TILTING AT WINDMILLS

...The order was resisted by the company attorneys as part of their continuing effort to keep documents from the court...

...Rich corporations like the referee much better because they can hire the best lawyers, lawyers who usually can run rings around the kind of attorney the average man can afford...

...A couple of years ago Bill Keller wrote an article in this magazine about the tendency of lobbies to represent the lowest common denominator of their membership—the most stupid and the most selfish—even if the majority is composed of good and decent people...

...Speaking of Mickey Kaus, if you're wondering if he's the Robert M. Kaus who has written for this magazine for the past six years and who was politics editor of Harper's during the Kinsley regime, the answer is yes...

...from the physician who regards $100,000 a year as the barest minimum...

...I wondered why he cared...

...It is also in your interest to fly a lot on business so that the amount of your discount will grow...

...There are none related to medical subjects...

...Now the same spirit is beginning to appear in their brother, Edward...

...These people will have to earn six education credits this year if they want to teach next year...

...The latest illustration of how this causes lobbies to be unrepresentative of the real feelings of their membership comes from a poll of teachers conducted by Lou Harris and Associates...

...Did Judge Lord take a bribe...

...There are seven four-color illustrations in the brochure—one of the Concorde, two of the Dorchester, and four of London tourist attractions...

...I then realized that his distress was not because of the intrinsic worth of the convention as an event but because of its value as a sign of his magazine's esteem for him...

...It exempts "employers of four or less" from being penalized for hiring illegal aliens...

...If you stop and think about it for a minute, you'll realize that the frequent flyer discount offered by airlines is a disguised bribe...

...This fall, according to Dial magazine, a new public television series called "On the Money" will feature tips on tax-deductible vacations...

...Instead of passively allowing this to happen, Lord called the Robins officials into the court and told them they were responsible and that it was time for them to admit their guilt...

...We believe we're well within the IRS guidelines for education trips of this kind...

...Now he and his wife are the orphanage's staff...

...More damning evidence comes from the Maine attorney general's office, which has filed an antitrust suit against a group of physicians who are alleged to be monopolizing anesthesiology services and charging excessive fees...

...I certainly have," Lord replied...

...Being chosen signified that he was on the first team, as the relief in his voice clearly announced when he later called to say that his editor had changed his mind and decided to send him...

...Reagan and his aides," according to The New York Times, "insisted" that it be linked to $21 million to support covert operations in Nicaragua...

...The result was more than 4,000 responses...

...Alan Pearl, a psychiatrist, signed the forms, although the Post says he seems to have neglected to examine the patients...

...The State Bar's Legal Ethics Committee has taken no action against him...

...Each of Washington's network television stations sent its own team of reporters and cameramen to the Democratic National Convention...

...Instead of being tried in Illinois, however, he has remained free in Utah, because Utah's governor refused to grant Illinois's request for extradition...

...Speaking of taxes, can you believe that Congress would shorten the period that investments must be held in order to qualify for the capital gains breaks...

...If you sometimes suspect that our laws are devised by the Three Stooges in secret session, confirmation comes from these recent news items: "California motorists caught speeding out of state are penalized only if they pay the ticket," reports the McClatchy News Service, but "motorists ignoring out-ofstate tickets get away scotfree...

...It's being increased 9 percent for the next fiscal year...

...It seems that Captain John Moultak, a Marine Corps pilot, had fallen in love with a subordinate, Lance Corporal Candy Clark...

...Robins' lawyer objected, saying that Lord had "become an advocate for the plaintiff's position...

...Neither your choice of airline or the number of miles traveled may be in your company's best interest, but most employees won't even think about that...

...You will get whatever frequent flyer discount is offered...

...Robins officials," according to Barry Seigel of The Los Angeles Times, to whom I am indebted for these facts, "never acknowledged that they knew the device was harming anyone...

...But doctors can take comfort that, however much their various scams may be exposed, reform seldom seems to follow...

...The reason is that the stupid and selfish are more likely to make trouble for the lobbies' officials if they don't get their way...

...In other words, Reagan was telling the Democrats that if they wanted jobs for the poor they had to support his illegal attempt to overthrow the government of Nicaragua...

...Some reform that would balance the loss of revenue...

...His friends have always called him Mickey, and he has decided that that's the way he wants to be known to his readers...

...Bostonians are hospitalized nearly twice as often as citzens of New Haven...

