TILTING AT WINDMILLS

...The opposition to price control is additional evidence of the terrible lack of empathy that characterizes the politics of selfishness...

...Given a choice between work and loafing, less than ten per cent chose loafing...

...We shouldn’t give up so easily...

...Autos, for example, were unavailable to civilians from 1942 to 1945...

...If you read Leonard Reed’s “The Budget Game and How to Win It,” in ths issue, you’ll see that a similar problem exists at the Office of Management and Budget...

...Speaker of the House Thomas P. ‘Tip’ O’Neill, in high good humour, was the guest of honor at a dinner given for new members of the House by the House and Senate Democratic Council at L’Enfant Plaza Hotel,” reports Ymelda Dixon in The Washington Star of December 5, 1978...

...But even more scandalous-and why didn’t the editors of either Washington paper or Judge Gesell point this outall this information about Jones was available before the t r i a l , when Williams could have moved to exclude her from the jury...

...The reason the liberals haven’t spoken up is that Perle is a super-hawk and the information was useful to the antiSALT forces...

...This is why Lt...

...it’s not your fault, it’s theirs...

...A spot check of six agencies by the General Accounting Office has found that they are owed $4.2 billion that they have not bothered to collect from grantees and contractors...

...How can it monitor the entire executive branch without becoming a giant itself...

...Noting that Rep...

...The image of the hard-working, God-fearing, middleclass American sweating long hours to support the shiftless bums on welfare is deeply ingrained in our rich...

...Speaking of media conformity, The New York Times chimed in with an op-ed piece saying the same thing...

...The companies aren’t getting rich from your sacrifices...

...The answer is again, no...

...for a single thing...

...Another, as Joseph Nocera suggests in “Making It at the Post,” is to enlist our great newspapers in the task...

...The reason is that we have always rejected the conventional left position that all business is bad...

...The National Journal’s Robert Samuelson came to the same conclusion in an article that was reprinted in me Washington Post...

...Anyone who has witnessed the 5 p.m...

...He defied all bureaucratic rules by seeing honor not as the passive avoidance of lying but as an affirmative responsibility to discover the truth and to disclose it...

...It began, “Survivors of the Jonestown cult suicide, menaced by flesh-eating piranha fish and other deadly perils of the jungle, eluded searching soldiers in the impenetrable Guyanese wilderness...

...Doolittle can write funny lines...

...But, you protest, didn’t they work during World War I1 and again during 1972...

...One way is to encourage the Fitzgeralds and Sullivans...

...and electric eels...

...A s k any economist why we don’t use price and wage controls to stop inflation and he’ll tell you they don’t work...

...When you hear from all your mutual acquaintances that O’Neill and Brademas are honest, you also learn that “honest”in Washington means not taking tit-fort a t bribes...

...Here’s his latest triumph and what it says about the American system of justice: Williams’ client, one Dominic F. Antonelli, Jr., was caught in what a jury found to be a patently crooked relationship with Joseph Yeldell, a former District of Columbia official...

...The account had been closed for two years, and the juror said she’d forgotten about it, and there was no evidence that it had affected the verdict in any way...

...How can we find out what these vast organizations are doing and determine whether what they are doing is in the national interest...

...It seems to me the true significance of the experiments was that the nightmare expectations of the conservatives were not realized...

...Missionaries used to stimulate the generosity of the parishioners back home by exaggerating the hardships of life in Africa or Latin America...

...over the past 20 years or so...

...But my attitude while in the government was a common one, and it remains common today...

...S u r g e o n s at the Cook County General Hospital in Chicago have been organized by the Amalgamated Meatcutters, according to Helen Dewar of 7he Washington Post...

...If you’re poor, of course, you can’t finance such investigations...

...In the last ten years the size of the congressional staffs has doubled, mainly because, through the eyeopening experiences of Vietnam and Watergate, Congress realized that the executive branch was concealing a lot of information...

