Tilting at Windmills

...Aren't they just plain common sense...

...A major thrust of this magazine's 25 years has been forcing liberals to confront what's wrong with liberalism...

...But we are liberals ourselves...

...A: I don't know...

...Q: As far as you're concerned, Mr...

...Certainly that could be done in some ways (such as by capping medical fees or by denying Social Security payments to the affluent), but there are other approaches to solving the problem that would reduce the tax burden on employment...

...Whatever plan we choose, an essential objective should be to reduce the disincentive to employment that the high costs of health and retirement benefits constitute when they are financed, as they are now, by what are in effect payroll taxes...

...So the homeowner loses twice over: The lender is actually getting an interest free loan from the borrower on a loan part of which the lender didn't really need in the first place...

...Tisch, as chairman and chief executive officer of Lorillard, this warning on the package which says that smoking causes lung cancer, heart disease and emphysema is inaccurate...

...One is to have a higher tax on higher incomes with rates comparable to those in the fifties, when such rates certainly did not discourage economic growth...

...His profession was mugging...

...The result is that three FAA employees were killed in a crash on October 26th...

...When the officer appeared, McCummings fled, leaving a bloodied victim behind...

...But the world paid no attention to either tragedy...

...We may often times seem scathing in our criticism, but we want them to succeed and hope that by pointing out where they are going wrong we can help them do right...

...Getting distinguished university professors to actually teach instead of merely collecting high salaries for the luster their names bring to their institutions has often seemed to be an impossible dream, pursued only by a handful of eccentrics consisting largely of the editors of The Washington Monthly...

...And in case you've forgotten, a mortgage is supposed to involve the advance of funds from the lender to the borrower, not the other way around...

...Take the 800-man Bulgarian contingent in Cambodia...

...One of the great cons of the banking and savings and loan industry—the escrow accountis at last threatened with reform legislation sponsored by House Banking Committee Chairman Henry Gonzalez and supported by the Clinton administration...

...In other words, we should carefully consider the VAT's pluses and minuses...

...Even his fellow crew members had accused him of safety violations...

...Speaking of Clinton's health program, one aspect of it that is profoundly right is the provision that encourages nurses to do as much of a physician's work as they are capable of performing...

...The result is that 41 percent of the professors are now teaching such courses...

...They do, but the banks' expenses amounted to only $685 million, meaning they made a profit of $3.67 billion on the penalties...

...Does it produce enough useful intelligence to justify its repeated excursions into these covert stupidities...

...Q: What is your understanding of the scientific and statistical evidence that's been presented...

...And it turns out that what The New York Times calls "one crucial source of information for American intelligence" against the democratically elected president, Father Aristide, was Lt...

...Thank goodness, an increasing number of people agree...

...For years, according to the Times, the CIA actually funded the Hatian intelligence agency, SIN...

...At Columbia, I was always comforted to recognize the handwriting of the Lionel Trillings and Mark Van Dorens in the comments written on my papers and exams—even though I sometimes felt the comments could have been a bit more charitable...

...You don't believe it's true...

...If you wonder why Rush Limbaugh is riding around in a limousine, it is because he can inflame his listeners with accounts of this kind of liberal stupidity...

...When I was a boy back home in Charleston, West Virginia, I can remember when my mother or father overdrew their bank account, someone at the bank would call them and they would have an opportunity to replenish the account before the bank bounced a check...

...The Monthly has long argued against the blind faith in credentials that afflicts so many professions...

...The reason is that they have wanted to have the freedom to fire incompetents and those who might sabotage policies the legislators were elected to pursue...

...A: That is absolutely correct...

...We ask them to design the basic required courses," explains Dean John W. Boyer, "and most people who spend a year or two doing that develop an interest in teaching these courses...

...There is hope...

...In 1989, an internal report at FAA said that the agency needed a program to ensure the safe operation of its own aircraft, but according to The Washington Post no such program has been developed...

...Medicine (where doctors keep competent nurses down) is one example I mentioned earlier in this column...

...Q: Based on what...

...He says, "I don't think a master's degree a teacher makes...

...At the University of California, for example, one department head was cajoled into actually encountering students by being allowed to teach a course on women in science fiction...

...commander, if he did not raise their pay...

...Today, as alas most of us know, there is no phone call, just the embarrassment of the rubber check and a penalty charged against your account...

...If it had, there is a good chance the public would have realized that the VAT might have meant they could have health care without endangering their jobs...

...Newt Gingrich...

...A: I don't believe so...

...The mentality of the cigarette companies' leaders was recently revealed by a transcript of depositions taken in a case brought by airline flight attendants who contend that their exposure to cabin smoke caused them to develop cancer and other illnesses...

...talks publicly about the legalization of drugs it is time for that official to resign," said Rep...

...When they have demonstrated such knowledge and competence, nurses should be permitted to perform the tasks for which they are qualified without regard to the damage to the physicians' egos and pocketbooks...

...Last year, banks collected $4.35 billion in bounced check fees...

...I n the section of the IKEA Christmas catalog devoted to fancy cooking utensils there is a picture of a chic woman saying: "I bought a huge array of [IKEA utensils] this year because it's my turn to cook the family holiday dinner...

