Halls Of Congress Research Articles

Commentary: Bringing science’s value to the US Congress

Commentary: Bringing science’s value to the US Congress

Buying Time: Protecting Free Speech and Functional Democracy by Distinguishing Between Expenditures

Many in campaign finance community suggest there is no room for further debate over constitutionality of statutory limits upon independent and contributions. Pro-reform groups perceive democracy as vulnerable to systemic from plutocratic influences and thus endorse regulatory oversight of campaign spending. Pro-speech groups assert pillar of democracy is participation in of information, and subsequently reject restriction of campaign financing even when advanced in name of anti-corruption. Since Citizens United, latter view has largely carried day in court.But what if pro-reform and pro-speech views are not at odds after all? Since Buckley v. Valeo, reformers have sought to limit contributions or expenditures in name of preventing corruption or political equality. These blunt paradigms have failed. But there is another way forward. For forty years, Congress and Court have unnecessarily examined all of money as an undifferentiated class subject to same restrictions. It is time to abandon this framework and pursue a new approach tailored to a new interest.The Court has long viewed First Amendment as protecting a for clash of different views and conflicting This of (or, marketplace) rests upon two principles: and free trade. The principle recognizes speech, not less, is governing rule of First Amendment. This protects entry into market and ensures a diversity and multiplicity of ideas. The free principle recognizes the ultimate good desired is better reached by trade in ideas and that best test of truth is power of thought to get itself accepted in competition of market. This protects competition within market and ensures best win through competition on merits. But if marketplace of ideas is more than just a catchy slogan, then what does winning provide? What limited resource does market allocate based on this free trade in ideas? The answer is time. a fleeting existence we have but little time to find truth through discourse. When content freely competes in of and wins on its merits, best rise to top, gain greater acceptance, and earn a larger market share of audience time and attention. And just as some contracts in economic enhance competition while others restrain competition, so too do some in ideational enhance competition while others do not. By distinguishing between these expenditures, we can raise unexplored questions and craft a campaign finance system aligns with First Amendment.Part I briefly surveys history of campaign finance debate. After examining problems posed by existing approaches and weaknesses of anticorruption and political equality interests, theory abandons faulty premises underlying those paradigms. Rather than assuming government's interest must cut against speech, theory proposes aligning government's interest with speech. And, rather than assuming all serve First Amendment purposes and asking how much protection should be afforded to these expenditures, theory asks which advance purposes of First Amendment and which undermine purposes of First Amendment.Part II proposes a new approach to reform based on differences between competitive and anticompetitive in ideational marketplace. By revealing Buckley and its progeny to be an inevitable judicial response to a clumsy legislative framework, theory makes room for a more tailored statute rooted in constitutional principles. Here, theory distinguishes between for creation of content (all of which help content enter market and are protected by principle) and for dissemination of content (some of which allow content to compete for market share on merits — and thus are protected by free principle — and some of which bypass competitive process for earning market share — and thus violate free principle).Part III proposes a new government interest: preserving competition in of ideas. By passing legislation curbs anticompetitive restraints upon trade, Congress could protect ideational market's natural role in safeguarding speech and self-rule. And, just as our antitrust laws curb restraints to protect economic competition (without regard to particular or products), so too would a antitrust law curb restraints to protect ideational competition (without regard to particular or ideas). Such a law would not favor particular speakers or equalize any more than antitrust laws favor particular businesses or equalize market share.Part IV discusses elements and application of a legislative proposal, forecasts standard of review to be applied, addresses likely objections to such a scheme, and evaluates various advantages of employing such an approach. In short, this Article sets out a constitutional theory and legal framework for understanding what so many Americans already know: they are not heard in halls of Congress, process has shut them out, and their compelling concerns cannot compete in a system where money matters more than merits.

