LETTERS
LETTERS Both sides now As a broadcast journalist who twice took time off to serve in municipal government as an assistant to the city manager and a brief stint as a press aide for...
...The actual data from the 1984 election tells us that neither of them are...
...The depressing reality, I think, is that the main chance to do that has already been blown...
...To my children, who have trouble understanding why their father has just about no white heroes, I shall refer to the Richard Reeves book review, "Why I Like Ike" in your January issue...
...I worked as an environmental engineer in state government for 12 years (the last seven in a regulatory capacity) and I have seen many similar examples of the bureaucrat's rigid respect for Stupidity...
...Indeed, the antilabor attack in The Washington Monthly (while simultaneously decrying the absence of anti-labor coverage) represented an unwitting and striking selfcaricature...
...Was the pile contaminated with something more alkaline...
...interpretation...
...In fact I've been preaching that issue for 15 years at broadcast news meetings...
...But "management" as a political issue...
...Doubt about the validity of pH readings, for instance, is...
...Any flexibility will be used by various "vultures" (competing agencies, lawyers, developers, public interest groups) to try to drive a truck through the breach...
...Kemp, the football hero, is calling for lower taxes and having great fun bashing the Federal Reserve...
...Head in the sand, old-line Democrats reacted predictably, reflexively criticizing the proposal because it comes from a Republican administration...
...Based on my experiences, here is a sampling of the possible reasons: 1. The Grudge: An influential individual or group in the environmental agency is "sticking it" to the highway agency as retaliation for such things as very real environmental abuses in past highway construction...
...Our own survey of just AFL-CIO members showed an even stronger 61-39 [22-point] margin for Mondale...
...It's safer to admit to no Stupidity loopholes...
...It is a most instructive story...
...MOTTO: He Who Is Strong and Unyielding Attracts No Vultures...
...Performance is at the heart of Mr...
...It was tough going in the forties and fifties engaging in the debate on objectivity vs...
...paid no taxes on $684 million in profits for a threeyear period while Grace shipping lines has received $337,150,000 in government subsidies since 1936...
...GEORGE LIPPER Macomb, Illinois What's a 'nice racist...
...Postponing today's crises often but not always ends up with worse problems for everyone later on...
...And, anyone even remotely familiar with today's American worker knows that he or she cannot be "delivered" by any organization...
...Black did not elaborate on why the beneficial reuse clause is considered so bad by some regulators...
...MOTTO: Invent a Heroic Act, Get an IOU...
...Yet these "Don't do it if it's stupid" clauses are not applied in many cases...
...Nonetheless, if anything resembling the Treasury plan passes, the Republicans will get the political credit...
...I will point out to them how, in spite of the fact the historian who wrote the book that Reeves reviewed, and Reeves himself, deemed Mr...
...Unload Today's In-Box...
...Equally important, however, is the substance of The Charleston Gazette and Washington Monthly attacks...
...The BradleyGephardt Fair Tax bill, or something similar, should have been the preeminent "new idea" of the 1984 campaign...
...If Gary Hart, in particular, had seized the tax issue from Republicans—campaigning on growth and "fairness"— he could have avoided the fallacious but ultimately crippling criticism of his campign: that he in fact had no "new ideas...
...Editor's note: MacDougall's textbook, Interpretive Reporting, was quoted in the course of demonstrating how society reporters of the 1930s were instructed to cover parties.] It would not take much research to reveal that I am praised (or blamed) for making "inventive" interpretative reporting during the Depression...
...LETTERS Both sides now As a broadcast journalist who twice took time off to serve in municipal government as an assistant to the city manager and a brief stint as a press aide for a gubernatorial candidate, I second your view of the value of having the journalist experienced in the field he/she writes about ["Tilting at Windmills," January...
...Nothing like a career in Congress to gain stature, is there...
...Reeves speaks of Eisenhower as ". . . a nice racist ." I will have to discuss with my children what constitutes fair and objective racism...
...I fear Mr...
...The American media alternates between two images of the American labor movement: one is the image of "labor bosses" delivering their votes to chosen candidates...
...VIC FINGERHUT Washington, D.C...
...Actually, I think the deficit could be considerably reduced if companies such as W.R...
...I'm reminded of a Stan Laurel vignette where he attempts to peel a banana and finds another banana inside...
...Historian Ambrose even is quoted by Reeves as finding Eisenhower "fair" and "objective...
...Newsweek, November/December election issue...
...Fix-It and get credit for fixing a problem which should never have occurred in the first place...
...I don't know whether I have peeled back all the layers of the banana, but if we understand the rules that Bureaucrats feel they work under, their actions become much more understandable...
...Grace paid their fair share of taxes and the government stopped its corporate subsidies...
