TILTING AT WINDMILLS

...Gray's credit card was canceled during a bona fide dispute over an item for which Gray had been billed...

...The latest example: a story headlined "CPSC to Parents: You Better Watch Out, Toys Can Pose Holiday Hazards to Young Children" and one beginning, "Two local drug store chains and a New Jersey company are recalling thousands of oscillating fans that may be a fire hazard if they overheat" Does this mean that the Post thinks that only businessmen and investors deserve to be protected from safety hazards...

...A few years and a good mind are often enough...

...A few are underpaid and should get raises, but "the great majority" are paid enough or too much...

...I just told them that I needed an account under a fictitious name in order to operate...

...By the way, the administration's proposal to reduce the salary of federal employees by five percent is sound...

...Many union leaders at the time termed this a mistake, but Kirkland and his cronies bulled their choice through...

...But another way to use them is to torment your adversary with excessive demands on his time and pocketbook (the latter is involved because of his legal expenses...

...Mondale is the villain in their script for having conducted an abysmal campaign...

...The nation has become so bureaucratized that when one company, Bell Atlantic, recently abolished the automatic raise, the story was deemed noteworthy enough to produce a headline: "Bell Atlantic Pegs Pay to Performance...

...She does not care and he does not dare...

...Since sex does not endanger the health of the average man and smoking does, one can only conclude that the publishers are influenced in their censorship choices by the fact that tobacco is their leading source of advertising revenue...

...That's too bad, you say, but we need the money—we have that gigantic deficit...

...The result was the exit polls for the local congressional race were completely fouled up...

...When U.S...

...But, as from time to time we warn our readers, the federal programs are but the tip of the iceberg of the government employee retirement problem...

...2. The U.S...

...The Wall Street Journal's account of a recent business seminar in which T. Boone Pickens told about Mesa Petroleum's attempt to take over Gulf ended with this paragraph: "When Mr...

...Vic Fingerhut, who takes polls for Democrats and often toils for unions, says: 'The unions delivered their vote in the face of an incredibly stupid Mondale campaign' "Ah, but what Fingerhut has forgotten is that a man who ran the 'incredibly stupid Mondale campaign' is the candidate Kirkland and the AFL-CIO selected for Oval Office stardom before the presidential primary season started...

...Of course, this new breed of journalists would have to be selected with care to avoid the losers we have seen among the jocks...

...Recently a witness told the President's Commission on Organized Crime how easy it was to launder money from Columbian cocaine trafficking in America...

...The reason is that hardly anyone else is doing so...

...This suggests that professional journalists could be encouraged to take a few years off to acquire firsthand experience in areas they cover or to get that experience before they enter journalism...

...This is a moral problem from which publishers should not be permitted to hide...

...To launder the money, he used, according to a report by Loretta Tofani in The Washington Post, "the Great American Bank of Dade County in Miami and the Deak-Perera currency exchange in New York" He used a fictitious name...

...And speaking of lawyers, where do you think the Kentucky Academy of Trial Attorneys is holding its next seminar...

...The board's decision: She doesn't have to take driver education, but Peoria has to provide her with a special safety course, in which she will be the only student in the class...

...In both government and in large corporations, the automatic annual raise—in the federal bureaucracy it's called a "step" increase—is expected without regard to performance of the individual or of the organization of which he is part...

...But so selected, they can give us something other journalists can't—the feel of what it's like out there on the field, of what goes through the players' and coaches' minds, the choices and the limits as perceived by the participants themselves...

...Why do people always cushion criticism of groups by excepting "the great majority"—as in "of course a few lawyers are crooked" or "a few doctors are greedy" but "not the great majority...

...The result of that planning ended in a disaster on Tuesday, November 6. "Predictably AFL-CIO strategists are doing their utmost to absolve themselves and their leader of all blame for the disaster...

...The length, scope, and detail of the inquiries propounded by American Express suggests," concluded the court, "a strategy of attrition rather than a legitimate discovery of the facts...

...At some point on the upward scale for the former and the downward for the latter, an unbearable din is achieved in which any real communication is impossible...

...The highest is among bachelors...

...They run as far afield as inquiring the name of every law firm that plaintiff [Gray] had been affiliated with since 1951 to asking all of the `professional credentials' that he had acquired in a lifetime...

...Rats are leaving the sunk ship...

...Who are the parents of these children...

...Why is it important to know that the car performs well under such circumstances—unless the driver is subtly being invited to put it to just such a test...

...In a suitcase...

...Another tax-deductible excursion is offered by the International Collectors Associates on February 2-19...

...They need to have not only actual experience in the field but the ability to describe that experience and to see what was bad about it as well as what was good—what worked and didn't work and why...

...If an American did what Sakharov did, he'd get a book deal, a movie out of it...

...They add to it...

...The case of Gray v. American Express is instructive...

