Tilting at Windmills

...That was clearly untrue during World War II and I know of no time in our history when it clearly was true...

...The same," writes Nelson, "holds true for swimming pools...

...The article also says that "the selection of wine for formal White House functions is now serious administration business...

...A recent article by Paul Jacobs of the Los Angela Times reminded me of the lessons to be learned from Lancet, the muckraking British medical journal, lessons that American professional journals badly need to learn...

...This meant that 1 had to learn enough about his specialty-say it was orthopedic medicine-to ask him the right questions about the lumbar one fracture involved in my case and to expose the holes in his testimony...

...Tennis, like fishing or golf, is a good way to get to know people outside of a formal setting...

...I couldn’t believe it...

...We’re always delighted to have the respectable world catch up with the Month/v’s ideas and that has been happening quite a bit lately...

...Like a few other . reporters, Barrett plays tennis with White House Chief of Staff James Baker...

...Nelson begins his report with an interview with one Jeff Loose, who sells Lotus and Ferrari motor cars...

...I am not the least disturbed that some of this time will surely be devoted to less profound matters ranging from sports to sex, or that some of it will be devoted to religion...

...A contractor that had plead nolo contendere to antitrust charges of bid-rigging was denied the right to bid on a new army contract...

...My other worry about Webster is his statement that groups that "produce propaganda, disinformation, and legal assistance may be more dangerous than those who actually throw the bombs...

...My best guess is that the constitutional way is not a constitutional amendment but a good lawyer to defend the first teacher to permit meditation...

...We once manned a lonely outpost on this one, but as a result of the outrage over the Hinckley case, we now may even have a majority on our side...

...w h a t has happened to the Democratic party, the party of the people...

...But two things have disturbed me recently...

...If you’ve been wondering about your chances in case of one of those chemical disasters, consider this report by Olga Wickerhauser of The Charleston Gazette: ‘‘It’s midnight...

...Why pay for lobbyists...

...My point is that it just hasn’t happened...

...He quotes one top damage analyst as saying, "Most vulnerability analyses are not worth the paper they’re printed on," and a retired Navy missile expert as explaining, "The analysts are paid to predict that the surface fleet is invulnerable...

...Department of Transportation reports that from I97 I to 1979 there were more than 95,000 accidents in the United States involving the transportation of toxic chemicals, which breaks down to several dozen every day...

...The real big shots are so wealthy they’re just living off the 12- or 13-percent in their money market funds," Loose says...

...Take our opposition to the insanity defense...

...Worry about the deficit in the short term seems just as insane to me today...

...Now think about that...

...I believe in a draft, but I believe it must appeal to the nation’s idealism...

...Much of the narrowness of the British success could be attributed to unexploded bombs...

...During pre-recession times, the top-of the line pools accounted for just 20 percent of Shepard’s business...

...As late as 1932, eyen FDR was talking about the need to balance the budget...

...It’s crazy, but it’s a trend that began in the sixties, gathered a lot of steam in the seventies and today has Washington full of lobbyists for state and municipal governments...

...If you’re wondering why there’s a column called "Wine Briefs" in the American Bar Association Journal, read James Fallows’s article in this issue and consider the fact that the University of Chicago’s Graduate School of Business is now teaching the art of selecting wines when dining out with customers...

...What 1 want to do is find a constitutional way of respecting the wishes of a vast number of fellow citizens who want a time to pray, and my own instinct is that a moment’s silence is a golden event in any day...

...Has Mr...

...Houses over $800,000 are moving at a very healthy pace...

...Although they love to complain about taxes, entrepreneurs are not really motivated by what the IRS does but by the desire to win, by pride in product or company, and sometimes by pride in gross income-"I made a cool million last year...

...L k e many others, I have had the impression that William Webster was doing a reasonably good job at the FBI, certainly in comparison to L. Patrick ( I Burned Them) Gray and J. Edgar (Dirty Tapes) Hoover...

...Only rarely is careful calculation of after-tax income a big factor...

