TILTING AT WINDMILLS

...I suspect," he writes, "that you are among the discerning few who recognize what a watercolor by an American impressionist and a scarf from Hermes have in common...

...Don't be cynical...

...Florida, Texas, Arizona, and Georgia charge only a fourth that amount, according to Richard Grimes of the Charleston Daily Mail...

...The point is that most soldiers, sailors, and airmen don't spend most of their time in such conditions...

...They would probably have two children...

...Tomas Hoving, the former director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, is now editor of a magazine called Connoisseur...

...He lives in a tiny room in a dormitory block belonging to the company, an hour's drive outside Tokyo, where meals are communal, and the young men are expected to spend their evenings in communal social and company activities...

...E ach of the networks provided us with at least 12 hours of unrelieved boredom during the Republican convention...

...So, one Friday in July he asked an aide to call the heads of the various divisions of the state government...

...But in terms of what they cost us, it's useful to break them down into smaller groups...

...Consider these headlines: "Breakup of Bell System Leaves Telephone Service in Need of Repair" and "Former Bell Operating Units Seek Big Rate Increases for Local Service...

...Treasury Department," the ad continues, "in a purported effort to track down unreported income, has proposed requiring citizens to turn in all $100 bills (and perhaps bills of lower denominations) for a replacement currency...

...population as a whole—it is clear that the fiscal consequences will be severe...

...But the increased cost of local service, connection, installation, and repair will wipe out the long distance savings for the average customer...

...The State Department follows a similar policy...

...Now at last he has graduated to some productive work...

...His whole life would be the company, and his home would be hardly more than a place to sleep...

...A national health service that controlled health costs, including the compensation to physicians, could help...

...Have you begun to suspect that the divestiture suit against AT&T has not been a total blessing for the Republic...

...Trenton, Newark, Princeton, Atlantic City...

...If I were a Wall Street speculator, I would certainly take a good look at Piedmont...

...They did their best...

...Willie Newman spent his boyhood picking oranges, packing celery, and mowing lawns to help his struggling family get along in Sanford's [Florida] poor black community of Goldsboro," began a recent story by Terry Osinski in The Chicago Tribune...

...H ere's the latest on A.H...

...The half-empty office is typical not only of state capitols but also of federal and municipal buildings throughout the nation...

...He was one of an intake [class] of 2,000 graduates in his year, only 100 of whom were women...

...According to a recent study by the Urban Institute, the administration's policies resulted in a $25 billion gain in disposable income for the top fifth of the population between 1980 and 1984...

...For example, people 80 and older get more dollar aid than all of the nonelderly poor...

...Yet NBC covered only half of it, with CBS and ABC doing even less...

...They are given assignments that are varied and broadening...

...And their best turned out to be quite good enough...

...I suspect the reason is that not only would it make a lot of people mad but it would also involve a lot of work, meaning there would be fewer of those long weekends...

...I know you're suspecting that they're going to London instead of Trenton because it's tax deductible and the rest of us will foot the bill...

...The reason is that the press, as the coverage of the House Judiciary Committee illustrates, is almost always influential and often decisive in determining whether that system works or not...

...They behaved accordingly...

...But don't worry about the price...

...Yet bureaucracy lumps us all together, deserving and undeserving...

...A recent article in The New York Times, "Out of College and Into the Red," reminded me to remind you that we have two solutions to the high cost of higher education...

...I don't know what a "whore bath" is, but I was in the infantry and I do remember what that was like...

...Just imagine how the free market works on a rainy night when the driver sees that there are no other cabs in sight and has a rider who must get from here to there by a certain time...

...But for the last ten years he has met no girls—or at least not the sort you marry...

...Is there any reason why, on their death—and, of course, after the death of their surviving spouse—that their estates shouldn't be charged with the costs Medicare has incurred in their behalf...

...Actually, "to each according to his need" was the only thing I ever liked about communism...

