TILTING AT WINDMILLS

...Its introduction says that entrepreneurism is now “socially acceptabl6’ and continues, “This statement may surprise...

...those who went to college in the 1960s and 1970s, but it is true!’ I certainly hope it is...

...But, according to Mark Potts of The Washington Post, the inside word is that he really doesn’t want to catch his prey...

...What does the lawyer get for making that one phone call...

...Of course, the report to the National Commission on Excellence in Education was the major factor in focusing public attention on the problem, but I think Keisling’s article was an important factor in inspiring the kind of concern that made people read the report instead of treating it as just another dull public document from another meaningless commission...

...So what is the World Bank doing with $97 million of its money...

...To justify such a fee, Judge Harold Greene wrote an article in The Washington Post that described how Washington lawyers behaved in 1966, the last year they got the same pay we got in West Virginia for federal casesnamely, nothing...

...T 1 he United States Senate has passed a lot of bills telling the rest of us that we should be equal opportunity employers...

...They were cheap, available to all, and there was little social discrimination based on the cost of clothing...

...While we think Milton Friedman is largely misguided in his faith in monetarism, we have long admired him (see “Milton Friedman: The Ambiguous Achievement of a Positive Economist” by David Ignatius, December 1975) as one of the nation’s most original thinkers...

...But I just have to tell you about the 1983 mid-year election of the Pennsylvania Bar Association to be held at the Mountain Shadows Hotel...

...CIA Director William J. Case$’ read an October 7 UP1 story, “was awarded the agency’s highest medal for outstanding leadership yesterday during a surprise ceremony at the agency’s Langley headquarters...

...The evidence from Chrysler, Conrail, and Lockheed suggests that maybe we ought to take another look at this position...

...If we waited a week, a week’s worth of students would have seen this before us...

...But community health centers also want the George Wills as patients...

...is that many families who get food stamps or other food aid fail to budget properly...

...This was not the wisest expenditure of postage...

...Further reassurance for the air traveler comes from a little detail about the lavatory fire on Air Canada that, I believe, only Aviation Week picked up...

...Fuller Torrey, one of the few American psychiatrists who has not devoted his career to the care of the comfortably heeled, recently wrote movingly in The Washington Post about the lives of some of the poorest of the poor, the homeless bag ladies and grate gentlemen who roam the streets...

...He should have an opportunity to fill an overwhelming bulk of all positions...

...It’s on us-we paid the postage on the franked newsletters...

...Besides, they look so crummy...

...S elf-respect can be a problem far people who have chosen to make money rather than do something significant with their lives...

...Add pleasant company, casual summer clothing, PIA education seminars, shopping bargains, gambling facilities, fabulous food, and tennis courts...

...While the fire was still small, the copilot went back to put it out...

...Otherwise, hundreds of thousands of workers would have lost their jobs and the country as a whole would have suffered from the economic consequences...

...Just two more items about lawyers and then I’ll stop for this time...

...Their finding: of the members of senators’ staffs who earn more than $30,000 a year, only 3 percent are black...

...If today’s lawyers lack any sense of obligation to the poor, modern American conservatives are no better...

...He is walking toward you, hand outstretched, with a warm smile that you know won’t last for long if you can’t come up with that name fast...

...Judge Greene’s next words reveal the moral desert in which the modern American lawyer dwells: “Objectively, one could hardly blame them...

...When he was asked about his views on a female vice president at the recent NOW convention, he replied, “I will not let sex, race, or creed, or color, or size [emphasis mine] prevent anyone from being considered!’ Perhaps Senator Cranston is a subscriber to Stature (see “Tidbits and Outrages:’ page 57 of this issue...

...In New York there is a sense of urgency about the display of taste that is unique in my experience...

...T. Boone Pickens Jr...

...V 1 ou have been reading a lot, I’m sure, about how international lending institutions are begging for funds needed to prop up the ailing economies of the Third World...

...So now, say Potts’s sources, he’s not wasting his time trying to succeed...

...Yet thousands of them are lobbyists whose main skill, negotiating, is the one most relevant to plea bargaining...