...Can you believe the way respectable Washington jumped all over Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders for suggesting that drug legalization be considered as a way of reducing crime...

...Take the case of Robert Barnett, who may lose his job despite the fact that he has won two national teaching awards for his skill in teaching science and technology at the North Metcalfe Elementary School in Metcalfe County, Kentucky...

...The New York school custodians, who elsewhere are called janitors, are paid extravagant salaries, fail to keep schools clean, and insist on being bribed to open schools at night for the use of community groups...

...Rfl any years ago Congress enacted a civil service system for the executive branch...

...While attempting to rob and strangle a 71-year-old in a subway station, a transit cop heard the victim's cries and found him on the station platform being throttled by McCummings...

...This might not be so bad if interest were paid on the escrow funds, but in most states it is not...

...A: That's correct...

...A brochure published by the California Medical Association's political action committee begins: "Warning...

...No one from ABC, CBS, NBC, or CNN was there...

...And then Bennet S. Le Bow, head of the company that owns Liggett, was questioned: "Q: Is it fair to say, then, that since you're satisfied that you have a legal right to sell cigarettes, you have never really explored or studied the issue of whether or not cigarettes cause disease...

...A: There's been no conclusive scientific evidence that's been presented that convinces me that cigarette smoking causes cancer...

...General John Sanderson, the U.N...

...In this respect I was depressed to learn that the Clinton administration abandoned consideration of the value added tax as a way of financing its health program simply because a poll conducted by White House pollster Stanley Greenberg showed no support for it...

...A: I can't answer it...

...Elders deserves the highest praise for being one of the few to have the guts to drag the subject out of the closet...

...That is what I am saying...

...A: Based on my understanding of the scientific and statistical evidence that's been presented...

...The chance to charge the penalty is the reason the bank likes to bounce your check...

...Q: Because if you believed it were true, in good conscience you wouldn't sell this to Americans, would you, or foreigners, for that matter...

...And it should be noted that students have a right not only to get the stars in the classroom but to know who grades their papers and exams...

...Q: If I asked you, does smoking cause lung cancer...

...The facts are that there isn't nearly enough accountability in the executive branch, and there's too much turnover in congressional staff...

...The first question by the flight attendants' attorney was directed to William I. Campbell, the president of Philip Morris: "Q: Does cigarette smoking cause lung cancer...

...It was a military organization that distributed drugs in Haiti," an official who worked at our embassy in Port-au-Prince in 1991 and 1992 recently told the Times...

...On the other hand, it could help cause a recession if it's implemented as ineptly as it was by Canada's Brian Mulroney in 1991...

...The physicians are outraged...

...It is used by the lending institution to pay such costs as property taxes and insurance premiums...

...It's not a disaster unless the television cameras are there...

...McCummings sued and has won $4.3 million from a New York court...

...peacekeeping missions for which so many of us held such high hopes is that some member countries have committed troops that are not exactly top of the line...

...Somebody not employed by the tobacco industry, or never got money from the tobacco industry...

...The catch is that lenders usually require the borrower to pay considerably more than is needed to cover these costs...

...The only solution that Glassman sees is to reduce the overall cost of benefits...

...According to a recent article by William H. Honan in The New York Times, the luminaries are being lured back to classrooms by promises that they can design their own courses...

...Q: Can you name a single scientist or medical doctor who has—who today will publicly say that he or she doesn't believe that it's been proven that cigarette smoking causes cancer...

...broaden the scope of practice for non-physician groups is dangerous to the public's health...

...But at some institutions the stars still don't come out for students...

...As McCummings ran from the scene of the crime, the policeman shot him...

...Why then did the FAA permit him to fly...

...An equally good illustration of how credential-ism can get the best of common sense is in education...

...Isn't it time to take stock of the CIA...

...It never produced drug intelligence...

...It now develops that while Congress was witholding $1.5 million in aid to get the Haitian military regime to encourage reform, the CIA was slipping that gang of corrupt colonels $500,000 to $1 million in under-the-table financing...

...The University of Chicago has an approach that, even though it's still bribery, I like a little better...

...Instead, it has been involved in the drug trade itself...

...General Raoul Cedras, the leader of the corrupt Hatian military...

...Thanks to recent books by Charles Sykes and Martin Anderson that have highlighted the scandal and to the strained university budgets that are at last forcing academic administrators to consider such hitherto bizarre strategies as the efficient use of faculty, some of the stars are getting chalkdust on their clothes again...

...That happened because the pilot wasn't using instruments in foggy weather and plowed into the top of a hillside that his eyes told him to be 2,000 feet in altitude when the instruments, if he had been using them, would have said 2,400 was the correct figure...

...For example, as Nicholas Lemann points out in this issue, we criticize government not because we don't think it can work but because we want to show why it isn't working and how it can be made to work...

...Some of you will detect echoes in this of the sad story of Air America, the CIA's airline in southeast Asia during the Vietnam era, which also became heavily involved in drug trafficking...

...Charles Peters...

