TILTING AT WINDMILLS

...The most recent example of what the Fed will do to the rest of us in order to protect the banks is the case of the money market funds...

...Many other Americans feel exactly as I do, and I think all of us are weary of being called anti-Israel and anti-Arab just because we want peace...

...I ncase you worry about running out of oil, bauxite, or cocoa butter, add a new shortage to your list...

...The 1946-47 inflation was caused by bidding up items in short supply, like automobiles, shortages that in turn had been caused not by price controls but by war-time production priorities that did not emphasize passenger cars and other eivilian goods...

...There is a one-year ban on practicing before your former agency, but that only applies to grades GS-17and above...

...The only cars that passed were the Chevrolet Citation, Pontiac Phoenix, Ford Mustang, Mercury Capri, Dodge Omni, Plymouth Horizon, Dodge Magnum, Chrysler Cordoba, Oldsmobile Omega,and Buick Skylark...

...In one way or another they will respond, 'The bureaucrats...

...I f I were an Israeli, I would be settling the West Bank and sabotaging any possibility of genuine autonomy for it...

...They'll probably get a fair hearing, since in advance of filing their petition they presented their case in private to the 10 commissioners' staff (their former colleagues)a procedure that is perfectly legal, although not one that many outside the agency would know to take advantage of...

...Volcker was worried about the loss of member banks...

...The banks didn't like the competition...

...Booker T. Wade, Jim Watson, and Sam Cooper-all attorneys at the agency, two of them assistants to FTC commissioners- are going into business on their own...

...This heightens my already strong suspicion that revenue-sharing is being used by state and local government to reproduce at the grass roots all the inanities of life in Washington...

...In case you've riever visited your local jail, six months' imprisonment is adequate punishment for just about any crime...

...The nature of the "public" served by public television is suggested by the fact that it, not commercial television, carries Wall Street Week...

...Is this a matter of chance, a response to economic laws or a conspiracy...

...But they aren't starting a law firm...

...T he revolving door has been redesigned at the Federal Communications Commission, the agency that regulates broadcasters...

...Further confirmation of our belief that bureaucracy is the central problem of our time comes from Jay Mathews, The Washington Post's correspondent in China...

...Another good book is Elmer Bendiner's The Fall of Fortresses...

...Flute futures...

...Do you ever wonder why the Federal Reserve Board acts with such delicate sensitivity to the interests of the banks and with such total indifference to the hardships it visits on the rest of us...

...And every month...

...If I were an Arab, I would demand a Palestinian state as the minimal righting of past wrongs to my people...

...not by the price controls but by the radical 'OPEC price increases of 1973- 1974 and the shortages caused by the 1972 Russian wheat deal...

...Another rule prevents attorneys at all levels from switching sides in any given case-but it doesn't prevent them from starting a case of their own based on arguments that just happen to be in line with the commissioners' latest thinking...

...Why should a federal government with a deficit give money to states with a surplus...

...The only justification for longer sen~ tences-all of which qualify as cruel and unusual-should be to protect the rest of us...

...Anyway, the rule only bans attorneys from representing others before their former agencies, while Wade, Watson, and Cooper are representing themselves...

...With a little help from the government, the market could do unto OPEC what it has done unto Bunker Hunt...

...What this means is that all sorts of fundraisers and hucksters are using the law to get for free a valuable asset-mailing lists-that they would normally pay good money for...

...The usual liberal position- that prisons only breed more crime-is thus replaced by the conservative notion that prison deters...

...This is a scandal for several reasons...

...And prices are going up so fast-from about $2,000 to $3,500 per flute in two years-that one knowledgeable flute aficionado swears he knows people who put in orders with Haynes solely for the purpose of selling their place in line later...

...M y greatest regret during this presidential campaign has been the failure of the press to investigate and report the pros and cons of Kennedy's positions in favor of price controls and gas rationing.'There were good arguments for both but the reporting was so bad I don't even know if Kennedy knew them...

...We're spending ten percent of the total defense budget on pensions-paying people not to fight...

...Every foreign car tested flunked the recent tests by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration...

...There's an unofficial but virtually ironclad bureaucratic rule that career advancement is related to the number of one's subordinates...

...But the economists have persuaded Jimmy Carter and most of respectable America that price con- trols were the villain in each case...

...If you had been riding in a Toyota Corolla, a Volvo, or one of the other foreign cars tested, a 35-mile-per-hour crash would probably have killed or very seriously injured you...

...Not quite...