...One recent example is the announcement in the PIA REPORTER, the “Journal of the Professional Insurance Agents of New York:’ of PIA’S “miniconvention” in Aruba...

...If her sons were happy to wear regular tennis shoes at half the price, she would be a lot freer to make a decision about that strike in terms of her convictions about the issues...

...The New Republic liked the article and asked him to do another on the same subject for it...

...He knows failure is better...

...The only kind of poor people the conservatives can identify are nice, cleanlooking people, George Wills in overalls, sitting in dice, clean kitchens in nice, clean suburbs carefully computing their monthly food budgets...

...On the other hand, I think the government should make sure that it does well if the company does well as a result of the bailout...

...some attorneys are charging as much as $1,0001’ Now for the final lawyers’ item...

...He said he thought it was doing a perfectly dandy job...

...One automatic liberal position previously shared by this magazine has been opposition to government bailouts of companies that have gotten into trouble...

...While, like Friedman, we are critical of our civil service, we realize we are fortunate compared to many other countries...

...And don’t terms like “mini” and “mid-year” give you a sinking feeling that we’re now paying for them in addition to the regular conventions each year...

...C harles Percy is expected to face a tough race to -retain his Senate seat next year so it’s not surprising that he is conducting a vigorous newsletter effort...

...The Reader’s Digest liked that article so much that it reprinted it as a cover article of the Digest’s February 1983 issue...

...I see the matter as analogous to asking a worker to take a wage cut to keep an industry alive...

...But I also hope that these Harvard entrepreneurs distinguish bet ween just making money, which is morally neutral, and making money by making good products and giving people jobs, which is morally dandy...

...Interviewed by Management Magazine, he said: “When a new president comes in, he has something like 3,000 positions he can fill...

...A lack of modesty has long been a lamentable defect of my character so I’m doubtless too quick to claim credit for any developme‘nt, such as the reawakening of entrepreneurism, this magazine has advocated...

...I’m a fan of Ann Landers but one of her stock answers to problems, “seek professional counseling:’ has always struck me as innocent in the extreme...

...With such excruciating moments still fresh in my nightmares, I was delighted to read in Jim Dent’s column in the Charleston Gazette of how the late Matthew M. Neely, a master politician who was congressman, senator, and governor at various times in his career, dealt with the problem...

...Today most people who can afford them buy designer jeans, and there’s a lot of social discrimination based on that fact...

...Lawyers routinely tailored the quality of their representation to the amount of money they were able to squeeze out of the generally indigent relatives of their indigent clients...

...The headline flashes before your mind’s eye: “Peters Loses by One Vote”-and you’ll have to live with the painful knowledge of exactly why you lost that one vote...

...The cost of these little jaunts is not modest: $1,018 for a Scottsdale single...

...The laugh, however, is not on Senator Percy...

...Demonstrating that they are people of taste seems to be the most common way these days...

...My firm did not object because it thought it owed a reasonable amount of such service to the community and because it saw me gaining experience negotiating with prosecutors, interviewing witnesses, and trying cases...

...If the worker takes the cut, which I usually think he should, and the government makes the bailout, which I’m obviously beginning to favor, each should share equitably in the profits with the company’s managers and owners if the bailout works out...

...Does it practice what it preaches...

...Why do I keep harping on abuses in convention travel and why do I keep harping on abuses by lawyers...

...The family of Joanne Alter of Chicago, for example, received eight copies of one recent Percy newsletter...

...There appears to be a new angle to the merger game, a field already rich in imaginative maneuver...

...A citation read by Deputy Director John McMahon said Casey was awarded the Distinguished Intelligence Medal for restoring the credibility of the CIA and bringing ‘imagination to our operations...

...Pickens failed in earlier attempts to acquire General American Oil and Cities Service, but in each case he found that failure brought a handsome bonus when he was able to sell his stock in those companies to the higherbidding Phillips and Occidental...

...Indeed many of those distinguished members of the bar suddenly feel very competent in criminal law when a rich defendant seeks their services...