...But I can't say that anymore...

...You have probably heard about Mike Royko's suggestion that voters should lie to exit pollsters...

...He says he told the tellers at Deak-Perera the name was fictitious...

...No, he said...

...The result, as heads begin to ache, is that each of you turns away saying, "Can't I get you another drink...

...Such cancellation is illegal...

...Yet more than 99 percent of the writers who have the skill to arouse public opinion on this issue remain silent...

...Did he have any difficulty getting the suitcase through customs...

...Take the case of a Georgia judge, described by Durwood McAlister in the Atlanta Journal...

...customs agents saw the vast amount of cash in his suitcase, they offered him a police escort to the bank...

...He will get all of that back, and more, in his first ten months of retirement ." Guess who pays for the rest...

...Since 1980, by the Forest Service's own figures, the government has lost $2.4 billion on its timber-sale program...

...While I was in the Army in 1945, someone gave me a subscription to "In Fact," a newsletter published by a man named George Seldes...

...Kirkland's grand strategy put his union, months prior to 1984's general election, 100 percent not only behind the Democratic Party's presidential candidate but also behind a particular candidate seeking the office, former Vice President Walter Mondale...

...For the November-May period it is 10.94 percent, which isn't bad at all...

...Now comes USA Today with another reason why parents need money...

...Last month we published an article by Phillip Keisling about how young parents think they have to make a lot of money and are thus unable to take off enough time to stay home with their children...

...They say they do this out of their deep respect for the First Amendment rights of cigarette manufacturers...

...This is the practice, increasingly common in television, of having a sport covered by its former coaches and players...

...The Grace Commission has called attention to the growing impact on the deficit of federal retirement programs for the government's civilian and military employees...

...A little good news: 1. According to Bernard A. Goldhirsh, the publisher of Inc...

...Pickens completed his description of the Mesa strategy in the Gulf matter, many in the audience departed with his entourage...

...He goes to the same parties, he's a good source, and a good fellow...

...The judge has just retired at age 54 with a pension of $57,456 a year...

...from psychiatrists consulted since 1978 to meals eaten at the fated restaurant since the suit was filed...

...The candidate was unopposed in the general election...

...The prohibition would have to be carefully drawn to take account of both the size of the guest list and the size of the room...

...The illegality of the cancellation was compounded by the indelicacy of Gray's notification, at American Express's instruction, at a restaurant where he and his wife were celebrating their 15th wedding anniversary...

...Nobody compelled Kirkland to endorse a presidential candidate so early...

...She will be a passenger and a pedestrian and who knows," her principal said, "she might have to drive?' The girl's parents appealed to the Illinois Board of Education...

...But the timber sales don't reduce the deficit...

...They're buying coke...

...The Washington Post has continued the bizarre practice that we noted here last month of burying consumer safety stories in the "Business" section...

...With strained shrillness, voices try to bridge the sixtotwelve-inch gap that separates the guests...

...Have you heard about the blind high school student in Peoria, Illinois who was being forced to take a driver's education class in order to graduate...

...But while the publishers refuse to censor the tobacco industry, they habitually censor advertisements that are sexually explicit...

...And, after all, he has one of the best wine cellars in Washington...

...I have always answered that I never saw a football game on PBS...

...Charles Peters...

...Everyone should do the same thing in the next presidential election and continue doing so until the networks abandon exit polling entirely...

...Not on your life...

...I remember George Seldes and I don't want to see his banner fall in the dust...

...Sometimes they are so uncritically loyal to their old colleagues that they come across as tiresome cheerleaders...

...But he was also—like Izzy Stone after him—a brave exposer of sellouts by the press in an era when a lot of selling out was going on...

...These are pre-trial questions that can, if relevant, be useful in developing facts and refining issues...

...In my hometown, 20 lawyers at the leading law firm contributed to the campaign of a Democratic candidate for the Supreme Court between the primary and general election campaigns...

...Mid-grade UN civil servants retire with $40,000-a-year pensions plus retirement bonuses of $184,500...

...Under that circumstance don't they have an obligation to confront the consequences of their actions...

...Savings Bond—which, with its low interest, was for years one of the most disgraceful examples of how the average man was screwed by the system—now pays a decent return...

...They're going to Kitzbuhel, Austria...

...More than anything else, we need to be needed...

...I continue to worry about the flight from the public schools...

...You don't have to spend a lifetime in sports to gain this understanding...

...To get the wood, the Forest Service constructs thousands of miles of remote roads that tear up the national forests and generally disrupt the environment...

...On November 24 they finally carried football: the HarvardYale game...

...Anxiety is continuous...

...How do the powerful make you wish you hadn't sued them no matter how just your cause...

...Over the years," writes McAlister, "he had contributed $26,123 of his own money to the retirement system, plus $13,944 in interest—a total of $40,067...