...Coleman, who has brought prosperity to local public relations firms, thus found another way-escort a person who is interesting to the press-to get his name in the p a p e r s . . . . The S e c u r i t i e s a n d Exchange Commission has proposed that broker-dealers be required to disclose their profit in municipal and corporate bond transactions...

...First and foremost was the dramatic rise in the price of oil, which came because of OPEC decree...

...Speaking of w e l f a r e , even the respectable press reacted like Reagan to the recent reports about the guaranteed annual income experiments...

...Tilting at Windmills T h e story by Lew Wheaton was datelined “Georgetown, Guyana (AP), Nov...

...When you’re wasting billions of dollars on something called HUD-quick, now, describe for me exactly what it does for you and your fellow man-it’s good to remember that during World War I1 the Office of Price Administration worked...

...As our long-time readers know, there has been no startling change...

...But the precedent that a government official can freely transmit information to congressmen and their staffs is crucial to open government...

...But then contemplate this fact: If you are rich you can finance an extensive investigation of each juror in your case...

...stampede of departing employees at these agencies will appreciate just how overworked they are...

...Third, Nixon, who blamed his loss in 1960 on Eisenhower’s failure to juice up the economy, gave the economy a massive infusion of money in the months before the 1972 election, which in turn helped stimulate inflation the following year...

...But as soon as those shortages were taken care of, prices stopped rising...

...He could tell his members, “Look, you’re not being screwed...

...Take another look at what really caused prices to go up after the controls were removed...

...NBC, ABC, and CBS each night, you soon realize how similar t h e i r treatment is...

...They rose primarily because of shortages caused by necessary wartime policies that cut back the production of civilian goods...

...At the same time we have tried to keep our eyes open to the sins of business...

...After the guilty verdict came in against his client, Williams began searching for ways to overturn it...

...Remember the Army’s first investigation of My Lai...

...From our earliest years, we’ve been running articles like “The Case for Entrepreneurs,” “Why Entrepreneurs Have More Fun,’’ and “A Harvard Man Discovers Free Enterprise...

...I remember my first much-dreaded trip to “the steaming jungle” of Central America...

...Finally, it is worth observing that price control is something the government can handle...

...Wheaton mercifully failed to include “the hordes of man-eating jaguars” featured in some of the other dispatches from Georgetown...

...Of Park, O’Neill said, “He has never asked me for a single thing,” and Brademas expanded, “He has been gracious and kind to me and never asked me...

...In 1945, under price controls, the price index rose only 2.3 per cent...

...Prices rose in the 1973-75 period not because there had been controls in 1972-which, by the way, held the price index to a 3.3-percent increase that year-but for three other reasons...

...Did prices really rise simply because lids were taken off...

...Rationing, by the way, is how to handle the problem of shortages and threatened shortages, as in the case of gasoline...

...This tells me not that the guaranteed annual income is wrong, but that we simply have to make a slight upward adjustment in its work incentives...

...What it all means is that, in one sense at least, Spiro Agnew was right...

...Peers, the officer who finally dug out the truth about My Lai, is such a great man...

...Still, Williams got his mistrial-from Judge Gerhard Gesell, the same genius who decided last month that it was a conflict-ofinterest for the chairman of the Federal Trade Commission to take a stand against misleading advertising aimed at children...

...but I felt an equal duty to conceal the truth-when it made the agency look bad-from Congress and from its i n v e s t i g a t i v e arm, the General Accounting Office...

...Perhaps they seemed to work,” he’ll reply with a look of withering condescension, “but what happened after they were removed...

...You may not like Perle or the cause served by Sullivan’s information...

...See, for example, our article on AT&T in this issue...

...And the same dilemma crops up in the government’s attempts to control AT&T, as Marjorie Boyd tells us on pages 37-47...

...By the way, Hamilton Jordan, who vowed he would never be conned by the Washington establishment, has been sitting in Williams’ box at the last two Redskins’ games...

