TILTING AT WINDMILLS

...The figure is expected to rise to 750,000 by 1987...

...If you are gung-ho ‘dedicated,’ you may persevere...

...Closely related to this tactic is having several lawyers in a firm involved and billing the client for work that one lawyer can do...

...In a reform that has stunned Washington bureaucrats, the Air Force has changed the name of its uniforms...

...administrators who, in many cases, were failed teachers...

...administrators, not teachers, who insisted on boring lesson plans...

...Another letter, this from my friend Randall Rothenberg, tells why his mother quit teaching: “Lousy administrators who refused to discipline kids because they, not the teachers, feared parents...

...As our discussion dragged into the second hour the meter seemed to tick louder every minute as I realized that the legal cost was already mounting to the point where their client was going to have to get some substantial concession from us to justify to himself the fees he was going to have to pay the lawyers...

...I f the Educational Testing Service could ever redeem itself by devising a test that accurately measures common sense, Tom Eagleton would certainly score among the top ten in the Senate...

...One of the most dramatic is the growth of private-sector hospital-management companies, who are now providing in many areas better hospital service at lower cost than either public or not-forprofit hospitals...

...For that, the Florida Bar Association is trying to put her in jail...

...You can’t call Patrick Buchanan one of those mealy-mouthed conservatives...

...Thousands of customers in 16 states were deliberately cheated by this woman...

...It has 19 bedrooms, ten bathrooms, two kitchens, seven fireplaces, a library, and tennis courts...

...No, but, as she explained to Newsweek, “Every time I make $50 some lawyer loses between $500 and $5,0001’ Anyone who has practiced law, as I have, learns that many legal secretaries know more than their bosses, particularly when it comes to filling out forms, a task which is usually delegated to them anyway...

...I think we desperately need both...

...Again Jones was involved in all the cases...

...I think you might find it worth reading too...

...On August 11 The Wall Street Journal‘s editorial page quoted this statement by John Whitehead, senior partner of Goldman, Sachs & Company: “I believe that it should be possible for the management skills and the administrative structures of corporate America to be effectively harnessed to solve our social problems...

...Its cost of $2.5 million is, according to The Washington Times, “the highest price ever paid in Washington for a residence, breaking the record set earlier this year when Senator John Warner and his former wife, Elizabeth Taylor, sold their Georgetown house for $1.75 million...

...Another device is filing suits of dubious merit...

...Like the jazz musician who seeks to give new life to old songs, we keep our focus on the important issues by trying to write about them more artfully, with more illuminating examples, with new facts relevant to the issues, and with fresh analysis of those facts...

...He has won all sorts of awards for his classroom teaching skills and is working on his Ph.D...

...How did the hospital respond...

...Any evaluation will fall short of perfection...

...0 ne reason that Door legal secretary is being tormented by those Florida lawyers came out during this year’s convention of the American Bar Association...

...To Reuther this was as important as higher pay for those already working...

...Let me explain, using Missouri as my base of experience...

...He told me that one of his previous students out of his gifted class had just graduated from college with a degree in chemistry and had accepted a job with a corporation which for starters paid more than Mchughlin’s own salary after 14 years of teaching...

...Men’s Combination 3 is now called Dark Blue Shirt...

...Of course, the main tactic in these situations is to keep the meter running as long as possible...

...Just a few minutes ago I had the ‘Missouri Teacher of the Year’ in my office prior to his having lunch with President Reagan...

...market...

...And, in the event the latter can’t be avoided, the preference of a Boston, Massachusetts over a Butte, Montana...

...Have any of her clients complained...

...But it gave Jones a good recommendation and offered another job at the hospital...

...That’s why in this issue you’ll find the articles by Peter Barnes on the socialist entrepreneur, John Eisendrath on the brokering of stock and other commodity futures, Thomas Peters on the factors that make winning businesses and why the Harvard Business School isn’t among them, and Jonathan Rowe’s book review of Seymour Melman’s Profits Without Production...