...That's nice, you say, but hardly reason for the Tribune to run a story...

...The irony of the meaninglessness of this year's conventions was further reinforced by reports that UPI is in financial trouble because of the money it spent on its usual army of reporters covering the conventions...

...I don't think so...

...His sentence was 90 days in jail...

...Yet so often such discrimination is the only basis for sensible policy...

...But we should stop trying to make all the pilots into chiefs of staff and all the FSOs into secretaries of state...

...This was the long Geraldine Ferraro press conference in which she took on all questions about her family finances and the related disclosure issues...

...The more the average member knows that attention is being paid, the better he will perform...

...The subordinate, an attorney named Roger Tuttle, has testified, according to The Wall Street Journal, "that he assigned small crews to search company files and burn any potentially damaging papers in a company furnace...

...Jimmy Carter had reduced it by 38,000...

...Wood observed in a letter to Aviation Week, commenting on the article: "We have many jocks, sitting at desks, looking at every contrail, waiting to get their hand on the throttle again...

...In Arkansas, according to The Wall Street Journal, a rate increase of 50 percent is being sought...

...What...

...Do the surviving offspring have a right to inherit that is greater than society's right to be repaid...

...He went to work for one of Japan's largest companies straight out of university...

...The system of 'to each according to his (or her) work done' can best serve socialism...

...The company has considerable foreign trade and now that he is trained he should be posted abroad...

...TILTING AT WINDMILLS Charles Peters A s we looked back during August to the House Judiciary Committee hearings on the impeachment of Richard Nixon that had taken place ten years earlier, I'm sure many of us were again struck by the high level at which most members of the committee performed...

...In August I went to Charleston, West Virginia for the 40th reunion of my high school class...

...Readers also help us in countless other ways, calling with tips for stories, giving their friends subscriptions, or just making sure we're on the shelves of their local newsstands, bookstores, and libraries...

...Remember how Ronald Reagan was going to get big government "off the backs of the American people...

...Just drop us a note telling us the work you're interested in, your experience, and the days and hours you're available...

...By the way, one organization that deserves special recognition is ABC News for its three-hour closeup, "To Save Our Schools, To Save Our Children," which erased any doubt about television's ability to present complex issues in a way that is both illuminating and engrossing...

...Keisling has never spent weeks in the field in belowfreezing temperatures, eating `C' rations and powdered eggs and getting 'whore baths' from a steel pot at 0400...

...Why would MONEX pay for the ad unless it thinks it will help sell gold and silver...

...Physical attractiveness or athletic ability might have enhanced your standing with your fellows but not your name or your address...

...In part, this trend was humane, but you should be sure your school wasn't one of the places where it produced a faculty that is underworked and overpaid...

...At the same time it forces people to fly who don't want to...

...Most of us simply don't do work that is physically demanding or dangerous...

...One way is to reduce the cost of that care...

...But the company has a policy of not sending bachelors abroad...

...After marriage, what lay ahead...

...Support congressional candidates who will work to eliminate the deficit," Keith Propst, the president of the Colorado Farm Bureau told the bureau's summer conference in Steamboat Springs...

...But an astonishing percentage—well over half—own their own...

...Our other solution has to do not with the cause of the costs but with a more sensible way to pay them...

...Of course not...

...Where would you guess the New Jersey State Bar Association plans to hold its mid-year meeting...

...G overnor Richard Lamm of Colorado had begun to suspect that some of his underlings had become accustomed to taking long weekends...

...I know," he wrote, "without any doubt that Mr...

...Every foreign service officer is supposed to be a potential secretary of state, so he gets assignments all over the world in all kinds of jobs to prepare him for a day that is almost certain not to come...

...His whole life and career was mapped out for him until the day he retired...

...The individuals that do may deserve better pay and earlier retirement...

...The state's unemployment grows, meaning that it has to charge employers more to pay compensation to the unemployed, and things just get worse and worse...

