Apache performances, and other Apache media. On our precarious planet, this imagined environment can teach us to stop defining ourselves around fixed places and to remain resilient while migrating through shifting spaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the determinants of governmental corruption exploiting a unique dataset generated by “Operation Pretense”, an FBI investigation of county purchasing activities that ultimately led to the conviction of 55 of Mississippi’s 410 county supervisors, one county road foreman, two state highway commissioners and 13 vendors on bribery, extortion and other felony charges. Evidence is reported that corruption occurs more frequently in rural counties where voter-taxpayers have fewer years of schooling. Corruption is also more likely in counties where supervisors are paid more, ceteris paribus, casting doubt on the proposition that efficiency wages purchase honest public officials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public bioethics advisory bodies have been a staple of US public policy for addressing public biotechnology- related controversies, in spite of the limited impact these bodies have had on policy-making. These advisory bodies serve an important tacit function as boundary organizations that stabilize the border between science and politics, preserving the autonomy of science from incursion by other societal stakeholders. In this paper the boundary work of the US National Bioethics Advisory Commission is examined at the border of science and ethics, in its deliberations on embryonic stem cell research. The coupling of scientific and ethical uncertainty, and that of research productivity and integrity assurance in the Commission's deliberations is described. It is argued that the Commission's boundary work reinforced the authority of science and marginalized conflicting civic-sector concerns [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reports on the decision of U.S. President George W. Bush to sign an executive order to set up his Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform on January 7, 2005. Objectives of the bipartisan panel; Overview of the paper "Principles for Tax Reform" of the Business Roundtable, an association of CEO of leading corporations; Commendation of the advisory group by Treasury Secretary John Snow. INSET: India releases VAT plan.

Examines the role of official public advisory bodies and private, voluntary associations in the mixed economy of public transportation in the United States. Reasons for the evolution and interaction of public and voluntary agencies; Advantages of both organizations; Patterns of interaction of both organizations.

The question of how best to design a new agency is of immense public importance. Congress creates new agencies and reforms agency structures with some regularity, while commentators frequently call for the creation of new or redesigned agencies. Scholars have, as a result, increasingly turned to studying the diversity of agency structures and questions of agency design. In this Essay, we tackle one of the decisions that must be made in designing any new agency—the choice between a single-director agency and a multimember commission—and we make a general case against multimember commissions. For the most part, scholarly discussion of these structures is interwoven with questions of agency independence. But these two questions—singularity and independence—can be pulled apart and assessed separately. Yet surprisingly little of the existing literature focuses systematically on this decision. The central benefits of single-director agencies are that they better ensure agency efficacy at accomplishing statutory mandates, and that they offer clearer lines of responsibility and thus accountability for agency failures. Proponents of multimember commissions concede the inefficiency of its design but hold that inefficiency is desirable because it serves as a defense against liberty-infringing actions. We term this the “safeguards of liberty fallacy” and show that it rests on faulty foundations. The most often discussed benefits of multimember commissions are that they enhance deliberation and accountability. Dissents also serve as a “fire alarm” signal to Congress and the courts of potential agency malfeasance and thus enable greater accountability. We do not disagree that these are potential benefits of a multimember commission, but we believe that these benefits are wildly overvalued, and their costs are widely undervalued. In addition to suffering from baseline problems, these arguments fail to take seriously the reality of asymmetric political polarization. Finally, we turn to the relationship between multimember commissions and regulated entities. We argue that the adjudicatory origins of multimember commissions cannot carry the weight of that design choice in an era of rulemaking, and we also suggest that multimember commissions might suffer from more acute industry capture than single-director agencies. In short, the general case against multimember commissions is extremely strong. Scholars and policymakers would be well-advised to recommend singledirector agencies as a default presumption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the prevalence of state-level commissions convened to make policy recommendations, research to date has not systematically investigated the ways in which these bodies impact policy or degree to which state-level interest groups can use these institutions in that process. We argue that less powerful groups will favor these mechanisms and use them to get issues onto the institutional agenda and to increase the likelihood of legislative success. We also suggest that traditionally powerful groups will oppose the creation of reform-minded task forces, but will likely use them to hinder policy change once they are formed. We test this assertion in an analysis of the creation and recommendations of task forces convened to study autism insurance mandates, as well as the eventual adoption of such mandates, in the American states between 2001 and 2010. The results suggest that public and industry groups influence the formation and recommendations of task forces, but that the latter appears to have a relatively larger impact. They also suggest that a task force recommendation has a large impact on the likelihood of adopting an autism insurance mandate and that neither the insurance industry nor autism advocacy groups have a direct influence on adoption after controlling for the presence of a recommendation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article provides a historical overview of military staffing in the U.S., focusing on the rationale for the movement away from conscription to an all-volunteer military force, as well as information about "four promises" by then-President Richard Nixon's Commission on an All-Volunteer Armed Forces (the Gates Commission) during the Vietnam War which have been broken over the years. The U.S. Constitution and promises related to liberty, fairness, and service-related costs are examined.