...It was announced that beginning with the fall term, college graduates will be able to get temporary teacher certification without having any education credits...

...But the ticket is in your name...

...In return," according to Business Week, "Rostenkowski won a provision that that will stop the Internal Revenue Service from seeking back taxes from commodity traders for tax straddles that took place before 1981...

...You may take ANY combination of live and video programming totaling 24 hours!' ANY is in bold type for a reason: the video programming may be viewed in your room, where "a self-contained video unit will be installed on your arrival...

...In the late seventies a West Virginia lawyer was videotaped by federal investigators as he handed a bribe to a county sheriff...

...Much of the evidence the Utah governor appparently relied on came from a long-time political and financial backer of the governor who also happens to be Mr...

...hose of us who read the New York Post soon become accustomed to the rich variety with which illicit impulses find expression in Manhattan...

...That is, they can run those rings as long as they're practicing before a neutral judge who feels no responsibility to expose what they are doing...

...It seems, according to the Post, that the New York Health Management Center at 29 West 34th Street was breaking this new ground in the use of health insurance...

...Mackay's attorney...

...As a country we are—we must be—more than a collection of groups and a combination of competing regions...

...With such earnings people begin to think of a Mercedes and a second home as necessities of life...

...What then is that motive...

...At last New York can take advantage of the vast number of people who would like to teach but who are too intelligent to endure the mind-numbing boredom of education courses...

...This in turn means that too few of them are free to do work they respect, to take stands that count, to live lives their children could be proud of...

...So it is in your interest to give your business to the airline that offers the best discount program...

...When those delaying tactics failed, Robins hit on a new strategy: get Lord out of their hair by settling the cases—so eager were they to do so that they gave the plaintiffs more than they had asked for—and getting, as part of a settlement, an agreement that new court orders from other judges would be required to get the documents and depositions for other cases...

...That's front-page news at the Gazette...

...A federal judge gave the tape to the West Virginia State Bar in 1979...

...Take the racket called Continuing Medical Education, I have in my hand a glossy brochure, "CME Comes Alive in London," sponsored by British Airways and an outfit called CME Tours, offering "8 day, 7 night programs at the world famous Dorchester Hotel in London...

...At the end of this case, after reviewing thousands of documents, looking at the briefs, and reading the depositions, I have concluded the plaintiffs are right!' Hurray for Judge Lord...

...The corporation in this case is A. H. Robins, the manufacturer of the Dalkon Shield intrauterine contraceptive device...

...A recent experience gave me a clue...

...The whole of America is greater than the sum of all its parts and interests...

...You can cover it up all you want, but it looks bad, and it looks bad because it is bad...

...There were 385 other network stations from around the country that did the same thing, joining 12,000 other reporters in one of the most spectacular examples of journalistic overkill of all time...

...A friend of mine subscribes to Penthouse...

...Otherwise they will continue to be doomed to the brain damage that is the almost inevitable result of the sport as things stand now...

...The incredible irony here is that PBS will be telling us how to avoid paying the taxes that provide a good part of its support...

...It is my guess, however, that they need have no fear of pursuit by the police...

...here was a kind of anticipatory neoliberalism in the John and Robert Kennedys who took on both the Teamsters Union and United States Steel...

...Frederick Robbins, the head of the National Academy's Institute of Medicine: "Nobody can get away from the potentially damning evidence that these great variations present...

...As most of you know, such testing is opposed by both the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers...

...And if they want to get full certification and tenure, they still have to have a masters degree and 24 education credits...

...The education program consists of 24 hours "of a combination of morning seminar and the availability of video programming each afternoon...

...So its budget is being radically reduced, right...

...Why do we let doctors get away with this kind of thing...

...Now you understand why Rostenkowski made our list of the Worst Congressmen (see page 12...

...But I'm certain that by the time this issue is published, just as many or more will have turned up in Dallas, thereby proving beyond any doubt that going to a charming city is not their primary motive...

...It has never issued a recall on the shield...

...If it protects the head as well as it appears to, why don't we require that it be worn by all boxers, professional as well as amateur...

...Charles Peters...

...One exception was The Chicago Tribune's Mike Royko, who asked, "How can you pretend to be serious, strong, and decisive in a city where wan young men drift through the press offices dropping off news releases that announce an ejaculation contest...

...They think the discount is theirs even though it is their company's money that bought it for them...

