TILTING AT WINDMILLS

...He then told another publication about the story, and it won a Pulitzer Prize for i t . . . . Anyway, as any magazine p u b l i s h e r k n o w s , an important reason why magazines like Mother Jones go “non-profit” is that they get much cheaper mailing rates...

...If pressure is put on an organization to achieve number goals, the sins committed in pursuit of the goals will be in direct proportion to the amount of pressure exerted...

...reported third quarter earnings up 32 and 62 per cent respectively...

...Now comes a report by Dr...

...It also involves the FTC, whose chairman, Michael Pertschuk, was disqualified by a federal court from taking part in the agency’s hearings on the fairness of television ads aimed at children...

...A classic example of the “form-over-substance’’ conflict cropped up in the news last month...

...For our latest on what’s happened to politics, see “How the Supreme Court Sabstaged Civil Service Reform,” by Robert M. Kaus on page 38...

...Have you seen those Eastern Airlines ads with Frank Borman, the former astronaut and now president of the company, looking so sincere and straightforward and decent...

...It seems the FTC chief had made “conclusory statements” against the TV ads, and this gave the “appearance” that he would be unable to decide the case fairly...

...But it’s distressing that the two forces that have made this nation, profit and politics, have both become bad words to respectable Americans...

...The reason...

...Brzezinski about the Camp David summit and how proud she must be of her husband’s work...

...This looks like a magic chance to recapture their lost markets, but they’re throwing it away...

...A lot of illegal aliens have attained citizenship by being inducted into the Army...

...So, there were no more private bus companies...

...The Interior Department’s National Park Service maintains five lodges-in the Blue Ridge mountains of Virginia, the Catoctin mountains of Maryland, the Grand Tetons of Wyoming, on Cape Hatteras in North Carolina, and on the Gulf of Mexico-for use by government employees who need to relax...

...Another investor urged us to do a story that we ignored-largely because the members of our staff shared Mother Jones’ suspicion of investors...

...Has the Commission gone out of business...

...The lowest bidder was the loser, of course...

...This year there’s one congressional staffer who’s worked his tail off for us on bills...

...It was Joanie’s birthday...

...Some saw the new law’s potential impact more clearly, however...

...I’ve got too much rank.’ I said, ‘Well, what’s going on, I thought it was just a group of old buddies.’ She said, ‘Well, it is, sort of, but 1 have the Kissingers, the British ambassador, t h e I r a n i a n ambassador, four senators-Baker, Heinz, Mathias and Ribicoff-and I wrote a note of congratulation the other day to Mrs...

...Tilting at Windmills If the San Diego crash gave you even a moment’s pause about the hazards of private planes, consider this fact: any of their owner-pilots are free to climb into their planes dead-drunk and take off...

...This is the essential reform required in all our income maintenance programs-from social security to unemployment compensationif we are going to keep them from bankrupting us with payments to people who don’t need the money...

...The Washington Monthly is owned by investors...

...Another more questionable excess was revealed in the recent trial of Captain Leon T. Davis, the radiologist who claimed the Army had reneged on the recruiting promises it had made to him and others...

...Of course not...

...Increasingly, however, physicians are avoiding tiresome ethical questions about kickbacks by forming their own clinics that do all their lab work and pay them 100 per cent...

...H e r e from Susan Mary Alsop is the latest of our social notes from Washington: “I consider the Rolly Evans’is a very amusing house to go to...

...If you read Robert M. Kaus’ article on trade in last month’s issue, you may be interested to know that Otto Eckstein, the liberal economist, was recently quoted in The Washington Post as saying the only way to stop the dollar slide would be to take direct action against foreign imports...

...A sizable portion of this amount goes to pay kickbacks to the doctors who order the tests...

...Consider for a moment the difference between “suffer or permit” and “authorized” and you’ll be able to share the golden vision of Feder and Murtha...

...It simply means that they must be accompanied by careful attention to how they are being achieved in the field...

...Pertschuk’s participation, according to Gesell, would deprive the poor advertising industry of its constitutional rights...

...McNamara’s body count in Vietnam resulted in the indiscriminate shooting of farm animals, women, and children, just as the recruiting pressure caused the recruiters to sign up the unqualified...

...And we mustn’t forget the Fritcheys...

...They have never demanded o r even s u g g e s t e d we publish anything-or at least they have done so only twice...

...I served in the West Virginia legislature, have friends there now, and know that few of them are millionaires...

...The investigation behind it began eight years ago...

...In October he placed an ad in The Wall Street Journal describing the dispute as “the largest claim ever filed against the U . S . under a government contract...

...The assumption here is that being owned by investors or a corporation is automatically evil and that non-profit is automatically good...

...They are not like the unions that protect those who run our assembly lines or dig our coal...

...He had represented the Navy in a billion-dollar contract dispute with Litton Industries...

