TILTING AT WINDMILLS
Peters, Charles
TILTING AT WINDMILLS If women’s groups really want to help women who want to work but also want to care for their children, an increase in the number of part-time jobs is essential. And that...
...If you’re an aficionado of bureaucratese, you will appreciate the words with which the CIA confessed its involvement in the Nicaraguan mining...
...As things stand today in downtown Washington there is little middle ground between the fast-food chains and La Maison de la Casas, where $50 might be enough to pay for your lunch...
...Since judges used to be lawyers themselves, they tend to view such applications benignly...
...Brinkley, when asked what thoughts the death of her lover had inspired in her, replied that it made her think how fortunate she was to be alive...
...If the writers and editors are strangely quiet, one of our leading philanthropists has spoken up...
...The administration’s plan would permit employers to pay young people aged 16-21 $2.50 an hour or 75 percent of the minimum wage...
...They combine suspense and a happy ending...
...I’ll tell you my views on Mondale, now you tell me yours...
...USA Today comes in ?or T he California Assessment Program ranks California high schools on the basis of a 31-question test given to students...
...We’re in the process of closing down:’ Ryan told him...
...GSA’s proposal to lease 110,000 square feet for ten years to house the Civil Aeronautics Board...
...One hand cupped to the side of the mouth does no good if there are people on both sides of you...
...7,400 Metro employees, 500 retired Metro employees, and 62 present and former members...
...of Metro’s board of directors all have passes-they ride for free...
...Knowing the editor, I am convinced that his sin was as unconscious as our original one, but the result was that the following material was omitted from the piece: “Jackson has played an historic role in transforming the views of black Americans toward voting-from a legal right to an emotional commitment...
...As all of us who love I f you have worried that the American steel industry is not summoning all the resources at its disposal to win back the steel market from the Japanese and Koreans, consider this beginning of a letter from USS Realty Corporation: “Dear ----: Quite simply you must act now to secure a homesite in one of the last unspoiled tidewater settings: Swan Point .” The letter is of course a real estate sales pitch from USS Realty, which happens to be a subsidiary of the United States Steel Corporation...
...It would say, we told the Post, that everyone should vote for Hart in the remaining primaries and caucuses so that an open convention would be possible in San Francisco...
...Now, he’s a lawyerlobbyist, representing, among others, luxury car manufacturers, and helping defeat a proposal in Congress that would have allowed a business deduction for only the first $15,000 value of a car...
...Leaving the next stop but one, I was aware of the very broad back of a man who stood in the aisle a little forward of me...
...I tell you what I did yesterday...
...They say it’s an invasion of privacy...
...Each of these exchanges is followed by another of the same kind...
...make no new commitment where we are not threatened...
...For a variety of reasons, in some legal cases the lawyers involved on one side or the other must ask the judge to set their fee...
...members and associates who have become a bit concerned about the downward trend in their business, Prentice-Hall is offering a new handbook...
...There are signs of awakening on this issue...
...Charles Peters...
...Still there is one Hart joke that I liked...
...For example, he is more forthright about the need for a Palestinian homeland...
...to 6 p.m., with an hour’s break for lunch, a therapist who sees patients for 45 minutes back-to-back, can have 12 clients, while the one who adheres to the 50-minute hour with ten-minute breaks can see only nine clients...
...We have compulsory retirement because administrators dread having to say, “Archie, you just don’t have it anymore...
...It’s called 7 Tested Ways an Attorney Can Get Top Dollar Clients Fast...
...It promises to explain “how do you get them in the door without giving the impression you need them...
...Where he had halted I couldn’t see the new passenger’s face, but from the wearied slump of the rotund form I figured he wasn’t young...
...One of our complaints about psychiatrists is that instead of curing us of the sickness of greed, they are constantly inspiring us with new examples of how to make an extra buck...
...In the next instant, the jetliner banked sharply to avoid a collision, flashing its silver belly at the judge...
...This time a nine-yearold girl, who was alone with her younger brother in a burning house in a suburb of Richmond, Virginia, spent the 50 minutes before she died trying to get a fire truck dispatched by emergency operators...