...But where is there a bureaucrat who never procrastinated...
...CURTIS D. MACDOUGALL Evanston, Illinois...
...However, whether one uses the networks' "union household" figures (50 percent more likely to vote for Mondale) or the figures for just AFL-CIO members (nearly 70 percent more likely to vote for Mondale), that is a powerful result for such a large and varied group of unions as comprise the AFL-CIO...
...Less conflict and more cooperation between workers and managers...
...J. Peter Grace draws an annual pension of $375,500 and he isn't even retired...
...Union voters must be persuaded to support a given candidate, ballot proposition, or other political position...
...Thirdly, as I read through the article, my soul was crying out for a regulation based on performance standards, rather than numerical standards...
...The regulatory agency needs—now and then—to deliver an Electric Shock to the nibbling agency to reaffirm the vigor of its regulations...
...Journalism is far too important to the maintenance of a free society to be left to the journalist...
...I normally would not complain about the item mentioning me in "Tilting at Windmills," January 1985...
...The fascinating challenge is to get at the root causes for such absurdity...
...WILLIAM SIMPSON Park Forest, Illinois Saving Grace Your "Tilting at Windmills" [January] reported that the Grace Commission has called attention to the growing impact on the deficit of federal retirement programs for civilian and military employees...
...The first is that organized labor in general and Lane Kirkland in particular are protected by friendly coverage, particularly in Washington...
...Although technically correct, what you say about my attitude is entirely incorrect...
...MOTTO: I Wrote It, So It's Great...
...However, you forgot to advise your readers that Mr...
...WILLIAM J. POWELL JR...
...This society is rife with individuals who bandy around the word "racism" with mock sobriety, but who in reality have only the slightest respect for the havoc that racism wreaks in the lives of those against whom it is practiced...
...In some cases we might even be more sympathetic—like the religious concept of Sin and Forgiveness...
...Then we will have to chew over how the seriousness of racism is glossed over and the life of racism perpetuated by just such devil-may-care attitudes as exhibited by Ambrose and Reeves...
...Measuring up to Kemp The Washington Monthly astutely recognizes that Jack Kemp would probably be the Democrats' most formidable opponent for the presidency in 1988 ["What the Democrats Can Learn from Jack Kemp," Jonathan Rowe, January...
...The American labor movement and the millions of working people it represents are facing many difficult problems these days, but suffering from "softball" media coverage is clearly not one of them...
...Hart (or the 1988 Hart equivalent), perhaps a tad on the technocratic side, is calling for "better management" Who wins in November...
...Now, however, the Reagan administration has again taken the offensive with the Treasury Department's version of the Fair tax...
...That is what AFL-CIO unions did in this year's presidential race, in their own internal communications efforts...
...4. Pride of Authorship: Whoever wrote the regulations thinks they are great and does not want to admit to flaws—especially those pointed out by engineers and laymen...
...Later, Kemp is elected to Congress and we are told he is now possessed of a "six foot body...
...Ironically, The Charleston Gazette editorial critical of labor's political role and The Washington Monthly item in which it was reprinted were just two more of the predictable post-election attacks on the labor movement...
...According to election night surveys taken by the major networks, voters in "union households" voted for Mondale by a 54-46 percent margin, while nonunion voters favored Reagan by a 64-36 percent margin...
...Officials who must defend their view of "fairness" against "political favoritism" frequently feel they are putting their jobs on the line and undermining their job futures...
...What, then, do the Democrats run on against someone such as Kemp in 1988...
...the other is an image of a labor leadership which is "out of touch" with its membership and therefore, politically ineffective...
...MOTTO: Back to the Doghouse, Fido...
...And with that reference I will call my kids' attention to one of the reasons why their father appears such a cynical Black man...
...1623) states that a saturated solution of calcium hydroxide should have a pH of 12.4...
...Management Guru Tom Peters says, "Management is THE issue in this country, not tax policy...
...Bureaucrats wrap their motives in layer upon layer of banana peels...
...It is extraordinarily important for individual firms in our economy to be run better...
...Black missed out on a few important points, however...
...See The Washington Post, November 11...
...2. The Zinger: If agencies get too comfortable with each other, regulations get nibbled away...
...pushing decision-making authority farther down in the ranks...
...5. Unstable In-Box: Bureaucrats besieged by priority crises can avoid one demand on their time by ignoring any allegations of defective regulations...
...Eric Black's article on the need for a "Stupidity Clause" describes vividly the symptoms of modern bureaucratic disease...
...and, what distinguishes a nice racist...
...If a regulation or bureaucrat holds things up and creates a crisis, then someone—the governor, other politicians, commissioners, can leap in as the sympathetic Mr...