...The latest illustration is the purchase by Ben Bradlee and Sally Quinn of a Georgetown house whose previous occupants include a granddaughter of J.P...

...H ave vou heard what the Florida-Bar Association is trying to do to Rosemary Furman...

...The more who can be saved for genuinely productive work, the better...

...Under today’s basic pay scales, I don’t see many new Bill McLaughlins entering or staying in the teaching profession and, hence, they won’t be around five or ten years from now when you want to give them a merit pay increase...

...Morgan...

...Why had the San Antonio hospital not acted to prevent this tragic sequel...

...Finally they left, but my misery was not relieved...

...Often laws are held unconstitutional on grounds of vagueness...

...Her punishment: a $500 fine and 200 hours of public service work-that comes to a grand total of 25 eight-hour days...

...The present situation was not inevitable...

...Even if all my efforts thus far have failed to convince you of the rising tide of snobbery in America, perhaps I will succeed with this news: In November the organization that keeps track of Britain’s titled nobility will publish Debrett’s Texas Peerage...

...But, within a period of 31 days, there were eight separate medical emergencies among Holland’s patients, one of which resulted in the death of a 15-month-old girl...

...London goes on to recall the testimony of the late Walter Reuther, then head of the UAW, before a congressional committee in 1958: “He urged auto companies to cut prices instead of raising them, and to derive their profits from increased sales instead of higher markups...

...General Motors has taken the lead, indicating that it will probably increase prices by an average of more than 2% percent...

...There is something bewildering about this silence when auto company profits are rising, unemployment remains high and middle class car buyers are still suffering from ‘sticker shock...

...Take his column in August entitled “What matters in the world is force,” in which he observes, “In the world in which we live, good will, good intentions, a spirit of compromise and a desire for peace add up to almost nothing...

...The Rand Corporation Institute for Civil Justice has found that of every dollar paid because of asbestos litigation, 76 cents went to lawyers...

...We used to have five of them which were called ‘teachers colleges.’ We now call them ‘universities’ both for reasons of prestige and because graduates from these schools today are not entering the teaching profession...

...He tells you that you will have one hell of a time owning your own home or giving your own children a college education on a teacher’s salary...

...And that’s why this magazine has devoted steadily increasing attention to what’s wrong with (and to what needs to be done about) our managers, workers, and investors...

...That’s the kind of leadership we desperately need in both labor and management today...

...0 ur critics sav that The Washington Monthly is often repetitive, exploring the same issues over and over again...

...We don’t ignore the issues that we think are important just because we’ve written about them before...

...Examples abound...

...She could have been-and you and I probably would have beensentenced to up to five years in jail...

...In addition to his chemistry courses, he teaches a class of 14 gifted students a course in scientific research...

...in chemistry at the University of Nebraska...

...One such device is keeping nonlawyers like the Florida secretary from competing...

...On page 6 of the same issue appeared an article about a study in the New England Journal of Medicine that found “the big, forprofit chains charged 24 percent more for services than the non-profits did...

...Instead of accepting this in silence, the public should be urging the auto companies to lower prices and profits, and to join in a national effort to improve the country’s competitive position...

...It used to be that settlement of a dispute was the first road a lawyer would take, ” Huckaby said...

...The major American auto companies have told their dealers that they can expect car prices to rise when the new models are introduced in September...

...As profits grow, what should happen is that instead of rushing to raise wages, salaries, and dividends, industry should emphasize keeping its prices at competitive levels with our Asian and European friends and on making sure our plants are modern enough to produce the best products...

...My own preference is to have experienced master teachers do the day-to-day evaluating...

...A remarkable article by Peter Elkind in the August Texas Monthly describes how, between May and December 1981, ten children died after “sudden and unexplained complications” while under the care of a licensed vocational nurse named Genene Jones in the intensive care unit of a hospital in San Antonio, Texas...

...A new part of that aristocracy was identified by Henry Fairlie in last month’s Washingtonian magazine...

...Regular Teaders know ahat I regard Never Leave The City Where The Good Bars Are as the governing principle of life overseas in the Foreign Service, the CIA, and the military...