...Before we leave San Jose, a story from the News there reminds me of one of the new insanities of American political life...

...Obviously, common sense tells one that taxes could get too high and the entrepreneur could really get discouraged and pull out...

...What about the rest...

...The works...

...The brighter the person, the more costly it is for the rest of us when he wastes time on snobbery...

...The reason for its popularity with civil servants is clear...

...The crucial thing is the customers...

...The highway construction industry was recently caught doing it in Virginia and in Nebraska...

...Or does the Air Force really not care because it knows there’s nothing about the B-l to worry the Russians...

...I learned it could be done...

...An example of her findings, as she explores local kinship patterns, is the case of Senator John Tower, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee: "Tower divorced his wife Joza Lou after 23 years of marriage and wed Lilla Burt in 1977...

...Lancer is 1) severe in its treatment of incompetent physicians, 2) never afraid to attack the conventional Wisdom, 3) written in readable, sometimes even vivid, prose, and 4) makes a deliberate attempt to understand the patient’s point of view...

...Why pick on them first...

...The clever lobbyist always knows where to place his legal business...

...The Argentines came remarkably close to winning that battle," says John Witherow of The Times of London...

...It took making a fool of myself as I asked all my doctor friends about lumbar one...

...Our concern has both idealistic and pragmatic roots...

...It is really a matter of voluntary compliance on their part.’ "‘We do know that regulations are violated regularly,’ Quarantelli said, and White agrees...

...This summer, while agreeing to cuts in Medicaid, a program that aids the poor, they made an all-out fight for a program that benefits the comfortable, opposing a four-percent limit the administration was trying to place on the cost-of-living increases scheduled for government retirees who are already the beneficiaries of one of the world’s most generous pension programs...

...Webster heard of the First Amendment...

...Korb: "Well, it’s an estimate...

...They didn’t put their tax savings into new plants because they didn’t see new customers...

...Florence Graves of Graves: "How much money Korb: "Again, it depends on H a v e you heard about the new magazine, Physician’s Travel & Meeting Guide...

...A stockpile of Sten guns in England supposedly awaiting shipment to ‘Latin American revolutionaries’ was traced to his stock, but no American laws had been broken...

...Now read this report from Stephen Barlas of the Independent News Alliance: "Rain repeatedly soaks thousands of tons of exposed ammunition at key air force depots in Europe...

...Ian Munro, Lancet’.s editor, In connection with the snobbery problem, let me call your attention to the fact that 4.8 million men and 4. I million women bowl at least once a week...

...She is Antoinette Hatfield (see The Washington Monthly, June), wife of the senator from Oregon...

...I also do not agree with the idea that high taxes for the rich discourage productive enterprise...

...It sounds as if it means something, but it really means nothing at all...

...Thomas in the Virgin Islands, who, according to The New York Times, "was inspired by the constant invasion of his home island by meeting-going doctors...

...If physicians don’t want to be bothered with itemizing their deductions, they simply can bill some medical institution that knows how to pass on the expense to the taxpayer...

...Common Cause interviewed Korb and asked: "Just how costly is the regulation...

...There’s been about 30-percent less demand for the more moderate pools costing below $20,000...

...Why else in the last year have they put their money into money market funds instead of investing in new plants and new jobs...

...Could it be,"asks Joseph M. Arena in a marvelous "My Turn" column in Newsweek, "because bowling is a bluecollar sport...

...the Navy does not know how many shells are there or what condition they are in...

...One experience 1 had before I came to journalism was invaluable in this respect...

...o n e of the dismaying lessons of history is how wrong people were about lowering government spending as a way to end the Depression...

...Well enough for the townhouse, the home in Lake Tahoe, the off-shore power boat, lots of skiing, a vacation every month...

...A Maryland legislator who is also an insurance agent runs ads for his insurance business that identify him as Delegate So and So...

...She is paid $57,500 a year as director of the government’s Institute of Museum Services...

...And just to make sure you won’t misunderstand my position, I would favor dismissal for any teacher who sought to convert the meditation period into an exclusively religious occasion...