Wolf by the Ears: The Missouri Crisis, 1819–1821 by John R. Van Atta

Reviewed by: Wolf by the Ears: The Missouri Crisis, 1819–1821by John R. Van Atta Matthew H. Crocker Wolf by the Ears: The Missouri Crisis, 1819–1821. By John R. Van Atta. Witness to History. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015. Pp. xiv, 199. Paper, $19.95, ISBN 978-1-4214-1653-3; cloth, $50.00, ISBN 978-1-4214-1652-6.) Following the precedent established by Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama, the territory of Missouri in 1819 petitioned Congress to become a slaveholding state without a second thought. There seemed little question that slavery would continue in the district once statehood was achieved. Indeed, the Louisiana Purchase treaty had guaranteed slavery’s legality in the territory, and by 1819 Missouri’s slave population had surpassed ten thousand. When New York congressman James Tallmadge presented an amendment to the Missouri statehood bill that would abolish slavery over the course of a few years, the southern delegation in Congress rebelled, beginning a three-year political battle that, according to John R. Van Atta, led to “a convergenceof political, economic, and social disturbances—West, South, and North—that brought an end to the old order of American life and suggested the broad outlines of a new one” (p. 4). A united South vigorously came to Missouri’s defense to secure slavery’s place in the republic, articulating a new and powerful rhetorical stance that anticipated the proslavery, “positive good” rationale of the future. In reaction, antislavery northerners saw slavery’s expansion coupled with its latest brazen defense as a threat to an emerging market economy in the North that was shedding its dependence on unfree labor for a free labor force of wage earners. Just as southerners during the crisis embraced a new ideology in slavery’s defense, northerners proceeded to form their own innovative canon based on free labor principles. The result in Congress, as well as in the country at large, was, according to Van Atta, “a widening cultural gulf between North and South . . . . [that] resulted in widespread anxiety that the country might split into not two, but three (or more) separate, distinct, and rival political entities—in the West, the South, and the North” (p. 89). In making his case, Van Atta adds to the historiography of the Missouri controversy by expanding his study beyond the halls of Congress and on to Main Street. We learn not only about the backgrounds and positions taken by some of the major players in the debates, such as James Tallmadge, Henry Clay, and brothers James and Philip P. Barbour, but also about how contrasting communities as diverse as Manhattan, New York, and Boon’s Lick, Missouri, reacted to the crisis. Van Atta also provides a comprehensive overview of the compromise worked out by Henry Clay, which Van Atta characterizes as “making sense at thattime” (p. 4). But, as he traces events, [End Page 919]what made sense in 1820 increasingly did not over the course of the next forty years as the “ convergenceof political, economic, and social disturbances” became too volatile for the political realm to handle. John R. Van Atta has written a fine synthesis on the Missouri crisis that incorporates some of the best scholarship in the field. It serves as a wonderful introduction to the subject. Matthew H. Crocker Keene State College Copyright © 2016 The Southern Historical Association

Crushing Strikes through the U.S. Military, 1875–1915

In the wake of the Civil War, a triumphant Northern railroad industry aimed to bind together the entire nation with a crosshatching of railroads linking farm, factory, and city. Railroad tycoons soon ran the halls of Congress and state legislatures seeking funding for their projects. By 1873, the stock market, oversaturated with bloated railroad stock, collapsed to throw millions of men out of work. Those who remained endured wage cuts of up to 50 percent and seasonal work, and so went on strike against this assault on their livelihoods. The protest summit was reached in 1877 with the Great Railroad Strike. To enforce robber baron will, massive military force was deployed after Thomas A. Scott, CEO of the largest corporation in the world, the Pennsylvania Railroad, rigged the 1876 presidential election so a Republican president would be the one to remove federal troops occupying the South and use them to break strikes in the rest of the country and deal with Native American unrest over being forced from their lands. This article is adapted from a chapter of the author's forthcoming epic 78‐chapter history of the U.S.

Washington Brotherhood: Politics, Social Life, and the Coming of the Civil War by Rachel A. Shelden (review)

Reviewed by: Washington Brotherhood: Politics, Social Life, and the Coming of the Civil War by Rachel A. Shelden Peter R. Tomas Washington Brotherhood: Politics, Social Life, and the Coming of the Civil War. Rachel A. Shelden. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013. ISBN 978-1-4696-1085-6, 296 pp., cloth, $34.95. Throughout the antebellum years, the streets of Washington City were busy with the country’s most important decision makers. The city saw representatives from across the country come to debate the vital issues of the antebellum period. Traditional [End Page 450] depictions of the city’s political atmosphere suggest that the fiery debates in Congress between these politicians represented the antagonisms dividing the rest of the country. However, during their political sojourns in Washington these politicians fraternized outside of the walls of Congress as well. This raises questions about these men’s relationships outside the debate hall and how those relationships they affected decision-making. Rachel Shelden sheds light on this issue with a well-researched and fascinating look at Washington’s political atmosphere that will undoubtedly move the historiography forward. Rather than primarily focusing on the spirited rhetoric within Congress to enable an understanding of antebellum Washington’s political nature, Shelden’s work steps into the intimate spaces of Washington City to uncover the day-to-day activities of antebellum politicians. She reveals how personal relationships were molded across party lines outside the walls of Congress, and how these private locations fostered atmospheres that allowed politicians to amicably discuss the important issues of the period. That these relationships emerged from private locations suggests a cultural and social atmosphere within Washington not indicative of the divisions among the rest of the country. According to Shelden, “by working together outside of the halls of Congress at dinners and parties, over drinks, and at the faro table” politicians were able to engage in the political issues at personal levels (171). These personal relationships though, she suggests, ultimately prevented politicians from creating a plan to prevent the Civil War. The book’s thematic and chronological structure grapples with the major political issues and documents of the period and follows the elite men, or “the movers and shakers” as Shelden refers to them, who debated the issues of the period (7). Her first chapter establishes the foundation of her argument by offering an internal look at Congress through the debates over the Wilmot Proviso. Shelden reveals an unorganized, somewhat haphazard atmosphere within congressional session: quorum was hard to maintain, and those in sessions often were not focused on matters at hand, thus creating an atmosphere not conducive to constructive or decisive decision-making. Furthermore, Shelden questions the accuracy behind using the “angry rants” of the Congressional Globe as a source in understanding the nature of antebellum politics (1). She shows how in the case of the Wilmot Proviso speeches were remodeled and edited for the purposes of publication. Her approach combines documents like personal diaries, political housing arrangements, and congressional seating charts to reveal how relationships were molded among politicians. Whether it was Jefferson Davis playing a friendly game of whist against a political opponent, two delinquent senators throwing back drinks at the Capitol’s Hole in the Wall or a presidential function where northern and southern politicians enjoyed an evening together, Washington Brotherhood’s nuanced look at how politicians interacted with one another during the turbulent period leading up to disunion [End Page 451] innovatively examines a side of politics that even in today’s tumultuous atmosphere, the public knows nothing about. Shelden’s ability to contextualize the capitol city as a microcosm of broader events of period, and then document an element of Washington’s social atmosphere with the larger political event is one of the book’s major strengths. Shelden argues that the day-to-day activities outside Congress essentially settled the major antebellum political issues. Her in-depth analysis and innovative use of sources to uncover the personal relationships among Washington politicians remind us as historians to go beyond the surface in order to uncover the emotional and intimate sides of people. Cross-sectional organizations, social gatherings, Washington’s political boarding arrangements, the ability to...

