Correspondence
CORRESPONDENCE What Gulf War Syndrome? I certainly expected better from The American Spectator. The article by Michael Fumento ("What Gulf War Syndrome?" TAS, May 1995) was completely one-sided...
...Penny-Kasich lost 219-213...
...And guess who were most often his allies in fighting to curb spending...
...It wasn't just Democrats either...
...Andrews must be correct with regards to some persons...
...Anyway, the phenomenon of senior members protecting their turf, their programs, and their spending evaporates with term limits...
...As far as I'm concerned your magazine presents exactly what is wrong with America today, and what needs to be changed...
...However, he wrongly relates this issue to behavioral differences between the sexes...
...Unfortunately, on this as with so many other hot-button issues, they seem forever in short supply...
...Bowman...
...Whining and crying do not solve problems, they only bring discredit to all Americans in uniform...
...For service members to try to make the government the scapegoat for symptoms that seem to have a lot more to do with aging and stress than with hazards on the battlefield is a disgrace to those who served without trying to get a handout afterward...
...Any welfare program involving children should require the mother to be legally married to a man in residence, who therefore assumes a father's legal responsibility for care of the children...
...I knew enough biology to realize that physical diseases must have identifiable symptoms, produce an identifiable effect in the body, and have a scientifically identifiable cause...
...Ironically, no one questioned the integrity of these veterans when they raised their right hand and took an oath to serve...
...and dermatitis...
...I, conversely, could list many types of bacteria that were also present in those vets...
...S. Hollingsworth Harpers Ferry, West Virginia Yes, Mr...
...Roderick T. Long Chapel Hill, North Carolina Wirth Noting John Michael Waller's article "Bella's Babies" in the April edition states that Tim Wirth was defeated in a re-election bid for the Senate...
...They're chosen because "they can trust one another to carry out the old policies with the same old compromises," Penny says...
...I know that the proof just isn't there that Agent Orange (or Agent Purple or White, two other defoliants used in South East Asia) causes any fatal illnesses...
...The surgeon general was a big joke, and so was Bush's surgeon general...
...I too, as Robert Carleson points out with relish, once believed in such visions...
...Their incentives change when they know they'll be quitting Congress...
...We lived in one of the burning oil fields for several weeks...
...Instead of being representatives of the people in Washington, they become emissaries of Washington to the people...
...Although gender differences certainly exist, they are irrelevant to welfare reform...
...Gilder, in "End Welfare As We Know It," uses a lot of conservative rhetoric to trash efforts of conservative governors to bring responsibility to welfare by making recipients earn their benefits and by tracking down dead-beat dads...
...This illness was known to our predecessors in medicine, but unfortunately it is not in the current Managed-Care Code-Book, the listing of illnesses that serves as a "cookbook" for those physicians who treat the sick by the simple recipes agreed upon...
...Number three is to abolish baseline budgeting...
...I would suggest that you question all of his future writings, if they are as poorly researched as this one...
...But why on earth wasn't the disease tracked down three years earlier...
...Go straight to the bottom line, which is to enforce the "family" in AFDC...
...In their rush to pander to the professional veterans(many of whom never got to Vietnam), it is lamentable that organizations like the American Legion are also piling on board the guilt trip train...
...I am a good American, I have spent the better part of my life trying to find positive and quality ways to support and better it [sic], I do not spend my life trying to tear it down and destroy it...
...division...
...The reasons that they gave us were quite creative, and their public stance was given by Mr...
...But this complaint applies to members of Congress more broadly: they gradually imbibe the Beltway culture and become Washingtonized...
...The old-timers prefer "the comfortable and the familiar...
...Hyman...
...Welfare 74 The American Spectator August 1995 puts us taxpayers in loco parentis, so we are justified, nay obliged, to demand this...
...Some spouses and other family members have gotten similar symptoms, so the parasite may be passed on by other means, such as exchange of bodily fluids...
...Besides, perhaps there is some debilitating physical disease that plagues some Gulf War veterans...
...I have had five relapses, but the three that could return for repeat treatment are again well or near well...