...What are the state legislators from Santa Clara doing in Sacramento...

...The Urban League is publicizing estimates that each percentage point subtracted from the ten-percent unemployed figure means $30 billion in new revenues for the Treasury...

...The recession might be affecting rich people somewhere down the line, but it’s sure not making a difference with buying pools.’ Shepard said...

...by not going to Farnsborough, and, incidentally, deprive Soviet spies of the opportunity to inspect "the full offensive and defensive avionics" with which, according to Aviation Week and Space Technology, the Farnsborough B-l will be equipped...

...We could save $ I million simply...

...To a very, very large extent, we depend on the sincerity of companies and their commitment to safety regulations,’ he said...

...The League may be o p timis t ic, but the relations hip between declining unemployment and rising tax revenues is.undeniable...

...One example: he wants to have OSHA inspectors graded by the companies they inspect...

...For example, if you live in New York City you recently learned from the Daily News that you have paid for trips to Hawaii and Sweden by doctors from New York Medical College...

...British police linked Cummings with ‘major international gun-runners’ arrested in New York in December of 1979...

...We have to spend-spend in a way designed to create maximum demand and to rebuild our infrastructure and modernize our plants so that we will be able to compete successfully in the world economy...

...Well it recently discovered, according to Ronald Ostrow of The Los Angeles Times, that it had $41 million in funds left over from fiscal I98 1. This was 20 percent of its budget...

...He had the cash in a liquid-asset account...

...The U.S...

...In the bureaucracy, values are more eternal...

...Congress is part of the government...

...He wants to eliminate safety record-keeping requirements for 470,000 companies in the retail trade, and the finance, insurance, real estate, and service industries...

...Last summer the broker says, it took only four months to sell a custom-made home in Woodside listed for 33.1 million...

...The guide will list the 5,000 tax deductible conventions, meetings, and symposiums that take place every year, listing them, the Times says, "by specialty, by locale, by date, and by the all-important recreational activity...

...Korb: "Well, my figures are as good as anybody else’s who’s commented on this thing...

...I think the crucial defect of most journalists today is that they lack this initial willingness to make fools of themselves in order to learn how to ask the right questions later...

...I do not support Strom Thurmond’s school prayer amendment (see "Letters...

...In other ways, however, Auchter shows the intelligence we have come to expect from the Reagan administration, which may be said to have turned the upper levels of government into a National Turkey Farm...

...At Subic Bay, Philippines, one of the Navy’s primary ammunition bays in the Pacific...

...Korb replied, "I‘d say it’s considerable because we had in 1980 something like 1,266 individuals who filled out the forms...

...Why the delay, a curious reporter asked a CBS source, who replied, "I’m never sure Reagan knows what he’s talking about...

...Why not go after the cynical evaders...

...Sure, there’s no question about it,’ responds Barrett, whose journalistic colleagues noticed him whacking balls with Baker on Barbados, site of the president’s Easter vacation...

...For example, the government says that carriers must put placards on trucks, but even if they set up roadblocks, they check maybe 20 or 30 trucks...

...You’re talking about a tremendous amount," are we talking about...

...Just because a Joe McCarthy comes along occasionally and misuses the information is not a reason to not provide the information, it’s a reason to get rid of the Joe McCarthys...

...An example: From the fifth to the twelfth of this month, the Air Force will be displaying the B-l bomber at the Farnsborough Air Show in England...

...One explanation is that journalists themselves have become fellow travellers of upper-level civil servants...

...The problem with such rigging is widespread, not only among defense contractors but in bidding by other government contractors at the federal, state and local level...

...According to The - Charles Peter...

...Again, the Reagan administration is doing things in exactly the wrong way...

...One is the conviction Webster has displayed throughout the Donovan case that he has no obligation to share with the Congress information he gives to the White House...

...But it’s also idealistic...

...Louis, but the news was not broadcast for another two hours...

...He did it while taping an interview on a CBS station in St...