OUR TIME IS NOW: AAFP PRESIDENT PLEDGES TO FIGHT FOR RESPECT AND RESOURCES

OUR TIME IS NOW: AAFP PRESIDENT PLEDGES TO FIGHT FOR RESPECT AND RESOURCES

Scholarly Power, Being, and Nothingness

In 1990, Vaclav Havel addressed a joint session of the United States Congress. It was a heady moment in many ways. Not only was his rise the product of stunning—and surprisingly peaceful—political change; not only was he a living symbol of principled political opposition and its force; Havel was also something extremely unusual: a true intellectual who had just entered the halls of power. And he quickly showed that in his visit to the halls of Congress. The new Czech president was not content to give a mere policy address or a string of bromides and platitudes. Instead he actually talked somewhat serious philosophy to the assembled legislators. Before doing so, he did at least promise, he said, to “limit myself to a single idea.” He called that idea “a great certainty.” What was it? “Consciousness precedes Being, not the other way around, as Marxists claim.”

The APJPH Supports “World No Tobacco Day”

Every year, on May 31, the World Health Organization (WHO) invites us all to join together to mark World No Tobacco Day.1 On this day, we highlight the health risks associated with tobacco use and we pledge to continue working together to advocate for effective policies to reduce tobacco consumption. The most important public health issue in the Asia-Pacific region continues to be tobacco use.2 Over the years, the journal has published 83 articles on smoking and no doubt this issue has been mentioned in many other articles. Because of the increase in chronic disease, 40% of the tobacco-related articles in the journal have been published in the past 3 years alone. We welcome continued submissions on tobacco; particularly papers on the ways that countries in our region are able to reduce overall smoking rates and the recruitment of teenagers into tobacco addiction. Tobacco companies remain a ruthless opponent in promoting and distributing a deadly product across our region. As they face the prospect of declining profits, they are continually inventing new ways to increase the addiction among children, ethnic groups, and existing users.3 They have consistently opposed the introduction of effective health promotion efforts such as the plain packaging legislation in Australia. They are encouraging countries with tobacco industries to sue Australia, and at the present time Indonesia is one of the countries trying to get the Australian public health legislation reversed.4 The small South American nation of Uruguay has a long history of social support and public health programs that are enshrined in its constitution. Its Congress Hall in Montevideo, itself a work of art dedicated to social values, has at its entrance a statue that includes a mother breastfeeding her infant, a strong symbol of social justice and public health. Uruguay enacted strong antitobacco legislation and because of its limited resources it was targeted by multi-national tobacco companies in the courts. With their multibillion dollar assets it looked as if Uruguay would be forced to back down on its antitobacco stance, but the Bloomberg Foundation came to its defense and is supporting the rights of Uruguayans to live a healthy life.5 The tobacco companies are heavily involved in promoting e-cigarettes despite the increasing evidence of their addictive effects on existing and new users.6,7 Recent reports by the WHO and NHMRC (National Health and Medical Research Council) have rejected claims that e-cigarettes can reduce harm from smoking.8 There is little evidence of benefit and emerging evidence that teenagers who would never have taken up smoking are beginning to use vaporizers.9 The tobacco companies have become innovative in the use of social media on the Internet to promote their deadly wares. They continue to sponsor and undertake “research” in the guise of

“A Strange Absence of News”

This study explores the controversy around allegations that the Titanic's surviving wireless operator and the operator aboard the rescue ship held back news detailing the disaster so they could sell their stories to The New York Times. Those allegations and a Senate inquiry into news suppression as part of the Titanic investigation raised some of the first questions about the ethics and/or the propriety of the then-accepted practice of journalists paying for news—an early sounding defining the responsibility of the press to society that still has resonance a century later. Informing that debate in both the nation's press and in the halls of Congress were an uncongealed journalistic news ethic in the face of rising notions of the public interest during a progressive era that saw the press as one more monied power in need of reform.

