TILTING AT WINDMILLS

...They will excoriate capitalism, finding it totally evil, without the slightest redeeming virtue, and then urge their sons to choose careers as its servants, as clever but parasitic clerks to the established system...

...But he is, because the statute says he can't communicate with his old agency in an attempt to influence decision-making for at least one year...

...In Stockton, California, Mark Stebbins was running against a black incumbent for a city council seat...

...Still, Hart had defeated the Minnesotan, Mondale, in an adjoining state where Mondale had long been prominent...

...In any event, Representative Hoyer is proposing, according to Mike Causey of The Washington Post, that federal managers, in addition to getting their regular civil service increase and the full longevity step raise, will receive a third bonus...

...In Washington, D.C., the fire department announced tests for 86 positions...

...And, of course, Wisconsin is much smaller than New York...

...Dykes, was convicted of obstructing an FBI investigation into bribery and ticket-fixing...

...I am comforted to know that the money is holding out and that Dr...

...The defeated incumbent checked with records and found that Stebbins's parents were white...

...The National Bar Association is a black legal group that the Carter administration consulted on judicial appointments, just as it did the American Bar Association...

...And as I would trudge homeward through Washington's train station at the end of another unsuccessful trip, my dream, just as Willy's had been, seemed threatened with being overwhelmed by the cruel reality of failure...

...was returned to us marked "Not Deliverable As Addressed— Unable to Forward ." Rockefeller does live in the governor's mansion, and, since 1 happen to be from Charleston, I know that everyone in the city over five years of age knows where the mansion is...

...How friendly...

...The interests we would be defending are those of Japan and Europe, on whose behalf we have alreauy spent far too many dollars...

...Those of us who saw the newsreels of the German troops entering Austria cannot recall one case like that of the memorable weeping Frenchmen when the Nazis marched down the Champs Elysees...

...I think that's why I am disturbed when the press tilts too far in one direction as it did during March and threatens to stampede the process...

...It comes with a choice of locations: Madrid and Barcelona, April 29 to May 6; or Paris, May 7 to 13...

...So I would have thought the story was worth frontpage attention, subordinate to news from New York but still significant...

...The award was made despite the fact that Addis never lost a day of work because of the "injury," still serves as commissioner, and still plays golf...

...It also added to the evidence from Oklahoma, Washington, Montana, and Florida that Hart had strength outside of New England...

...It may be no coincidence that Maryland ranks third nationally in getting federal money, after Virginia, which is of course the other federal bedroom state...

...Indeed, they were enthusiastic partners of the Germans until the tide turned against Hitler...

...They managed to save everyone but they rescued the passengers first and Weaver last...

...Stebbins told black voters that he was black...

...But I also think at least part of that response springs from a not-very-healthy kind of selfpity...

...On one issue, the need for a Palestinian homeland, I think Hart and Mondale are cowards and Jesse Jackson is right...

...Now for the lawyers...

...This is clearest in the play's symbolism, in which modern American society is depicted as a garden in which seeds can't grow or as a jungle in which you should "never fight fair with strangers, boy...

...That's how lawyers keep us from becoming unruly...

...This is shameful, another way we betray the trust much of the world once held for this country...

...I want them to change their lives and do work that counts...

...This has to be one of the quaintest traits of the New York Jewish radical left of which Miller was a part when he wrote Death of a Salesman...

...Three years earlier, according to Grimm, "Dykes had escorted his old friend and former sheriff, William A. Anderson, to jail after Anderson was caught selling marijuana...

...This means the wholesaler, who would have no competition in his area, can charge the retailer more, and he, in turn, will surely raise the price of your favorite brew...

...John Duncan raise more than $200,000 in campaign funds...

...It's The Journal of Continuing Medical Education for Primary Care Physicians...

...In the last few months, according to Fred Grimm of the Knight-Ridder News Service, the sheriff was imprisoned, the mayor arrested, and the district attorney accused of fraud...

...We're almost always late getting out, but your copy should reach you by the 15th of the month it is dated...

...The word "sleaze" is being overworked these days, but it does seem to me to have some application to two recent direct mail campaigns, one seeking members to the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare and the other seeking subscriptions for the Smithsonian magazine...

