Tilting at Windmills

...Pretend you are a governor...

...The Saudis offered to oppose the rise, but Kissinger sided with his friend, the Shah, who was its leading advocate...

...The copy begins: "Les Aspin, Congressman from Wisconsin, is an outspoken advocate and authority on two of the most critical issues facing America today: inflation and SALT II...

...and have the time of your life doing it "U.S...

...If that suggests that a state government can run without a leader, there is also impressive evidence that the federal government can run without subordinates...

...Another West Virginia paper, the Huntington Herald Dispatch, has revealed that the GSA has paid $150,000 to rent a building it is not using there...

...Too much federal funding of cities and states goes to financing the explosive growth of their bureaucracies and is not tied to the delivery of needed service to the public...

...American cities should do the same, and part of their federal subsidies should be specifically earmarked for that purpose...

...There are, it revealed, five rules for shaving, one of which is "Don't cut yourself...

...Treasury regulation #1162.5 permits an income tax deduction for education expenses (registration fees and cost of travel, meals, and lodging) undertaken to: (I) maintain or improve skills required in one's employment or other trade or business, or (2) meet express requirements of an employer or a law imposed as a condition to retention of employment, job status, or rate of compensation...

...Esquire, which once devoted its pages to crashing bores like Hemingway and Mencken, took the "service" sensibility to a new plateau last month when it followed a sixpage feature article on razor blades with a 1,000word piece entitled "My Shaving Secrets...

...During the last two weeks of the year more than half the federal employees ih Washington were away from their desks...

...A recent edition of his constituent newsletter tackles the issue of how to "help remove those tough stains without damaging your clothes and furniture," urging voters to be prepared— because "nobody ever plans to spill anything...

...Why does the rest of the press continue to treat Kissinger with respect...

...Coming in a campaign year, however, the 1976 ad ran the risk of being labeled a campaign contribution...

...Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown, Jr...

...They conserve...

...Because they have no incentive to save...

...Why does only Anderson write this story...

...and, for two years, an Assistant Professor of Economics at Marquette University...

...expose yourself to the newest procedures and practices of notarization...

...He has the academic credentials of a professional economist: A B.A., summa cum laude from Yale...

...Kissinger thought a stable Middle East would be the result of the oil-enriched Shah's ability to buy arms...

...has been absent from this state capital for 96 of the past 100 days and the prevailing view here is that state government is running fine without him...

...The interesting person featured happened to be Jimmy Carter, sitting in a rocking chair on the front porch of a small-town house, looking exactly as his campaign managers wanted him to look...

...Last month I read in The Washington Post that the General Services Administration had paid over $500,000 for office space in New York that has remained vacant since it was leased two years ago...

...If they used the animal's other name, they could call it the Gnu Shoe...

...Scientific American may have avoided that pitfall by helping a politician in a nonelection year...

...I n this issue, Walter I Shapiro says that conferences and conventions have become the number one growth industry of America today...

...0 D uring the last half of the seventies Jack Anderson often appeared to be a mere shadow of his old muckraking self...

...magazine publisher and want to advance the career of the politician of your choice, but you neither want to compromise your editorial pages with the appearance of favoritism nor risk prosecution under the campaign financing laws...

...They believe in you...

...The only difference in service noted by the local press was described in a story in The Washington Star, which alleged that, because of excessive leavetaking, there were only 11 controllers monitoring air traffic in the vast area stretching from the Carolinas to Pennsylvania when there should have been a minimum of 18...

...The point of the ads was that interesting people read Time...

...Well, right now, according to Mike Causey, The Washington Post's expert on the civil service, there are more people working for the federal government in the Washington area than at any time in the nation's history...

...Its subject was Representative Les Aspin, who ranks second only to Senator William Proxmire in his ability to inspire column inches of attention...

...Imagine how you would feel about this if you were Aspin's next opponent...

...There is a way to solve this dilemma, and those of us who live in Washington saw it used last month by Time, which got local advertisers to finance a 20-page supplement paying tribute to Mayor Marion Barry...

...Why are government employees so indifferent to waste...

...And the alumni of the Nixon-Ford administration seem to have specialized in poisonous portrayals of their former colleagues in the roman a clef suspense stories that have provided their principal occupation since their removal from office or release from incarceration...

...But "unstable" would have to be the mildest description of that area today—and of course the rest of the world, and the United States in particular, is still reeling from the succession of OPEC price rises that the Shah began...

...Gillis Long of Louisiana has answered that question...

...You urge the people of your state to conserve gasoline...

...Eight color photographs showing Aspin's active, concerned, and statesmanlike qualities in all their rich variety are spread over two pages...

...An isolated incident, I thought...

...Arecent report from Sacramento by Lou Cannon of The Washington Post began, "Gov...