...w eha ve all noticed how often Time “ H o w far can the GSA scandal go...

...All of these stories were typical of what third-world veterans call missionary journalism...

...This reminds me of just how tiresome the Ronald Reagans can be...

...That’s right, a little less than four minutes...

...Indeed, usually when such a person is found, he is treasured, permitted to report to work at 11 a.m., take threehour lunches, and have a secretary whose physical attributes are her only apparent qualification...

...A small but telling example of the way the Carter administration repeatedly discovers the wheel is the fact that Jerry Doolittle was eased out of the White House speechwriters’ office...

...Scott, like Everett Dirksen, escaped negative’notice in the press because he was a man of great charm and wit...

...One ‘ well-known reporter once told me, “Why, he’s an expert on Oriental art,” as if that should somehow make him above criticism...

...Wouldn’t you love to be hit with that rate of increase today instead of the 12-percent inflation we’re enduring...

...John Brademas was among the guests, Dixon explained that the House and Senate Council charges $1,250 for membership (with proceeds going to Democratic campaign funds) and is headed by a Washington attorney named Patrick O’Conner...

...But that was anti-hawk information, exposing the cost overruns on the C-5A...

...Soon we’ll have another huge bureaucracy on Capitol Hill...

...They are resisting-massively...

...They don’t teach that kind of honor any more-not at West Point or anywhere else in the government...

...They couldn’t even see the bodies in front of their eyes...

...If not honest old Tip, I suggest investigators might find it worthwhile to look at Hugh Scott, the former senator from Gulf Oil who was noted for his deep interest in GSA...

...Indeed, looking at the lethargic bureaucracies of government and other huge organizations has convinced us that we need more of the entrepreneurial spirit that made the country great in the first place...

...You know he had to be brushing away those hands that were trying, as they later did with Rep...

...When I worked in the executive branch, I felt it was my duty to tell the truth within the agency...

...There were not massive defections from the work force...

...The late forties were even more interesting...

...I found that much of Costa Rica, El S a l v a d o r , and Guatemala was infinitely more pleasant than Washington in the summer, and I resolved to return there whenever 1 couldremembering, of course, to give a martyred sigh to my colleagues as I departed...

...And that is why Peers’ career, which had been on the full general track, was derailed because of his efforts...

...Put yourself in the shoes of a union leader and imagine how much easier price control would make it for him to persuade his men to go along with moderate wage increases...

...Now just what do O’Conner and the other members get for that $1,250...

...It doesn’t work...

...Alto went on to say that “it has involved a small number of members of the Congress...

...But Michael Rappeport points out that the average American works a little less than four minutes per working day to pay for his share of welfare...

...The important opinion-makers are cut from the same mold, they share the same attitudes, the same values, and the same response to the events...

...A cleric comfortably sipping his gin and tonic on the terrace of his home in Kenya, gently caressed by 70-degree breezes in one of the world’s most pleasant climates and looking at some of the world’s most beautiful scenery, would write letters home that would bring tears to the eye, and cash to the collection plate, in a rural church in Mississippi, where the congregation would be sweating in 99 degree heat and 99-percent humidity...

...E d w a r d Bennett Williams has become a respected public figure through his skill at helping criminals evade the law...

...The result was that for the five years after price controls were removed, 1946-50, prices rose an average of only six per cent a year...

...and Newsweek come up with the same was the question The Washington cover, and if you watch the news on Star’s Mary Ann Kuhn asked Vincent R. Alto, who just left his job as chief investigator of the GSA scandals...

...If liberals want the Fitzgeralds protected, can’t they see that the Sullivans must be protected too...

...Now comes Jonestown, with that State Department officer-and believe me he is typical-who could talk to 60 people and not perceive any s i g n s o f discontent...

...If you also read The New York Times and The Washington Post, our two leading newspapers, you’ll find the same similarity...

...He discovered that a juror had once maintained a small checking account in a bank involved in the case...