...He would not be able to leave and join another company later, as he would be regarded as disloyal and suspect...

...In most states the figures would be higher, much higher...

...The problem is that a lot of the best pilots don't want to be broadened, they just want to fly...

...So we aren't wasting our time in trying to make it that way for everyone...

...Clippings from reader's local papers inspire many of the items in Tidbits and Outrages and Tilting at Windmills...

...It's time to resurrect once more Nicholas Von Hoffman's immortal observation that only the United States government would pay people more for not working than for working...

...Over the years many readers have asked why The Washington Monthly, a magazine ostensibly devoted to the political system, gives so much attention to the press...

...Box 1288 Oakland, CA 94604 He recently received a letter addressed to Jay Bradshaw at: RFD 2 Box 145 Oakland, ME 04963 The federal system outrages common sense...

...That is why attention must be paid...

...Their incomes are usually modest...

...We can't let pilots be pilots if we don't need pilots, just as we can't let every FSO choose his own specialty...

...Still another way to address the problem is to increase the revenues available to provide the care...

...The brochure says: "The signing of the Magna Carta and the development of the common law gives one the opportunity to visit places of great law and lawyers...

...The answer is no...

...Discriminating among people as to their talents and needs is something that bureaucracy hates to...

...The meeting will be held in London, November 11-18...

...Currency switch: Will you be ready...

...The bottom 40 percent of American families have lost ground under Reagan...

...Last month I got a letter from an army captain complaining about Phillip Keisling's article, "Soldiers of Good Fortune," which argued that today's military was adequately paid...

...Many have other assets as well...

...One of the problems the plaintiffs' attorneys have been having is with the tendency to disappear displayed by evidence embarrassing to Robins and within Robins' control...

...Well the news is that Willie Newman didn't go to Jacksonville or Atlanta or New York to minister to the affluent, he went back home to Sanford, where he works in a low-cost clinic...

...MONEX, which describes itself as "America's Most Trusted Name in Precious Metals Investments," recently ran an advertisement in The Wall Street Journal with this headline: The proposed U.S...

...It's a bit like the airline situation, where competition on the big, long-haul routes tends to keep fares down while the cost of flying nocompetition routes skyrockets...

...Since the number of people in their eighties is increasing—the over-85 group is growing six times as fast as the U.S...

...It is for the media to pay far more attention to the important Senate and House committees...

...Those who are in it for a career deserve terms of compensation and retirement that are generous and humane...

...On most of its routes it is the only airline providing service...

...The students had treated each other as equals, regardless of the wealth or social position of their families...

...In other words, it can charge what it wants...

...There was no news to report, no reason to spend the money except to allow its reporters to be seen there and to feel important...

...The company has dominated his evenings as well as his days, and the very few girls who were in his intake have already left work to get married...

...In spite of all the disadvantages of their restricted opportunities, perhaps it is not altogether surprising that there is virtually no wish at all among most Japanese women to have anything at all to do with the male world of work and careers...

...In other words, cut that deficit but not the part that helps us...

...He would get a small flat and move out of the dormitory...

...Therefore, they should be rewarded differently...

...They went to work and saved enough money to hire their own lawyer, Michael Kelly.- "The major thing they want is a cessation of the continuous litigation," says Kelly...

...They were AWOL," an indignant Lamm told The Denver Post...

...A somewhat more direct approach was adopted by William A. Forrest Jr., vice president and general counsel of Robins, who simply ordered a subordinate to get rid of incriminating papers...

...When the phone is AT&T's and the wiring is done by the local telephone company, according to one AT&T employee quoted by The Washington Post, "The customer calls and says, 'My telephone line has been connected but nothing on my set is flashing here.' Two companies have to be involved and sometimes there is a communications breakdown ." The only phone cost that has gone down is the charge for long distance...

...The Air Force treats its officers as if each one is destined to be chief of staff...

