Tilting at Windmills
Peters, Charles
TILTING AT WINDMILLS Last month a conservative publication called The American Spectator asked me to contribute to a symposium on what ails liberalism. I began by saying "liberals have...
...The situation was a bit sticky because the accusation was based on the lawyer's own testimony...
...The moral problem of American conservatives is that they're evaders—they want to get out of doing their duty, whether it's military service or paying taxes...
...Speaking of the IRS, a friend who is a tax attorney writes that those members of the Kentucky and Tennessee bars who think they're going to get away with deducting their jaunts to Austria may be in for a shock...
...But the answer to that problem is, as The Washington Monthly has proposed, having higher education financed by loans to students repayable over 30 years or so through an additional assessment on their income tax...
...For example, Andy Jacobs, a congressman from Indiana accepts only $49,000 of his $74,891.63 congressional salary...
...Finally they were told that it couldn't fly because, according to the Tennessean, "its transmission was frozen...
...Both the legislative and the executive branches are servants of the British people...
...Another troubling item in the news about science, at least insofar as legislation might play a role in determining our technological future, came from a special school the scientific community held for newly elected members of Congress in January...
...That's why I hope congressmen and other top officials will at least share, if not exceed, the 5 percent pay cut the administration is asking civil servants to accept...
...Keep out the Jews...
...Now, 35 years later, Craig Medred of the Anchorage Daily News reports: "There is no reason to believe U.S...
...Pritchard was, many thought, the brightest of the bright young men of the New Deal...
...A similarly persuasive explanation was provided by a lawyer for Resorts International in the Bahamas who was accused of having made a pay-off to the Bahamian prime minister on behalf of the hotel and casino chain...
...The Wall Street Journal's Karen Slater decided to pursue the answer to that question by calling IRS offices around the country and asking their advice on four questions ranging from simple to complex...
...Here are some of the expenses: $39,240 a year in payments on $375,000 home in Wesley Heights, $12,000 in tuition for two children at St...
...Unfortunately, this is understood little better here than it is in England...
...It used to be that winning a scholarship meant that a poor boy or girl could go to college...
...A recent article about Philadelphia Mayor W. Wilson Goode says that among his efforts to remove obstacles to economic growth is "a change from taxes on gross receipts to a profitbased plan...
...In 1984, according to The New York Times, the United States voted with the majority of UN members 14 percent of the time compared with 21 percent of the time in 1983...
...The true answer to this may be that it is "as reasonable" since the only reasons for the meeting are pleasure and tax deductibility, which the members would be seeking, wherever they went...
...Veteran readers may recall the memorable article Frank Browning wrote about him in these pages in 1973...
...Albans and Sidwell Friends, another $12,000 for a live-in nanny and housekeeper, $8,000 for vacations at Aspen and Martha's Vineyard, and $9,600 for payments on a $26,000 BMW and a $16,000 Volvo wagon...
...But what about it, IRS...
...I lived with rapists, murderers, thieves, and embezzlers...
...How about using some of that time to care for lonely old people or to do public-interest lobbying or any of the thousands of other things that need doing and that there isn't enough money to pay people to do...
...Exactly 8.2 percent...
...He flew to Fort Bliss, Texas, where he was placed in a tank that carried two 40mm Divad barrels...
...Too many congressmen and too many reporters are seduced by their belief that the government should help small business into thinking that the SBA actually renders such assistance...
...Charles Peters...
...Episodes like these led The New York Times recently to run a story about military contractors on the first page of its Sunday Business section...
...On taxation, their concern is to reduce their own burden...
...It's not Americans who are getting all those degrees...
...I want to congratulate the Boston Globe for its editorial insight into a tax break the respectable press seldom criticizes: "Nonprofit institutions that have played the tax schedules heavily in their fundraising efforts also threaten the broad objectives of tax simplification...
...For a family of four, Washingtonian estimates that this life costs $207,255 a year...
...In 1983, American universities awarded more doctoral degrees in engineering to non-U.S...
...Their passion is protection of privilege...
