Tilting at Windmills

...General P.X...

...The volume of mail sent out by congressmen has grown four times as fast as that sent by the rest of us during the last decade...

...A recent study reported in The New York Times confirms the sad tale we have told you over the years about the fate of whistle-blowers...

...That was a key experience in my life...

...Thornton found that the jet had been used 21 times for trips from Washington to New York, even though commercial service was available every hour...

...Make the mortgage interest deduction apply only to new houses...

...And if a compromise had to be made to get the bill through, I think 38 percent would have been a lot better than 28 percent...

...Hopkins was virtually penniless when he died, but he had rendered important service to his country and mankind...

...Then Napoleon McCallum, the former Annapolis star who is being allowed to play for the Raiders while serving in the Navy, grabbed the kickoff and returned it down the sidelines, escaping one Redskin tackler after another and heading toward the touchdown that would have defeated us...

...They don't care about the fare...

...Second, drunkenness has been made to seem not only wrong but stupid and definitely not chic...

...By taking on the problem at the risk of offending the unions, these officials have succeeded so dramatically that even the unions' leaders—first Albert Shanker of the AFT and now Mary Futrell of the NEA—are supporting some of the reforms...

...Then Clay resigned from his Washington job and accepted the one in San Francisco...

...It recently fined the TVA for harassing a whistleblower...

...To me the most important of these reforms is the one often called alternative certification, which permits schools to hire bright people who know their subjects and can teach even if they don't have education degrees...

...Meyers incurred his military obligation to his country when he sought and accepted a free four-year education at the Naval Academy and a commission in the Marine Corps...

...I think those state and local officials who took on the education unions are charting the path to the future...

...She tugs at your heartstrings...

...The ad is sponsored by Boeing and the subhead reads "America Needs the Space Station" The message is that the way to put Kathy's Dad back to work is to build the Space Station...

...He was also wrong to allow McCallum to play for the Raiders...

...So every time you plunk down your 22 cents to mail a letter, remember that you're helping pay for trips such as this one that Paul N. Carlin took when he was postmaster general: "Carlin flew to New York with his wife Feb...

...It appears that Pat Robertson has joined the ranks of Richard Perle, John Lehman, and the other gutless hawks throughout the Reagan subcabinet who have never risked their lives for their country...

...If Albert Gore is our long, long shot, Babbitt is our long shot candidate for president...

...Carlin didn't have to take that plane to New York...

...12, 1985, for a dinner meeting with Forbes magazine executives at a cost of more than $1,400...

...Pan Am's advertising for its new shuttle service promises better service than Eastern, but not lower prices...

...He reimbursed the government $58 for his wife's fare...

...This exacerbates my fear that the world will end, not because of malevolence in the White House or the Kremlin, but because of some fuck-up by the American or Soviet military...

...The ad is dominated by a photograph of a sad-faced but adorable little girl...

...Another was the seven years I worked for the Peace Corps where my job was to find out what was doing wrong, to rub the organization's nose in its errors, and in general to be the most negative thinker around...

...50 percent was a perfectly fair and reasonable top rate...

...I was reminded of that by a recent article in The New York Times on FDR's closest aide, Harry Hopkins...

...You may have been surprised that so many Democrats sold out to the affluent...

...I have a solution...

...I saw a rerun of "The China Syndrome" last month...

...The journal of the American Bar Association reports that one out of nine lawyers is a millionaire...

...Why should that concern you...

...This will increase employment and bring down the cost of housing as the supply increases...

...We had looked at one staff member in 1975 and found that indeed they had not forgotten his birthday, but we didn't have the wit to extend our inquiries further...

...But you can't say Dotson is indifferent to the elderly...

...Mario Cuomo Emerges As Major New Voice in Democratic Circles;' read the headline in The Wall Street Journal...

...After Cuomo's impressive speech at the Democratic National Convention in 1984...

...But it doesn't have to be...

...If you thought the mayor was kind to cab drivers, take a look at Dotson's record...

...If you want to understand why NASA didn't want to face the warnings about the 0rings, all you have to know is that they dread such headlines as this recent one in The Washington Post: "Up to 1800 More Space Program Layoffs Expected...

...My favorite is Arlene M. Wills, an aide to a California congressman, who got a trip to the Far East courtesy of the Republic of China-USA Economic Council, and 25 days in Ecuador paid for by Belco Petroleum...

...That's why I applaud Timothy Noah's call for a national service, which is the way out of the spiritual desert that I promised you last month...

...Officials have devised a rich variety of justifications for their junkets...

...Knowing everything that was bad about it, I ended p believing in the Peace Corps, not just a little bit, but totally...

...He did not feel, as most former White House aides seem to feel today, that he had an inalienable right to cash in...