...We hailed the move both because it increased safety and decreased costs (the 13,133 were needed only because of the peaks...
...Racially discriminatory practices still are common in the building trades and man) other unions, and the union-supported minimum wage is one of the most serious obstacles to the employment of black teenagers...
...Increasingly we fund conferences and studies whose proceedings immediately begin their long accumulation of dust on some library shelf, but also cause no criticism and are good for some nice lunches...
...I was pretty tired myself and powerfully drowsy and most earnestly desirous of catching 40 winks or so...
...The report, which cost $80,000, recommended that “within a year [the city] should target two or three countries for official visits by the mayor or other high-level city officials...
...But still we should be thankful for progress...
...One that was widely published was the near-miss between two Pan Am jumbo jets off Florida in January...
...Jackson’s continued presence in the race is also important because, on some issues, he deserves to have influence at the convention...
...Will there be blood on the hands of Elizabeth Dole and Donald Engen...
...Well, that’s what we thought, too, until a medical trade publication discovered that in all of 1983 there was only one such application...
...For Washingtonians who are curious about how the local Metro Transit Authority can seem so unconcerned about the fare increases it inflicts on the rest of us, here is the explanation...
...She finally stopped driving the car when the right front wheel fell off .” Our readers in the Washington area will recognize Mr...
...Of these I find I most enjoy romantic disputes that are resolved by the conclusion of lunch...
...By now everyone has heard about the Kafkaesque bureaucrat who kept insisting that an emergency telephone caller put his dying mother on the phone...
...D id you read that Archibald Cox is being forced to retire from the faculty of Harvard Law School because of his age...
...Often the resistance is strongest, as in the case of postal and transit work, where part-time employment makes the most compelling sense...
...Basketball fans tell me the Post and the Times are even weaker in their coverage of that sport...
...The New York Times reports that the change is now the accepted practice and explains: “By working from 8 a.m...
...But the sharp elbow of conscience kept nudging me...
...It also has the disadvantage of strongly hinting to his bureaucratic enemy across the room that he is spilling the beans to a journalist...
...Well, neither had I, that is until I watched her being interviewed by Barbara Walters a few weeks ago and was struck by the contrast between her comments on her father’s death and a similar response by the model, Christie Brinkley, on the same show...
...So what’s the answer...
...I f the government is not doing so well on its space reduction program, is there better news from the paperwork reduction campaign...
...So we put Jackson in, but then the same Post editor cut everything in the article that was favorable to Jackson, leaving only our negative comments...
...Had you ever thought of Jane Fonda as a source of spiritual guidance...
...There is no rule about telling people to leave the scene of a fire...
...Organized labor is the principal opponent of part-time work...
...thing that really worries me about these conversations...
...For example, on the day before the Kentucky Derby, it gave its readers the kind of information about each entry that is usually available only in the Daily Racing Form...
...snores and choked grunts...
...The problem with this price was that it was $3,630.50 in excess of the Blue Book value of the car...
...Jamie Malanowski’s article beginning on page 28 of this issue suggests that Gary Hart’s sense of humor may not be his most impressive asset...
...Stuart Eizenstat was considered a liberal when he worked in the Carter White House...
...The National Conference of Black Mayors, at their April convention in St...
...You would find a fascinating mixture of people at Sholl’s, people from every class and every race...
...But I must confess that I also enjoy hearing some’ unpleasant lecher have his proposition rejected by a sweet young thing whose occasional sidelong glances suggest, or so I like to imagine, that she wishes I were in his place...
...The State Farm Insurance Company had written it off as a total loss and sold the wreckage to a salvage dealer in North Carolina...
...They will be responsible, as secretary of transportation and head of the FAA, if the FAA continues to let the number of rush-hour flights grow...
...It is how little real communication occurs...
...Another group that is going to have to take on organized labor is blacks...
...It was unknown until this report by Christopher Conte of The Wall Street Journal: “He was near Chicago when suddenly he saw an American Airlines Boeing 727 just a quarter of a mile away, rising quickly toward him...
