Tilting at windmills

...Kennedy’s price controls and gas rationing might protect my money, but his opposition to the draft might endanger my life...

...and kick the sheets around until 7:30, when they can begin a reasonably normal day...

...It seems, reports the Texas Monthly, that while Missouri-Pacific crews take half-hour coffee breaks at a Falls County cafe, their freight trains are left blocking the streets, including the main route to the hospital...

...There’s something else that many of us consume with gusto-and it has no labeling information at all: Yet one hears that most beers are brewed with sodium nitrite- Coors, for one, is notand that some European wines are filtered through asbestos...

...In most cases, the logic of the bourgeois press calls for the immediate publication of a ‘scoop.’ Sometimes a publication receives a Pulitzer Prize for such a story, but usually this approach results in the tendentious coverage of events and divorces the press from responsibility for the authenticity or consequences of its ‘revelations.’ “The result is a vast number of ‘overblown’ sensations, false ‘leaks,’ and ‘facts’ taken out of context...

...0ne of Jack Benny’s classic lines was when the robber said, “Your money or your life...

...Unless, of course, there are laws requiring that everything else (or at least some of it) be taken into account...

...T he Russians are on to us...

...And almost all cars have under-inflated tires...

...Few laws are more flagrantly ignored...

...M y concern about military unpreparedness wasn’t exactly eased by this January 1 report from Robert Smith of The Lm Angeles nmes: “The Air Force’s experimental cruise missile is designed to duck below enemy radar and weave 1,000 miles over varied terrain to deliver a nuclear warhead...

...It flew like a rocket, he reports, but got only 11 miles per gallon...

...But last month, one unarmed cruise missile instead weaved into a hillw e never expected to see the elegance of language of the Watergate tapes surpassed, but according to a wellinformed friend of ours, the FBI’s ABSCAM tapes have Rep...

...As a result, Pamplin says, things “have improved considerably...

...Ted wondered how best to explain why he should be in the Senate...

...Instead, they charged the customer as if the gas they were selling him had been purchased at the new OPEC rates instead of the old...

...Or support gasoline rationing that is tough enough to drive down the price of oil...

...And “standard” may mean a giant top-ofthe- line LTD with every accessory known to manbut the rental receipt will simply say “Ford...

...If we’re really interested in saving fuel, we ought to require attendants to check the tires when they fill the tank...

...Why not spend those 36 hours aloft in the spacious, quiet, comfortable cabin of a dirigible, gradually adjusting to the time change...

...This has provided the opportunity to make an informal survey of gas stations in several cities...

...Both missiles were supposed to end up at a Utah test site...

...But this usually happens only with small enterprises that are not important sources of income for their investors...

...Again, in 1979-and even with a windfall-profits tax staring them in the face and a last chance to demonstrate corporate good citizenship-they valued Arabian oil, which the Saudis were selling at below OPEC prices because they did not want to exacerbate world inflation, at the highest OPEC levels and charged you with the highest price...

...What do they do when they get a windfall profit...

...3) It effectively emasculated another intended result of the Civil Service Reform Act-a study to determine how much of the government could be moved out of Washington- by persuading the Office of Management and Budget to report that only a few thousand jobs could be moved to field locations without undue cost and disruption...

...Three recent illustrations: 1) It persuaded President Carter’s pay advisory commission that the annual in-grade or “step” increases given to 99 per cent of federal employees shouldn’t count as pay raises under the inflation guidelines...

...And then see how many more of those pious injunctions to conserve you get from the oil companies...

...On the whole, then, profits must be maximized, and to hell with everything else...

...Look at the record...

...The clerk said, “Of course,” and gave him the keys-to a Firebird Trans-Am 6.6 with a 400- cubic-inch 220-horsepower V-8 engine, quad-flared tailpipes, hood scoop, spoiler, mag wheels, and a T-bar roof...

...Both had been fired from a B-52 bomber about 400 miles off the California coast...

...than I was worried about the kids,’ Mr...

...It is possible for the entrepreneur who owns all of his company’s stock to put product quality, worker welwelfare- and fair pricesabove profit, but only until the red ink is reached...

...New administrations come and go, and nothing changes but the charts...

...Compact” means “Firebird...

