<p>I haven't seen such a tear-gas engine. Sounds like something out of Dr. Seuss. I can see this with throwing-arms on it, slinging canisters in all directions as it rolled through the streets.</p>
<p>In my days in Madison the use of tear gas (cs gas) was often counter-productive. Police would declare any gathering of 3 or more people to be an unlawful assembly, and if people didn't disperse they would sling some tear gas in their direction. And so people would flee into the buildings. But the buildings, including stores along State Street as well as in some of the ratty old houses in areas near to the campus, would then fill up with tear gas, and far more students would flee the buildings into the streets.</p>
<p>The riot commission reports in latter 60's and 70's were very helpful, IMO, in coming up with practical advice for training and equipping police, and for deploying them massively before things got out of hand in order to avoid escalation.</p>
<p>I would not pay a tax increase to fund tear gas weapons to be used on Americans, but I am interested in increasing funding for our public Univerisities. I am under the impression that the more expensive private schools actually have had a higher rate of inflation than the publics. Can public Universities reduce costs by dropping the lower level of students?</p>
<p>
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Can public Universities reduce costs by dropping the lower level of students?
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In my view they already do this. Enrollment is capped at each campus, and while with rolling admissions who gets in is partly a question of timing but mostly a question of qualifications, the better students get in. Where do the less qualified students go? Well, in Cali they go to the CalStates, or to the community colleges. And the costs per credit hour or per student graduated are far lower at the CalStates and CC's than at the UC. While most states don't have the same kind of 3-tier system as in California, most have at least 2. And many have a fair number of private colleges that aren't up there with the AWS's of the world in quality nor are they nearly as expensive, and so the B-/C+ high school student can usually get a college education somewhere.</p>
<p>Here's another example of an unfunded federal mandate that drives up college costs (and also, IMO, threatens our civil liberties): </p>
<p>Colleges Protest Call to Upgrade Online Systems</p>
<p>By SAM DILLON and STEPHEN LABATON
Published: October 23, 2005</p>
<p>"The federal government, vastly extending the reach of an 11-year-old law, is requiring hundreds of universities, online communications companies and cities to overhaul their Internet computer networks to make it easier for law enforcement authorities to monitor e-mail and other online communications."</p>