...If planning continues at this level of taste it won’t be long before we are asked for another $3 million to finance the acquisition and display of Oswald’s mummified remains bathed in colored lights with organ music softly playing in the background...
...People talk at one another...
...Another is what happened to Gilbert Merritt, a federal judge, while piloting his twin-engine Navajo...
...Most of us would sail past 1) and 2) without trouble, but 3) and 4) stopped me dead in my tracks...
...But a similar phenomenon has also hurt Jesse Jackson...
...I liked that...
...The California authorities say “sports,” and mark wrong the answer of the 33 percent of the students who chose “athletics .” I support, rather than oppose, efforts like Governor Clinton’s to evaluate teacher knowledge and performance...
...1) basketball, 2) team sport, 3) athletics, or 4) sports...
...I tried to forget the figure he made...
...I have been reared to have respect-and some consideration-for my elders...
...They cannot handle the peak loads that the larger group was able to deal with...
...The trouble is that all the Archies who still have it are tossed over the side to spare the feelings of those who don’t...
...This no doubt is the cause of considerable gratitude among those readers who recall my last excursion into the field-my suggestion that all banks be located on the top floors of their buildings so that the street level would be available for interesting shops and bank robbers would be deterred by the need to wait for the elevator before they could make their getaway...
...Cairns as the dealer whose television commercial features a letter from a woman warmly thanking him for the wonderful treatment she was given by his dealership...
...It certainly seemed so when on January 30 the FDA announced in the Federal Register that it would no longer require four copies of a certain kind of application...
...The result has been overworked controllers who are making too many mistakes...
...Among the parts of the building to be restored are the area in the rear of the sixth floor where Oswald’s rifle was found and the second floor lunchroom where Oswald appeared minutes after the president was shot...
...OMB, acting on what seems a sensible assumption that the government should know how much money its contractors spend on lobbying it, proposes to require contractors to reveal these amounts, identifying them separately from their other costs...
...In this case, the Reagan administration had hired Coopers & Lybrand to advise the District of Columbia on how to promote international business development in the city...
...Fonda, on the other hand, said thinking about death made her think a lot about how she was living her life,.about what she was doing for her family and for others, about what her life would add up ‘to when the end came...
...The secret, of course, is to forget about doing any real work and tell the client what he wants to hear...
...And that means NOW and its allies are going to have to take on the AFL-CIO and other unions...
...We thought about it and concluded he was right...
...One of the questions illustrates why Arkansas teachers worry (see page 47) about the competency test Governor Bill Clinton is proposing for them: “Which of the following words or groups of words is MOST general...
...Anyway, I now have another proposal...
...He straddled a heavy suitcase which he must have lugged aboard without aid, for his globular sides were heaving and he was giving little grunts and panting sounds...
...Why don’t we give the builder an extra floor in return for a moderately priced cafeteria or restaurant on the ground floor...
...The mining had been carried out, it said, by “unilaterally controlled Latino assets...
...The problem with most of them is that the tables are so close together that you and the occupants of the adjoining tables are inevitable eavesdroppers on one another’s conversations...
...Here’s how Walter Mondale’s campaign organization carried out his order that his delegate committees that were evading campaign financing laws be “terminated period .” Ten days after the instruction was given, The Washington Post’s Tim Kenworthy called Charles Ryan, the head of a suburban Maryland Mondale delegate committee...
...fretful, sourlooking babies crying...
...We will be closed down by May 101’ The Maryland primary was held May 8 . . . . I seldom venture into s.uch areas as municipal planning and urban zoning...
...mysteries know, murder is a crime for which the possible motives are inexhaustible...
...Ben Bradlee and Abe Rosenthal should be embarrassed...
...The episode concerns a train trip Cobb took around the time of World War I: “I climbed aboard a day coach, to be greeted by the familiar scenes and smells-dust clouds sifting in the open windows and ashes and acrid smoke and gushes of humid heat...
...We need many more Sholl’s, not fewer of the them...
...Now that teachers are faced with being tested themselves, perhaps they’ll have more sympathy for that transfixed student to whom those ambiguous answers 3) and 4) are the weaving head of a cobra, certain to strike at whatever move the student makes...
