Yes, the federal government should have mandated planning for public transportation.
For its part, the F.C.C. on Tuesday characterized its Congressionally mandated plan as a much-needed step for keeping the nation competitive.
For much of the last year, Julius Genachowski, the F.C.C. chairman and the plan's chief salesman, has laid the groundwork for the Congressionally mandated plan by asserting that the United States is lagging far behind other countries in broadband adoption and speed.
Do you think that if the federal government had mandated planning for public transportation as a condition of receipt of federal transportation money, the Verrazano and other arterial highways in metropolitan New York might have a rail line down their centers today?
In 1983, an unprecedented voluntary busing plan was put into place, integrating the schools without a mandated plan being required.
A $19 million initiative to be announced today by ITVS International, a unit of the federally mandated Independent Television Service, plans to try, by financing work by foreign filmmakers to be shown on American television and by arranging distribution of American-made independent movies abroad.
Passed in 2010, the ACA mandated healthcare plans to provide some preventive services, including birth control, at no extra cost.
Other funders, such as the National Science Foundation, routinely use metrics of societal impact and mandated dissemination plans as part of their evaluation strategies.
Listed as an endangered species in 1997 under the Endangered Species Act, the jaguar has lacked a federally mandated recovery plan.
It would also have mandated a plan for "negotiations leading to a political solution and reconciliation in Afghanistan" and a new National Intelligence Estimate on al Qaeda.