Washington Brotherhood: Politics, Social Life, and the Coming of the Civil War by Rachel A. Shelden (review)

Reviewed by: Washington Brotherhood: Politics, Social Life, and the Coming of the Civil War by Rachel A. Shelden Jessica Ziparo (bio) Washington Brotherhood: Politics, Social Life, and the Coming of the Civil War. By Rachel A. Shelden. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013. Pp. 296. Cloth, $34.95.) In Washington Brotherhood, Rachel Shelden argues that the “social and cultural life” of the capital city was “a critical part of the way that politicians engaged with the sectional and ideological struggles of the antebellum era” (2). Shelden aptly demonstrates that understanding the social, cultural, and political norms of Washington, D.C., is necessary when interpreting politicians’ decisions during the sectional crisis, focusing on the years between the Wilmot Proviso and the winter of 1860–61. More broadly, Shelden’s work suggests a new way of doing political history, one that more carefully interrogates the domestic lives of the white male elite, underscoring for historians of all eras the importance of acknowledging the personal motivations and constraints of historical actors. Shelden organizes Washington Brotherhood chronologically and thematically, opening each chapter with an overview of a major political issue or event and then exploring how the politicians involved in it may have been affected by an aspect of social or cultural life in Washington, D.C. This approach allows Shelden to highlight the interpersonal factors that historians have overlooked in their analyses of antebellum politics. Chapter 1, for example, considers how the culture of Congress affected voting on the Wilmot Proviso in 1846. Shelden posits that historians have “overvalued” the Congressional Globe, the official record of the proceedings of Congress during the mid-nineteenth century, as a source for determining politicians’ positions on sectional issues (39). Shelden found that congressmen and senators were often absent, intoxicated, or distracted during sessions and [End Page 159] votes. Moreover, the unwritten practices of Congress meant that the Globe did not always accurately report debates and proceedings as they occurred. Demonstrating the limitations of the Globe as an official source, Shelden argues that much of the discussion on legislation, including the Wilmot Proviso, actually happened in the cross-sectional and cross-party boardinghouses, association meetings, balls, and dinner parties that she explores in later chapters. Creatively using a variety of sources, Shelden brings new information and perspectives to this and other important political events, including the Compromise of 1850, the caning of Charles Sumner, and the Lecompton Constitution battle. In her final chapter, Shelden explains the three ways the “unique Washington living experience” influenced congressmen’s handling of the secession crisis: first, cross-sectional and cross-partisan friendships gave politicians “a distinctive understanding and approach to Lincoln’s election”; second, while their constituents could spar with each other from afar, congressmen lived together in the capital and “dealt with the realities of their cross-sectional, cross-partisan city during the crisis itself”; and finally, politicians approached the sectional crisis “by working together outside of the halls of Congress at dinners and parties, over drinks, and at the faro table” (171). Washington Brotherhood is supported by broad and deep research. Shelden consulted manuscript collections from eighteen states and the District of Columbia. She mined boardinghouse records, Washington etiquette books, personal papers, letters, invitations, notes, diaries, dinner guest lists, and church pew records in her effort to re-create the daily lives of antebellum politicians, lives that did not neatly compartmentalize the personal and the political. Shelden used the research cleverly, including analyzing congressional seating charts for evidence of cross-party sociability. In addition to being well researched, the book is also fun to read. Shelden writes in snappy, vivid prose, and readers are quickly moved along by stories of parties, drinking, friendships, dinners, hangovers (there is a shocking amount of alcohol in this book), and fighting, all set in the very male arena of antebellum Washington, D.C. Washington Brotherhood is an important and useful supplement to studies that focus on the political ideologies and sectional interests of the age, complicating the traditional narrative of North versus South. Shelden persuasively argues that recognizing the “‘unofficial’ political arena” of Washington—the parties, friendships, associations, and board-inghouses—is critical to understanding antebellum federal politics (2). It is...