...Nirvana...
...Older members tied to special interests...
...however, the "Land to the Tiller" program in Vietnam was not one of them...
...Their votes, Penny adds, "would have made the difference...
...Among these studies were, yes, those by DoD and the Veterans' Department...
...The results were incredible...
...What matters is how high is the payoff for circumventing the rules...
...We experienced gas-attack warnings...
...Ironically, Mr...
...It is disturbing that a medical doctor such as John Boyles would confuse stress-related illness with a "figment of one's imagination...
...No doubt they thought they were revealing their "cultural literacy" by connecting the movie to Scott's book...
...There were no standard symptoms, no identifiable effects in the body, and as each "cause" was tested it was found not to be a cause...
...Senate staffer for John Glenn...
...The film Rob Roy has nothing to do with Walter Scott's novel...
...All thirteen senior Republicans on the Appropriations Committee voted against us," he writes...
...Claiming that the severe illness of hundreds of soldiers involved in this conflict is a figment of their imagination is truly an insult...
...According to the Hartford Courant, Mr...
...If it is successful, why, for the second year, has the DoD blocked the funds signed into law by President Clinton...
...Goligowski's letter shows that one need not have pored over all the studies and testimony relating to Gulf War Syndrome to understand, nor have written a 5,000-word article to convey, that there is something terribly wrong with the Gulf War Syndrome picture...
...The Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta was too busy with AIDS...
...Yet his remedy is merely to have term limits on committee chairmen...
...Hyman's treatment brought real relief to many of those vets—though at quite a price...
...Moreover, in this cozy little coterie of Gulf War Syndrome conspiracy theorists, it turns out he is one of the soldiers "cured" by Dr...
...My results are well known to the DoD and to the VA...
...His Rockefeller campaign colleague Richard Nathan and Daniel Patrick Moynihan, along with others in the first Nixon administration, touted successfully to Nixon and many conservative members of Congress the guaranteed income using conservative rhetoric...
...Number two is to "reduce the number of congressional committees and the number of staff employees in Congress...
...because the bacteria involved are probably blood-borne and thus go to every organ...
...His constituents in Minnesota—Rochester, home of the Mayo Clinic, is in the district—thought of him as the equivalent of a Republican...
...As a veteran of the Gulf War, with a total of eighteen months spent in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Iraq, I was concerned when this syndrome was reported...
...I also demanded you cancel any subscription and not send me any more of your trash...
...Done...
...They elected Republicans to the House for decades before Penny, and they elected one, Gil Gutknecht, to succeed him...
...It is possible, but less likely, that the germs could have been man-made...
...It is telling that of the six congressmen most influential in terrifying the vets, five of them opposed the Gulf War even though a large majority of congressmen voted in favor of it...
...They have followed my patients before and after success...
...Robert B. Carleson San Diego, California George Gilder replies: My correspondents share a vision of tough, compassionate, and therapeutic government policies, full of mechanisms to enforce work, marriage, and other good behavior...
...I served in a front-line U.S...
...The article was peppered with other important insights, which makes it frustrating for having a flawed line of reasoning and fizzling out without offering a credible solution...
...Thus, it is my understanding that even today the "Land to the Tiller" title remains a prized possession...
...That is when I noticed something odd...
...This is incorrect...
...It's the place where innovations approved by the House or the Senate often die...
...Glenn T. Wilson Middle Tennessee State University Murfreesboro, Tennessee Bravo for Michael Fumento's article on the Gulf War "syndrome...
...T here's a culture of spending in Washington, Penny argues, and "seniority plays a big part" in it...
...I don't blame his co-author, Major Garrett of the Washington Times, a premier Capitol Hill reporter...
...Hyman also has a federal grant of almost $5 million at stake...
...In his National Review review of Martin Anderson's 1977 book Welfare which accurately outlined the success of the California Reagan reforms, Gilder condemned the reforms by singling out the one element that Reagan had vigorously opposed, the annual cost of living adjustments (COLAs...
...The Army's medical officers had a "not my problem" attitude...