...The latest illustration of what might be called the Boston-Butte Corollary is provided by the bureaucrats who are operating the Strategic Petroleum Reserve...

...The rule also has found consistent domestic application in the tendency of federal employees to prefer work in Washington to service in the provinces...

...Where there were 250,000 lawyers in 1960, there are now 622,000...

...The Field Utility Uniform will henceforth be known as Fatigues...

...Let us all join in helping Mr...

...There were no more unexplained events at the San Antonio hospital...

...The meals were, of course, served to the same Reagan administration officials who scorn subsidies and welfare...

...According to Elkind, it was because its administrators were “fearful of a lawsuit and bad publicity...

...Two of his students have won a Westinghouse Award for their academic work...

...Here’s what he said: “Many of the articles and commentaries on merit pay seem to be premised on the notion that the nation is faced with a choice: Either raise the base salaries of all teachers or have selective pay increases for some teachers based on a fair merit evaluation system...

...He wasn’t disillusioned...

...Just for comparison, do you remember reading last year about the hefty jail term given Frank Wills, the black security guard who ten years earlier had discovered the Watergate break-in...

...we need a fair merit pay system that rewards a guy like Bill Mchughlin...

...They are absolutely right...

...Ninety-four percent of the program’s money is spent in places like West Hackberry and Bayou Choctaw in rural Texas and Louisiana, but 90 percent of the employees work in New Orleans...

...Here is part of what he wrote...

...It is the press, leading members of whom now earn incomes and enjoy social prestige that would have astounded the journalists of just a generation ago...

...I f yo u share my respect for the shrewdness of the Swiss and my concern about our reliance on the M1 tank, you will not be comforted to learn that the Swiss have decided to buy West Germany’s Leopard 2 tank because it is, according to The Washington Post’s Fred Hiatt, cheaper than the more sophisticated MI and performed better in trials...

...This will be the first of a series of ten volumes devoted, in the publisher’s words, to “the untitled aristocracy of the United States...

...Well, an appeals court in-where elseCalifornia has done just that to a law that prohibits driving while one’s blood-alcohol level is 0.10 percent or greater...

...But isn’t something very, very wrong when a superb teacher is so grossly underpaid...

...He promised that if they would do so, he would curb the wage demands of his members...

...You talk with the guidance or career counselor...

...Something can be done about it...

...Yet no consumer organization, no blue ribbon group of financiers and bankers, no labor union, no defender of the poor, and no representative of the Federal Reserve Bank of the Reagan administration has suggested that auto price increases now might hurt America’s effort to retain industrial jobs and compete more effectively with the Japanese in the US...

...T 1 ’m getting very tired of hearing that we must resign ourselves to high unemployment and the continued decline of our great industries...

...In similar situations, Japanese companies have always chosen to go for higher volumes of production, a bigger share of the market, and more jobs instead of higher profit margins...

...When he busts his butt and produces, he deserves to be recognized for it, not only on his wall with a plaque, but in his pocketbook with some green...

...Of course there are lots of bad administrators-some of them have had their brains turned into mush by too many meetings and conferences-and any school board that institutes a system of merit pay should first make sure it has an administrator who can put the system into effect with fairness and intelligence...

...Recently this magazine was involved in a legal issue that had not even reached the lawsuit stage, but, when the other side’s lawyer arrived at our office for a preliminary discussion, he was accompanied by two associates...

...Soon after I wrote those words, an article by an economist named Paul London appeared in the Outlook section of The Washington Post that said the same thing...

...He saw that growth was the key to prosperity and job security for his members and the country...

...But isn’t it better to evaluate teachers on ability rather than seniority or education credits and degrees, which is how they are evaluated today...

...Instead Jones left voluntarily to work for a doctor named Kathleen Holland...

...I think we ought to warn students there might be some potential danger...

...Joseph...

...He tells you that the teaching profession is dreadfully, dreadfully underpaid and, in all likelihood, will remain so...