日本心臓血管内視鏡学会を創立して29 年

On 5 February 1986, a committee meeting was held at Hilltop Congress Hall of Tokyo University to establish Japanese Society for Angioscopy and Laser Angioplasty. The members of the committee were Drs. Hitoshi Koyanagi, Syoichi Takekawa, Syunichi Hoshino, Masayoshi Okada, Komei Sugimoto, and Yasumi Uchida (myself). I was recommended as the representative of this society. On 26 September 1987, the first annual meeting of this society was held at the Hilltop Congress Hall. Dr. George Abela was invited as a guest speaker on laser angioplasty of the peripheral artery. On 17 September 1988, the second annual meeting, too, was held successfully at the same Hall. Since then, the meeting was held in Autumn every year. Since 1991, proceedings of the meeting were published in English every year. In 1998, the name of this society was changed to Japanese Association for Cardioangioscopy, and Dr. Uchida was elected as the president. In 2007, Dr. Kyoichi Mizuno was elected as the next president. During the past 29 years, angioscopy was applied clinically not only to coronary artery but also to cardiac chambers and valves, peripheral vessels and great vessels, and many hitherto unrecognized mechanisms of vascular disease were discovered. Many valuable papers were published in famous journals not only in Japan but also in abroad. Angioscopy and cardioscopy both conventional and fluorescent are now directed to cellular and molecular imaging of cardiovascular diseases, and also for guidance of intravascular and intracardiac surgery. This imaging technique will further contribute to diagnosis and evaluation of medical and surgical therapies of cardiovascular diseases.

Surge: my journey with General David Petraeus and the remaking of the Iraq War

Surge is an insider's view of the most decisive phase of the Iraq War. After exploring the dynamics of the war during its first three years, the book takes the reader on a journey to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, where the controversial new U.S. Army and Marine Corps counterinsurgency doctrine was developed; to Washington, D.C., and the halls of the Pentagon, where the Joint Chiefs of Staff struggled to understand the conflict; to the streets of Baghdad, where soldiers worked to implement the surge and reenergize the flagging war effort before the Iraqi state splintered; and to the halls of Congress, where Ambassador Ryan Crocker and General David Petraeus testified in some of the most contentious hearings in recent memory. Using newly declassified documents, unpublished manuscripts, interviews, author notes, and published sources, Surge explains how President George W. Bush, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, Ambassador Crocker, General Petraeus, and other U.S. and Iraqi political and military leaders shaped the surge from the center of the maelstrom in Baghdad and Washington.

Highway to Hell: The Great National Highway Debate of 1830 and Congress as Constitutional Interpreter

This Article focuses on the role of the Constitution in the 1830 Congressional debate over the Buffalo to Washington to New Orleans National Road. It takes as its inspiration David Currie's monumental study of the ante-bellum Congress as constitutional interpreter. It moves beyond Currie, however, in the intensity of its focus on a single congressional debate.The debate over the National Road was largely a proxy for the larger struggles over slavery and sectionalism. The Road's supporters generally represented Northern or Western states and took a nationalist view of the Constitution. They understood the Union as an organic entity, a single nation, comprising a single People, united to attain large and shared objectives. They understood the Constitution as facilitating these objectives. They were bold in the various creative if not novel constructions they placed on the Constitution. They paid little heed to arguments about states' rights or limited and enumerated constitutional powers.The opposition was centered in the South although it drew support from some Northern sympathizers. They viewed the highway as a threat to the Southern slave-based economy and mustered various constitutional objections to it. The Constitution was one of limited and enumerated powers, they argued, and it did not include the authority to construct highways. Similarly, they argued, the Constitution created a loose "confederacy" of sovereign states, united for only a few specifically identified purposes. States' rights was, on this analysis, the central organizing principle of the Constitution. In all of this, the great concern was with the preservation of an "agricultural" way of life, understood by all to refer euphemistically to plantation slavery.It becomes apparent that the contest over slavery, which was certainly the greatest constitutional debate of the nineteenth century - and very possibly the greatest constitutional struggle of all time - was playing out principally outside the purview of the judiciary. It was taking place, rather, in the halls of Congress and the court of public opinion.

Destructive and Nondestructive Testing on Silica Fume Concrete

Factors such as poor design, bad workmanship and a harsh environment can combine to cause deterioration within a concrete structure leading to visually unacceptable surface cracking or spalling of concrete cover [. In aggressive environments, corrosion of steel reinforcing bars is responsible for major deteriorations in concrete structures. Reduction in bar diameter leads to a lower resistance, which can result in brittle failure of the bar. Initiation and progression of reinforcing steel corrosion can lead to progressive weakening of the structure due to damage accumulation over a period of time, or in sudden catastrophic failures, such as the Berlin Congress Hall, a parking garage in Minnesota [. Antonaci et al. [ conducted an experimental study on different concrete cylinders damaged in compression followed by means of linear and nonlinear ultrasonic methods. Arndt et al. [ tested a concrete slab representing typical bridge decks in order to evaluate the ability of NDT methods to detect different phases of corrosion progression in concrete. Reinforced concrete beam-shaped samples were tested by Aveldano and Ortega [ in order to characterize concrete cracking due to reinforcing corrosion under different environments. Shah and Ribakov [ performed nonlinear ultrasonic testing of cubic concrete specimens with different frequency transducers. Al-Amoudi et al. [ investgated the relatioship between compressive strength of ordinary concrete and blended cement concrete with durability propeties of concrete samples and conculded that the addition of blended cement will improve the performance of concrete in ressiting corrosion of reinforcement. The main objective of this study is to investigate the effectiveness of using nondestructive testing to assess the performance of different types of concrete such as OPC and SFC. Also, to correlate different types of nondestructive testing and to investigate the possibility of capturing the occurrence of corrosion in reinforcing bars in concrete.