...They knew what they were doing was important, and they knew that the world, including most especially that part of it that resided in their respective districts, was watching...

...What made them behave so well, I'm convinced, is the spotlight that was focused on them...

...And those 85 and over are 15 times more likely to be in a nursing home than those people who are 65 to 74 years of age...

...As a group they were quite typical of the Congress...

...I had remembered Charleston High as the nearest thing to a perfect democracy that I had ever known...

...And the disease is not confined to the public sector...

...For instance, 20 boxes of documents at the home of a Robins attorney were said to have been discarded as part of his wife's spring cleaning...

...These were most definitely not the assortment of fools and scoundrels that Congress is commonly suspected of being...

...Karl Marx would not be pleased by this recent editorial from the China Daily a friend sent me from Peking: "It is well known that people are different, both in ability and the contribution which they make...

...you protest, don't these loans put a bankrupting burden on the students, who then fail to pay them back and leave the government holding the bag...

...But it is a step that should be taken and this ad explains the reason...

...The U.S...

...They get 77 percent more medical benefits than the newly retired, aged 65 to 69...

...But he would scarcely see them, since the company would continue to expect to dominate his life and his evenings...

...Meanwhile, income for the bottom fifth dropped an average of $600 per family...

...The fact that this is news says something very good about Dr...

...Yet, at the same time, I have never come across a society where it is so genuinely hard to tell whether the men's or the women's lot is worse...

...The suspicion that the police are subjected to a different standard of justice than the rest of us is fortified by the recent case of a Maryland state trooper who was convicted in Harford County of molesting a woman motorist...

...Were the members of the Judiciary Committee at that particular time far above average...

...She has long since given up trying to reach any of the top people on Fridays during the summer...

...Our Memos of the Month come almost entirely from you...

...Finally they decided they were tired of going to court to hear their parents argue...

...He said, with a wry smile, that without a wife he might get a highly undesirable job, in Lagos, for instance, and he would have no chance of anything better...

...But this is why he seldom stays long enough in one place to learn the language and to acquire the knowledge that he needs to communicate with and understand the nationals with whom he is dealing...

...Robins and the cases that have been brought against it by women who have been harmed by its Dalkon Shield intrauterine contraceptive device...

...Forty years later they were treating each other the same way...

...Newman and something very bad about most of his fellow physicians...

...It offered free hairdos...

...For eight years, Catherine Ryan, age 17, and her brother Eric, age 12, have endured a custody battle between their divorced parents...

...The story of Kasuo's life, past, present, and future, is typical of a Japanese man's existence...

...As Captain M.C...

...One hundred and thirtyeight former congressmen now are paid more in annual pensions than they earned in annual salary while serving on Capitol Hill, according to a recent report by the National Taxpayer's Union...

...Many publishers close down their offices entirely...

...If you happen to live in the Washington area you may be able to volunteer here at our office...

...homes outright, without any debt...

...We also have unenthusiastic, unproficient, and careless ticket-punchers sitting in cockpits dreading and avoiding every combat maneuvering or coordinated strike they can...

...Life can be as good and fair as it was at Charleston High...

...by can't I just fly...

...One is to cast a critical eye on the trend toward higher faculty salaries and fewer teaching hours that dominated the upper reaches of academia in the sixties and the seventies...

...Well, under his administration the number of full-time permanent federal employees has grown by 23,000...

...I n the future when you look at a Sony or a Honda and begin to think that imitating the Japanese is the path to salvation, reflect on this report by Polly Toynbee, who, as we noted last month, used to write for us and is now a columnist for the Manchester Guardian: "The lives of Japanese women are dismally restricted—probably less equal and more bound by duty, tradition, and obligation than any other women in a highly successful developed society...

...My own experience visiting state capitol buildings on Friday afternoons suggests that Lamm should have been relieved to find only ten sinners...

...Once he signed up with this company he knew he was there for life...

