Tilting at Windmills
Tilting at Windmills One of the truly delightful results of the Balanced Budget Amendment would be its effect on banks. As the national debt disappeared, so would the bankers’ ability to make...
...Of course the best solution to the national debt is simply to cancel it, except for Series E bonds, which should be paid off double to make up for the way they have been used over the years to con the average man into giving his savings to the government in return for measly interest...
...Last month we discussed the fact that most of the violent crimes in this country are committed by people between 15 and 25...
...Why on earth can’t we gain our satisfaction from doing what we do as well as we possibly can...
...Born in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, he graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy, Princeton, and Yale...
...Asian government policies that allow Asian businesses to sell in the United States but keep the United States out have had the effect of transferring $80 from every American to South Korean, Japanese, and Taiwanese citizens...
...A few years ago, the prospect of a “stagflation economy,” with high unemployment and high inflation, seemed troubling even to our ruling class...
...This is the first time a member entitled to a chairmanship has been defeated solely on ideological grounds...
...He died while playing squash at the Metropolitan Club...
...And he wants them-at least those who are good-to continue working for him...
...Both of these factors mean that, just as the employee tries to please the boss, the boss will try to please his employee...
...As recently as 1970, the branches of the District of Columbia library were open for 72 hours a week, according to an article by Paula Span in Washingtonian magazine...
...In 1975, for the first ti me, these no n p r o d uc t i o n County, Maryland, has provided us with our Bureaucratic Hero for 1979...
...The United States should make’clear that it supports, and will defend against attack, both Israel and a Palestinian state on the West Bank...
...But it also has its good side-a side that more employees should be aware of...
...But while the staff had grown by six times, its payroll had increased a b o u t 50 t i m e s t o a t o t a l of $525,000...
...We should begin to take some steps to remove this hazard from our lives...
...So it won’t be only the blacks and the poor who have trouble finding jobs...
...The Times headline read “Pentagon Chiefs Warn of Soviet Progress in Weapons,” and its story, by Bernard Weinraub, began: “WASHINGTON, JAN...
...We could, for example, raise the licensing age to 18, and provide that any moving traffic violation would result in loss of license until the age of 25...
...Another desirable move against inflation is gas rationing, which was recommended in our July/ August 1978 issue...
...A few months ago we wrote about the decline of prejudice against Jews and Catholics since 1960...
...Now, with t h e i r incomes adj us t ed by re gu lar cost -of- 1 ivi ng increases, they are insulated again...
...In one of the calmest appraisals to come out of the Pentagon since the Eisenhower era, Brown cautioned against ‘acting as though we were engaged in a terminal arms race,’ and instead recommended a carefully paced modernization of American forces...
...It will be sorely missed by organizations like Ralph Nader’s and ours, for whom the amount of rent we have to pay can be the difference between life and death...
...I t was a historic moment when Richardson Preyer was defeated by Henry Waxman for chairman of the House health subcommittee...
...The same age group produces most of the violence on our h i g h w a y s . High s c h o o l d r i v e r education courses, instead of helping, are adding to the problem by getting more drivers out on the roads earlier...
...It is also an example of the way to make urban life more livable, for it mixes apartments with office space, so if you work late or come in early there’s always life in the building-someone going downstairs to eat at Sholl’s Cafeteria (which, because of its low prices and good food, functions as a sort of kitchen for the entire building) or heading for the laundry room with a load of clothing, or bringing in groceries...
...If you are talented, and if you have skills your boss needs or thinks he needs, you have real power to influence him to do what is right, what is in the best interest of your organization and your country...
...Subordinate power is a fact of organizational life that I don’t believe I’ve ever seen discussed...
...If we limited gasoline consumption for even a year to what we could produce, OPEC would be taught a useful lesson...
...Yet in my own experience it is a powerful force in the lives of most organizations...
...So I immediately endorsed their budget request for $1 million dollars and worked hard to get it through Congress...
...for once, their own sons and daughters may feel the pinch...
...The main reason is salaries, which go up each time f e d e r a l employees get a raise, which of course is every year...
...You see its worst effects in the new cabinet secretary who brings to the job a determination to reform his department and quickly becomes the prisoner of his minions...
...Those who worry about the elitist nature of the CIA will not find their anxieties soothed by the recent obituary of its director of personnel...
...I don’t think we do-I still like Zen pong...
...T h e building where we work is being torn down...
...It is one of the last low-rent buildings in downtown Washington...
...But if reform comes, it will require a legislative miracle, for, as Mike Causey points out, control over the pension programs is split between eleven committees of the House and ten of the Senate...
...When I was working in the government, the director of my agency doubled my modest bureaucratic empire by adding a new division, and 1 was anxious to win the respect and affection of its employees...
...Only the rich would be hurt, and we would have an immediate budget surplus...
...They refused to give the Japanese the plans for the Messerschmitt jet plane unless Japan came across...
...In the District, a beginning librarian with no experience gets $15,920 a year, compared to $1 1,387 in nearby Baltimore...
...The Post’s headline read, “Pentagon Chief Takes Calm View of Soviets,” and its story, by George C. Wilson, began: “The Soviet Union has so many problems, both military and economic, that the United States can safely adopt a ‘basically conservative’ defense posture, Defense Secretary Harold Brown said yesterday...