...Is that some new Pennsylvania resort you haven’t heard of...

...Heat in 85 degree sun and expose to gentle February trade winds...

...How can they get away with it, you ask...

...Now Alan Cranston has introduced another one...

...Instead, he hopes that his efforts will trigger a larger bid from a richer competitor to whom he can then sell his newly acquired Superior stock at a tidy profit...

...Headlined “Recipe for a PIA Aruba Cocktail:’ it read: “Place yourself and your family on a large sandy beach in Aruba...

...And most of them won’t have...

...Neely would throw his arm around him and say, “Why of course, of course...

...The number of people who were getting Keisling’s message had grown from 30,000 to 30 million...

...In a recent article about the Manet retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Philip Shenon of The New York Times asked why 7,000 people would stand in the long opening-day line...

...The reason seems to me to be captured in the crowded New York cocktail party where you have only a couple of minutes, sometimes only a few seconds, to flash your taste badge before that beautiful blond turns to someone else...

...Their excuse is that they don’t know criminal law...

...That psychiatrist will have a waiting-room coffee table that features the most intellectually chic of publications...

...You don’t have to give your life to a good cause if your lifestyle demonstrates that you have good taste...

...We’re confident that the decision to make this award was just as objective as USA Today’s recent choice of Allen J. Neuharth as the interviewee to ask how well USA Today was doing...

...It was clear from the answers that, as one of the standees put it, “being able to see something first makes them feel special” and “makes them feel interesting...

...Another, a student, said, “NOW we can walk up to people next week and ask them if they’ve seen the Manet show...

...Accountability would roar through Washington right down to the GS-1 level...

...On the whole, we’re better off that these companies survived...

...Shake well while you experience Aruba’s nightlife...

...T he women’s movement added sex to the litany of race, creed, and color about which we are not supposed to be prejudiced...

...Charles Peters...

...Cases were postponed again and again to allow more time for these collection efforts...

...As the voter approached and said, “DO you remember me...

...Those who can’t even spare a minute can give the kid the number of Phone Friend, which is described as “an after-school help line for youngsters who are alone...

...I was therefore delighted when one of her correspondents wrote that “the vast majority of counselors are completely ineffective, some are downright dangerous and only a precious few do any good whateverl’ I was also pleased by the candor of Landers’s answer: “Because I often recommend therapists and counselors, I do so with my fingers crossed and a prayer on my lips...

...A travel firm called FP Tours, advertised as “the world’s largest packager of 24-hour divorces:’ offers the attorney the opportunity to make travel and legal arrangements for 24-hour divorces in either Haiti or the Dominican Republic...

...Washington is full of rich lawyers who could afford to devote part of their time to free representation of the indigent...

...In the District of Columbia lawyers are now paid $35 per hour for such work...

...It’s going to build its third new office building in three years...

...We certainly don’t want that to happen...

...A significant percentage of them, he points out, are schizophrenics who were turned out of mental hospitals on the grounds that they could be treated in community health centers...

...After drinking, deduct cost of ingredients on tax returns...

...The Atlanta Constitution’s Andrew Alexander and Larry Checco decided to investigate...

...To turn to more cheerful news, veteran readers who have shared our concern about the intellectual elite’s disdain for commerce will share our joy at the publication of The Harvard Entzpreneur Society’s Guide to Making Money...

...William Morrow took out a full-page ad in The New York Times Book Review to announce publication of two new books called The One Minute Father and The One Minute Mother...

...Buried in a long Washington Post article about why the Korean 747 drifted off course was this comforting news .for transoceanic travelers who wonder how crew members remain alert on those long overwater flights...

...1,395 for Aruba...

...When I practiced law in West Virginia in the late fifties, we were paid nothing for defending indigent criminals in federal court and $50 per case in state court...

...The promotional literature says, “Most of your colleagues around the country are charging fees of approximately $300 on top of the fee to be paid to our Caribbean counsel...

...That doesn’t mean he would, in fact, do so...