...She said she took the car to the Cairns company four times in five months...
...It has been a tendency of reporters to, on the whole, treat him too gently to avoid the charge that they are prejudiced, but to try to atone by criticizing him bitterly when he himself appears to be guilty of prejudice...
...I found a vacant place, the last one available, and hunched down in it...
...It’s up to the dispatcher...
...I n the build-em-up, tearemdown of modern American campaign reporting, it seems to me that Gary Hart has suffered the most so far this year...
...It came during the Tennessee primary, while he was addressing a fundraiser at the Opryland Hotel: “So if everyone here will go out tonight and call ten friends and ask those ten friends to call ten friends of theirs and ask those ten friends to call ten friends of theirs-pretty soon we’ll have an Amway distributorship...
...Except that it has made it possible for me to become a student of the conversations at the next table...
...But I think that support carries with it the responsibility to scrutinize carefully the various ways such evaluation may be carried out...
...This time the operators weren’t bureaucratic...
...some severe and, 1 think, deserved criticism in the article beginning on page 37 of this issue...
...We now have 9,800 air controllers doing the same job that 13,133 did before the strike...
...they wanted to help but couldn’t get an accurate address from the child...
...and the superimposed layers of fine grime so deeply imbedded in the faded upholstery that putting your cheek to it was like pressing against some sort of furry sandpaper...
...I see the solution in the Washington building code that limits buildings to 12 stories...
...It is the sports section, which is, I believe, the best in the country...
...The answer, according to a Richmond official, is a judgment call...
...He is the only candidate proposing drastic and long overdue reductions in our military commitment abroad, demanding that our allies pay a fairer share of the rest of our mutual defense while urging that the U.S...
...meals there for prices that ranged from reasonable to downright cheap...
...Now it’s your turn to tell me...
...What the press has not done is take Jackson seriously as a presidential candidate or attempt to give him or his views the balanced and thorough reporting they deserve...
...The black mayors said they supported the plan because of “the persistence of the tragedy of youth unemployment, particularly the problem of minority youth unemployment...
...Yet here he was, only a few years out of the White House...
...This can be inhibiting in the extreme to a potential whistleblower with whom one is lunching...
...He is J. Irwin Miller of the Cummins Engine Company...
...The two cafeterias have been legends to generations of Washingtonians and visiting tourists, who found good, wholesome...
...Speaking of office buildings, whatever happened to the General Service Administration’s space reduction program...
...The Washington Post’s Jerry Knight recently came across a perfect example of how consultants can succeed without really trying...
...The Postal Service, for example, has a requirement, ardently backed by the unions, that 90 percent of a1 its work be performed by full-time employees...
...But there is at least one element of USA Today that deserves high praise...
...The five newly leased buildings will use 1.1 million square feet to house employees who now occupy 917,124...
...But the chairman of the House Government Operations Committee, Jack Brooks, and the ranking minority member, Frank Horton, oppose the’ provision...
...We are among the guilty...
...One has been forced to relocate away from its former, central location, and the other is being closed down by greedy landlords, who want to use the space for more lucrative purposes...
...The Post editor asked why we didn’t say Hart or Jackson...
...I dedicate the following excerpt from Irwin S. Cobb’s memoir, Exit Laughing, to all of you who read Teresa Riordan’s account in these pages of the millions we are lavishing on the luxurious retirement of our former chief executives (“The Imperial Ex-Presidency,” April 1983...
...Its coverage of pro football and baseball tells how every score was made by every team...
...As David Savage, an education writer for the Los Angeles Times points out: such as jogging around the block, that are athletic, but are not sports...
...men and women crowded together and curled up in tortured attitudes...
...I bent forward and touched him and he turned a ruddy, sopping-wet, dirt-streaked face upon me and it was William Howard Taft...
...The news became a trifle less heartening when the announcement went on to say that the original and two copies would be required...
...The latest: Just when we had all become accustomed to the fact that to a psychiatrist an hour meant 50 minutes, the 50 minutes has changed to 45...