...What did Dan Rostenkowski, the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee get in return for this gift to Wall Street...

...It had been run by a friend of his, a Benedictine monk named Brother Gerrard, who had died...

...If that sounds crazy, consider the law of extradition...

...Did you ever hear of a measure more clearly designed to help the average man...

...In the past decade over 10,000 lawsuits have been filed against Robins alleging that the Shield causes inflammatory diseases of the pelvic area and miscarriages leading to infection, sterility, and 17 deaths...

...Even among journalists and public officials, where underpayment was once a rule, couples making more than a hundred thousand dollars a year are no longer rare in Washington...

...This means that the upper class can keep their maids—who tend to be Hispanic and sufficiently underpaid to arouse reasonable suspicion that many just might be illegal as well—without fear of risking anything so unseemly as a stretch at Allentown or Danbury...

...However, none of them have complained about the treatment received from the Center's female therapists...

...But even we were a bit taken aback by this recent headline: "BLUE CROSS PAID FOR 'SEX THERAPY' WITH PROSTITUTES...

...The Washington Post's Victor Cohn reported these facts as well as a quote from Dr...

...We are one nation with one history and one destiny—and I am certain that Americans will sacrifice if we are challenged to raise our sights from narrow and separate views of an issue to a broader vision of the nation's future...

...A couple of weeks before the Democratic convention a friend who works at one of the news magazines called in distress to tell me that he wasn't going because of budgetary cutbacks...

...Not on your life...

...Speaking of medical treatment, did you know that studies cited at a recent National Academy of Sciences conference show that: • 19 percent of Medicare admissions and 27 percent of the days these patients spend in the hsopital are unnecesary...

...He consolidated the 28 Dalkon Shield cases pending before his court and demanded that Robins begin giving depositions and producing documents...

...But don't get too excited...

...Don't be foolish...

...Is the trip tax deductible...

...You fly frequently...

...Robins's legal strategy has been to keep the cases separate, first because judges and juries who are unaware of the extent of the problem are more likely to side with the company and second because the judges are less likely to demand the production of the thousands of documents that might be relevant but would seem an undue burden for the defendant to produce for an individual plaintiff...

...In Latin communities there is a custom called the paseo, in which the people walk around the village square in the evening...

...Did you notice the headgear the boxers were wearing during the Olympics...

...During World War II Franklin Roosevelt proposed that all income be limited to $25,000 a year after taxes...

...This was estimated to have cost these stations around $100,000 each...

...No, his sin is that he sees the role of a judge not as a neutral referee but as a seeker of truth and justice...

...The latest outrage from the education establishment is the news that Florida's Teacher of the Year will not get a merit pay bonus because she does not have a master's degree...

...When the company chairman claimed he was unable to recall any conversations with other company officials about the shields, Lord ordered Robins to produce the minutes of meetings that showed the chairman did know what was going on...

...The suit also charges that the doctors are trying to squeeze out potential competition by restricting training and educational opportunities for nurse anesthetists...

...In a remarkable speech at the University of Virginia's Class Day in May, he said: "I strongly believe in unions and in private endeavor...

...When, however, the honest motorist pays his outof-state ticket, the California Department of Motor Vehicles is notified, which can lead to suspension of his driver's license as well as other problems...

...There are cities where seven children out of 100 have their tonsils removed by the age of 15—and there are cities where it's 70 out of 100...

...Mackay's role in the worker's death...

...Speaking of our writers, you may be interested to know that Polly Toynbee, who was an editor of The Washington Monthly in the early seventies and is now a columnist for the Manchester Guardian, is one of the leaders of England's Social Democratic Party, discussed by Laurence Grafstein in this issue (see page 32...

...The story that accompanied it was about a former Charleston resident named John Cook who had given up a professorship at the University of New Mexico to run an orphanage...

...But, continues UPI, "instead of a blessing, he got a court martial and dishonorable discharge" for "conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman ." On the other hand, an officer who had beaten and raped Corporal Clark a year ago was honorably discharged with full benefits...

...How else can justice be done between parties of unequal access to legal talent unless judges aggressively seek the truth...

...This is the way the judicial system works in England and it is the way it should work here...

...Well that's exactly what it's done, reducing the time from one year to six months, and just when we thought practically everyone had realized that one of the central problems of American capitalism was its focus on short-term gain...

...We've got a long way to go...