...Ronald Reagan, who is no fan of the agency, will for sure be delighted...

...I would say it costs the government several million dollars a year for all of the things involved in this report...

...I think that’s because these people don’t have to borrow money at 18 percent to buy them," one real estate broker tells Nelson...

...This lets those who anticipate the possibility of legislative action affecting them know exactly where they should buy their insurance...

...Why do certain words seem to dominate certain periods...

...According to the National Journal, leading reporters for the Washington Post and New’ York Times receive similarly generous salaries: $55,000-$60,000...

...Remember how it was complaining about being starved for funds...

...Does this help Barrett cover his beat...

...you’re more likely to get a call back in time for deadline.’ ". . . . O n th e lessons learned from the Falklands, please add that unexploded Argentine bombs may have made the difference in the crucial battle on May 2 I at San Carlos Bay...

...Congressional sponsors of legislation to exempt physicians from the rules of the Federal Trade Commission have, according to Ralph Nader’s Congress Watch, received more than $ 1 . 1 million from the American Medical Association, the American Dental Association, and the American Optometric Association...

...They are the best informed administration on wine in this century," says "Wine Briefs" in the An7eric~m Bur Association Journal...

...Nothing else can explain how the Federal Reserve and the Department of Defense have gotten away for so long with the con of "We’re the experts, we know what is best, don’t question us...

...Now you know why they don’t have time to worry about tiresome matters like unemployment...

...What you may not have read is that in the two days before it closed, Penn Square got $26 million from another prudent banker, the Federal Reserve...

...Think of "dichotomy" and "ambiguity" in the literary criticism of the 1950s...

...The large tank ruptures, and chlorine begins to seep onto the road and down an embankment into a creek...

...I do support a daily period of silent meditation in the schools, during which the pupil can silently pray or otherwise contemplate the meaning of it all...

...The time wasted is time taken away from real communication with others, whether about individual human problems or vital issues facing the nation and the world...

...I know of no American professional journal of which even two of these things can be said...

...One truck out of every ten and one out of every 23 railroad cars carries a hazardous load...

...One Reagan reform that makes sense to me has been proposed by Thorne G. Auchter, the assistant secretary of Labor...

...Snobbery may be at its most dangerous when it counsels that one of those vital issues is chic and encourages us to ignore others that are in fact of equal or greater importance...

...But Judge Charles Richey ruled that barring a company from getting government work is not proper punishment for bidrigging...

...H e r e ’ s an update on some items that appeared in past issues of The Washington Month;,!: Raymond Donovan, the secretary of Labor, who is in danger of having his confirmation hearings reopened by the Senate, has selected his real estate agent...

...I was a trial lawyer, and as such, I had to learn to cross-examine expert witnesses...

...And Joseph Kraft, who couldn’t be more respectable, has adopted the view Gregg Easterbrook expressed in these pages last fall that because of the money market funds and other factors, too many influential people now have a self-interest in high interest rates...

...The draft is practical because it can be cheap-we no longer will have to offer financial inducements to get people to enter military service, so we’ll save money...

...Whether a potential disaster is checked within minutes, or whether it develops into tragedy depends on factors like luck, weather, or the chance expertise of a local police officer...

...Create them and recovery will follow...

...All but ignored in Navy studies," Greve writes, "are the dangers of fires like those that have destroyed at least four British vessels in the South Atlantic war with Argentina...

...That gamble may fail, but if we don’t take it, things are sure to get worse, just as they did in 1932...

...One cannot help one’s relatives, of course, but it’s interesting to note that Lilla Burt’s brother, Samuel Cummings, runs Interarmco, the big arms dealership based in nearby Alexandria, Virginia...

...also is skeptical about the experts, an attitude that I commend not just to the staffs of professional journals, but to all reporters and editors...

...We’re against snobbery because we’re for democracy, for finding ways to bring people together instead of separating them into classes...

...Diana McLellan has written a fascinating new book, Ear on Washington...