...He points out that he never sees those radar traps on crowded roads where speeding is the most hazardous...

...They were ultimately pooled and now support the Lithuanian embassy...

...If Time is going to tell its readers how wonderful the post office is, it should reveal that it is the beneficiary of favored treatment by the post office, receiving "red-tag" service, which delivers its copies overnight for a few pennies, while you pay $9.35 to get your letter delivered overnight by express mail...

...Do you really want the senior levels of your government to be staffed by people whose major concern in life is retirement benefits...

...The Wisconsin primary was less important, of course...

...If Reagan is inaccurate in this view, he is being kind...

...I hope we refuse to get involved in any kind of military action in the Persian Gulf...

...So I think Miller was right when he said that his play "touched a fear that one has lied to oneself over a period of years in relation to one's true identity and what one should be doing in the world...

...While I feel that this win was just one example of the consistently unfair treatment Hart got from the press from about a week after New Hampshire through New York, I have not yet decided whether to support Hart for the nomination...

...The ads invite constituents to write the offending official and ask for an explanation...

...Indeed, Miller once told an interviewer that "when the audiences weep they are weeping for themselves...

...Then men had come home from the war, tired of danger and seeking security, just as their fathers had sought security from the trauma of the Depression...

...But wasn't the space shuttle supposed to serve that purpose...

...Jim Funk and Jerry Mendez, two harbor patrolmen, realized the boat was sailing into danger, followed it, radioed Weaver trying to stop him, and, when the boat sank, plunged into the water and began hauling people out...

...So I know why audiences weep when they see the play...

...It is a tragedy because they were once staunch allies in the struggle against discrimination of all kinds...

...Here's how: Under a banner headline stretched across the top of the front page that read, "Mondale Wins Overwhelmingly in New York," there was a fivecolumn story...

...On Tuesday, April 3, Gary Hart was defeated in the New York primary but won in Wisconsin...

...Since so many weapons don't work, it was clear to Pentagon officials that this requirement would place an unconscionable burden on the defense contractors for whom many of those officials would work after leaving the government...

...The Washington Post did mention it...

...So are most lawyers who do the same kind of thing...

...The Ethics in Government Act of 1978 was supposed to protect us against the danger that former officials would, immediately upon leaving government service, lend the expertise they had gained working for us to coaching private enterprises on how to con the federal agency that had employed them...

...If you sometimes suspect that we could compensate government employees less, still leave them well paid, and thereby cut the deficits at state, local, and federal levels, consider this recent evidence of the attractiveness of such employment...

...Last month, we said we didn't think most people knew that most federal employees got two raises a year...

...It is the province's first fully integrated secondary school, with equal numbers of Catholics and Protestants...

...Clark, not being an expert in medical matters, could not evaluate most of the charges, but he was struck by one item: "pharmacy generic, $1,619.52...

...Well, three of the five members of the Senate's military construction subcommittee are proPentagon Republicans: Jake Garn, Paul Laxalt, and Mack Mattingly...

...The caucus, on the other hand, only demonstrated the sentiments of a few party regulars...

...But what about the other papers...

...The sheriff, J.B...

...Have you heard about the CME Bulletin...

...I don't want them to go to Death of a Salesman and wallow in self-pity...

...He surmises that the reason is that it's much easier to spot and apprehend lonely offenders escalating from 55 to 60 on the open road, than to nab them on busy highways where they're hard to pick out from the pack...

...The Sound of Music suggests that there was strong anti-Nazi sentiment in Austria...

...More often than not—much more often—I returned emptyhanded...

...The Milwaukee Sentinel's John Fauber has been looking into the fees probate lawyers are charging for handling estates...

...What the bill does is give beer companies the right to grant wholesalers exclusive distribution territories...

...Translated, that means it tells you all about those lovely tax-deductible cruises and conferences...

...Funk has been sued by lawyers representing the Weaver family...

...You can understand why we're getting mildly concerned, so please give us a call if your letters aren't reaching us, or if you miss a copy...

...or Rio de Janeiro, May 21 to 29...

...They wanted them to have a nice steady career with the company...