...Here at last Congress had a chance to make him put down that cigar and talk turkey about lowering interest rates...

...The result is that Carter does not have any authority to impose price controls...

...This means locking up the violent, sane or insane, until-and only untilthey have ceased to be violent, which usually happens when they reach middle age...

...I'm told, for example, that the attorneys plan to ask their former bosses to waive at least two major commission regulations that would threaten their profits...

...My concern is shared by Fanny Seiler, who as a political columnist for The , Charleston Gazette has become familiar with the folk art of my native state...

...Now, I have seen the way government computers work-they will, I can assure you, respond to a Russian rocket launch by spitting forth 500,000 erroneous Social Security refunds...

...An even more special place in Hell than those reporters have earned should be reserved for the economists who concluded that the cause of the price rises in 1946- 47 and 1973-74 were the controls that had preceded them...

...We don't mind the government giving out our address, but why shouldn't the government sell its lists, as virtually every other organization in America does...

...She tracked down Joseph Domaschko, a computer expert who assured her that with a brief refresher course in programming, the Lever Brothers could achieve with computers the same results they have obtained in recent years on the voting machine, and before that (thanks to the art-gum eraser) with a paper ballot...

...The English did do such bombing...

...The most important result would be to squeeze out of world inflation its largest single factor-a factor that is also the most unnecessary because it is based not on real cost but on cartel pncmg...

...AASA proceeded to subcontract $55,000 of the job to another consultant...

...Civilians were hit, but only because our bombers were missing the target as they tried to dodge the flak...

...The most commonly practiced and apparently most effective means of controlling deviants is through character assassination," report Serber and MacLennan...

...Carol MacLennan and David Serber 6 of the University of California studied the question and found that while real estate agents tolerate a broad variety of illegal and unethical practices by one another, there is one matter of principle upon which they are steadfast: opposition to commission cutting...

...They all seem to think that the American air corps in Europe dedicated itself to mass bombing of civilians...

...When there aren't enough command slots to go around, . some of the commanders have to retire...

...resolution in March...

...We'll spend $1.2 billion on military retirees this month...

...Flute rationing is around the corner...

...And I have also been a politician in West Virginia-where the term Lever Brothers refers not to the soap company but to a Logan County family particularly adept a~ the manipulation of voting machines...

...Unaccountability is the main problem there just as it is here: "Those who know do not decide...

...But for the corporate criminals, they want jail...

...those who decide do not know...

...Like Hunt's silver prices they are based on partial control of a commodity...

...But some who use the act have other motive...

...So the Fed has required that 15 percent of the money market funds be invested in non-interest-bearing accounts so that their return will no longer worry the banks...

...Boston's Haynes Flute & Piccolo Co...

...Some of our car makers might still beat the Japanese and Germans if they would just advertise their cars' primary virtue: safety...

...OPEC's prices, remember, are not based on the cost of production...

...A number of agents will visit or call the discount broker's customers and say or imply that he is 'unethical, a crook, unable to sell property.'" T here is a book all subscribers to this magazine should read...

...L iberals are of two minds on crime...

...But I am neither...

...I always admire people who find it -in themselves to leave the risk-free environment of federal employment to become entrepreneurs, but some things about this venture make me pause...

...I ncase you think the consultant explosion described elsewhere in this issue is confined to the federal government, The San Jose News in Santa Clara County, California reports that the county's expenditures for studies and consultants' fees have multiplied more than seven-fold during the past decade...

...Surely this is one budget cut that Carter is right about...

...Charles Peters...

...Instead it passed his bill in record time...

...Whatever the defects of the resolution, our support of it was aimed not at hurting the Israelis or helping the Arabs, but at encouraging peace...

...Now ~ll we can do is campaign for gas rationing-and go along with Carter's budget- balancing as the only other effective way of controlling inflation...

...The catch for the average man is that these funds required initial investments as low as $1,000 and were the only way he could get a return on his money comparable to his rich friends with their $10,000 certificates of deposit...

...So men who have demonstrated enough ability to rise to, say, rear admiral by their late forties are shoved out...

...See Thomas N. Bethell's article beginning on page 32...

...If we ration gas at the same level of strictness that we did during World War II, we would cut our consumption in half...

...This simply is not true...

...It is called I.e Mal Francais, its author is Alain Peyrefitte, and it describes the French version of the bureaucratic sickness that is the central concern of The Washington Monthly...

...One of my favorite consultant stories didn't get into the articles in this issue...

...Early this year congressmen had a chance to gain some degree of influence over the Fed and spare themselves those hearings during which their concerns about high interest rates are dismissed with a bland wave of Paul Volcker's cigar...