...On our view that the Federal Reserve can lower interest rates without causing inflation (see The Washington Monthly: June) we gained a significant and courageous ally in the person of Robert Ortner, the chief economist of the Department of Commerce, who had the courage to speak up against his own ad ministration...

...It was started by Steven D. Salinger of St...

...It took hard work...

...Lawyer-legislators don’t even have to advertise to get this message across...

...Lawrence Korb, the assistant secretary concerned, says the costs of regulation outweigh the benefits...

...And it doesn’t seem likely to work very well when its businessmen waste time worrying about impressing one another with their knowledge of wine instead of worrying about the quality and usefulneess of their product, the efficiency with which they produce it, and the competitiveness of its price...

...whether you’re talking about direct or indirect [costs...

...O n e very ominous fact was buried in Newsweek’s excellent review of what went wrong with the Desert One rescue: "The seizure of the embassy had left the CIA without a single agent in Iran...

...Graves: "But you don’t know for sure...

...He says the "big-ticket" cars ($55,000 to $110,000) are moving as well as ever, and offers as evidence his pythonskin cowboy boots ($500), his diamond-studded Rolex President watch ($l0,000), his 14-karat gold bracelet ($5,500), and the gold ring he wears that has a giant red stone in the center...

...Jewelers tell Nelson that in recent months more and more people have bought big-ticket items on a whim...

...There was almost no criticism of this from the normally liberal-leaning staffs of our great newspapers...

...On any one day, according to the DOT, there are more than 75,000 different hazardous substances in transit on the nation’s roads and railways...

...The error was mine...

...When they do pull out it’s not because of high taxes but because of lack of faith in the economy...

...All of us-rich and poor-will do our part in the nation’s defense...

...I misread his story and it was ungenerous of me not to take complete responsibility for the mistake...

...The Legal Services Corporation is in many ways a praiseworthy organization, but in one way, at least, it has turned out to be just like the other bureaucracies...

...The public is left to trust private industry to make sure the chemicals are transported safely,’ says a spokesman for the DOT’S Federal Highway Administration...

...None was out among Iranian people...

...A tanker truck loaded with 22,000 gallons of chlorine swerves on a patchy two-lane highway to avoid an on-coming car and overturns...

...on all the time, it is understandable that doctors have a strong interest in avoiding the public scrutiny involved in the attention of the regulatory agencies...

...One hopes, however, he will realize that such poor-mouthing is typical of bureaucracies generally, and that the worst offender of all is the Pentagon...

...With this kind of thing going w h e n the Penn Sauare Bank went under, you probably read that Chase Manhattan lost millions and that as a result two senior executives and seven of its lower-ranking officers were fired...

...We also have a very practical desire to see this country work...

...And educated Americans are wasting a truly frightening amount of time either putting down others or living in a state of inner panic that others will put them down because they’ve used the wrong word, ordered the wrong wine, praised the wrong book, suggested the wrong restaurant, or visited the wrong Greek island...

...Now comes new evidence from Mark Nelson of the Sun Jose Mercurji News...

...The guys know that if they did good studies, their shops would not be funded...

...one of the rare cases where the Army tried to do something about bid-rigging by its contractors, the federal courts have rushed to protect the guilty...

...Speaking of the San Jose papers, I have an apology to make to one of their reporters, Philip S. Trounstine, whom I blamed in our May issue for an error about the expense accounts of the mayors of San Francisco and San Diego...

...Shouldn’t the voters replace them if they are not adequately representing the county’s interests...

...Steven Graham, who sold a $16,000 ring just before he was interviewed, says sales of expensive jewelry are making up for the slack buying of items less than $1,000...

...According to Graham Shepard, owner of Royal Pools in Palo Alto, only the high-line pools are selling as well as they did last year...

...One of the instructors is quoted by 7hr New York Times as saying, "While the lack of knowledge about choosing the proper wine may not kill a business deal, selecting the proper wine leaves a lot of room to impress a client...

...But we haven’t heard of anyone being fired at the Fed...

...The man who bought it didn’t borrow a penny...