...a very small handful have had a controlling hand within GSA...

...But is continual growth of congressional staff a sensible solution to the problem...

...Because of shortages, in 1946 and 1947 they shot up by 8.5 per cent and 14.3 per cent, respectively, but by the middle of 1948 there were plenty of cars and other consumer items to supply the demand...

...It wasn’t that manufacturers couldn’t profitably sell the cars within the price controlsit was that the car factories were converted to make vehicles for the war...

...Sometimes it seems as if the entire United States government is based on looking the other way...

...But if $4.2 billion is going uncollected by just six agencies, think what the figures must be for the government as a whole...

...I didn’t begin to see how wrong I was until I left the government, founded this magazine, and started to look at the government from a citizen’s instead of an insider’s perspective...

...If you’re saying “David who...

...Ryan’s party, to slip messages into his pocket...

...Why no more than Tongsun Park, who’ you will remember put thousands into parties for O’Neill and cash for Brademas...

...The story went on to mention “a jungle filled with swamps...

...Loyalty to one’s own agency that keeps one from telling important truths about it to other agencies is one of the great problems of the United States government...

...The same Ymelda Dixon column with the O’Neill-Brademas item contained another example of how Washington officials are used: “The President’s personal secretary, Susan Clough, was at the Kennedy Center Sunday night with Fairfax Hotel owner John Coleman...

...This is a rare talent among speechwriters...

...Second, the rise in food prices was strongly influenced by the Russian wheat deal of 1972, which caused temporary shortages here...

...Senators and congressmen and CIA and Defense Department employees all work for the United States...

...Sullivan was recently fired by the CIA for giving information to Richard Perle, a top assistant to Senator Henry Jackson...

...Remember that one of the highest officials during much of that period was Tip O’Neill’s friend, Robert Griffin, who is now in the White House...

...So there was tremendous demand when cars came back on the market in 1946 and 1947, which caused a temporary shortage and a rise in prices...

...We must remember that principle first, and we must help them remember it...

...Here is what one, Lowell H. Listrom and Co., said: “Showing the amount of the profit on the customer’s confirmation, we think, would make for hard feelings between the customer and the broker-dealer.’’ As Leonard Curry of The Washington Star observes: “The investor might feel abused by seeing that a broker paid a transaction fee of $1 and charged the customer $10...

...Soon the White House will discover this wheel and send out an urgent call for some writer to supply the humor Carter lacks...

...I’m waiting for my fellow liberals to speak up in defense of David Sullivan...

...That is why it is so important for liberals to wake up to the significance of the Sullivan case...

...Charles Peters...

...At this point, most of us remember that prices rose when controls were taken off, and we abandon the argument...

...Typical of the excuses given the GAO are, “heavy work load” (Commerce Department) and “did not have the time” (HEW...

...Knowingly allowing yourself to be used-permitting hustlers like Park to endow themselves with the appearance of respectability and influence through their association with you-is perfectly okay...

...It not only administered prices and wages but also the wartime rationing...

...Bruce McCabe, of The Boston Globe, took a look at our “Putting America Back in Business” issue (November) and pronounced it “a striking change in editorial sensibility for the liberal magazine...

...A great liberal hero, Ernest Fitzgerald, was fired for giving information to the Congress...

...His answer: “. . . . it goes to the extent of involving the highest officials within GSA...

...Such middle-of-the-roaders as columnists William Raspberry of The Washington Post and Charles Bartlett of The Washington Star announced that the experiments proved, in Raspberry’s words, “There’s only one bad thing about the concept [of the guaranteed annual income...

...Your investigators, if they go far enough, are almost certain to unearth something that will qualify as a conflict-of-interest to the judicial mind...

...To understand this month’s error by Gesell, we again refer you to Michael Kinsley’s article in our November issue, in particular to the section on “penny ante” conflicts...

...Liberals have been screaming for years about the need for Congress to inform itself about the CIA...