...peaking of liberalism gone mad, have you heard the story of Bernard McCummings...

...A: To my knowledge, it's not been proven that cigarette smoking causes cancer...

...So Congress reserves the right to fire staffers...

...The judgment has twice been upheld on appeal...

...They—or at least a dozen or so—threatened to kill Lt...

...Charles B. Rangel...

...The escrow account costs the typical home owner several hundred dollars a month above what he actually owes on his mortgage...

...A: That's correct...

...On their flight home they wrecked the inside of the aircraft as female flight attendants took refuge in the cockpit to escape assault...

...Why didn't the board and principals always have such powers...

...He cites evidence that hours worked per employee per week recently equalled the post-World War II high, which suggests that to meet the demand created by an improving economy, employers are not creating new jobs but are instead requiring their current employees to work longer hours...

...Roughly 30 percent were convicts released to make prison space available back home in Sofia...

...The reason is Kentucky law requires that within five years of becoming certified, teachers must enroll in a master's degree program...

...Why shouldn't the executive branch have the same interest in accountability...

...Perhaps the answer lies in a combination of it and of higher taxes on the rich, because then the VAT's regressivity would be balanced by the progressivity of the higher income tax...

...Another is the value added tax (VAT) that has been in effect in many countries for years...

...Doesn't this suggest that the best system for both congressional and executive branch employees would be the one that the Monthly has long advocated in which employees could be divided roughly half and half between career civil servants and those who can be fired at any time...

...A: Correct...

...And as I learned 30 years ago evaluating Peace Corps medical programs, some nurses know as much or more than some doctors and are often more competent at procedures such as suturing...

...The truth is that no one in the civil service unions or in Congress wants to face this inconsistency, and the press has failed to inform the public about it...

...Well, you ask, don't they incur expenses for which they should have the right to charge...

...But even this small progress seems to require bribery...

...Investigators, according to the Post, found several examples of poor judgment by the pilot on previous flights, including flying with visual flight rules when poor weather required instruments, and departing on flights without obtaining weather information or filing a flight plan...

...Of course the truth is that reasonable men have privately talked about the wisdom of legalization for years...

...But nothing proves it like Burundi where a recent tribal slaughter killed 150,000—the same way an eerily similar number died in 1972...

...I'm shocked," said Rep...

...This has always seemed to us a reasonable compromise between the interests of accountability and those of continuity...

...Those of you from New York who are of mature years are aware of the continuing scandal of the New York city school custodians, second only to the corruption among building inspectors and the police in the frequency of their recurrence on the front pages over the years...

...Kentucky Governor Brereton Jones' Task Force on Teacher Preparation has recommended that teachers become certified based on how they perform in the classroom not on the course credits or degrees they accumulate...

...They have been protected in these practices by legislators who will never oppose labor unions, most especially Local 891 of the International Union of Operating Engineers —gee, that's even better than "custodians"—which is a generous contributor of campaign funds...

...It is a tax on consumption that could make a lot of economic sense for this country because it would encourage savings and capital formation...

...Q: If somebody is a two-pack-a-day smoker for 20 years, and they get lung cancer, and every medical person is satisfied the reason that the person got lung cancer was because he smoked, you are saying it is not proven...

...Barnett spends several evenings a week teaching adult education courses and wants to spend the rest of his time with his family instead of acquiring another credential...

...Everything looks so impressive, I hope no one notices the food is from the restaurant down the street...

...This reminds me of another banking scam...

...Andrew H. Tisch, the chairman and CEO of Lorillard, was asked: "Q: Does cigarette smoking cause cancer...

...A: That is correct...

...The administration had made no effort to explain the advantages of the VAT as against the employer-employee tax...

...Anyway, according to The New York Times, the state legislature has finally displayed a little courage and has given the Board of Education the power to set performance standards for the cleaning and maintenance of the schools and permit principals to evaluate custodians by these standards to determine promotion and demotion...

...It is interesting, however, that members of Congress have never wanted their own employees to be part of the civil service...

...At Texas A&M, for example, neither Norman Borlaug, a distinguished professor of international agriculture, or Sir Derek H. Richard Barton, a distinguished professor of chemistry, have taught undergraduate classes in years...

...We have similar feelings about Bill and Hillary Clinton...

...A congressman interested in health reform, for example, does not want to be saddled with a tenured staff that might be more sympathetic to lobbyists for the health industry...

...Of course, keeping up with developments in one's field helps one perform better, but continuing evaluation of performance is the best way to determine whether a teacher is maintaining his skill...

...Q: O.K., and you really don't care because you're selling a legal product...

...I think when a top public official of the U.S...

...But the eccentrics can take heart...

...The agency was supposed to help in the international war against drugs...

...Let us pray that the ability of the FAA to assure the air safety of the rest of us is not indicated by its ability to provide the safe operation of its own planes...

...to employment that is caused by such benefits as health insurance and Social Security...

...As anyone who has ever been to a hospital knows, on the whole nurses are nicer than doctors, more humane, more concerned, and more willing to listen...

...We all know it's true...

...The California Medical Association has determined that health care reforms which...

...Why should the public have supported it...