TILTING AT WINDMILLS
Peters, Charles
Tilting at Windmills Bureaucratic values, as we constantly point out, are taking over the world. The latest example is the defection of the Soviet Union’s top employee at the United Nations,...
...ite meetings and 50 publlc meetings...
...T h e only problem with the law extending the nation ’s mandatory retirement age to 70 is tenure...
...All too often the answer is not much more...
...I’ve never had that happen...
...Blaylock, a member of the AFL-CIO executive board predicted that many AFGE members holding important service, safety and support jobs in agencies would react later this summer with a ‘slowdown.’ “ ‘If pay is not going to be comparable to the private sector,’ Blaylock told a news conference, ‘maybe production should not be comparable either.’ ” Carter’s real problem is that he came to the presidency with no agenda, with nothing other than good management to offer...
...As a result, according to Sheila Kast of The Washington Star, “Stockholders are swamping legislators with telegrams, telephone calls, and letters, urging a ‘no vote...
...T h e 200th anniversary of our constitutional convention is now less than ten years away...
...Speaking of the FBI, its new director, William Webster, stepped off on the wrong foot with his appointment of James B. Adams to the number two post in the bureau...
...Charles Peters...
...I am the sort of person who seldom finds it difficult to arrive at a firm opinion on any public issue...
...Attended 83 official receptions and soclal occaslons...
...Tilting at Windmills Bureaucratic values, as we constantly point out, are taking over the world...
...Delegate Torrey C. Brown is quoted as saying, “1 had a stockholder walk into my house on Sunday to tell me her investment would be worthless if we passed the bill...
...T h e time for selling out in Washington used to be when the kids went to college...
...While the proposed legislation designed to protect whistle-blowers is well-intended, I don’t think it will relieve the shortage of whistle-blowers that has plagued the government for years...
...A constitutional convention might not do much good, but it’s worth trying...
...Because of declining enrollments, it appears that the District of Columbia will have to discharge about 700 teachers in the next two years...
...These are not the kind of people who will take risks no matter how much protection they have...
...Glven Jflnterviews with Indlvldual journalists...
...They did so for years before the bar associations and law schools got together to push through legislative requirements that make the misery, boredom, and irrelevance of law school the only avenue to practice in all but a handful of states...
...The civil service lobby that opposes them is selfrighteous, self-pitying, and powerful, and no one in Carter’s or Campbell’s positions has had the courage to take it on before...
...1 am bewildered by the indictments of former high officials of the FBI for various sins connected with the pursuit of the Weathermen...
...What union is now the largest affiliate of the AFL-CIO...
...Made 15 major speechc...
...The real reason for this shortage is that the tenure offered by the civil service has attracted the cautious, those who want security above all, to its ranks...
...Now it is much earlier-when you buy your first house...
...But if people who are not performing well are permitted to cloak their inadequacies with the protection of tenure for five more years, we are going to be in trouble...
...Congress has just authorized the creation of 152 new feaeral judgeships because judges are now supposedly so overworked...
...Signed 150 iotographs a week Made 16 pu\lic appearances aiound Washington, D.C...
...This is a man whose other ambition was to be Chief of Naval Operations...
...Some of the best comedy of our day is on the television show “America 2 Night...
...This government simply does not work very well...
...The resulting irony is that, in the cities, real mingling of the classes takes place only in parochial schools...
...How does the eager assistant go about selling a president on a new program...
...The latest example is the defection of the Soviet Union’s top employee at the United Nations, Arkady Shevchenko...
...If, however, they investigate each agency’s effectiveness in carrying out its mission, and if they are willing to investigate the relevance of the mission itself, they would be a revolutionary force in the bureaucracy...
...The most recent example, reported by Stephen Aug of The Washington Star, is the Consolidated Rail Corporation, which lost $367 million last year but gave salary increases to 56 of its top officers and paid nearly $5 million in bonuses and perquisites...