...True, he makes a strong case for this limited reform...
...When Persian Gulf veterans went to war, they were called patriots, and when they returned they were called heroes...
...Hyman's word for it on his treatment success rate, but let's do so for sake of argument...
...By 1972 the Mekong Delta was as secure as it had been in twenty years...
...Wirth announced in the spring of 1992 that he would not seek re-election, which surprised everyone in Colorado and made me ecstatic...
...In extreme cases, stress can have The effect of a severe allergic reaction and be life-threatening...
...Done...
...Till the Truth As an occasional AID employee (19691990) I would agree with Tom Bethell ("Aid Affects Everyone," TAS, May 1995) that its policies too often prescribed a "little dose of socialism to ward off a big dose of Communism...
...However, I object strenuously to your claim that USAID supported a land reform program that expropriated land from middle-class farmers in South Vietnam...
...Twice Congress voted funds for me to continue, but the DoD responded by writing Congress to say that the funds were unnecessary, "this clinical evaluation is not needed, as antibacterial treatment for Desert Storm Syndrome has already begun with success for some veterans...
...I also noticed that none of the active-duty soldiers in my unit came down with the disease, nor did my Arab friends who lived near the battlefields and oil wells...
...Instead he provides mere bombastic rhetoric about the vets being heroes and patriots, as if I had said otherwise...
...First of all, I sent back the first issue of your magazine at my cost, suggesting you use it as toilet paper in the future, as I could not find any other redeeming quality in it...
...But I had left them behind long before Wealth & Poverty—in 1977 when after two years of researching for Visible Man, I resolved that such programs, despite their appeal on paper, are confounded in practice by the collective ingenuity of thousands of clients with time on their hands and Legal Aid lawyers in tow...
...Done...
...On December 11, 1994, the Tennessean and other newspapers reported that the primary cause of the illness is leishmaniasis, a parasitical disease carried by sand flies in Arabia...
...Think for a moment about a Congress with term limits and no lawyers...
...Moreover, Agent Orange and the Gulf War "syndrome," like Robert McNamara's memoirs, serve as retrospective absolution for those of the left, like Bill Clinton, who did their best to dodge military service...
...So why does Penny shy away from the obvious, term limits...
...All it takes for this to happen is time, which is also what it takes for a member to get a committee chairman-ship and become transformed into an entrenched power...
...Quality wise it fits into the class of "Gangster Rap...
...It is a particularly tough uphill battle these days...
...The parasite, a flagellate protozoan, is somewhat similar to the malaria parasite...
...The United Nations has some evidence to support the latter possibility...
...Donald R. Wulfinghoff Wheaton, Maryland I say to former Nelson Rockefeller campaign aide, George Gilder, as my former boss, Ronald Reagan said to Jimmy Carter, "There you go again...
...Fumento should interview the persons and organizations that he condemns before casting judgment and printing his conclusions...
...Fumento, contrary to what you concluded, there is a real Gulf War Syndrome...
...veterans and the seven British veterans I have tested, and thus this single disease must be present in a large percentage of the total number of casualties...
...The article is downright sloppy journalism...
...Gilder correctly recognizes marriage as a key element in eliminating welfare and its devastating effect on children...
...Unfortunately, you were unable to follow those instructions...
...continued on page 82) The American Spectator August 1995 75 CORRESPONDENCE (continued from page 75) With the help of deficit and trade hawk Republicans, Roosevelt turned a transitory stock market crash into a ten-year depression, yet still is celebrated for his welfare state compassion and leadership...
...It wasn't enough any longer to support basic civil rights, labor rights, equal rights, and education rights—positions that gave Democrats much of the moral (if not political) high ground in the 1960s...
...Nixon's Rockefeller crowd never forgave Reagan for his role in killing their guaranteed income plan...
...The Mother of All Problems George Gilder's "End Welfare Reform as We Know It" (TAS, June 1995) is a major breakthrough in understanding the welfare problem...
...Gilder's labeling Ronald Reagan the "Deadbeat Dad of Welfare Reform" enraged me and I hope most of your readers...