...But the promotion meant that he spent little time with the students he wanted to help...

...Here we have an insight into the fascinating nomenclature of the rental-car industry...

...While handicapped workers had to assemble 120 bomb parts an hour to earn $2.90, sources say, the fastest administrator, an accountant, could assemble only 75...

...For a more sensible way to finance higher education, see the article by Robert M. Kaus in this issue...

...Unfortunately, more typical examples of what this method yields are the ‘exposure’ of the affair between Congressman Wayne Hays and his secretary Elizabeth Ray (with all the salacious details) and the ‘leak‘ of indecent remarks made by former Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz...

...e T he most important story in The New York Times of January 27 was buried on page 22: became a teacher 30 years ago, he wanted to spend his time with students, not paperwork...

...Only rarely, as has been the case with this magazine, a small group of benign stockholders will permit a company to be run without regard to profit...

...They’ve simply switched from children to the handicapped...

...The enthusiastic Mr...

...Now he has given up 18 years as a principal to move back to teaching...

...Reorganizing the division, she said-from 14 small sections into three large sections...

...2) It persuaded the Merit System Protection Board to invalidate a regulation permitting the firing of government employees for “unacceptable performance...

...According to Diane Brockett of The Washington Star, more than half of the payments in the government’s largest aid program to college students have been either too large or too small...

...The problem here may be that Ralph Nader doesn’t drink...

...In the second place, in using ‘leaks’ press organs inevitably place themselves in the humiliating and dependent position of passive conduits for those who organize the ‘leaks’- congressmen, politicians, government officials...

...That way the bookkeepers back at the home office never have to confront the profligacy of their expenseaccount executives...

...This is why the New Deal legislation to protect workers was so important...

...Three out of every four, he finds, don’t have a working air pump...

...Two: Suppress Michael R. Bechloss’s Kennedy and Roosevelt, which shows Kennedy’s father to hiwe been a vicious anti-Semite...

...He asked for a compact...

...Another ad had Carter telling an Iowa farmer: “Well, nothing’s more important to me than being with you...

...Here it is: Marxism assumes that if government doesn’t have to serve the interests of the rich, it will serve the interests of all the people...

...DuRocher said...

...Pamplin and railroad officials had engaged in a war of words for months, but when the sheriff found his way to the hospital barred one day early this year, he’d had enough...

...I have a couple of tips for Kennedy’s campaign manager...

...T here’s a federal law that says passenger trains can’t be sidetracked for freights...

...Kennedy’s inability to explain to Roger Mudd of CBS why he should be president calls to mind this passage from Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.’s biography of RFK: “The Attorney General [Robert Kennedy] went up to Hyannisport to help prepare Ted for a debate with his opponent...

...Missouri-Pacific had to send another conductor to move the train...

...From time to time it may appear to be serving only the rich, in capitalist countries, or the poor in communist countriesbut the bureaucrat’s true concern is for himself, and that’s why Marxism has succeeded no more than capitalism in solving the central problem of our time: the bureaucratic state...

...Invoking an old state law prohibiting obstruction of a crossing for more than five minutes, Pamplin arrested the conductor and threw him in the pokey...

...Such a law could go into effect immediately, involving no investment capital...

...DuRocher’s story is among able public and private elementary and secondary teachers to move into administrative jobs where the pay and prestige are greater but the joy is missing...

...They leave Washington at 7:30 p.m., arrive in London at 7:30 a.m...

...important because it reverses a distressing trend “When Albert DuRocher Mr...

...Sometimes, particularly in very large corporations, where ownership is diffused, the executives and the union will get away with running things as much for their own benefit as for the stockholders, but even then reasonable diligence must be exercised to keep the price of the stock from going down...

...London time), get into their hotel around 10:30, collapse immediately from jet lag and sleep until around 5 p.m., wake up, eat, fall back into bed, wake up again at 2 a.m...

...Michael Myers saying, “Money talks, bullshit walks...

...For instance, if one glances back through the ‘Periscope’ and ‘Washington Whispers’ sections of Newsweek and US News & World Report over the past few years, it is amazing how many absurdities, mistaken forecasts and unconfirmed ‘facts’ one finds...

...and Benny replied: “Hmmmm...

...It so happens that tire pressure is the greatest single factor affecting fuel economy...