This article reviews the history of executive budgeting in the United States a century after President William Howard Taft's Economy and Efficiency Commission proposed an executive budget. This history, the authors argue, does not suggest that giving more budget power to the president will improve budget outcomes. Instead, what is needed is more cooperation between the branches of government and a better-educated public-goals that were shared by budget reformers when the Taft report was published. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author reflects on the theme of 2011 American Academy of Forensic Science meeting in Chicago, Illinois and the National Research Council of the National Academies' report on February 19, 2009. The author says that the theme deals with the real context of forensic science. He adds that the 2009 report focuses on the strengthening of forensic sciences. Moreover, the academy urges both the legislative and executive branches of the U.S. government to reach out to workers in forensic science.

The article offers information on the history and activities of the University Council for Workforce and Human Resource Education in the U.S. It states that the university council is a nonprofit organization that represents the leading universities in the country. It also offers emphasis on the mission of the University Council which were accordingly reworded to be inclusive to career and technical education (CTE) and human resource development (HRD). It further enumerates the purposes of the University Council which include the provision of forum related to the contemporary issues, examining and formulating positions in the emerging workforce, and assisting the improvement and capacity of its members.

This article examines the impact of the “neutral” or “honest” broker role in presidential decision making, particularly as applied to the job of National Security Council adviser. It provides further evidence of the positive and continuing contribution of the role to effective decision making, which has been expressed both in theory (Alexander George's formulation of the related concept of the “managerial custodian” in the 1970s) and in practice (the broker role of the Eisenhower-era NSC special assistants). At the same time, it considers the feasibility of additional tasks such as policy advocacy, public visibility, political watchdog, and operational assignments, which have been embraced, to varying degrees, by more recent NSC advisers but were largely absent in the Eisenhower era and rejected by George as appropriate to the custodian role. The article also examines the applicability of the broker role in light of differing presidential decision-making needs, different advisory structures, and the issue of bureaucratic leverage and personal influence. Attention to the broker role remains relevant not only in understanding classic decision failures (the expansion of troop commitments in Vietnam in 1965) and successes (Indochina in 1954) but in gaining perspective on more recent decisions, such as Iran-Contra during the Reagan years and the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and issues surrounding its postwar reconstruction in the George W. Bush presidency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Whatever the legacy (or lack of it) of the Hutchins Commission in the United States, it resonates well around the world. Cases of national, regional and international media philosophies show that essentially the same social responsibility theory of the press has won wide global recognition, with or without direct reference to the Commission. Its current variant is a paradigm whereby the citizen rather than the media or the journalist occupies a central place. The conclusions of the conference suggest further reflection on themes such as: media as vehicles of public interest vs. media as commodities; media diversity and concentration; the idea about a truthful, comprehensive and intelligent account of the world under contemporary conditions; the nature of democracy being advocated. Lee Bollinger's proposal for a new Commission is endorsed--as a global exercise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Even though the Hutchins Commission report has not explicitly informed journalistic practices, it has achieved a profound effect in its critique of media access equity and its concerns about media ownership. This article revisits the commission report to interpret its relevance to current media problems. Despite its practical shortcomings of influence, the report continues to provoke a critical inquiry: How is it possible to reconcile a standard of' "professional ethic" with the demands of a workaday journalism concerned with the marketplace bottom-line? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Hutchins Commission was concerned that the small minority of the people controlling the press as an instrument of mass communication could misuse their gatekeeping power. Due to new communication technologies the abundance of media outlets has increased choices available to the public far beyond anything commission members could have envisioned. This, in turn, has led to the development of a second layer of electronic gatekeepers between information originators and the public. The effect these electronic gatekeepers will have on the evolution of the press will be as great as, if not greater than, that of the human gatekeepers who were the commission's focus. This article suggests there will be an increasing equation of the public interest with what the public is interested in, a reduction in people's knowledge of public affairs and a decrease in the exposure of individuals to new ideas or ideas that contradict their existing beliefs. The article concludes by questioning whether government regulation is capable of addressing these concerns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that the conclusions reached by the Hutchins Commission were wrong 50 years ago, and even more wrong today. First, greater diversity of media and market segmentation have made it easier, not harder, to voice an opinion today. Second, the expanding number of media outlets allows deserving opinions to reach large audiences indirectly by persuading the mainstream press to pick up on the subject. Third, the First Amendment should not be construed to place a special responsibility on the media to make judgments about what kinds of views and ideas the public should be exposed to. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The governmental structure and political process of counties differ sufficiently from cities which use the council-manager form of government to ask whether county managers can be professionals in the same broad sense that city managers are professionals. We seek here to start answering this question by examining the similarities and differences between managers in cities and counties in one state--North Carolina. If one uses the characteristics of city managers as the frame of reference for assessing the professionalism of county managers, the latter measure up well being on analysis of survey data from city and county managers. The political and structural characteristics of counties apparently do not impede the ability of county managers to be general policy leaders and organizational director who apply professional practices to their work. In order to understand how county managers perceive their circumstances and deal with the presumed impediments to professionalism, interviews were conducted with four county managers. These managers interact directly and influentially with their elected superiors on the full range of programs and services offered by their government and set the tone and direction for their organizations. They sometimes have to work to establish support for basic principles of professional management through persuasion with some new commissioners, and they must integrate their organizational structure through communication, persuasion, negotiation, and skillful use of resources. Although they cannot rely as fully as city managers on formal authority, they operate as professionals by effectively communicating with elected superiors, officials not under their direct control, and subordinates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The National Commission on the public Service recently reported its recommendations for revitalizing the federal service, and this significant effort deserves and requires searching analysis. This critique highlights several inadequacies of scope and approach, all falling under the rubric of the Commission's "managerial orientation," viewed from both narrow and broad perspectives. In the present view, these inadequacies raise serious doubts about the actions which the Commission associates with the basic recommendations about increasing federal compensation. Some observers will insist that the Commission recommendations are political documents with a narrow focus on necessary increases in federal compensation, and that this worthwhile goal places critical commentary in the class of niggling or whining. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Deals with the criticisms issued by law professor Richard Posner on the "Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States," in his book "Preventing Surprise Attacks: Intelligence Reform in the Wake of 9/11." Problem with the bipartisan makeup of the commission; Failure of the report to address potential terrorist attacks; Criticism on the proposal of the commission to revise the intelligence system of the U.S.

The article discusses the culture of standards development of U.S. technical advisory groups (TAG). It states that the culture is grounded in cooperation and common purpose. It notes that the development process requires discipline and attentiveness. It mentions that standards are the foundation of how everyone get along and how they continue to effectively function in a complex environment.

The article discusses a report on handling incidental or secondary findings issued by the U.S. Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues on December 12, 2013. It enumerates recommendations applicable to such findings in all contexts, including conducting more empirical research on the discovery. Ethical guidelines on the issue issued by the American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics are also cited.