...Costs aside, one can't help but believe that the best treatment is not to push tens of thousands of vets through Dr...
...Edward S. Hyman, M.D...
...The COLAs had been demanded by the liberal Democratic California legislators and their principal Nixon administration ally, Assembly Republican William Bagley, as the price for true welfare reform...
...The perversity of democracy in a shrinking economy is epitomized by the career of Franklin Roosevelt, by all objective standards a catastrophe as president...
...Like the longer-running Agent Orange campaign, the Gulf War theatrics are a manufactured crisis calculated to pay dividends to the anti-war left...
...I have treated eight U.S...
...The best to Mr...
...Hyman'soffice but to rather have our media, our government, and lobbyists like the American Legion stop deceiving them in the first place...
...Thus Reagan was willing to trade an increase in benefits for the enactment of new rules against deadbeat dads and miscreant mothers...
...Bowman chides fellow critic Rita Kempley, no doubt justly, for having "little knowledge of and less interest in .. . the history of world literature...
...A little bit of common sense and an open mind go a long way...
...Hollingsworth's treatment cost $22,500, though Hyman told the paper he received nothing from that...
...But a parasitical infection is likely to cause long-run darn-age, as opposed to a chemical attack, which would have caused immediate damage that faded...
...I gather that they are now disposable like used beer cans...
...It is destructive to the American way...
...Roger Cook Santa Monica, California 82 The American Spectator August 1995...
...Welfare in the slums is all or nothing...
...veterans and one British, four U.S...
...We know of one fine young man who went to a VA hospital two years ago with a rash to demand payment for having Gulf War Syndrome...
...It is said to be incurable, but remedies for malaria and other parasite diseases should be tested to see if something works...
...Therefore the approach of trying to get real entry-level work to outbid welfare, even for a married couple, can never succeed...
...TAS, May 1995) was completely one-sided and, worse yet, agreed with the government cop-out to research the illnesses of these soldiers...
...wives and two U.S...
...For despite Dr...
...In the Congress I joined in 1982 we had to be willing to increase spending to impress the Democratic leaders who had built their careers around maintaining and expanding federal programs that the country could no longer afford...
...Hyman more seriously...
...The problem with lawyers is that law school trains people to be legalistic, prosecutorial, and argumentative," he says...
...I know that Reagan opposed linking welfare to a cost of living allowance...
...What is perhaps most interesting about Mr...
...Nearly all the major film critics made the same mistake, including Roger Ebert...
...Newer, younger members...
...But saying that if a vet believes his illness to be from a Gulf exposure that it therefore must be so is superstition, not science or medicine...
...but despite the title, Rob Roy is only a minor character in that novel, whose plot bears nothing whatever in common with that of the movie...
...It evidently "fell between the cracks...
...Because they're in all humans...
...Centerville, Ohio My congratulations and thanks for the outstanding article by Michael Fumento...
...I know the Army is expending a lot of resources in the search...
...If he weren't, he'd be a Republican...
...The first one, don't vote for lawyers...
...I also argued that if South Vietnam were lost, the Communists would pay hell collectivizing the Mekong Delta's peasant proprietors...
...From 1970-1971 I took part in an AID program that underwrote a "Land to the Tiller" program, which had a major impact throughout the Mekong Delta...
...He concludes, "The only welfare reform that makes a long-term difference is a private economy that grows faster than the public dole...
...James Bowman may take comfort in the knowledge that he is not alone In his error...
...Since they said what Mr...
...Katherine Murray-Leisure of the Veterans' Affairs Medical Center in Lebanon, Pennsylvania, who made this discovery about Gulf War Syndrome, is owed a great debt of gratitude...
...Until the "no husband, no benefits" policy takes hold, the work of caring for the children of unwed mothers will devolve on relatives and local organizations, as it has historically, especially among blacks...
...Now that it has been identified, veterans and their doctors can test for the disease...
...I won...
...in fact, all they were revealing was that they hadn't read the book and didn't know what it was about...