Corrosion Behavior of ASTM A416 Steel in Simulated Pore Solution

Cable used in post-tensioned bridges usually consists of multiple strands encased within a plastic sleeve. The annulus or space between the steel tendon and the plastic sleeve is filled with grout, which is intended to provide corrosion protection for the steel. Often the grout does not provide adequate protection due to a number of factors, including insufficient grout-cover, i.e., air voids; insufficient grout quality and/or strength; faulty grouting procedure; or inadequate waterproofing sealant. Because post-tensioned concrete members rely on tensile strength of prestressed steel to resist loading, the loss of even a few wires or strands could have catastrophic results. And yet, because these members are encased in grout, a method to detect corrosion or corrosion risk does not yet exist. Since post-tensioning technology is still relatively new, these problems were not evident until the 1980’s. The first instance occurred in 1980 when the southern outer roof of the Berlin Congress Hall collapsed 23 years after it was constructed. Soon thereafter, two bridges were found with similar serious corrosion issues – the Taf Fawr Bridge on A470 in Wales, England and the Angel Road Bridge on the A406 North Circular in London, England.1 The Taf Fawr Bridge was demolished in 1986, and the Angel Road Bridge was significantly retrofitted in 1982. In 1985, the single-span segmental post-tensioned Ynys-y-Gwas Bridge in Wales collapsed as a result of corrosion of longitudinal tendons at its segmented joints. This structure was only 32 years old, and there had been no previous indication of distress prior to collapse. In 1992, the British Department of Transportation conducted a study on these corrosion issues and concluded that there was no method that could guarantee complete corrosion prevention. Later that year, post-tensioned bridges were effectively banned in the United Kingdom.2 The United Kingdom was not the only country with post-tensioned bridge issues. The post-tensioned Melle Bridge, which was built in Belgium in 1956, collapsed in 1992. In this instance, the bridge had been inspected, load tested, re-waterproofed, declared adequate, and just restored to service two years prior to its collapse. More recently, the Saint Stefano Bridge in Italy (1999) and the Lowe’s Motor Speedway footbridge in North Carolina (2000) collapsed due to similar corrosion-related failures.3 Locally, in Florida, corrosion in post-tensioned bridges is a major concern as well. The first reported observation of post-tension corrosion was at the 18-year old Niles Channel Bridge in the Keys (1999).4 Similar issues were reported at the 7-year old Mid Bay Bridge in the Western Panhandle (2001)5 and the 15-year old Sunshine Skyway Bridge in Tampa (2002).6 As part of an effort to develop an impedance-based sensor for detecting corrosion of pre-stressed tendons, experiments were conducted using rotating and stationary disk electrodes fashioned out of the tendon steel and immersed in a simulated alkaline pore solution. A model for the impedance response was developed that accounted for a porous electrode behavior that gradually disappeared over a period of 36 hours. In some cases, a small corrosion rate could be discerned from the impedance response, but, in general, the metal was stable under these conditions. References Proverbio, E. and Bonaccorsi, L. M. (2002). Failure of prestressing steel induced by crevice corrosion in prestressed concrete structures. Proceedings 9th International Conference on the durability of building materials and components, Brisbane, Australia, March 17-21. Lewis, A. (1996). A moratorium lifted. Concrete, November/December, 25-27. Goins, D. (2000). Motor speedway bridge collapse caused by corrosion. Materials Performance, 36 (7) 18-19. Sagüés, A. A., Kranc, S. C., and Hoehne, R. H (2000). Initial development of methods for assessing condition of post-tensioned tendons of segmental bridges. Final Report Florida Department of Transportation, Tallahassee, FL, May. Hartt, W. H. (2002). Corrosion evaluation of post-tensioned tendons on the mid bay bridge in Destin, FL. Final Report, Florida Department of Transportation, Tallahassee, FL, April 15. Sagüés, A., Powers, R. G., and Wang, H (2008). Mechanism of corrosion of steel strands in post tensioned grouted assemblies. NACE International, paper no. 03312.