...He doesn't even have to report it if his salary is less than $61,296—and there are a lot of people who make less than that who can change a key comma in a bill...

...A 1984 trip by the mayor and his party to the Far East cost $42,000...

...According to a recent article in The New York Times Sunday Magazine, the brightest are deserting the law and becoming investment bankers, for whom a million dollars is barely more than chicken feed...

...There is a line in it that I had forgotten and that subsequent history has made eerie in the extreme...

...Do lobbyists lavish similar favors on him...

...You will recall it was the 1983 film, starring Jack Lemmon and Jane Fonda, about a near catastrophe at a nuclear power plant...

...The Runner-Up in my Story-I-Wish-We-Had-Done Award goes to Mary Thornton of The Washington Post, where it appeared on the Federal Page, which, after years of unbelievable dullness, seems at last to be at least flirting with covering the bureaucracy with some wit and sophistication...

...In fact, 38 percent will be the rate on incomes over $90,000 during the transition year of 1987...

...The Mayor was given $2,000 cash for expenses...

...During her five-year tenure, she has made 124 trips to 38 U.S...

...Why don't we leave it right there, fellows...

...National service is also a way to restore community to a badly fragmented nation, to bring rich and poor together as I saw them in World War II, learning to understand and respect one another...

...This New York Times report of Babbitt's views makes clear why: "He has told union workers that economic reality might require them to take pay cuts, and he has told management that it should allow workers to share in profits when times are good...

...An audit has revealed that Pacific Telesis overcharged its customers by $13 million in order to support its non-telephone business...

...Yet this is not enough for many of them...

...Everyone is going...

...For years federal, state, and local officials have been afraid to tackle the problems of the public schools for fear of offending two powerful unions, the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers...

...Her article was about the Postal Service's $1.9 million executive jet that costs the taxpayers $820 an hour when it is used...

...These days I am embarrassed when I pick up my second martini—and embarrassed is what I should be...

...C ynics have suspected that the regional telephone companies, or Baby Bells as they are called, will use money from telephone customers to subsidize their non-telephone business ventures, and the customers could end up paying higher telephone rates to finance various diversification efforts by the regional companies...

...The record is, of course, little better in government, where civil service rules may save the employee's job but he will still find himself harassed and emasculated, with, as we pointed out last month, his tormentors unpunished...

...And the more people who feel like jerks when they take drugs, the less drugs we're going to have...

...The fine was far too little but it points the way...

...Do you find anything suspicious in this story...

...Since Eastern's fares are quite high, price competition would seem called for...

...My Redskins had just scored to go ahead of the hated Raiders 10-6...

...Now schools in New York, Los Angeles, Connecticut, and New Jersey, among others, are doing it...

...They have an average annual income of $121,913 and an average net worth of half a million...

...China ranked ninth just behind Spain...

...But what if they were to lose more—more money and more jobs—if they were found to have ignored the whistle-blowers...

...But there is growing evidence that the Democrats are just as dependent on the rich as the Republicans are...

...But the Army has lost it...

...To those rich lawyers and even richer investment bankers, he must seem a sucker...

...But I am delighted to report the Nuclear Regulatory Commission may have discovered an answer to the problem...

...Among her findings: there is no limit on how much in honoraria a staff member may accept...

...The people are beginning to see through Ronald Reagan's patriotism that says all you have to do is wave the flag and pay lower taxes...

...Since we have to pay for their mail, this is a problem we should attend to...

...This is the key to why inflation in so much of the service industry runs ahead of the rest of the economy...

...He thinks well-off Social Security recipients should pay a higher tax on their benefits, with the revenue going to increase assistance to the elderly poor...

...First, tough penalties for the offender—meaning the user— including jail and loss of license...

...Since it takes the Post Office one to two weeks to deliver The Washington Monthly—and the time is steadily increasing—you will understand why this particular flight drives me around the bend...

...As to why the rest of the media does not take up our crusade against the insanity of rent control, a hint may come from Paul La Rosa of the New York Daily News, who checked a building at Fifth Avenue and 96th Street and found that thanks to rent control Alistair Cooke of PBS and William Shawn of The New Yorker were both enjoying for only $950, the comforts of large apartments that had market rental values of $10,000 to $12,000 a month...

...Charles Peters...

...Where has the Journal been for the last two years...

...Clay gave Mendelsohn's firm the right to build a $460 million project in the District...

...But in recent years, dramatic progress has been made at the state and local level under the leadership of governors like Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, state school superintendents like California's Bill Honig, and local school officials like those in Los Angeles and New York City, and state legislatures like Connecticut's...

