On Sun, Mar 15, 2015, at 01:32 PM, dan@geer.org wrote:
As a side note to this debate, I've negotiated bunches of settlements between local (and, once, state) governments and citizen claimants. In not one case can I say that the agreements were worth the paper they were ultimately printed on as there is no way to hold a government to its agreements when you really get down to it beyond the ballot box. If an agreement calls for some sort of enforcement, then you can be sure that in the fullness of time enforcement will wane. If an agreement calls for appointment of an oversight board, then you can be sure that in the fullness of time the appointment process will yield not fire-in-the-belly citizen activists but apparatchiks. If an agreement calls for an evaluation five years hence as to whether the course of action was or was not producing the results that it was promised to produce, then you can be sure that in the fullness of time such review will be pro forma, vapid, innocuous, and self-congratulatory, if it is done at all. A government's word cannot be trusted when details matter, yet another manifestation of how eternal vigilance is the price of freedom, or, to repurpose the title of Larry O'Brien's memoirs, there are no final victories.
Please don't let this start an exploration of any rat-hole, just allow me to speak from four decades of experience, please.
--dan
+1. In this instance I wholeheartedly agree with you, Dan (also borne from experience, though nowhere near as much as you have.) These are wise words and should be heeded. -S