...When one congressman wanted to stay three weeks at Camp Hoover (the Blue Ridge lodge), Whitlock turned him down...

...Gerald Feder, who, as chief counsel to a Senate Labor subcommittee, helped write the amendment, left the subcommittee staff shortly after it passed to become an associate of Donald Murtha, who had already won a $25-million suit against the Post Office on another matter...

...Borman, according to the pilot, did nothing about the defect until seven months after the crash, when a report revealing it as the cause was issued by the National Transportation Safety Board...

...and Bank America Corp...

...Not exactly all government employees...

...It continues to keep its employees occupied with such vital matters as determining which private limousine agency will carry TWA employees between Dulles Airport and Washington...

...During his service at the White House he wrote four articles for this magazine that appeared under other names...

...The evidence showed that one of the Army’s promises was that it would promote doctors from captain to major after three years without regard to h’ow they had performed...

...Fallows received no compensation for these articles...

...But what did Gesell thinkthat Pertschuk, who has been fighting tooth and nail to keep Congress from cutting the TV inquiry out of his budget, really has no views on the matter...

...Crowley went on to say that “he seeks associations with law firms and representations of contractors and others with claims against any agencies of the U.S...

...area...

...He’s done more for us than many congressmen...

...Judge Gerhard Gesell’s opinion in the case should be read by any student of the process by which our administrative agencies have been hamstrung by the requirement that they behave like courts...

...Milton I. Roemer of the University of California showing that during early 1976, when many doctors withheld their services to protest increases in malpractice insurance premiums, Los Angeles County experienced a significant drop in its death rate...

...They were: “How Jimmy Carter Can Find Out What Government Is Doing” (January 1977), “How To Stop Masturbating” (October 1977), “The American Class System and How to End It” (February 1978), and “China and India and Me” (March 1978...

...We’re also being done in by our own citizens...

...Frederick Crowley resigned from his job as a Navy lawyer in September...

...None recognized its desirable feature, which relates the pensions for non-wounded disabled veterans to their income levels...

...Pertschuk was appointed precisely because he does have strong views, and all we should expect from him is that he be willing to change them if the hearings turn up contrary facts...

...This is one of the assumptions of the left that drives us around the bend...

...And now Mother Jones has put out a piece of promotional literature that says, “Keep in mind that Mother Jones is run by a non-profit foundation, so we are beholden not to investors or a corporation, but to you, the subscriber...

...An item from “Ear,” The Washington Star’s gossip column: “At the steeplechase in Middleburg Saturday: Tongsun Park and Tandy Dickinson sauntering hand in hand, stopping to chat up True Davis...

...Are they crazy, or, as General Haig would say, is there some sinister force at work...

...T h e bureaucratic cause of both the recent service recruiting scandal and My Lai is the same...

...It is depressing that none of our leading editors seem to have thought enough about income maintenance to realize the problem and thus recognize what was good in this bill...

...Last month we ran an article by Michael Kinsley criticizing the obsession of our legal system with avoiding the appearance of “conflicts of interest...

...I went to a marvellous party at the Bradens the other night...

...Why on earth, for example, do American automakers raise their own prices when the dollar decline causes foreign manufacturers to raise theirs...

...He will become Washington editor for The Atlantic and will resume his role as contributing editor of The Washington Monthlj...

...This is a bit blatant, but more subtle versions are common...

...The pension bill signed by the President last month has been condemned by such publications as The Washington Post, Fortune magazine, The Boston Globe, and The Wall Street Journal...

...Citicorp reports “record results for the first nine months of 1978,” with a 36 per cent third quarter income over last year...

...Anyway, there has been one happy result to the service scandals...

...This is the eternal Washingtonsocially pleasant, morally corrupt, and artfully managing life so t h a t i t is s p e n t at places l i k e Middleburg instead of Leavenworth...

...Several years ago, the buses were taken over by local governments...

...This just might have something to do with the fact that private planes have a much higher accident rate than commercial planes...

...Brzezinski called me up to thank me for the letter so I said casually, by the way, I’m having a little party next Monday but if by any chance you’re free let me know at the last minute...

...Well he just let me know...

...T h e amendment required government agencies, including the Postal Service, to pay overtime that they “suffer or permit,” even if it is not authorized...

...Back in 1974, while the amendment was pending, the Post Office wrote the White House that it threatened “no adverse effect on the activities of the Postal Service, which does not contemplate that this measure will result in additional costs...

...She called up the afternoon of the party and said ‘I need your help, things are getting a bit out of hand...

...This took I8 months to decide, cost the commission $30,000 to hear, and cost one of the companies involved $21,000 in legal fees...

...But their owners do not come from the deprived classes and have a strong lobby that protects them from sensible regulation...

...A typical example is this engraved announcement from Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver and Kampelman, a Washington law firm: “Paul Shnitzer, formerly associate general counsel for procurement of the United States General Accounting Office, has this day joined our firm...