...If you're over 40, you will remember hearing stories of blacks "passing" as whites...

...It seems that one of the state's compensation commissioners, J. Dawson Addis, got a compensation award of $57,400 for a back injury...

...The National Bar Association was a specialinterest group, they said, and they wouldn't use specialinterest groups...

...Speaking of articles about the post office, Time recently ran a puff piece about it that I think would embarrass Ray Cave, whose leadership of that magazine I have generally admired...

...From a little further south, in Augusta, Georgia, comes another inspiring story of state and local government at work...

...You've heard about those occasional souls who actually check the line items in their hospital bills—by the way, be sure to read Standing Up to the Fine Print, on page 32 of this issue—instead of just passing the bills along to Medicare or their insurance companies...

...Backis, upon his retirement, will be replaced by Stasys Lozoraitis, who is currently the Lithuanian charge d'affaires at the Vatican...

...Miller seems to confirm this analysis in an essay called "Tragedy and the Common Man," in which he says the destruction of the tragic hero "posits a wrong or evil in his environment," the opposite of "a condition of life in which the human personality can flower and realize itself...

...They're both lying, and we're subsidizing the mailing...

...Trillin's prophecy, taken by our readers at the time with a rather large grain of salt, is looking increasingly prescient as the years pass...

...I remember the lump in my throat when I first saw it at the Morosco Theatre in New York in February 1949...

...Take it with him...

...When the Soviets seized the Baltic countries, the State Department took over $4 million in assets those nations held in the United States...

...Enough of politics...

...Postal Service announced 25 openings...

...House Bill 738 in this year's session of the Maryland General Assembly provides for the licensing of birdwatchers...

...Ours is a small building, and we are the largest of the handful of tenants, with our name on the building directory at the entrance...

...In another, he found that a lawyer, who was caught charging an excessive probate fee by the circuit court, was a member of the grievance committee that handled complaints against attorneys and until a few months ago had been its chairman...

...The story of the latest demonstration of their skill in the latter art began last fall when reformers managed to get through Congress a law requiring written warranties on the weapons produced by defense contractors...

...3," came the small italicized lines, "Hart wins narrowly over Mondale in Wisconsin's non-binding primary...

...Because, finally, the men wanted the security just as much as their wives did, they became company men...

...Recently a copy of this magazine addressed to "John D. Rockefeller, Governor's Mansion, Charleston, W. Va...

...Like many people I know, I desperately wish I could combine the best qualities of Hart, Mondale, and Jackson into one man...

...This is also a tribute to the profound survival instincts of bureaucrats...

...If only the fellows at the Pentagon were as clever in military matters as they are in conning Congress...

...You may recall that last fall the Consumer Product Safety Commission voted to allow export of products that had been recalled under the Flammable Fabrics Act...

...In Charleston, South Carolina, the U.S...

...I looked at the Wednesday editions of The New York Times, the Boston Globe, the New York Post, the Los Angeles Times, and the Philadelphia Inquirer and could not find a word, much less a headline, about Hart's winning in Wisconsin...

...Reagan stopped the practice...

...take glitter off Hart campaign" and "Hart headed for slim win in Wisconsin...

...Take the case of J. Lynn Helms, whose advice is now helping airlines evade the noise regulations that the FAA promulgated while he was its leader...

...TILTING AT WINDMILLS We hope our recent criticism of the post office has not inspired retribution, but we can't help being somewhat suspicious when letters addressed to The Washington Monthly at 1711 Connecticut Avenue are returned marked, "Delivery Attempted—Addressee Not Known...

...What is Rep...

...Two thousand applicants showed up...

...It was a popular vote beauty contest with delegates to be selected later...

...The award was made by the commission's chairman...

...In contrast, notes The Washington Post's Ward Sinclair, "American farmers earned $13.4 billion for their corn and $12.4 billion for their soybeans...

...During the year 1968, I often felt I was Willy Loman...

...Frankly, I hope the race goes to the convention...

...But this often meant they did work that wasn't truly satisfying, work they really didn't like or respect...

...These are two of the headlines in a series of ads placed in papers in the states or districts of politicians who should do some explaining about their campaign finances...