...Bear that in mind as you read his reaction, as reported by Mike Causey of The Washington Post, to Carter’s proposal to cut the October federal pay increase from 6.5 to 5.5 per cent: “Kenneth T. Blaylock, president of the 800,000 American Federation of Government Employees Union, said the idea of mandatory wage controls for civil servants was ‘disgusting’ and would not stop inflationary increases in wages and prices in the private sector...
...cities...
...People who are performing well should never be forced to retire...
...She recently sold The Washington Star- on a half-page feature on her boss that was not marred by a negative word and had this box in its center: Impressive 14-month record 1 ter’s record for her first I4 months, reduced to Is as foilows: ION and 27 US...
...The Weathermen, after all, were blowing things up, and I really can’t get too upset that the FBI used illegal breakins to try to prevent further violence...
...Carter’s press secretary, is a skilled practitioner in the field of public relations...
...In its April 23, 1978, edition, The New York Times ran an excellent article exposing the uncoordinated and ineffective nature of the steps taken by federal agencies to deal with the problem of terrorism...
...Rosalynn Cai Held 259 prlv...
...The first tip-off was when he got his energy program from Schlesinger instead of telling Schlesinger what energy program he wanted...
...The American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees...
...A recent article in The Washington Post expressed outrage at the fact that lots of people were getting into law school with false credentials, passing the courses, graduating, and going into law practice...
...D a v i d N. Edlestein, chief judge of the Southern District of New York, announced last month a program to train law students as trial lawyers at leading litigation firms in New York City...
...A major administration effort to reduce blindness world wide would have dramatic appeal, could be uniquely and distinctively identified with you...
...Elliott, shouldn’t we be outraged by the phony system of credentials that deprives people of ability of the right to use their talent...
...Had 71 hours of briefings...
...Seattle’s bus and trolley system has negotiated an agreement with its union that permits the use of part-time drivers during rush-hour...
...Since then, his day has been dictated far too much by external eventswhether it be a crisis or a memo from a cabinet member...
...The trolley-or light rail, as it is now called-is another possible salvation for urban transit...
...I think he saw bothjobsCNO and president-as goals to be reached or jobs to be performed skillfully when he got them-but not as chances to at last get rid of unnecessary aircraft carriers or to achieve social justice or to put any program of his into action...
...One case where this definitely is not so is in the matter of public aid to parochial schools...
...It may be time for another...
...Because of the end of the military draft, the public schools are now the only place in America where there is much hope for the kind of mingling of social classes that is so essential for a democracy...
...There is, however, an easy solution: amend the law to provide that those who wish to work after 65 may do so if they forego the protection of tenure and undergo annual performance evaluation . . . James A. Haught, the investigative r e p o r t e r for The Charleston Gazette who wrote the article in our April issue about the growth in the number of public employees in West Virginia has just come up with the all-time winner in the Assessors Who Love the Rich contest: In Braxton County, West Virginia, the mineral rights under a 10-acre parcel of land owned by Eastern Associated Coal Corporation were assessed at $100 and the corporation was charged a tax of $2...
...the empty chambers of your nearest federal c o u r t h o u s e any F r i d a y afternoon...
...It sold one seam of coal under the parcel for $108,465...
...What was his first concern...
...According to Time’s Sandy Smith, who probably has the best sources in the FBI of any reporter, Adams used to be Hoover’s hatchet man and as the PBYs chief of investigations for the last four years has presided over some curious events, including leaks of the indentity of witnesses to the Mafia, the insulation of top Teamster officials from an investigation into corruption in the Teamsters’ Union, the signing of his name as a witness to the forging of Clyde Tolson’s signature, and the award to himself of six cash bonuses of $500 to $1,000 for outstanding service (field agents call him a “six-star general...
...Carter also deserves high praise for his speech on lawyers, the significance of which was missed by most reporters and the text of which was not printed by any paper we could find...
...If these inspectors confine their work to cases of possible illegality, they will be modestly useful...