...The point is that like Robert Dole and George Bush and other Republicans still proud of the Americans With Disabilities Act (see James Bovard in July's TAS), Reagan believed that government could identify the "truly needy" and lavish benefits on them without galvanizing the greed of millions of the marginally needy and litigious...
...As I say, Penny, 43, is an eccentric, but a lovable one...
...The supply-side message is that without low tax rates and an expanding economy, democracy gives way to socialism and war, Bronx and Bosnia...
...His replacement was Democrat Ben Nighthorse Campbell, who became a Republican earlier this year...
...The outpouring of sympathy of these people is truly puzzling until you understand that the left is sending a message to veterans as well as to those in military service today: "Beware, soldier, those who would send you to war will poison you, then betray you...
...Penny dissented...
...All members of the Armed Services know their profession may require them to lay down their lives for their country...
...Although I defer to no man in my admiration for Reagan (admittedly arising well after the precocious Carleson's), I think that Reagan was wrong to capitulate massively on what is important (benefit levels) in order to achieve a transitory crackdown...
...Hollingsworth's letter is what he doesn't tell us—that he himself has claimed to be among the reservists suffering from Gulf War Syndrome...
...In congressional testimony the year before he claimed tohave suffered from breathlessness, migraines, dizziness, coughing up of heavy sputum, and chest pains...
...The problem with his argument is that the first part is true but the second part simply doesn't follow logically...
...It corrupts married couples as well as single mothers...
...If Mr...
...The Nixon Family Assistance Plan was defeated, largely through the efforts of Ronald Reagan and his successful California welfare reform of 1971-72...
...He even takes up the venerable novelist's cause in an impassioned defense: "Poor Walter Scott only tells one of the most exciting, action-filled stories in history and all he elicits from modern critics is a yawn...
...As the chief architect and implementor of the Reagan California welfare reforms I can assure your readers that, contrary to what Gilder claims, the welfare rolls in California did not "soar throughout the 1970s...
...Welfare police all too often fear even to enter the communities and households that workfare schemes require them dauntlessly to regulate...
...While in Vietnam, I flew defoliant missions, I've maintained contact with the president of the Ranch Hand Association—an unofficial group of defoliant "alumni...
...Without Bagley and his Nixon friends the Democrats would not have been successful...
...Using aerial photography and ground investigation, land was redistributed, and computerized titles were granted free of charge to 600,000 tenant farmers who actually worked the land...
...Unless people in general believe that they can thrive by serving others under capitalism they resort to stealing from others under socialism...
...Sadly, he does not even regurgitate this information correctly...
...children, with 100 percent success (all pro-bono...
...When the cabinet prospects faded for Wirth, Clinton created the new position...
...Fumento and The American Spectator in your efforts to push common sense and good science to the fore...
...Hyman's results have not been peer-reviewed or published in any American medical or science journal, and therefore we are forced to take his word for his findings and their relevancy...
...Hyman find a bacteria unique to this group of vets, and the answer is he can't possibly say because he can't identify the bacteria...
...After World War II, veterans were heroes, I remember...
...Wyman Englewood, Colorado Proud to Be an American In certain quarters of America, people do business in a reputable manner, not by avoiding their responsibilities as quality Americans...
...His top recommendation is to "place Congress under all health, safety, labor, and discrimination laws that govern the private sector...
...In the end, unconditional abolition of government welfare is the only solution...
...But this long-known tropical disease, named after Dr...
...This is not the place for a close scrutiny of the data in question...
...His article is a regurgitation of very selective information from other articles and publications, most of which are three or four years old...
...Other relevant and important medical, scientific, and intelligence information supporting the veterans' claims has repeatedly been ignored...
...Indeed, it seems he was a one-man epidemic...
...Under other circumstances I would feel less personally involved, but as a professional soldier I feel a stake in resolving this matter...
...His list of the ten major fallacies of welfare reform should be tacked on the wall of every American concerned about this problem...
...The disease manifests in many organs (arthritis in joints, mental fogging in the brain, eruptions in the skin, etc...