...I'm always delighted when I see women—or men—who can afford to free themselves from thinking they have to have the same kind of high-paying jobs that everyone else seeks...
...I f on the evening of February 8 you happened to catch the network news and saw the shocking way in which the Americans accompanying Kim Dae Jung, the Korean dissident leader, were shoved and pushed around by Korean police, you must have been bewildered by the stories in the following day's paper that treated the incident as one about which there was some doubt...
...Since midwives have proved that they can handle 90 percent of births alone, this requirement is outrageous...
...When the Korean War began in 1950, American troops were outfitted in winter clothing that was bulky and offered little protection against harsh cold...
...Incredibly enough, they often perceive such behavior as the path of honor...
...It has come to mean only that a smart kid has proved that he is bright...
...John Fedders, the former head of the Division of Enforcement of the Securities and Exchange Commission may be different from most lawyers in his tendency toward wifebeating, but he is painfully like far too many of them in his motivation for public service...
...It looks as if the architect of the Rayburn building had been asked to design the Fuhrerbunker...
...David Stockman is right in wanting to abolish the Small Business Administration, and the congressmen who are opposing him, like Senator Lowell Weicker and Max Baucus, are displaying their ignorance of the executive branch, where the SBA has long been infamous for the inferiority of both its personnel and its programs...
...But some of it should be used to help the helpless and the afflicted and to serve the community...
...For example, one woman is using her new freedom this way: "She leaves her Alexandria townhouse every morning at 7:30 to drive to Warrenton to play tennis, gets back at noon and cleans the house, goes to the grocery, takes long walks, and reads...
...When you have one impression and the figures come out entirely differently, you have to ask if you were wrong or if the figures were misleading...
...Senator Alan Dixon, who is a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, had read the reports questioning the effectiveness of the Divad Field Gun (see "Why Divad Wouldn't Die," Gregg Easterbrook, November 1984) and decided to test the gun himself...
...The result, as described by The Washington Post's George C. Wilson: "One of the Divad barrels jammed and was not to fire again during Dixon's visit to the firing range...
...Their solution to the problem of national defense is to bribe the poor to serve in their stead...
...He was indicted and brought to trial by the Thatcher government, which has been embarrassed because the documents showed that it had lied to Parliament about the sinking...
...The question is, does one have to have any of those things, and the answer is of course not...
...Last year's Deficit Reduction Act asked federal agencies to cut $3 billion from their budgetary allotments for public affairs, advertising, audio-visual products, publications, consultants, motor vehicle purchases, and travel...
...But they really didn't look all that bad a few years ago...
...Congressmen from districts where real estate costs are especially high do need some kind of housing allowance to help cover the costs of maintaining residences both back home and in Washington...
...Prich," as he was called by his friends, was campaigning against A. B. (Happy) Chandler, who proceeded to denounce him as an ex-con...
...An example of a lack of such understanding has been the recent national policy of lowering income taxes while raising Social Security taxes...
...They have persuaded Washington Hospital Center to require that a doctor be present whenever a midwife delivers a baby...
...He points out that a key criterion for deductibility under Section 274 (h) of the Internal Revenue Code is that "it is as reasonable for the meeting to be held outside the North American area as within it...
...But when it must be paid regardless of profit, as in the case of Social Security tax, it can be fatal...
...Won't some brave soul over there finally do something about these junkets the rest of us pay for and that people like the Kentucky and Tennessee lawyers seem to almost contemptuously assume will be allowed by the authorities...
...The facts indicate otherwise...
...Apparently what happened is that the reporters relied on an embassy briefing for their stories, not realizing that in the great tradition of the foreign service, the embassy suffered from clientitis, a tendency to sympathize more with the Korean government than with their troublesome visitors...
...The peoples' interest is to have each branch deal truthfully with the other...
...In fact it seldom does...
...But the point is not whether the loans represented the ultimate in fiscal prudence or not, it's that a lot of farmers are in trouble today and that as a group they deserve our help...
...Despite advances in manmade fabrics that have revolutionized winter wear for civilians, the Army has remained dressed in the heavy wool and inefficient cotton ensemble of Korea...