...If the "hazardous waste" was on state forest land, it would have been handled very differently...
...Vic Fingerhut is president of Fingerhut/Granados Opinion Research...
...Until Elmer Davis and a few other professionals awakened, I was almost alone...
...NORMAN L. DODGE Springfield, Virginia The press on unions I enjoy being the subject of ad hominem attacks as much as the next person...
...In doing so, you also illuminate the party's principal problem if it is to avoid permanent decline: regaining the offensive in the debate over how best to achieve consistent economic growth...
...Secondly, Mr...
...Please note that W. R. Grace & Co...
...A few others, observing that it increases business taxes while lowering rates for most individuals, recognize that the Treasury proposal is probably the most Democratic—capital D—tax reform proposal to emerge from the special-interest thicket in Washington in years...
...A matter of interpretation Someone sent me a copy of the December issue with Timothy Noah's article, "What David Broder Could Learn from Sally Quinn...
...I picked up on three...
...6. Vultures: Bureaucrats have no faith in the political process...
...How then, one has to ask, was a pH of 12.7 determined for the pile of lime...
...one of the bones of contention in the acid rain saga...
...Black's "don't do it if it's stupid" dictum...
...But it should be noted that beneficial reuse is almost literally written into the title of the nation's chief hazardous waste control act, RCRA, the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act...
...PETER GARRETT Augusta, Maine Peter Garrett is a senior geologist with the Maine state Department of Environmental Protection...
...MOTTO: Simple Decisions and Procrastination...
...But performance standards can be defined, whereas stupidity is sometimes a matter of opinion...
...If they don't grant favors (admitting something is stupid) they don't have folks chasing after them for additional favors...
...3. Creative IOUs: If all regulations are rubber-stamped, there are no heros...
...What won for the believers in more than deadpan reporting was the realization that the press was largely responsible for the rise of Joe McCarthy because of its deadpan handling of his prevarications...
...I believe some of them think it allows too enormous a loophole for the disposition of hazardous waste by unconventional and unregulated means...
...I learned so much of what it's like to be on the other side of the fence that I can now wander comfortably back and forth preaching openness to local government officials at the same time as I advocate reportorial carefulness among newspeople...
...creating a sense of ownership among employees...
...Norwalk, Connecticut Jonathan Rowe describes Jack Kemp as a "five foot, 10 inch" quarterback at Occidental College...
...Or was the pH reading in error...
...The bureaucrat's judgment call about "insignificant impacts on the environment" (a buzzword for "it's stupid") will be politically manipulated by PACs and political hacks from the governor's office worried about IOUs to favored supporters...
...However, the item was based on several inaccurate assumptions concerning some broader issues...
...RALPH A. BROOKS New York, New York Pooh-poohing pH Thank you for publishing Eric Black's analysis of why regulators need a "don't do it if it's stupid" clause [January...
...First of all, the Handbook of Chemistry and Physics (p...
...The "spread" between the 8-point Mondale margin in "union households" and the 28-point Reagan margin in nonunion households was a substantial, net 36 points in favor of Mondale...
...STEPHEN H. KAISER Cambridge, Massachusetts Stephen Kaiser was formerly the principal civil engineer for the state of Massachusetts...
...Quite right...
...jolly good ideas all, and Peters has been their most influential advocate...
...Most highway agencies would never get anything built if they didn't cut corners...
...pH meters, for those who use them regularly, are notorious for erroneous readings...
...Indeed, given the diversity of the American labor movement today (ranging from low-skilled service workers to highly paid technical employees), this strong pro-Mondale showing, in the wake of the pro-Reagan tidal wave sweeping the rest of the country, is nothing short of remarkable...
...Regulators have quite simply got to decide what it is they want their regulations to do, and to trust other people to find innovative solutions within a performance standard...
...Management is THE issue if American companies are going to be able to compete in global markets against low-cost competition from abroad...
...Business Week, November 19...
...MOTTO: Don't Get Mad, Get Even...
...In the case of this pile of lime, it was clearly ridiculous to use the numerical standard of pH 12.5, when the performance standard of corrosivity was what the regulators had in mind as a definition for this kind of hazardous waste...
...Picture this: Your average American voter is watching Jack Kemp and Gary Hart tromp through the snow in New Hampshire in February of 1988...
...Logic tells us that these two mutually exclusive political images cannot both be right...
...Eisenhower to be a racist, still both of them treated that judgment as though 'boys will be boys,' after all...
...Most regulations already allow for an ad hoc Stupidity Clause—flexibility in interpretation or definition, variances, waivers, or ultimately to modify the regulations...
Vol. 17 • March 1985 • No. 2