...John H. Boyles, Jr., M.D...
...When members stay on the same committee for years, their world-view tends to shrink," he notes correctly...
...Pentagon service, five years at CIA as national intelligence officer for East Asia...
...That's why I believe that many of these vets truly are sick, despite the overwhelming evidence that in all but a tiny number of cases, it isn't from any exposure in the Gulf...
...The symptoms are fevers, night sweats, pains in the joints, headaches, bleeding bowels...
...It's a clubby, protective, and static environment...
...it's all about winning the argument, not revealing the truth...
...In any case, somebody's making a pretty penny off these guys...
...This same figure also inspired Scott's novel...
...According to DoD, leishmaniasis has been isolated as a cause of The American Spectator August 1995 73 sickness in only thirty-two Gulf War vets...
...Now that they are suffering and complain of serious medical problems, they are called liars...
...The land reform issue was taken from the Communists, and tenants qua emerging capitalists were won over to the government...
...My reading quickly proved that this disease failed each of these tests...
...My treatment of the illness is based on the bedrock of medicine...
...However flawed the old arrangement may have been, the children of unwed mothers fared better under it, by virtually any measure, than when isolated with single mothers for whom they are largely a meal (or drug) ticket...
...If there is, medical science will identify it, describe it, and find a cause for it...
...On leaving Vietnam I was convinced that the land reform program was the single most successful effort the United States launched in that country...
...Penny admits as much in his recounting of the battle over Penny-Kasich, the bill to pare $90 billion from the federal budget in 1993...
...First, my own bona fides: career Army officer, multiple Vietnam tours with Special Forces and CIA...
...CORRESPONDENCE (continued from page 13) Michael Fumento replies: Mr...
...There are many motivations behind the Gulf War Syndrome myth, and certainly Mr...
...I have faith in the fact that your publication will never survive, as there are not enough people in the United States sick enough to support it...
...I will not pay for the first issue as it was returned, and never worth anything, more or less what you charge for it, and I have and will continue to refuse any future issues from the mailman...
...But until we know there is a disease, those who think they are suffering need to state their case with logic and dignity, provide the evidence they can, remember that they volunteered for service, and keep a stiff upper lip...
...Like most diseases and unlike Gulf War Syndrome, leishmaniasis has a tight constellation of symptoms and it is easy to test for and identify...
...The answer is, he's a political eccentric...
...It seemed that every month there were new symptoms, and a new agent was identified as the cause...
...He joined the Nixon campaign after Rockefeller's defeat in 1968...
...Most of these cases were identified quite quickly after the soldiers returned home, and long before last December...
...A little knowledge is a dangerous thing...
...Hollingsworth didn't want to hear, they are ipso facto irrelevant...
...His name was Timothy McVeigh...
...Robert Andrews Arlington, Virginia Michael Fumento's article presents a very lopsided argument filled with half-truths and much misinformation...
...Hollingsworth says that, "Other relevant and important medical, scientific, and intelligence information supporting the veterans' claims has repeatedly been ignored" in my article, yet declines to name any of it...
...The same apparently is true of the National Institutes of Health study which I cited and which said the same thing...
...doctors told him his problem was in his head...
...It only makes sense that a placebo—that which effects the body through the power of the mind—would be most effective in dealing with stress-related illnesses...
...My personal experiences tell me that Mr...
...I recall wagering friends that if Saigon were to fall it would do so before a single delta province was overrun...
...New Orleans, Louisiana (continued on page 73) 12 The American Spectator August 1995 natical about cutting spending and eliminating federal programs...
...The disease is likely due to a strain of bacteria indigenous to that Gulf region but foreign to westerners...
...Many liberals say soldiers aren't very smart, but I am smart enough to realize something is wrong when a disease tends to strike the people who were least exposed to its possible causes...
...Let the welfare widow or divorcee know that she has two years to find another husband in order to retain eligibility for welfare...
...If the cause of this syndrome was in the environment, my unit was exposed...
...The question is, did Dr...