...They were published under other names solely because he wanted to avoid embarrassment to the White House...

...Now if he were to call me and ask for it and if it were free, of course I’d say yes...

...Davis is a former ambassador, who also served as Tony Boyle’s front man while Boyle was using ownership of the National Bank of Washington to take money from the United Mine Workers’ peosions and give it to himself and other union officials...

...But now they’re fighting just as hard for salary increases for GS-I 5s, most of whom are overpaid and u n d e r w o r k e d . . . . Now t h a t t h e Interstate Highway System is almost complete, we will probably end up paying several times its original cost in order to rebuild it...

...This doesn’t mean profits can’t be obscene, which is why I’m for price controls now (more about this next month...

...The case was filed in 1972...

...The Faustian bargain behind the Civil Service Reform law was its inclusion, to appease employee groups, of provisions granting unions new collective bargaining rights...

...The problem with our antitrust laws and their enforcement system could not be illustrated better than by the FTC’s case against the big cereal companies, important because it was the first direct attack on the oligopoly (or shared monopoly) problem...

...Charles Peters...

...The law provides that if they are honorably discharged from the service, they become citizens...

...I love the Krafts...

...This way, the needy receive help, but money is not wasted on those who don’t need it...

...Tax pay e r s , through higher p os t a 1 subsidies, pay mailing costs that those big bad investors must pay for other publications...

...Dickinson may be blameless except for her taste in men...

...As a rule, doctors want a 40 per cent return on their testing business,” according to Edward L. Morgan of the Illinois Association of Clinical Laboratories...

...We need sharp restrictions on trade,” he says, “We’re being done in by our friends...

...He wasn’t in a position of life or death with us,” Whitlock explained to ,The Washington Star...

...Chase Manhattan Corp...

...He demoted, then grounded, the pilot who had blown the whistle on the defect that caused the December 1972 crash of an Eastern LlOll near Miami that killed 103 people...

...L a s t month James Fallows resigned as the White House’s chief speechwriter...

...Together they filed overtime suits on behalf of 60,000 workers...

...According to Robert A. Merry of The Wall Street Journal, the Postal Service may soon have to pay its workers a billion dollars in overtime payments that should have been given to .them since the federal labor standards act was amended in 1974...

...The administrative judge who has been hearing the case has decided to retire...

...White collar unions are one of the main forces behind the bureaucratization of America...

...That’s one of the reasons I thought his request was out of line...

...According to Ira E. Whitlock, chief of t h e Park Services’ congressional l i a i s o n d i v i s i o n , w h o h a n d l e s reservations, he usually refuses people below the rank of assistant secretary or congressman...

...If he were chairman of the subcommittee on Interior appropriations, well then 1 could understand asking for three weeks...

...What do I do about the seating?’ ” T h e Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Commission was set up to regulate the private bus companies in the D.C...

...Federal aid, under the laws governing the interstates, is available for “resurfacing, restoration, and rehabilitation” of the highways but not for routine maintenance such as sealing cracks and filling potholes...

...The judge should be ashamed of himself...

...Since I think new immigrants are life’s blood to this country and that we have, since the twenties, unduly restrictqd them, this part of the recruiting scandal doesn’t bother me...

...They’re coming...

...This doesn’t mean that numerical goals are always wrong...

...Park, you know, is the briber of congressmen...

...R u t h Carter Stapleton is now in the tourist business...

...A couple of years ago Ivan Illich wrote a book arguing that many of our health problems are “iatrogenic”meaning they are caused by physicians...

...Medical lab charges add about $ I 1 billion to the nation’s annual health bill...

...government...

...As for his high entrance requirements, Whitlock noted, “You have to be flexible though...

...It turned out we already had reviewed the book and had panned it...

...So non-profit is not automatically virtuous (see Arthur Levine’s article on the YMCA in this issue...

...Instead, Gesell would require him to maintain a false facade of disinterest...

...Some government employees’ unions, like Jerry Wurf‘s AFSCME, started out that way, fighting valiantly for the people who empty our bedpans and collect our garbage...

...One asked us to review a friend’s book...

...She leads groups of 75 on a ten-day, $1,300 tour of the Holy Land...

...The real radical truth about West Virginia is that it is a cobony that never had its fair share of millionaires...

...This is the kind of exaggeration that earns radical journalism a bad name...

...First with a statement in its August issue that “half of the West Virginia state legislators are millionaires...

...Mother Jones earned a lot of credit with its expospre of the deadly defect in the Pinto.‘But it has used up a bit of that credit recently...

...The tonic effect of high i n t e r e s t r a t e s is sometimes difficult to perceive by those of us who have to pay them...

...The investor continued to support us...

...I t h a s c o s t the government $5 million, and the government may have to start all over again...

...Nor is profit automatically evil...

...But it’s certainly clear to those on the other side of the transaction...

...And the run was worth at most $3,500 a year in profits...