...As anyone who knows Washington knows, the staff member is more likely to write the speech or draft the bill than the congressman himself...

...Six months later he accounted for this sum by saying he had spent $300 for "taxi fare, beverages, gifts, and entertainment:' and $1,200 for "a business dinner in Korea" It's those business dinners in Korea you've got to watch...

...Fact-finding missions are one excuse to get out of town...

...McCallum, I forgot to tell you, was tackled by the last Redskin who had a shot at him, saving the game and Lehman's career...

...Even a tiny outfit like the Kentuckiana Regional Planning and Development Council, according to the Louisville Courier Journal, "spends thousands of dollars a year on travel for staff and board members, including visits to conventions of the National Association of Regional Councils, most recently held in New Orleans and Washington...

...Robertson denies the charge, but the fact remains that he did escape the combat duty that awaited almost all other Marine lieutenants sent to Korea...

...Just the amount that is missing is said to be capable of infecting the entire human population of the world many times over...

...People will still be able to sell existing houses, but only at reasonable prices that have wrung out some of the outrageous inflation of recent years...

...The hotel bill for the New Orleans meeting alone totaled $3,400...

...And the Caribbean resort island of Barbados beat out Lebanon and every country in Central America...

...Dotson has been spending all this money during the very same years that the administration of which she is part has mournfully been assuring the aged, the poor, and the handicapped that there just isn't enough money to meet their needs...

...2.352 milliliters of Chikungunya virus is missing...

...I have a simple solution for this problem...

...Former Congressman Paul McCloskey, a man I have known for 20 years, and in whose integrity I have high confidence, has charged that Robertson used his father's pull as a United States senator to avoid combat duty in Korea...

...She has made 29 taxpayerfinanced trips to her hometown of Chicago where her mother lives...

...Word Publishing, a Christian publishing house in Waco, Texas, is distributing to religious bookstores the final report of the Attorney General's Commission on Pornography, which includes detailed descriptions of the plots of such masterpieces as "Deep Throat...

...One interesting figure is that in the last year, contributions to the Democratic National Committee of $500 or more—the kind you and I can't afford to make—have more than doubled in the Washington area alone...

...She spent $6,840 in taxi fares on her foreign trips alone...

...The irony of all this is that the Postal Service doesn't need Forbes, Forbes needs the Postal Service which gives Forbes—and Forbes alone among magazines that appear with less than weekly frequency— "red-tag service...

...With his contacts with world leaders, he could have gotten rich as Henry Kissinger and many others have, and as Michael Deaver was well on his way toward doing until he became a bit too obvious about it...

...The mayor's expenses on such trips are not modest: for example, he spent $481 of the taxpayers' money for just one night at the Hyatt Regency in Memphis...

...Of the 6,262 new teachers hired by New York City last year, 4,131 did not have education credits...

...Robert H. Mendelsohn, an influential San Francisco politician, enthusiastically recommended James E. Clay, head of the District of Columbia Redevelopment Land Agency, for a job as the $87,000 a year head of the San Francisco Housing Authority...

...Louis "—all of which have frequent commercial service from Washington...

...But four countries in western Europe came in ahead of Russia...

...If you would like to express your feelings about this kind of advertising, write Boeing, Seattle, Washington, 98124...

...It is the threatened loss of budget—and most particularly the loss of jobs that follow loss of budget— that makes agencies ignore the whistle-blower...

...The public is ready to face real problems, even if it means taking on previously sacrosanct interest groups...

...Money is becoming the measure of all things...

...It ends, "Write your Senator: Washington D.C., 20510, and your Congressman: Washington, D.C., 20515...

...It will amount, according to current estimates, to over a billion pieces this year...

...Those whose main customers are on expense accounts have no reason to hold the prices down...

...When he left the government, he wanted to write a book about FDR, but "he had no agent, no big advances, no package deal;' writes the article's author, Verne Newton...

...Clay was offered the job...

...The answer to the problem of drug addiction is that it has to be based on our success in reducing drunk driving, which has declined significantly in recent years...

...TILTING AT WINDMILLS When Marvella Bayh first heard the news that her husband had been elected to the United States Senate, she exclaimed, "This means we get to go to Europe...

...I'm sure you assume they visited the other most important countries in the world—Russia, China, and Japan—and such trouble spots as Lebanon and Central America...

...Kelly of the Marines showed a lot more wisdom in rejecting the request of Eddie Meyers, another former Navy star, to play for the Atlanta Falcons with the words "Lt...

...Of those who have to report, William M. Diefenderfer, chief of staff for the Senate Finance Committee, got $14,250 in speaking fees, and M. Danny Wall of the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee got 30 trips, each in one year...

...Another is conferences and conventions...

...Now comes the first smoking gun...