...The story recites that "despite a shrinking budget that has required layoffs of county employees, the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors has decided to spend $18,000 for office renovations for its Sacramento lobbyists...

...OSHA figures show that 94 percent of these companies will have fewer than two employee injuries a year...

...Frank Greve of the Knight-Ridder papers has looked at how the Navy is facing up to the Falklands and has found that it has deceived itself and Congress about the vulnerability of its warships to modern enemy missiles...

...Enrico Quarantelli, director of the Ohio State University Disaster Research Center, ‘government regulations do not address the potential dangers of transporting hazardous substances, and are ineffective in preventing accidents...

...The office renovation is bad, but what’s really wrong here is that Santa Clara has lobbyists at all...

...All the CIA officers in Iran at the time of the seizure were in Tehran...

...It took betraying vast ignorance, at least at the beginning...

...And if it works and the economy gets moving, we will be able to generate enough tax revenues to keep the deficit under control in the long run, which is, after all, what is most important to the bond buyers...

...The only CIA officers there were held hostage...

...Too many bombs rust...

...We’re doing well enough for me to afford all the toys...

...Now, these tailor made pools, which cost up to $30,000, make up half of his dealings...

...Washington Post, most of the I60 young men the government is indicting for failure to register for the draft are self reporters, people who have written the Selective Service to explain why they didn’t register...

...I have mentioned my suspicion that one reason for Reagan’s lack of urgency in dealing with recession is that it presents no problems for his rich California friends...

...T h e Defense Department is trying to get rid of a regulation that requires employees who move back and forth between the Pentagon and its contractors to report their moves on a single form designed to reveal whether conflicts of interest exist...

...federal grand jury has indicted three firms in connection with bid-rigging on highway projects there...

...If you sometimes wonder why the press lays so few gloves on James Baker, ponder the following excerpt from a story on local tennis players in The Washingt on Post : "Larry Barrett, Time magazine’s White House correspondent, has a job that depends largely on good relations with administration advisors...

...The number one word for at least 30 years has been "appropriate," as in "appropriate response...

...It’s all ‘ifs,’ " says Bill White, Kanawha County Emergency Services Director, and other state authorities and emergency response experts agree with him...

...In practice,’ says Dr...

...This is a common position in the executive branch, but it is wrong, except for the rare information that truly should remain secret, like the Polaris sailing schedule...

...Now it’s "disparate...

...Graves: "But you are just guessing...

...In addition to the defense spending cuts and elimination of tax decreases and federal pension and salary increases that Timothy Noah advocates to finance the new WPA, once it gets started, the WPA itself will be increasing tax revenues...

...It represents the American people just as much as the president does and has a right to know everything he knows...

...If you want to get down and talk about from start to finish, processing the paper, mailing the things out, having them come back in, being compiled, Xeroxed, reproduced and sent over [to Congress], I would say it probably costs the taxpayers several million dollars...

...And if they are not willing to pay for their trips, they certainly are willing to pay to avoid regulation...

...Some of you may wonder why The Washington Month!,, publishes so many articles exploring the various forms of snobbery...

...She is the town gossip, but she is also one of a new breed of anthropologists, unencumbered by academic degree or by academic predilection for places like Ouagadougou and Zamboanga, who believes that there are rites and rituals worthy of study right here in the culture of Washington, D.C...

...Remember when Reagan inadvertently leaked the news of Murray Weidenbaum’s resignation...

...In the seventies, ‘‘convoluted’’ seemed to appear in almost every manuscript submitted to this magazine...

...And, of course, there are nickels and dimes that could be raised in almost every part of the federal establishment...

...The punishment seems just right to me...

...Yet how much space ioes The Washington Post sports section give to bowling...

...These are people of conscience...

...Now you understand why several years ago I proclaimed "Never Leave the City Where the Good Bars Are" as the guiding rule of the CIA, of the foreign service, and of American reporters abroad...

...Incidentally, I think our position on the draft is based on the same kind of pragmatic idealism that motivates our concerns about snobbery...