...In other words, it's not our fault, we are all victims of a society in which it is impossible to function decently and creatively...

...This makes me weep about Jackson's Hymie remarks because they make the right position seem to come from the wrong motives...

...What do you pay to mail yours...

...Another horror story has been provided us by a reader in South Carolina...

...Dan Rostenkowski going to do with half a million dollars in leftover campaign money...

...There's also one called "International CME: A Cross-Cultural View...

...In contrast, the Post made Mondale's victory in the Wisconsin caucus on April 7 its lead story on the following day's front page...

...The latest such case comes to me by way of H. Bruce Miller's column in the San Jose Mercury News, which tells of a man named Burr Clark, who, after a stay of 12 days in O'Connor Hospital, got a bill for $25,895...

...We tried to keep the Carter relationship with the Reagan administration," the director of the black group explained to the Dallas Morning News...

...In one case he found that "lawyers' fees have gobbled up $280,000 of an estimated $350,000 estate...

...The lawyer's name is Philip R. Weltin...

...My own fear is that again today we have a ready audience for the play because far too many people are seeking secure niches in our corporate and government bureaucracies—with, ironically, many of the brightest serving as lawyers in these organizations—and not doing work that really excites them...

...Well, times have changed—at least in certain election districts...

...They said the American Bar Association was the representative body for lawyers...

...It did not mention Wisconsin but at its end,after "See NEW YORK, A8, col...

...A couple of months ago Teresa Riordan described in these pages the outrageous way workers' compensation is handled in this country...

...Waiting for the convention will give us a chance to get to know the three leaders better and for other candidates, perhaps a Dale Bumpers, or Mario Cuomo, or Joseph Biden, to emerge...

...If you read our article last month on the intractable problem of tribalism, you will be pleased to hear about Lagan College in Northern Ireland...

...I am indebted to Steve Taylor of Meriden, New Hampshire, for pointing out an important addendum to our item on radar surveillance of highway traffic...

...I have since childhood been a sympathizer with the Baltic republics—Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia—that were taken over by Russia at the beginning of World War II...

...Speaking of marijuana, you may recall the prediction made by Calvin Trillin in these pages 15 years ago that "permanent pot parity" would some day become the hottest issue down on the farm...

...These children have to spend the rest of their lives together," the school's principal explains to Richard Ford of the London Times, "so they need to spend their school days together learning to respect and trust each other...

...Causey also reported recently that 69 percent of senior federal executives "said that the current retirement system—which permits workers to retire at age 55 with 30 years' service on 56.25 percent of salary—was a major reason they came in government ." Now I want each one of you to think very seriously about this...

...Instead, he sees them on vast empty stretches of interstates...

...But we were told by the White House and attorney general's office that they were going back to the traditional methods of clearing judges only with the American Bar Association...

...I was therefore delighted to learn from a recent article by John Sherwood in The Washington Times that, if all other evidence of these countries' existence has been erased, the Lithuanian flag still flies over its old embassy at 2622 16th Street, in Washington...

...The envelope of the first says, "ATTENTION POSTMASTER: TIME DATED OFFICIAL DOCUMENTS ENCLOSED EXPEDITE FOR IMMEDIATE DELIVERY...

...Weaver, it turns out, suffered brain damage from the incident...

...He is free, however, as John Burgess of The Washington Post has revealed, to "advise" people who are lobbying the FAA...

...When he looked more closely he found that things like aspirin and Tylenol, which he bought for pennies at his drug store, were charged on his bill at $1.14 per tablet...

...Stasys A. Backis, the charge d'affaires, has been serving his embassy without a country for 27 years...

...I'm a longtime admirer of Mike Royko's, but I believe that in the case of the lie-totheexit-pollers idea, he was beaten by the Circleville Philosopher, whose column appears in the Taylor (Texas) Daily Press and who proclaimed the idea in its March 7 edition...

...What I most fear is that the social mood that made Death of a Salesman so popular in 1949 is recurring today...

...A more recent example, perhaps not so inspired but still quite effective in preventing any suspicion of what , the bill is really about, is the Malt Beverage Interbrand Competition Act...