...We should be ashamed to be part of a society that permits young men to be harmed so grievously for the amusement of others...

...He suspects that more than a few postal employees yielded to the temptation not only to take a peek but to pilfer copies for resale...

...One breakthrough against this idiocy has taken place in New York, where there is a shortage of teachers...

...Here is why...

...Suppose, for example, you're a journalist working for a major network news department...

...Well, Judge Lord saw through this strategy and was fed up with their behavior...

...He had been to a convention and knew how boring it could be when everything had been decided in advance...

...Even though a Robins qualitycontrol supervisor pointed out flaws in the contraceptive's design in 1971, Robins did not advise the FDA about any problem until 1973 and did not stop distributing the device until 1974...

...Most of what is written about neoliberals ignores, as Mickey Kaus points out elsewhere in this issue (see page 48), their idealism...

...but I also believe that we must transcend the simplistic labels of pro- or anti-business, pro- or antilabor...

...The Shipping Act of 1984 eliminated almost all of the work of the Federal Maritime Commission...

...On the other hand the forces of law and order have moved rapidly to investigate misconduct charges against Miles Lord, a federal judge in Minnesota...

...And that's why we reject the greed that has come to dominate too much of American society—from overpaid corporate executives to union members who have sought wage gains that exceeded increases in productivity...

...Their coverage for the most part was duplicative, so that you saw the same thing on the local news that you saw on the network...

...I like my hometown paper, The Charleston Gazette...

...Unfortunately, however, the unions have usually been allied with the teachers colleges in supporting education credit and degree requirements for teachers...

...Male patients were told to indicate on their insurance forms that they were being treated for "anxiety disorders...

...We cannot grasp new possibilities by continuing the old practice of always calculating every decision on the basis of who will get what...

...The primary purpose is to give the young men and women a chance to see and be seen...

...The trouble with this story is that it was disproved as recently as June this year when a summer jobs appropriation was pending before the Senate and "Mr...

...They told their superiors of their relationship months ago," the report says, "in the hope she could get an early discharge and they could marry...

...Of the 1,981 elementary and secondary school teachers surveyed, 57 percent said they would welcome periodic testing of teachers in the subjects they are supposed to know...

...Obviously, like most reporters, the television people wanted to go to San Francisco...

...Five years later the attorney is still practicing law...

...When I called and casually mentioned an academic interest in seeing the September issue, he said, "I didn't get it, and I bet a lot of the other guys didn't either...

...to the Wall Street lawyer who feels like a failure if he earns less than a quarter-million dollars...

...Our Republican friends tell us that the administration really does care about the poor or that, even if some of its rightwingers had been guilty of indifference earlier, things are different now that moderates are in the driver's seat at the White House...

...Because the rest of us are eager to join in the fun...

...Cook returned to Santa Fe but said, "I could not get the orphanage and the children out of my mind...

...I am delighted to see that some teachers union officials in Florida are arguing that a master's degree is irrelevant to classroom ability...

...On a day in July when other papers were carrying lead stories about Ronald Reagan's views on space weapons and Paul Volcker's on interest rates, the Gazette devoted the top of its page to a picture of a man, a woman, and 21 children standing in front of a bus...

...The network pays for it...

...Matheson," according to The Wall Street Journal's Bill Richards, "conflict sharply with eyewitness accounts and with court documents that raise serious questions about Mr...

...This kind of outrage can occur because an 1861 Supreme Court ruling left extradition to the discretion of governors...

...Recently Michael T. Mackay, who now lives in Utah, was indicted by an Illinois grand jury for the murder of an immigrant worker...

...It seems to me that the modern political convention has become a continuing grand paseo in which people circulate to prove that they are there, to be seen as important because they are there, and to join with their peers in the warm camaraderie of mutual reassurance...

...When John Cook learned of his friend's death, he went to visit the orphanage and was told by the nun who met him that she had to disband the orphanage because she had no help and no money...

...Military law provides my final example in a case reported July 14 by UPI...

...That's why neoliberals, or at least those of us who work at The Washington Monthly, believe in, among other things, a national service that brings together people of all classes to do their part for the common good...

...While I don't believe in government telling us how much we can make, it does seem to me that FDR was right to try to make people think about the kind of monetary reward it makes sense for any of us to seek...

...The conclusions reached by Gov...

...Who, after all, is going to file an indignant protest and thereby reveal that he is a subscriber...