...The fawning profiles were paid for by the advertisers, not by Time, so the magazine was immune to the laws limiting campaign contributions...

...Publishers are upset...

...explore the technological advances that are rapidly changing the Notary profession...

...By now, even the most highbrow publications are filled with useful information on how to keep your lifestyle on track...

...Recently, however, he has struck gold in the form of government documents that show Henry Kissinger to have been the leading American villain in the OPEC price rise of 197374...

...Does this mean that not only are most federal employees not needed, but even those who are needed either don't realize it or don't care...

...One of the men's shoe companies, Allen Edmonds, is offering a Genuine Wildebeest Shoe...

...On the front page was a story that the government spent $76,000 for office space in Charleston that had not been used for 16 months...

...There is a federal incentives awards program, but 90 per cent of its awards are for things like "skillful reorganizations" that have nothing to do with saving money...

...Its ad, with a pitch similar to Time's about Carter, ran during 1979...

...The tribute, entitled "Can A City Take a Stand...

...A good place to start correcting this problem would be to make part of the federal subsidy to cities dependent on at least a trial reduction in local transit fares...

...A key member of the Government Operations Committee, Aspin takes a hard line against inflationary waste and extravagance...

...what some people call "service journalism" was once the exclusive province of women's magazines...

...If magazine readers need this sort of advice, why not voters...

...At the peak of World War II, by contrast, the grand total was 270,000...

...Montreal has done what every city should do...

...Every delegate to the Conference will receive a National Notary Association Certificate of Attendance signifying completion of all Notary workshops and other Conference activities...

...The present total is 370,964, and it does not include employees of the CIA and the National Security Agency, which knowledgeable observers say would put the figure well over 400,000...

...It has reduced subway and bus fares in order to lure its people out of their cars...

...I think it's one of the most destructive and wrongheaded decisions that any court has made in the area of First Amendment rights," says Townsend Hoopes, who is president of the publishers' association...

...meet the National Notary Association's innovative executives and notarial experts...

...In 1976, while Donovan was supporting Jimmy Carter (in whose White House he now works), Time ran a series of ads in its own behalf...

...My own view is that the authors of the increasingly common roman a clef have become increasingly indifferent to the harm they do when they exaggerate the defects of—or just plain lie about—real people...

...from MIT...

...Our favorite convention has to be the Notary Publics...

...Miami Beach also provides a unique opportunity to broaden your notarial and legal horizons...

...a Rhodes scholar...

...D wring the 1976 campaign did you get the impression that Carter would streamline the bureaucracy and reduce the number of governmental employees...

...For example, I have never belonged among the admirers of Jacqueline Onassis—indeed, when I worked in the Kennedy campaign in West Virginia in 1960, 1 unsuccessfully tried to keep her out of the state because she seemed so phony compared to Muriel Humphrey—but she has my total sympathy for what she has endured at the hands of novelists...

...S oon after Howard Jarvis started the Proposition 13 movement in California, this magazine published an article called "The Fireman First Principle," which warned that the clever bureaucrat's response to such budgetcutting efforts is to threaten to fire essential employees while protecting the unessential ones...

...Here is a headline that appeared in The Los Angeles Times a few weeks ago: Jarvis Pushing New Initiative to Restore Pre-Prop 13 Fire, Police Funding Levels The promotional materials of a magazine called Self blatantly appeal to the worst side of the "me" generation...

...a Ph.D...

...ACalifornia court has held a novelist liable for defaming a psychiatrist who had claimed that the portrayal of a character modeled on him was libelous...

...Then I picked up the latest issue of my hometown paper, The Charleston Gazette...

...Here is an excerpt from the conference brochure, headlined "The Notary Public in the 1980s": "Come join us for the 2nd Annual National Notary Association Conference & Excursion—May 15-23, 1980—whose backdrop will be exciting Miami Beach and the beautiful rum-and-sun-soaked Bahamas...

...Now they will have a new source of income: libel suits against each other...

...The time, last summer...

...What is their reward, and what will be yours when they find out that the Department of Energy has based this year's gasoline allocations on last year's consumption...

...To appreciate its full attraction, you should realize that all the professional knowledge required of a notary can be communicated in somewhere between 15 and 30 minutes...

...was in an advertising section, so the taint of editorial favoritism was avoided...

...was economic advisor to the Secretary of Defense...

...This is because the bureaucrat knows he is much more likely to get his budget restored if that seems necessary to bring back employees who perform vital functions...

...This supplement represented a refinement of a technique developed by Time when it was led by Hedley Donovan...

...sharpen your professional skills...

...The result, according to The New York Times: "Probably the most successful magazine start in the last couple of years is Conde Nast's Sell...

...Another is to shave before showering so you needn't "submit to the boredom of wetting your face all over again...

...Of the many errors Kissinger made during the Nixon and Ford administrations, this was surely the most disastrous...