...Since we are the largest consumer of the world's oil production, such a cut would collapse prices and OPEC would join Bunker Hunt and all the other high rollers who have tried to a~t as if they controlled a market they really didn't...

...July wheat off three points today, July orange juice even, and flute futures were flat...

...Tilting at Windmills Computers are being installed all over the country to count votes...

...The reason is that the Fed is not accountable to the rest of us...

...In the last quarter of 1979 and in the first month of this year, 69 banks with total deposits of $7 billion gave notice of withdrawal from the Federal Reserve System...

...Its constituency is its member banks...

...has a seven year waiting list for flutes...

...A bill before the Senate provides for up to five years imprisonment without parole for employers who violate environmental and health and safety laws...

...The answer is that other organizations are continually looking for ways to recover some of their costs, while the typical government agency feels no such urgency...

...There is a lot of useful and important work that does not require a retinue of flunkies, including many of the engineering tasks that many West Point and Annapolis graduates are trained to perform...

...But any such control that is not complete is subject to market forces, as Hunt found out...

...For regular, ordinary criminals, they seek alternatives to prison, like workrelease, halfway houses, restitution, probation, and fines...

...MOSt people think of the Freedom of Information Act as a way for reporters and citizens to find out what secrets the government has stored up on them...

...Volcker needed congressional action to stop the withdrawals that were threatening his power...

...In an article published in April, he writes: "Ask any Chinese from Vice Premier Deng Xiaoping on down to a hotel room attendant: 'Who are the real enemies of the people these days...

...So I wish: to sound a warning...

...in their early fifties-an age when they could be serving their country for another decade...

...When an agent attempts to reduce his commission, he is gently reminded that he has wandered into no-no land...

...We recently received this warningin a mailing from the Federal Trade Commission: "IMPORTANT NOTICE: Government mailing lists are subject to Freedom of Information Act requests and you may therefore receive unsolicited mailings...

...These funds-like Dreyfus Liquid Assets and Merrill Lynch Ready Assets-were offering high interest rates to people who wanted greater liquidity than that offered by the six-month $10,000 certificates of deposit on which banks paid such rates...

...It could be done at night when it was safer for the pilots...

...The worst recent example of this sort of thing was the Jewish reaction to the American vote on the U.N...

...He would have to ask Congress for such authority, and in the time it would take to be enacted, prices would surely explode as nervous businessmen hurried to raise them before the bill became effective...

...A bill before the House makes it a felony, punishable by two years in prison, for "an appropriate manager" who knows of a serious health or safety hazard to conceal it from the public and affected employees...

...I think we should have done exactly what the British did, because I think it is exactly what the Germans deserved...

...Ironically, they're often pushed into this enviable situation by policies that encourage servicemen to retire as early as their late thirties and make it practically mandatory by their midfifties...

...It should be required reading for the generation that got its view of the American bombing of Germany from Kurt Vonnegut...

...But whether you agree with me or not, the Vonnegut version is a serious distortion of history...

...Thousands of American airmen died because they did not employ the English strategy but instead attempted precision bombing of German factories in the daylight, exposing themselves to murderous attacks by German fighters and, sadly, seldom inflicting serious damage...

...What sort of trading is this...

...There are nonOPEC sources of oil, enough to fill at least half of our present demand...

...As an American and a citizen of the world, I have to urge restraint on both sides in order to prevent a war that could harm them and involve us...

...To me the justification for prison is not deterrence or rehabilitation, it is punishment of the guilty and protection of society...

...But going along doesn't mean that we are prevented from trying to make sure the budget cuts come in the right places, like, for example, the MX missile (see Bill Keller's article beginning on page 53...

...With their twice-ayear cost-of-living increases, many retirees can make more by staying at home than they would by going to work...

...It concerns a "sole-source" contract for $71,000 awarded by the Office of Education to the American Association of School Administrators...

...The reluctance of the American manufacturers to exploit this edge may be due to the fact that you also would have been killed or seriously injured had you been riding in any of the 24 American cars that failed the test...

...The 1973- 74 inflation was ,caused...

...The sole-source contractgranted without competitive bidding-was justified on the ground that AASA was "the only firm that can reasonably and economically meet the contract requirements...

...They're starting a broadcasting company...

...Unfortunately, the book is only available in French...

...But, you ask, didn't the government's new revolving- door rules prevent this sort of thing...

...Real estate commissions generally run in the six to seven-percent area...