Focus: The workers scorecard on NAFTA

INTERNATIONAL union rights Page 7 Volume 21 Issue 3 2014 The promises of profits from increased investment and freer markets were kept. But the promises of jobs and benefits for working people were not electronics, apparel and other goods moved to Mexico, and job losses piled up in the United States, especially in the Midwest where those products used to be made”. In a 2006 report Scott said those deficits “displaced production that supported 1,015,291 US jobs since NAFTA took effect”. In the last few decades Detroit lost half its population as the auto industry left, and today every engine in a Ford comes from Mexico. Huge swathes of other industrial cities have acquired that abandoned look that comes with boarded-up homes and storefronts. But the working families who lost those outsourced jobs didn’t disappear. Instead, hundreds of thousands of people began an internal migration within the US larger than the dustbowl displacement of the 1930s. Former machinists and factory workers went on the road, got jobs in fast food restaurants, or lost their families and began living on the streets. Fear of losing a job is never far from any worker ’s mind, but in some industries fear has become terror. Employers bent on lowering wages or cancelling health care plans quickly learned to use NAFTA to inspire that fear. In 1997 (three years after NAFTA went into effect) Cornell professor Kate Bronfenbrenner found that one out of every ten employers facing a union drive said they’d move to Mexico. ‘At ITT Automotive in Michigan’, she reported, ‘the company parked 13 flat-bed tractor-trailers loaded with shrink-wrapped production equipment in front of the plant for the duration of the campaign with large hot-pink signs posted on the side which read ‘Mexico Transfer Job’’. By 2009 a second report, No Holds Barred, found that 57 percent of employers facing a union election threatened to close their worksite. During the NAFTA period, US wages have remained virtually flat. While factors beyond NAFTA (such as the falling rate of unionisation) had an impact, NAFTA and subsequent trade agreements clearly contributed to it. “Production workers’ wages have suffered in the United States”, says Scott. In his 2006 study he found “there is a nationwide loss of $7.6 billion in wage premiums that would have been earned had trade been balanced”. Jeff Faux, former director of the Economic Policy Institute adds simply, “NAFTA strengthened the ability of US employers to force workers to accept lower wages and benefits”. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka called NAFTA “only the first in a series of trade agreements that have undermined millions of middleclass American jobs and weakened our democratic structures. So it is ironic”, he said, “that this year the supporters of that failed model are bringing forward a fast track trade promotion bill to bring us more of the same: more trade deals I n 1986, a provision of the Immigration Reform and Control Act created a commission to investigate the causes of Mexican migration to the US. When it made its report to Congress in 1992 it found, unsurprisingly, that the biggest was poverty. It recommended the negotiation of a free trade agreement, modelled on the one that had been implemented a few years before between the US and Canada. The commission argued that opening the border to the flow of goods and capital (but not people) would, in the long run, produce jobs and rising income in Mexico, even if, in the short run, it led to some job loss and displacement. The negotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement began within months. When completed, it was sold to the public by its promoters on both sides of the border as a migration -preventing device. During the debate executives of companies belonging to USA•NAFTA, the agreement’s corporate lobbyist, walked the halls of Congress, wearing red, white and blue neckties. They made extravagant claims that US exports to Mexico would account for 100,000 jobs in its first year alone. Some sceptics warned that the agreement would put downward pressure on wages and encourage attacks on unions, because its purpose was to create...

“Who Will…Pay for their Sufferings?”: New York Abolitionists and the Failed Campaign to Compensate Solomon Northup