...During Penny's tenure, only Ron Dellums, then chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, named freshmen to conference committees...
...We are also forced to take Dr...
...It's little wonder the VA...
...Placebos routinely show a certain amount of efficacy against even illnesses with clearly identifiable causes, ranging from warts all the way to cancer...
...It is especially disrespectful toward the dead and the physically maimed, individuals who truly made a sacrifice for this nation...
...With the participation of accomplished, scholarly medical scientists, I have submitted plans to Congress, to the VA, and to the DoD that include proof of the cause of the illness, treatment, and an approach to the origin of the bacterial illness...
...To my dismay, I discovered the definition of a Democrat had changed in the 1980s," Penny writes...
...Fumento had interviewed the sickest of these soldiers and compared their health before and after the war, he could have hardly written such an inaccurate article...
...But for the sputum, which is hardly unusual to have in the course of one's life, all the other symptoms are classic psychosomatic ones...
...As I made clear, symptoms of stress-related illness can be very real...
...Even this will not "end" welfare, because there is another welfare fallacy to which Gilder succumbs: the notion that welfare benefits can be capped enough to make recipients seek employment...
...To say that since the vets were heroes and patriots, Gulf War Syndrome must be a real disease is like saying that since Abraham Lincoln was a great man, pigs must fly...
...I sincerely hope that you go bankrupt, for the sake of America...
...They're the folks who get on the conference committees that resolve the differences between Senate and House bills...
...If the mother claims to be a widow, she must be able to demonstrate that her children were born in wedlock or were adopted by hthe deceased husband, whose death benefits would apply to the support of the family...
...As the leopard may change his spots, George Gilder may change his rhetoric, but he is still part of the liberal crowd who have not forgiven Reagan for killing the guaranteed income...
...If a married welfare mother becomes divorced or separated, the marriage requirement has created a father of record, who can be pursued in the usual way, without the need for DNA testing or other Ortwellian intrusions...
...Information reviewed by the government-funded researchers has come primarily from the Departments of Defense and Veterans' Affairs...
...Steven Goligowski Leavenworth, Kansas The Gulf War Syndrome has already been solved...
...It's the classic example of not seeing forest for the trees...
...W hat's striking as well is that many of the congressional reforms recommended by Penny—he began writing the book during his final year in the House, 1994—have already been carried out by Gingrich and company...
...Some of the new incentives are bad (like the desire to line up a job with a special interest) but most are good (like the need to serve the public they'll soon be joining...
...If that isn't enough, Penny has still another argument against senior members of Congress...
...It is curious that the traditionally anti-military left are clutching to their bosoms the "victims" of Agent Orange and, now, the Gulf War "syndrome...
...Gilder repeats the erroneous story in your article, having used similar conservative rhetoric in his best-selling 1980 book on welfare to call for a national guaranteed income...
...Glass houses, Mr...
...Millard Burr Sonoita, Arizona Scotch Glass In "It's a Man's World" (TAS, June 1995), James Bowman refers to the recent film Rob Roy as being taken "from the classic novel by Sir Walter Scott...
...It is supported by unmistakable laboratory evidence in 100 percent of the forty or fifty U.S...
...By January 1980, well into Jerry Brown's liberal Democratic administration, the welfare rolls were still 300,000 persons below where they had been when we started the reforms in March 1971...
...But California's welfare rolls and outlays were rising at a furious pace by the end of the 1970s and would explode soon after, compounded with immigration, homelessness, and disability "crises," as the news of California girls, doles, beaches, and balmy bureaucrats spread around the globe—while productive workers and businesses fled toward Salt Lake City and Las Vegas...
...Far from drawing upon three- or four-year-old material, my article used all of the latest information available, including a major study updated just weeks before the article went to press...
...Rather, the film is based directly on the historical figure of the Scottish rebel Robert Roy MacGregor...
...There may also be diseases with similar symptoms but different causes...
...This gratuitous bouquet for the private sector and growth is out of place, it is needlessly pessimistic (you mean we are stuck with welfare if the economy doesn't grow...