...Louis, endorsed the Reagan administration’s plan for a subminimum wage for young people who work in the summer...
...The New York Times and The Washington Post, by contrast, give you this information about only the local teams, even though both publications have readers from all over the country...
...This fact was recognized by the FAA immediately after the strike, when it restricted rush-hour traffic...
...and underfoot, trampled food fragments and slimy fruit peelings, and a heavy sprinkling of anthracite cinders which made a crunching, gritty sound when trodden on...
...It, you may recall, was supposed to cut down on the cost of federal offices by reducing the square footage allotted the average employee from 166 square feet to 135 and by housing agencies in buildings owned by the government instead of leased so that “at the end of a ten-year period,” as one congressman put it, “we would have more than rent check stubs to show for it .” This year, according to The Washington Post’s Myron Struck, the government will not only not reduce the number of leased buildings in Washington, it will increase them from 18 to 23...
...But that was minor compared to the fact that the car had been irreparably damaged in a crash eight months earlier...
...In 1982, Linda Sharon Tucker agreed to pay a local car dealer, Bill Cairns Pontiac, $6,430.50 for a 1979 Monza...
...Foundations deserve a lot more criticism than they get...
...Now another less widely publicized tragedy has occurred in a similar situation...
...In federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, a 26-year-old soldier has pleaded guilty to a charge that he conspired to murder his wife...
...When you see something like that out there, your heart jumps into your throat,’ Judge Merritt says...
...Why had he done it...
...As the world around us becomes more confusing and, in many ways more terrifying, foundations appear to be impelled to play it safer and safer,” he says...
...If any of our fellow travelers ever before had seen him, or his picture, they either had forgotten or, seeking their own ease, chose to ignore his presence...
...His religious beliefs, he explained, kept him from asking for a divorce...
...Instead of modernizing its plants in Pennsylvania, it is hustling lots in Maryland...
...Kenworthy had learned that the committee was still in operation and asked Ryan when it would stop...
...In McCarthy v. United States, for example, the lawyers for a plaintiff who got $4,742 in his suit were awarded a fee of $15,169...
...But the source often clams up and the entire lunch is wasted...
...The student has always known that tests can be unfair...
...The two aircraft came so close that he remembers feeling a bump as the larger plane’s wake hit him...
...The Dallas County Historical Association is seeking $3 million to restore the Texas School Book Depository Building from which Lee Harvey Oswald fired the shots that killed John Kennedy...
...Right...
...According to The Washington Times’ Arlo Wagner, to whom I am indebted for this story: complaining about the car within one month after she purchased it, but a steering problem never was repaired...
...It is prompted by the troubles of a beloved Washington institution, the two Sholl’s cafeterias...
...The CAB is scheduled to go out of business on January 1. . . . Still more interesting is the Those of you who read Phillip Keisling’s “The Case Against Privacy” last month will be interested to learn of the troubles OMB is experiencing in trying to regulate lobbying expenditures by federal contractors...
...Sometimes the source will sit silently until the people at the adjoining table turn to address the waiter, then lean forward, and with a delivery that combines machine-gun rapidity with a tone softer than a whisper, try to confide his entire message in 60 seconds...
...Rarely does a theme emerge in which one person says something that the other actually hears in a way that inspires new thought and a response that in turn stimulates new understanding...
...Struck also found that the GSA proposes to continue leasing space at 1717 H Street to house 411 OPM employees, even though 124 of them moved out two months ago...
...But since then the FAA has relaxed the peak hour restrictions...
...The latest evidence of this truth comes not from fiction, however, but from real life...
...But why didn’t they tell her to take her brother and get out of the house...
...One reason is that many writers and editors who have the talent to do a proper job of skewering organized philanthropy have their own applications for additional funding pending and don’t want to bite the hand that might feed them...
...But some sports, such as chess and auto racing, are not athletic...
...For instance, Phillip Keisling and I approached The Washington Post with a proposal for an article advocating an open convention...
...l h e r e are, I should concede, a few cheap restaurants left in downtown Washington...
Vol. 16 • June 1984 • No. 5