...He has filed suit, charging, according to AP, that Stebbins is "a white guy with a perm and vinegar in his hair...

...They pay 3.3 cents to mail their letters...

...Surely, he shouldn't be able to get away with such an egregious violation of the spirit of the law...

...And the primary had represented a chance for Hart to demonstrate electability, because both Republicans and Independents were free to cross over...

...That was when I traveled to New York almost every week trying to raise money needed to start this magazine...

...Let's have some fun...

...What I wonder is why we taxpayers have to finance these vacations for a medical profession that is already taking us to the cleaners...

...The Air Force is going to spend a couple of billion dollars on ten additional unmanned rockets to launch satellites into orbit...

...Charles Peters...

...The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws estimates the value of the pot crop at $13.9 billion...

...On the morning of February 16, 1983, 23 children from a California school boarded a boat called the San Mateo for a whale watching expedition leaving from Morro Bay Harbor...

...He won...

...We should not now spend lives...

...There is absolutely nothing "official" about either mailing...

...If you were disturbed by the news in these pages last month about how many tobacco companies sell cigarettes abroad that are even more hazardous—often much more so—than those sold here, you should remember that American industry generally is under little legal inhibition against such practices...

...I have long admired the skill of lobbyists in coming up with euphemistic titles for bills that are in fact designed solely to serve the interests of their clients...

...The weather was hazardous, and, according to the Los Angeles Times, Gerald Weaver, the captain of the San Mateo, steered the boat into a "monstrous wave" that capsized the boat and threw 23 children into the sea...

...One of the great triumphs of this genre was of course christening legislation that restricted competition as Fair Trade Laws...

...The second reads, "WASHINGTON POSTMASTER: PLEASE DELIVER THIS OFFICIAL INVITATION PROMPTLY...

...All the Austrians cheered...

...And that's what's wrong with them...

...I like the idea...

...So Pentagon lobbyists leapt into action, quietly slipping into the 1984 supplemental budget request a repealer of the new law...

...In order to grease the repealer's passage, the lawyers for the Pentagon had it classified under military construction, which meant it went to a friendlier committee than the one that had orginated the new law...

...We're also having trouble getting our own mail delivered...

...Like most people who have seen it, I find much that is moving in Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman, which is now enjoying a spectacularly successful revival on Broadway...

...This seminar is "designed to be informative to all medical and surgical disciplines...

...In other words, if you were overcharged by a lawyer, you would seek justice from a man who himself was overcharging...

...I seldom rise to the defense of Ronald Reagan, but I am moved to do so by recent criticism he received in the Austrian press for having an inaccurate, Sound of Music view of Austria...

...But you can always count on the lobbyist to weave language into such a law that, while actually emasculating, seems to leave it intact as a bold reform...

...Now comes Representative Steny Hoyer, from Maryland, one of the bedroom states of federal employees...

...And the wives, like Willy's Linda, didn't want them going to Alaska, as his brother, Ben, urged him to do...

...But wait, says Miller, there is one other honorable way out—become a lawyer like Biff's high-school friend and neighbor, Bernard...

...And that's just the way The Washington Times treated it—with a three-column headline saying, "Mondale reestablishes status as front-runner," over onecolumn subheads that read, "Results in N.Y...

...But the caucus involved only 30,000, as against the 700,000 who voted in the primary...

...The boys and girls come from both middle and working class families and learn together about their separate cultures and traditions...

...and "With no opponent why did Rep...

...He's probably proud of himself...

...Here are some of my favorites from the winter 1984 issue: "Recent Advances in Cardiology at Vail," "8th Annual Hawaii Dermatology Seminar," "Cardiology at Wimbledon," and "Sun Valley Primary Care Conference...

...The secret of his survival, as in all such cases, is what is politely called "funding...

...It was inundated by 7,300 applications...

...If you do, too, you can send a contribution to the organization that's behind them, Citizens Against PACs, 2000 P Street, NW., Washington, D.C., 20036...

...There is a truly dangerous antagonism between blacks and Jews that has developed in the last two decades...

...The only escape seems to be working outdoors with one's hands—as a cowboy or a carpenter, or—in the words of Willy's son Biff—mixing cement on some open plain...