...The makers of Rob Roy never claimed any connection to Scott's novel, and the movie credits quite rightly make no reference to it...
...Wirth served as a co-chairman of Clinton's 1992 presidential bid with the hope that Clinton's reward to him would be a cabinet post such as Interior or EPA...
...I recognize that we can never prove a negative—that Gulf War Syndrome is not a physical disease...
...and it bogs down the discussion in innumerable side issues such as marginal tax rates...
...Yet all of them had voted against Clinton's budget, claiming it taxed too much and cut too little...
...A solution based on Gilder's own premises doesn't need to be complicated...
...Some of his other premises about marriage ("Men learn love from women who say no") are polite fictions...
...Some 1.1 million hectares (2.75 million acres) of riceland was expropriated and absentee landlords—who were by no stretch of the imagination "middle class"—were compensated...
...Gilder disappoints by failing to cap his brilliant analysis with a serious solution...
...Fumento should do his homework...
...I concluded therefore that what matters is not which rules are ostensibly imposed (I promise that these will be circumvented by the practiced prevaricators of the welfare culture...
...I have given detailed information on this illness to the VA and to the Department of Defense (DoD) on several occasions...
...Fumento engaged in the same irresponsible reporting that he condemns...
...Fumento is right: there is no physical disease...
...David C.P...
...Perhaps he thought that this would harm his credibility...
...And so on...
...This is not new for Gilder...
...They become wedded to the status quo on the committee and hostile to new approaches...
...It doesn't take a conspiracy theory to explain why the DoD hasn't taken Dr...
...They "compile a mountain of facts to defend their preexisting political beliefs...
...Thus it's perfectly conceivable that Dr...
...They lose sight of the big picture...
...On one news show last December he claimed to have suffered fevers, twitching muscles, and severe muscle and joint aches...
...Certainly, in its long and curious history AID has made many mistakes...
...There's just one problem...
...These flaws will surely be used to deflect attention from his central point about marriage...
...Democrats, Penny's partisan colleagues, refused to adopt any of these reforms...
...The cheap huckster tactics, and antiwar connections, of the Gulf War Syndrome organizations are an embarrassment to all who have served their country faithfully and well...
...Perhaps you're still in the men's room using the first one as toilet paper, and have not yet returned to work to follow the second instruction...
...Wirth wanted to remain in Washington since he had no intention of returning to Colorado or getting a real job...
...This would create enormous motivation for unmarried mothers to channel the "sexual compulsions" and other yearnings of the local lads toward marriage, eventually producing the long-term benefits that Gilder correctly posits...
...It is highly treatable, but it is not being treated...
...And guess who opposed the cuts...
...In answer to Donald Wulfinghoff, I do indeed believe that "if the economy doesn't grow," the political dynamics are appalling across the board and we are stuck with all sorts of terrible policies...
...After sniffing around the solution in his eighth fallacy, he veers off into mushy economics-as-a-solution-to-everything...
...Besides reforms, he offers tips for voters...
...Leishman (1865-1926), should be investigated first...
...His view of government is far closer to Newt Gingrich's than to Richard Gephardt's...
...10 The American Spectator August 1995 There are of course some people claiming Gulf War syndrome who have other assorted illnesses...
...They tried and, faced with widespread revolt in a crucial rice surplus region, they backed off...
...He provides no name for this mystery bacteria and indeed has admitted elsewhere he cannot...
...Naturally, I started reading everything I could about this "disease...
...Moreover, the laboratory methods that will detect it are not in use in Military or VA hospitals...
...Welfare benefits must always be large enough to sustain life and buy a modicum of goodies...
...Hyman's claim to have aided the soldiers for free, at least one poor vet had to shell out a cool $26,000 for a two-week series of antibiotics...
...That said, there certainly must be some vets who are fabricating ills in order to collect disability...
...I have interviewed some alleged victims of Gulf War Syndrome, and I've read hundreds of articles and congressional testimonies presenting their viewpoint and that of their self-styled advocates, including the American Legion...
Vol. 28 • August 1995 • No. 8