...The record is replete:’ said one veteran pilot, “with numerous incidents of a guy just falling asleep...

...This feeling has fueled the brand-name snobbery that has swept the country in recent years...

...How do those psychiatrists who treat only the well-to-do or those lawyers who represent only the rich justify their existence...

...Certainly I found it hard to believe as I encountered it again and again, traveling through that world for the Peace Corps in the sixties-and remember, I came not from some cloister of innocents but from West Virginia politics, where the state of the art had reached its highest form in America, New Jersey and Nevada excluded...

...Thousands of others are skilled at interviewing witnesses and trying civil cases...

...They don’t want a bunch of disorganized schizos who can’t remember their appointments, lose their Medicaid cards, and cannot pay part of their fees...

...Because the tax dodge involved in convention travel spreads the poison of tax cynicism throughout the middle class, and because the lawyers are supposed to have the highest, not the lowest, standards of integrity in regard to the law...

...A press release for the Heritage Foundation’s Policy Review says that in one of its articles “James Bovard suggests that one of the reasons hunger still exists...

...The life of real poverty is usually vastly different, sometimes chaotic, often desperate, full of humiliation and disorder...

...of Mesa Petroleum is going after Superior Oil...

...He was afraid using the extinguisher would just make things worse...

...In France, for example, 320 people are employed by the French National Railways just to answer the 5,000 complaint letters it gets from its passengers each year...

...When ultimately it became obvious that the defendant’s relatives had neither cash nor property they could mortgage, the attorneys simply entered guilty pleas regardless of the availability of a valid defense...

...There is, however, one such development, the explosion of concern about the quality of public education, that has occurred this year which I think we-or more precisely, one of our editors, Phillip Keisling-can claim a bit of credit for...

...A nurse was recently asked why she was participating in a strike: “I have sons who wear Nikes that cost $40, ” she replied...

...No, it’s located in nearby Scottsdale, Arizona...

...And how’s that back problem of yours...

...Neely realized that almost everyone has experienced back pain at one time or another and that for many it was their main complaint, one for which warm sympathy was almost certain to elicit a grateful response in the voting booth...

...He happens to be head of the Gannett Corporation, which happens to be the owner of USA Today...

...Something else we pay for is conventions...

...That lawyer will have a house hung with paintings that testify to his discernment...

...Alter is the Democratic national committeewoman from Illinois...

...The needs of Me Generation members who find themselves saddled with children are not being ignored...

...As Judge Greene would put it, “Objectively, one can hardly blame the centers...

...If these people worked an average of 200 days per year, according to an item from Le Point reprinted in World Press Review, each employee would answer an average of one letter every 12.8 days...

...One fact about the Third World that liberals find hard to face is the stunning amount of corruption that goes on there...

...So we were delighted to learn that he advocates a return to the spoils system...

...The crucial point is that the persons who are elected are perceived by their staffs as being able to replace any employees whom they need to replace...

...I bet you were beginning to think I would get through one column without mentioning lawyers...

...But he didn’t try because his fire extinguisher wasn’t the dry-chemical type that works on electrical fires...

...Well, if you’ll reread the above with a magnifying glass, you’ll note the mention of “PIA education seminarsl’ Don’t tell me you doubt that they are the central purpose of the convention...

...The latest example of Third World corruption was called to my attention by an article about Mexico in World Press Review that describes how that country’s leaders, including Jose Lopez Portillo, the former president, and Jorge Diaz Serano, the former head of the state oil monopoly, have amassed a total of $40 billion in loot...

...In June 1982, motivated largely by the fear that mediocre public schools, particularly in the large cities, had become the new way to keep the poor in their place and that liberals had become more concerned with protecting the jobs of incompetent teachers than in protecting the poor from that incompetence, we published Keisling’s “The Class War We Can’t Afford to Lose...

...There’s just not that much difference involved in doing the same thing on the criminal side...

...Next to the Pinto, the worst thing Lee Iacocca ever did was to try to weasel out of Chrysler’s obligation to the government after the bailout had succeeded...

...When I was in school, people bought jeans...