...And this is also why you should be for a windfall-profits tax on the oil companies...

...After a dozen years in the classroom, he moved to the principal’s office...

...Of course it can...

...But three of the five offshore launches have crashed (one dropped in the ocean) and, in all, seven missiles have gone down out of the 16 aircraft-launched tests...

...W hen Barbara Babcock recently resigned after two-anda- half years as assistant attorney general in charge of the civil division at Justice, she was asked what she thought had been her major accomplishment...

...0u r rim-riding editor, Gregg Easterbrook, recently rented a car in Cincinnati...

...Air is harder to get than gas...

...DuRocher, in his mid- OS, is now ‘Mr...

...To bureaucratic insiders, this is as familiar by now as Jack Benny’s jokes...

...Only a monopoly can do that, and then consumers are victimized by unfair prices...

...This is what passes for modern, convenient travel...

...I n December, the government announced plans to require food labels to divulge more information about ingredients...

...All it has to do is hire Sheriff Larry Pamplin of Falls County, Texas...

...I f you think the kind of businessmen who exploited child labor went out with Dickens, you’re wrong...

...Here is an excerpt from an article by Aleksei Burmistenko appearing in a recent issue of the Soviet magazine Zhurnalist: “. . . On the whole, the use of ‘leaks’ is a dubious journalistic techniquefrom both a professional and an ethical viewpoint...

...One: Distribute free copies of Antonia Fraser’s Royal Charles, which argues that even a tireless womanizer like Charles I1 could be a great king...

...Where there are other stockholders, he is under a legal duty to maximize profit in their behalf...

...The time had come when I was more worried about filling out federal forms...

...This story brings us to the fallacy of capitalism, which is that profits can always be maximized with due regard to the quality of the product and the welfare of the worker...

...Tilting at Windmills by Charles Peters 0ne of our editors has a car with a chronically leaking tire which he has to pump up at least once a week...

...When the first great OPEC price increase occurred in 1973- 1974, the oil companies could have held consumer prices down by valuing the oil they had on hand at the lower cost at which it had been purchased and pricing its gasoline accordingly...

...This is what a bureaucratic society does: It takes its best doers and grinds them into managers, because administration is what bureaucracy values, and doing is what it avoids...

...Well, the trip costs them nearly 36 hours out of their lives the way they travel now...

...D.,’ the object of attention of kindergarten students at Sherman School...

...I applaud the effort but wish they would broaden their sphere of concern...

...As for the Carter campaign, one of Carter’s television commercials in Iowa had the announcer saying: “You may not always agree with President Carter, but you never find yourself wondering if he’s telling you the truth...

...side near Ojai, California, and another veered into a cattle ranch near Lompoc, California...

...according to EPA, under-inflated tires can cause a car to use tento 25-percent more gas...

...Yet, instead, we’re spending billions in complicated changes in automotive technology and shoveling more billions overseas...

...A reliance on ‘leaks’ or ‘authoritative’ sources makes it impossible for Western journalists to evaluate and verify the information they obtain...

...That captures exactly my dilemma about the Democratic candidates...

...S everal months ago, when I boldly launched my campaign to bring back the dirigibles, my friends said (among other things): “But no one will want to spend 36 hours getting to London...

...First of all, ‘investigative reporting’ rarely turns up anything of social significance...

...Even when wages are decent, they are accompanied by some incredible production quotas: “Last winter,” Landauer and Kwitny reported, “blind workers struck California Industries for the Blind, of Monterey Park, forcing administrators to finish a job for a private defense contractor...

...So support a tough windfall-profits tax...

...The Wall Street Journal‘s Jerry Landauer (surely one of the best reporters around) and his colleague, Jonathan Kwitny, took a look at what employers of the handicapped have been getting away with and found a pattern of wages as low as 10 cents per hour...

...And this is why no one should ridicule efforts to force management to provide a safe and healthy workplace...

...e L ooking for the funda- mental fallacy of Marxism...

...The truth is that government cares only about perpetuating itself...

...When he asks for it, service station attendants look at him as though he had just asked for a garland of roses...

...Time and again the bureaucracy, which can so often seem inept and lethargic, moves like a tiger when its own interests are threatened...

...But can Amtrak do anything about it...