...That the readers of this magazine are spared long articles on subjects like the above, and instead find them only in this column, can be traced to what I call subordinate power...
...One way to deal with both urban sterility a n d t h e housing shortage would be to require landlords who build big office buildings to reserve a third or so of their space for apartments at reasonable rents...
...Charles Peters...
...This is the practice of automatically increasing salaries and pensions when prices rise...
...1 can think of many times I have been saved from folly by employees who talked me into a more sensible course (“Put it in the column, Charlie...
...Our complaint certainly does not apply to their reporting of Harold Brown’s statement of January 25, 1979...
...N o t long ago we complained that there was too much similarity in the views of The New York Timesand The Washington Post...
...We could comfort the landlords with the thought that one-third controlled rent is better than complete rent control...
...It deprives all its beneficiaries of any incentive to fight inflation...
...As the national debt disappeared, so would the bankers’ ability to make an easy living by buying, at higher interest rates than the banks pay to depositors, the various bills and notes the Treasury issues to finance the national debt...
...It also has chauffeured cars that pick up its top executives at their homes in the morning and take them home again in the evening...
...So while the war was being l o s t , J a p a n e s e submarines were used not to fight, but to transport that gold to Germany...
...The effect of this reform on auto insurance rates is also pleasing to contemplate...
...Why do we also have to beat the shit out of the other guy...
...He said he was no more than a “glorified clerk...
...With their unfunded liability that now exceeds $3 trillion, one could safely say that the federal pension systems require reform...
...A congressional task force under the chairmanship of Rep...
...Not long ago we reported that the federal chiefs (GS-18s) finally outnumbered the Indians (GS-Is) in Washington...
...I can also think of times when I’ve made mistakes because of a desire to please the people who worked with me...
...Here is evidence from Congressional Quarterlii: In the last two decades the number of Catholics in Congress has grown by one third and the number of Jews has more than doubled...
...Evidently the same thing had already happened in the aircraft industry, according to William Greider of The Washington Post, who writes: “The aircraft industry has become top-heavy with the overhead costs of maintaining nonproduction employees, the managers and engineers who do not make airplanes but who plan, design, and sell them...
...So subordinate power can be harmful...
...Maybe we should hire some Germans to handle our trade relations with the Japanese...
...Consider World War 11 when they were supposed to be allies...
...What makes it particularly unusual is that no one ever questioned Preyer’s competence or f a i r n e s s . In the p a s t , when a congressman in line for a chairmanship had been turned down, such doubts about his ability or capacity for fairness had always played at least a partial, and sometimes a decisive, role in t h e d e c i s i o n . . . . Henry Pace recently retired after 35 years as a member of the staff of former Senator James 0. Eastland...
...They actually delivered six tons...
...The congressmen gave us $500,000...
...In case it escaped your notice, it was a version of ping pong in which the object was for two players working together to see how long they could keep the ball going back and forth, playing well but not trying to defeat each other...
...James Jones has found, according to The Washington Star’s Leonard Curry, that “the export-import policies of Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea pose as grave a danger to the American economy as the cartel of petroleum exporting nations t h a t has set artificially high world prices since 1973...
...As late as September 1944-less than a year before the end of the fighting-the Germans were insisting that Japan pay off a $140-million debt by shipping 50 tons of gold to Germany by submarine...
...25Defense Secretary Harold Brown said today t h a t there was ‘an uneasy balance’ of military power between the United States and the Soviet Union and t h a t Americans faced major defense and weapons needs over the next few years to meet expanding Soviet strength...
...He is Wayne Norris, who will be out of work on July I because he told his boss ‘development process unnecessary...
...But if they don’t notice the lines of poor people outside the employment office, or the domestic factories being closed down by vigorous foreign competition, they might consider this fact: by 1985 there will be an estimated “surplus” of 950,000 university graduates...
...As part of the battle against inflation, “indexing” should be stopped...
...But, while we do our best to break up the oil cartel, we should also attend to the legitimate emotion behind OPEC, which has a lot to do with our relations with Israel and the Palestinians...
...If bureaucrats generally would face this kind of truth, we could cut the government payrolls in half...
...When he retired there were 24 working in Eastland’s office...
...The man in charge wants to be liked by the people who work for him...
...The idiocy of this is that there are lots of people who want nice, quiet jobs out of the rain and snow, and would gladly work for lower wages.If we hired them, the libraries could be kept open...
...To me, the worst aspect of American c u l t u r e is its vicious competitiveness...
...And it turned out, even by using every end-of-the-fiscal-year spending technique known to the bureaucratic world, we were able to get rid of only $385,000...
...Now they are open 40 hours per week...
...The Energy Department rents parking space for its workers at its L’Enfant Plaza office in Washington so that they can drive their cars to work instead of conserving energy by riding the buses and subways that come to the department’s door...
...of all the things that went down the drain with the demise of the counterculture, Zen pong is the loss I most regret...
...That reminds me of one thing that should have been in our Platform for the Eighties...
...When Pace joined the staff, there were but three other people on it and the total payroll for all four was $1 1,000...
Vol. 11 • March 1979 • No. 1