...A lot of them are public school teachers, according to The Chicago Reporter, which says that Chicago residents who are public school teachers are more than twice as likely to send their children to private schools than the population in general...

...Or does the Post assume that its readers are interested in such hazards only as they might affect the fortunes of the businesses involved...

...Did you see what David Owen, the leader of Britain's Social Democratic party said about Margaret Thatcher and Neil Kinnock, the head of the Labor party...

...magazine, entrepreneurship is exploding in the United States...

...Charleston Gazette, ran an editorial the other day that should have appeared earlier in the nation's leading newspapers: "It won't happen, but if Lane Kirkland, president of the AFL-CIO, had any sense of decency and of honor, he would resign...

...The same applies to other fields...

...If not, why is he or she constantly looking over your shoulder...

...In each of these cases suspect the "great majority" usage grossly underestimates the number of sinners involved...

...His newsletter was one of the few places one could find the facts about the dangers of tobacco and about the suppression of those facts by the press...

...The Forest Service has a policy of selling timber from government land to private industry...

...I bet you're already guessing Miami Beach or San Francisco...

...Our final travel note comes from the Democrats who, seeking the right place to reflect on their loss after the November election and to launch their crusade to recapture the allegiance of the common man, chose St...

...Well, you're just not in the same league with Kentucky lawyers...

...Speaking of ethics, I know you want to hear the latest on what our friends at the bar are up to...

...Maybe you're just not important enough...

...The announcer said, "A few hunters are dangerously reckless, but the great majority are safe...

...I know some readers are asking, why are you writing about this again...

...Let's outlaw large cocktail parties...

...The trip—by South African Airways, of course—offers a unique opportunity to maximize virtue...

...But American public servants are pikers compared to those who labor for the United Nations...

...Today's papers print the facts about the danger of tobacco, but at the same time they publish advertisements that make smoking seem sexy and sophisticated...

...The New York Times recently reported that private school "applications have risen dramatically in recent years," and, even more significantly for a general circulation newspaper, published a long article of advice to parents on how to get their children into private schools: "testing a four-year-old's ability is generally the most stressful part of the process...

...You may not have heard that a disc jockey in Salt Lake City named Tom Barberi picked up Royko's idea and started propagandizing his listeners about it...

...The same could be said of the leaders of the Republicans and Democrats here...

...My friends in public broadcasting keep telling me that it is not elitist...

...Louisville...

...The mind of Hollywood was never captured better than in this comment by Michael Fuchs, president of Home Box Office, about the film, Sakharov: "Americans don't understand the risks he took...

...Did American Express say they were sorry...

...Another kind of advertising that worries me is the television commercials for cars that show the vehicle careening recklessly over streets and highways at rates of speed obviously way over the speed limit...

...If it were otherwise, American Express would be able to tell its card holders, "Don't disagree with us, Buster, or we'll cancel you...

...Thomas in the Virgin Islands...

...An undersecretary general of the UN gets a $75,000 pension plus a bonus of $343,500...

...The reason this editorial has not been written by Washington journalists is that Lane Kirkland is a friend of theirs and has been for years...

...Feeling that he had been unjustly dealt with, as indeed the court later ruled that he had, Gray sued...

...Tax deductible, of course...

...How did he get the money into the United States...

...He says that, where 180,000 new businesses were started in 1963, the figure was 600,000 in 1983...

...State and local governments face situations that are often worse...

...Only about half remained for the next topic—'Ethical Considerations' in takeovers...

...Why not apply this lesson to other sectors of journalism...

...The other night I was watching a television news segment on the growing frequency of hunting accidents...

...It's the Eighth Annual Financial Tour of the Gold Fields of South Africa...

...Lexington...

...The lowest suicide rate is among mothers with young children...

...In this case, the court observed: "The various sets of interrogatories and answers are in the hundreds of pages...

...But sometimes—John Madden is an example—they provide insight into what is happening on the field that the traditional journalist with no actual experience in the sport is incapable of giving...

...only to rush directly into the path of someone you said the same thing to five minutes earlier...

...Or maybe he or she is afraid that you feel stuck...

...They not only fought the suit but they did so with exhaustive use of a device called interrogatories...

...Is your companion stuck with you...

...Sometimes they are inarticulately unsuited to their new calling...

...Cocaine," the story reports, is now "the drug of choice among middle-class Americans" and "the fastestgrowing group of users is the baby-boom generation, ages 24-40"—in other words, today's parents...

...Have former congressmen cover elections, former bureaucrats write about the executive departments, and former businessmen give us the inside skinny on corporate America...

...The tax deductibility means that it will transfer money from the citizens of this country directly into the hands of all those nice white folks in South Africa...

...Why was so inept a champion chosen...

...Seldes had a lamentable tendency to use the word fascist as a synonym for conservative...

...You know better by now...