...The best private schools have always done this, but the unions used their muscle to keep the public schools from doing so...

...Other frequent destinations," she notes, "were Boston, Atlanta, Miami, Memphis, Dallas, and St...

...cities and nine foreign countries at a total cost of $86,868...

...It comes when Lemmon, an engineer at the plant, tells Fonda, a reporter: "We've got a quality-control system here that's only equaled by NASA...

...And the other eight are not suffering...

...The record is particularly grim in industry...

...But it isn't...

...Tell the congressmen the public will pay only for legitimate correspondence individual letters about official business—not the mass mailings of newsletters that have become the preferred means of electioneering at taxpayer expense, and that have been the major cause of the huge increase in the volume of congressional mail...

...But my Traveler of the Year award has to go to Betty Lou Dotson, the director of civil rights for the Department of Health and Human Services...

...It is because of my conviction that we all must give up something if we are to solve the nation's problems, that I especially admire what Bruce Babbitt, the governor of Arizona, is saying these days...

...I would like to present The-Story-I Wish We-HadDone Award to Susan Milligan of States News Service...

...That would have been the lesson if the NRC had really socked it to TVA...

...National service is the only way we can meet the problems we face in cleaning up the environment, caring for the aged, educating the disadvantaged, and staffing the military with our best people...

...even if it means the people themselves must make sacrifices...

...They're ready for a challenge to their real patriotism—to their willingness to join together and make whatever sacrifices necessary to meet the real problems of the country...

...But never have I come closer to rooting for the other side, for I realized that if McCallum defeated the Redskins, all Washington would rise as one to oust John Lehman, the secretary of the Navy who had permitted him to play...

...But what about congressional staff...

...The headline over the fullpage ad in The Washington Post reads "My Daddy Lost His Job...

...But as their own end draws near, I have a feeling they will wish they had followed his path...

...In 1985 alone, reports The Washington Post, "The mayor traveled to Memphis, Tennessee, Hartford, Connecticut, Anchorage, Alaska, Cincinnati Ohio, Nassau, the Bahamas, Boston, and Seattle to attend functions held by these organizations...

...We all know that lobbyists use free trips and speaking fees to bribe congressmen...

...If you tend to sentimentalize about farmers as I do—both my mother's and father's are farm families—you will be shaken by a recent GAO survey of income tax returns that revealed farmers had underreported their subsidy payments from the federal government by an average of 80 percent...

...No, the story appeared on September 4, 1986...

...Conference of Mayors, the National League of Cities, the World Conference of Mayors, and the National Conference of Black Mayors...

...Lehman has been a disaster because he has wasted billions on surface ships we don't need instead of concentrating on the submarine and antisubmarine forces we really do need...

...Anyone who knows life in the military knows that there can't help but be some favoritism in a policy that invariably manages to let McCallum off in time for afternoon practice and gives him 72-hour passes when the Raiders play away from home...

...That means that at no extra cost to Forbes, the magazine is delivered the day after it is published...

...Milligan did...

...Guess when the story appeared...

...I continue to think the taxreformers, whom on the whole I admire, got their pants taken off by the rich on the issue of the top rate...

...Speaking of Pentagon fuck-ups—and I do wish for the sake of our more fastidious readers that a synonym existed other than foul-up, for which everyone reads the original anyway— the official who was in charge of counter-terrorism for the Pentagon at the time of the bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut, has charged that military commanders ignored warnings that could have saved the lives of the Marines who were killed...

...A report, recently released by a House subcommittee, confirms what Ken Weiss told you in these pages in our February issue: faulty and fraudulent appraisals of real estate are a primary reason for the weakening financial condition of banks and savings and loans in recent years...

...Shuttle customers are on expense accounts...

...Want to know why...

...The opportunity to travel has become one of the central attractions of public life in America today...

...not one of the industrial whistle-blowers we studied survived on the job...

...Malcolm Forbes could have picked him up in his yacht...

...They fear the whistle-blower because his bad news might convince Congress that their program should be curtailed or— perish the thought!— eliminated...

...Mayor Marion Barry of Washington is a devoted participant in the affairs of many organizations that hold conferences and conventions, including the U.S...

...Back to taxpayer-supported travel for a minute...

...Members of Congress took 426 foreign trips last year...

...Well, it happens to be missing from the Army's BioWarfare Research laboratory at Fort Detrick, Maryland, and it is deadly...

...The headline in The New York Times on October 1 read "New Home Sales Down for Fifth Straight Month...

...The acquisition was first discussed by the Postal Board of Governors on the same day Postmaster General Bolger proposed to increase the cost of postage stamps...

...They can really add up before you know it...

...There have been two major factors in this development...