637 Documents and Interpretations “Who Will . . . Pay for their Sufferings?”: New York Abolitionists and the Failed Campaign to Compensate Solomon Northup Roy E. Finkenbine, University of Detroit Mercy Eighteen fifty-four proved to be an eventful year in American history.1 Many of the year’s events further heightened the growing sectional struggle over slavery. Proslavery politicians facilitated the Gadsden Purchase, annexing a strip of southern Arizona and New Mexico into the Union, thus completing the outline of the continental United States. In one of the most famous renditions of a runaway slave under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, thousands of Bostonians jeered and draped their homes and businesses in black as federal officials and troops marched Anthony Burns to a waiting vessel to return him to Virginia bondage. Hundreds of thousands more in the North were grieved and angered after reading newspaper accounts of the rendition. The Kansas-Nebraska Act repealed the decades-old Missouri Compromise, bringing the Second Party System to a resounding end and placing the slavery question squarely at the center of American politics. The Republican Party, a sectional party whose main premise was opposition to the extension of slavery into the new federal territories in the West, came into being. A blustery speech by Senator William Seward of New York in the halls of Congress sounded the opening salvo of what would be years of undeclared civil war between proslavery and antislavery forces on the ground in Kansas, testing the concept of “popular sovereignty” included in the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Working behind 1. Roy E. Finkenbine is Professor of History and Director of the Black Abolitionist Archive at the University of Detroit Mercy. An earlier version of this article was presented at the thirty-second annual meeting of the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic in Rochester, New York, July 25, 2010. The author would like to thank Diane Barnes and the anonymous reader for New York History for their comments. 638 ■ NEW YORK HISTORY the scenes, proslavery diplomats maneuvered unsuccessfully to wrest the island slave colony of Cuba away from the Spanish empire and add it to American territory.2 Less heralded, perhaps, but no less important, thousands in the free states read slave narratives in 1854 and were moved to heighten their involvement in the antislavery struggle. Among the most moving of these autobiographies—penned or dictated by former slaves to inform and instruct northern readers of the horrors of bondage—was that of Solomon Northup, a freeborn New Yorker, who was kidnapped into slavery.3 Born in 1807, Northup lived in Saratoga Springs prior to his capture, supporting himself, his wife, and their three children by working as a tradesman , carpenter, and musician. In March 1841, he was lured southward to Washington, D.C., with the promise of lucrative employment. He soon found himself drugged, without his free papers, and in a slave pen awaiting sale. Shipped to New Orleans via the mechanisms of the internal slave trade, he labored for twelve years as a bondsman on cotton and sugar plantations in the Red River district of Louisiana. Solomon Northup was freed in January 1853 through the efforts of his wife Anne and a politically -prominent white patron, Henry Northup. Soon after, he converted his life-story, with the help of local attorney David Wilson, into a booklength narrative entitled Twelve Years a Slave. Published in July 1853, the volume circulated widely over the next few years, selling more than thirtythousand copies by 1856, second only to Frederick Douglass’s slave autobiography . Capitalizing on the public enthusiasm for slavery stories fueled by the recent publication of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Northup’s tale increased the audience for other slave narratives, convincing publishers to bring out an expanded edition of Douglass’s celebrated 1845 Narrative. Northup himself played a role in generating such enthusiasm, giving antislavery lectures and peddling his narrative across New York, New England, and Canada West (contemporary Ontario) between 1853 and 1857.4 2. David M. Potter, The Impending Crisis, 1848-1861 (New York: Harper & Row, Publisher, 1976), especially chapters 7–9, remains a valuable narrative of the major slavery-related events of 1854...

Partial collapse of the Berlin Congress Hall on May 21st, 1980

The Berlin Congress Hall was a gift of the United States of America to Germany for the Berlin World Exhibition in 1957. The elegantly double-curved roof was made from an advanced prestressed concrete construction. The construction followed the design by the American architect Hugh Stubbins with special structural modifications to comply with German construction rules. No early indications for failure initiation were detected before a sudden partial collapse. On May 21st, 1980, the Southern external roof overhang collapsed. In December 1980, Jörg Schlaich and his co-authors published a summarizing expert opinion about structural causes of failure. The present paper mainly introduces results of cause analysis made at the Federal Institute for Materials Research and Testing (BAM), mandated by the Public Prosecutor at the Berlin District Court to specify the causes of the sudden failure. This paper refers to BAM-publications about analyses that were performed under this mandate and published – most of them in German language – within the first years after failure. The expert’s opinions comprise structural considerations materials investigations, metallographic analyses and corrosion. Nowadays experts have learnt from the failure and built a slightly modified roof in the original shape at the 750th birthday of the city of Berlin and re-opened the former Berlin Congress Hall to the public on May 9th, 1987. The Hall is now serving as the House of the Cultures of the World, following the initial intention of the hall.

Dialogue of the Deaf: Scholars, Practitioners, and the Drug War in U.S. Foreign Relations

In this paper I offer some Washington-focused reflections on the scholarly-policy divide in the drug war debate, drawing from more than two decades of observing and occasionally participating in what often seems to be a dialogue of the deaf — or perhaps the problem is not lack of hearing but not liking what one hears. Academics, I argue, have little discernible influence on the Washington policy debate on international drug control except at the margins (in technical aspects of crop substitution schemes, and so on). To the extent that scholars are involved in the foreign policy drug war debate — and there are plenty of disciplinary factors inhibiting this — it is primarily as outside critics rather than as trusted advisors. So to the extent that they have a receptive audience, it is more in the broader public sphere than in the halls of Congress or in the drug war bureaucracy. Their policy influence is therefore more indirect and more difficult to measure, though this does not mean it is necessarily unimportant.

Prof. Dah-You Maa’s Contribution to Acoustics

In his life-long career pursuing, Professor Dah-You Maa contributed greatly in many areas of acoustics, not only in acoustical research and development, but also in the promotion of acoustical education, application, and legislation. Professor Maa presented a simplified method for calculation of normal modes for room acoustics, invented micro-perforated panel absorbers and micro-perforation jet mufflers, gave a formula of jet noise power via air pressure, and acoustically designed the first and biggest Congress Hall, built the first set of acoustical laboratories, and established the acoustical standard system in China. He also supervised tens of postgraduate students working in environmental acoustics, building acoustics, speech signal processing, nonlinear acoustics, and active noise control. In this paper, the main contribution of Professor Maa is introduced. Several of his typical research works, such as micro-perforated panel absorbers and micro-perforation jet mufflers, are explained in detail, from which we can well appreciate the physical insights and theoretical skills of Professor Maa.