...The real trouble is that the same can be said for almost every problem our country faces...
...It doesn’t pollute like the bus and it doesn’t bankrupt like the subway...
...Since it doesn’t involve big money like subway or highway construction, there’s no big lobby to support it...
...On the other hand, the Department of Justice is not seeking indictments in the many cases of totally unjustified FBI harassment of non-violent members of the New Left under the program designated Cointelpro...
...But tiny as they are, Carter and Alan Campbell, the chairman of the Civil Service Commission, deserve high praise for attempting to take them...
...7,939bvitatioas...
...O n e thing about the Carter proposals on Civil Service reform that is surely good: They have sparked massive press coverage of a subjectthe shortcomings of bureaucracythat had been almost the exclusive province of this magazine and turned it into front-page news...
...One has to go back to W. C. Fields’ The Bank Dick to find the sleazier side of human nature so perfectly captured...
...Held 22 ress conferences...
...One has to ask why couldn’t law students learn other areas of the law as apprentices in law firms...
...Received 152 000ietters...
...This is a step that could save urban transit systems throughout the country...
...There are bills before Congress that would establish Offices of Inspector General in large numbers of federal agencies that would have sutjstantial independence to investigate their operations...
...Subscription offer on page 17 T h e potential power of a seldomused lobbying device was demonstrated r e c e n t l y i n M a r y l a n d . The Baltimore Gas & Electric Company and the Potomac Electric Power Company sent 66,000 letters to their Maryland stockholders urging them to protest an anti-utility bill before the state legislature...
...When William Raspberry of The Washington Post asked William Simmons, president of the union, if Simmons were principal of a school that had to lose five of its 25 teachers wouldn’t he prefer to keep the good ones, Simmons replied: “On paper, it sounds wonderful...
...Real estate prices have become so absurd herethe small first house is sure to cost $100,000-that young couples need to start making substantial salaries fast if they want a home of their own...
...When I criticize Jimmy Carter, I sometimes wonder what more the president of my dreams could have done in his shoes...
...Mary Hoyt, Mrs...
...As highway deaths have begun to creep back up from their lows in 197475 when the 55 mile-per-hour speed limit was being taken seriously, isn’t it time for state police departments to start cracking down again on a public that is increasingly reading the 55 sign as 65 or 70...
...A recent study by the Treasury Department confirmed a suspicion that most of us have long held that a lot of people get unemployment compensation who don’t need it...
...In America the Feat.herbedded, failure is success, as we all know...
...But in practice I have to go with seniority...
...You can find out yourself about the need for the judgeships by dropping in on...
...Fundamental reforms are needed in the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government, and the role of the two unofficial branches, the interest-group lobbies and the press, has grown immensely in recent years...
...Gabrielle Ann Scott Elliott was one example...
...Kenneth T. Blaylock ‘is widely reputed to be one of the better leaders of the civil service unions...
...Spent over 300 hours on mental health...
...The reason it’s not being pushed is simple...
...How to keep his pension money...
...Instead of being outraged by Ms...
...But while the public schools continue to bring people together in small towns, they no longer do so in the big cities...
...Because of the teachers’ union, the decisions will be based not on ability but solely on seniority...
...Held 26 speclai interest and group meetings at the Whlte 4:E;Y;:i: House...
...The study found that $51 million in tax savings for deductions for unemployment compensation recipients went to people who had incomes of $50,000 a year or higher...
...Carter’s civil service reforms are tiny steps in the right direction...
...The Founding Fathers would surely be astounded by the bureaucracy, both in terms of its size and its unresponsiveness...
...With only a tenth-grade education, she used false credentials to get into the University of South Carolina Law School, from which she graduated with aboveaverage grades and then passed the South Carolina bar examination...
...Here’s one of the most time-honored strategems, this time employed by Peter Bourne, Carter’s assistant on health matters, in a memo to the President...
...It’s working in Seattle, Boston, and Dayton...
Vol. 10 • June 1978 • No. 4
