Life in the Pigsty

...Nothing is as violent as a moneyed interest in difficulties, nothing so loud...

...But the Senate snuffles up to the same trough in which the Reagan Administration feeds...

...The law is hardly a perfect defense against appointment of officials who have conflicts of interest, as witness the regular exposure of Reagan oinkers...

...Does Ronald Reagan simply fail to have his candidates checked out...

...Now you have people with a direct interest in legislation before Congress subsidizing the income of Senators...

...I mean, we're talking about the head of the CIA...

...When you see Rita Lavelle with the lunches, and Tom Reed with the insider information, being placed at the pinnacle of government, that feeds the cynicism...

...There are honorable people willing to serve the conservative cause...

...Others will reply, "That's Strange...

...Explains McBride: "The Senate is heading for a national scandal...

...I would say that people's confidence in government—and the polls show it has long been declining—is a real concern...

...She cites a recent study by the General Accounting Office which found no evidence that the Act is keeping people away...

...Let Michael C . Jensen (The Financiers, Weybright and Talley, 1976) receive full credit...

...Surely there are some honest conservatives the Administration could have brought in...

...It is one of the reform measures adopted in the wake of Watergate and attendant Nixon Administration scandals...

...At the same time, the Administration complains that it can't attract qualified public servants because of the disclosure requirements of the Ethics in Government Act...

...Is it the people Reagan attracts or the policies he pursues...

...I don't think the Reagan people have found the best people to serve in government," McBride offers...

...I don't know," said McBride, "but the facts speak for themselves...

...Or is that just a prejudice prompted by antipathy toward the incumbent...

...William Thomas, the White House wall-sitter and antinuclear demonstrator whose story was told in this space last month, was bleeding from nose, chin, and lip the week after that article appeared...

...Oinkerism is not limited to one branch of government...

...The Moonie headline was over a story that denied there was any concerted effort to rid the White House wall of demonstrators...

...Just as that story hit the streets, Concepcion Picciottio took up her duties with a four-foot by eight-foot placard bearing Thomas's favorite maxim: WANTED: HONESTY AND WISDOM...

...McBride, who lobbied for passage of the Act, says it "has become the public whipping boy for all the problems that come with [Reagan Administration] recruitment...

...A British prime minister of 150 years ago, Lord Melbourne, observed, "Inconveniencing and discontenting the moneyed men creates a clamor as shrill and as unappeasable as does the killing of a pig...

...Don't you believe it...

...There's more oinkerism in the Reagan Administration than has been seen or heard in these quarters for many years...

...For some reason, many of the people who have come into this Administration have no sensitivity to or concern about responsible public service...

...When an appointee is accused, Reagan always responds with his pet phrase: He has "full confidence...

...A Senate committee headed by William S. Cohen, Republican of Maine, is currently examining the Act...

...The White House needs Strange to counteract the weekly disclosure that yet another Reagan appointee has joined the Conflict-of-interest Club...

...The Senate removed all overall limits on what Senators can receive in honoraria...

...That tag has a venerable history...

...Friends arranged his release on bail, but more arrests followed...

...He wrote: "An old adage on Wall Street has it you can sometimes be a bear, sometimes a bull, but never a hog...

...Common Cause sees it as one of its functions to spot oinkerism in the Executive Branch while also keeping an eye on those wallowing in the public trough at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue...

...The story wound up, "Strollers can get a clear view through all parts of the fence...

...Life in the Pigsty The Reagan Administration is searching for a candidate with impeccable credentials to fill a post at the highest political level...

...He had been smashed up against a police car by arresting officers, according to his wall-sitting companion, Concepcion Picciottio...

...And William Thomas was off painting new signs...

...In the midst of this conflict-of-interest business, they want to weaken the ethics law...

...I wouldn't say that...

...From C I A head William "Not Unfit to Serve" Casey to National Security Council consultant Thomas "I Have an Option" Reed, this Administration has assembled the sorriest aggregation of political jobbers since Tammany Hall and Boss Tweed...

...It feeds the worst part of people's perceptions that all politicians are crooks...

...Every morning, as the subway unloads at the corner of Wall Street and Broadway, the oinks can be heard loud and clear...

...Not quite so...

...That's Strange...

...The day after that arrest, Thomas's fourth in as many days, the Washington Moonie newspaper, The Times, crowed in a front-page headline, WHITE HOUSE CLEAR OF SIGNS , PROTESTERS . Thomas was arrested for arson after his plywood posters were set afire—by whom is unclear—and scorched the gatepost and fence outside the Old Executive Office Building next door to the White House...

...There's speculation that the White House may send a lobbyist to Capitol Hill to make sure the Ethics in Government Act is preserved in all its powers—someone who can demonstrate the Reagan Administration's concern for the public interest...

...You can look back to the Carter Administration and Burt Lance," McBride told me, "but I think with the Reagan Administration the insensitivity to conflicts of interest has reached a new low...

...One would think no occupant of the White House would want to leave so messy a trail...

...Oinkers" should do...

...McBride says, "What's really important is, where would we be with the Reagan Administration if we didn't have this Act...

...People will recognize the official on the street, and some will say, "There goes Reagan's honest appointee...

...There seems to be one a week...

...Will they be loud enough in 1983 to tamper with the Ethics in Government Act...

...You would think politically they wouldn't want to do that— particularly with the number of their people found wanting...

...Cohen was instrumental in persuading the Republicancontrolled Senate not to scrap the office of Special Prosecutor—another post- Watergate reform the White House wanted to repeal...

...But it doesn't seem to deter them, and that's where the real insensitivity comes in...

...We're talking about the Attorney General...

...Such histories...

...Is this some sort of sociological phenomenon...

...The only way we know about William French Smith and his $50,000 severance deal is because he had to disclose it...

...Well," says McBride, "the checks are confidential...

...So, either the checking is not being done or the checking is being done and the facts are on the record and people are saying, 'So what?' " Has the tradition of the honorable public servant totally vanished...

...I mean when these people come in they already have histories...

...Strange will cut a swath through Reagan's Washington...

...The 1978 Ethics in Government Act covers public financial disclosure by appointed officials...

...It's frightening to think where we'd be...

...I put that question to Ann McBride, vice president of Common Cause and a prime mover behind the 1978 Ethics in Government Act which the oinkers are pressing to repeal—since so many of them have been violating it...

...They originally had a limit, but they lifted it and lifted it...

...Just as Reagan needs a suitable name for one honest appointee, we need a name for the fast-buck artists who seem to have found a congenial home in the Administration...