...I kept trying to bring the discussion to a brisk conclusion-once I even rose from my chair to escort them to the door-but they just continued to sit there...

...They were from one of Washington’s poshest firms and when they departed, it was by chauffeured limousine...

...Now settlement is the last road we take...

...Huckaby spread the alarm among present and potential law students...

...But London also said more, building upon the point in a way that I believe justifies its repetition...

...He is a marvelously engaging person...

...Still another is charging excessive fees when they do succeed in getting a case...

...If he is not fired, he certainly should not get raises that encourage him to go on miseducating our young...

...I agree with Tom Eagleton that there is a need to pay more to new teachers-this is particularly true in sciences and math-but that does not mean we must pay more to the veteran teacher who is mediocre or worse...

...Charles Peters...

...His name is Bill McLaughlin and he teaches chemistry at Central High School in St...

...What she had done was instruct her oil company employees to readjust gas pumps so that they delivered less gas than the customer had paid for...

...In the meantime we must be alert to all the little tricks our brothers and sisters in the bar are capable of pulling when legitimate legal work is in short supply...

...Last month, for example, I wrote that my worst fear about the economy is that, as some recovery occurs, “the old mindless greed will reassert itself...

...Assume you are in one of Missouri’s state universities...

...But have you ever heard of a statute that was overturned because it was too precise...

...If the patterns of earlier years are repeated, analyits say, additional price increases will follow during the year, even though the auto companies have just announced second quarter profits totaling $1.8 billion, including $1 billion at GM alone...

...Even today we have school districts in Missouri where the beginning salary for a new teacher is $8,500 per year...

...He was proud of his erstwhile student and delighted with his success...

...This would seem to be an excellent opportunity for American companies to regain a larger share of the market lost to Japan in the 1970s...

...We may be reaching a point where the number of lawyers are more than we can handle, ” said Gary C. Huckaby, former chairman of the ABA committee on delivery of legal service...

...But in order to have truly meritorious people to recognize with merit pay, you have to attract talented people into the profession in the first place...

...His crime was stealing one pair of tennis shoes...

...These problems are worth that kind of attention and, where they are concerned, I think we must continue to risk being charged with repetition...

...Teaching is a dead-end job and college students view it as such...

...Even then, before the era of fierce foreign competition, Reuther figured that higher volumes of production, made possible by reasonable prices, would create more jobs...

...Mary Hudson Vandergrift, who is said to be one of the country’s wealthiest individuals, pleaded no-contest to a felony-theft charge...

...Otherwise, you probably will pursue something with a greater economic potential...

...Finally, Ellen Goodman made the best point about merit pay: “There is something amusing about the way that teachers, of all people, resist being graded!’ . . . Last year the White House dining room lost $35,787 by serving meals worth an average of $10.24 and charging an average price of $5.81...

...All the companies are reducing rebates and low-cost financing arrangements, while raising the prices of most options...

...So she decided to start a business providing that help, for which she charges $50...

...What is most outrageous about the Florida lawyers’ persecution of Rosemary Furman is that they are trying to have the matter decided by a judge, another lawyer, so they can avoid a jury of laymen who might sympathize with Furman’s efforts to save them money...

...Having spent years as a court stenographer and legal secretary, she learned that some legal tasks lawyers charge a lot of money for are really quite simple and could be handled by the average citizen if he was given some help in filling out the forms and a bit of practical advice on how to represent himself...

...So when he wrote me about an article advocating merit pay for teachers that Phil Keisling and I had done for The New York Times, I read his letter with care and respect...

...They travel in packs, )’ said Huckaby, and according to The Washington Post’s Fred Barbash, added, “sometimes the sole function is for one to pat the other on the back after he sits down...

...It’s the kind of leadership the rest of us must encourage by writing and talking about the issues involved until the entire country is aware of the problem and determined to meet it...

...And that’s exactly what is happening at our Missouri state universities...

...Instead of firing Jones and calling the police, it replaced all the licensed vocational nurses in intensive care with registered nurses as a subterfuge for getting her out of that unit...