...was the question asked in an article by an Air Force captain in a recent issue of Aviation Week and Space Technology...

...No other company would want him...

...We propose that the government offer loans to cover the full cost of college...

...For the first five years he was a trainee, and for the next five years he was scarcely more, with no responsibility...

...It was a unique opportunity to gauge the mind and character of the Democratic candidate for vice president: Because it tested her in a way no one was tested in Dallas, it was the most important political news of the week...

...They have less disposable income now than they had in Jimmy Carter's last year...

...Obviously businessmen would prefer to locate in places where they pay the lower figure, so they avoid West Virginia...

...And why will it help sell gold and silver unless there are a lot of people who have cash that they can't explain and who would be caught redhanded by a currency switch—unless, of course, they convert their currency into gold and silver...

...So could a national service program that would assign young people to work in nursing homes, not as a career, but as part of two years of service to their country and to their fellow man...

...Which is definitely not what Ronald Reagan has been trying to do...

...That's true now, but what we propose are loans payable over a mercifully long term, say 30 years, and fully collectible because they would be paid to the IRS as an additional assessment on taxes...

...There is, of course, no shortage of anecdotes illustrating that the postal service has not quite gotten its act together...

...I can fly from Washington to Miami for half the lowest fare from Washington to Charleston, West Virginia, which is onesixth the distance to Miami but is served only by Piedmont Airlines...

...The story went on to tell how Willie had gone on to medical school and was now a practicing obstetrician/ gynecologist...

...It turned out that ten out of 68 were not to be found...

...But that doesn't mean the rest of us should receive such treatment...

...One example comes from the employee in our office who deals with New York book publishers...

...When this is done some interesting facts emerge...

...They want their parents to stop using the courts to get at one another...

...Charles Peters You Can Help Sometimes it's easy to forget how much The Washington Monthly depends on its readers...

...My memory had been right...

...Another blow to the cause of deregulation comes from Seattle, where the city fathers decided to deregulate taxi fares...

...When we look at the elderly we tend to see them as one homogenized group...

...If you pass that test, you can buy a copy for $3...

...But, according to a report of the meeting in The Denver Post, Dennis Stolte, the next speaker, "asked farmers and ranchers to support a bill introduced by Senator Bill Armstrong that would exempt irrigation systems from fee and permit requirements under the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976...

...The fact is that people within the Treasury Department have talked about taking this step for years but have never gotten around to doing it...

...My favorite comes from William Bradshaw, whose address is: P.O...

...Why this difference between expectation and reality...

...Kasuo is a charming, intelligent man of 31, highly educated, and with many European friends...

...Their employees have to be married...

...Not everyone will agree with my belief that people go to political conventions to be seen, but Clairol certainly does...

...My home state, West Virginia, charges the average employer $442 per employee per year for its unemployment fund...

...That's why we're hard on the press when it fails, and that's why we try to applaud it, as with our Monthly Journalism Award, when it succeeds...

...Hoving adds in a P.S., "because Connoisseur is of unsurpassed usefulness in starting collections of value, it may well be taxdeductible...

...To the extent possible the recipients of that care should pay for it themselves...

...How are we going to pay for the care that will be needed...

...Most nights he would not be home before 12...

...Charges against him in another county involving assaults on three other women were dropped because, according to The Washington Post, "assistant state's attorney Charles Frey said he believed the purposes of prosecution were accomplished in the Harford County case...

...What then, is the lesson...

...In that capacity he has addressed a letter to several hundred thousand potential subscribers...

...Installation and connection service for a couple of telephones that just a few years ago cost a small business like The Washington Monthly around $100 now costs close to $1,500...

...The same week there was one event of 84 crucial minutes that not one of the networks covered completely...

...In Nevada the figure is 71 percent...

...Yet his life seems far more rigid, remote, and restricted than the lives of most people in communist countries...

...to prominent Republican women at the convention in Dallas...