...It told what seemed at first to be a heartening story about women who were fed up with "wasted years, trying to imitate men," or women who were leaving prestigious law firms...
...Administration witnesses do not hesitate to bend or conceal the truth on the Hill...
...He can come from a rich family, but he will seize the scholarship money from the hands of the impoverished because of the recognition it represents...
...Is there no shame in the Pentagon...
...How much of the requested cuts has Reagan gotten his own agencies to make...
...He could be singularly effective in pointing out that the Harvards and Yales of the world should have deeper calls on alumni loyalty and support than through the pages of Form 1040...
...And there may be some who for various reasons don't really need government help...
...It appears that we're going back to the worst of the fifties woman, only without the three kids in the station wagon...
...We frankly were surprised...
...And keep out the Hispanics— except when they use the servants' entrance...
...troops are any better outfitted for a winter war today...
...It might make sense in the small number of cases when complications are likely...
...The results: "No question commanded correct answers from all five IRS offices, to which it was directed...
...But aside from them, I think the only other top officials who have a legitimate excuse for needing more money are those with offspring in college...
...Among the teachers were such scientific luminaries as Lewis Thomas, Leon Lederman, Maxine Singer, and Joshua Lederberg...
...The people who think they must have their BMWs are made very uncomfortable by people like Jacobs...
...It was called "Bungling the Military Buildup" and concluded that "four years of Pentagon nurturing and Reagan administration budgetry largess" has produced "a dizzying procession of highly publicized cost and quality fiascos...
...Americans Say They Were Roughed Up" (emphasis supplied) was a typical head...
...With their new embassy in Washington, the French abandon whatever claim to leadership in taste they may have had...
...I wish more public officials had had Mayor Goode's understanding of business reality...
...I'm indebted to Arthur Schlesinger for reminding me of my favorite story about him...
...We concluded the figures were misleading and that even though the numbers were down, it's quite fair to say we've done better this year...
...Even during the heavy fighting with the Chinese around the Chosin Reservoir, more Americans were killed by cold than by guns...
...While the net income of companies making up the Fortune '500' list would have been low in 1983 had it not been for the extraordinary earnings of the automobile industry," writes Arch Patton in the Harvard Business Review, "directors of the 100 largest increased the salaries and cash benefits of their chief executive officers by an average of 13.7 percent"-32 actually paid their CEOs more than $1 million each, but these same directors displayed their devotion to fair play by giving their workers only a 5.9 percent raise...
...On two questions, four out of five responses were correct...
...Naturally the lawyer got the money for the loan by asking Resorts International to give him an advance of $120,000 for legal work...
...Sure, some of them took out loans that don't look so good today...
...There's nothing wrong with using some of that time for fun...
...Last year, against the bitter opposition of the local medical establishment, the District of Columbia city council enacted a law permitting midwives to deliver babies in local hospitals...
...But shortly after he returned to his native Kentucky in the late forties to go into politics, his career was blighted by a prison sentence for stuffing a ballot box...
...That is why we need a law requiring all executive branch testimony to be under oath...
...Around the same time that Dixon was trying to fire the Divad, public relations officers were assembling a group of reporters in Nashville, Tennessee to watch a demonstration of the Apache, which the Army describes as "the free world's most advanced adverse weather helicopter:' The reporters' necks began to ache as they fruitlessly scanned the skies for the Apache...
...This is, of course, outrageous...
...I think it's time for liberals to mount a great counterattack on the conservatives...
...Why bother with H&R Block when you can get the inside skinny from the IRS itself...
...There also might be a reasonable argument for having a doctor on call nearby, but there is simply no justification other than income protection for having the physician present at every birth...
...On the other two, totally or partially wrong answers outnumbered the correct ones by about the same ratio...
...And remember, that plan has the additional benefit of making the student take his education more seriously because he knows he'll ultimately have to pay for it himself...
...Prich replied: "It is true that I once was an inmate at the federal penitentiary...
...Why should an embassy have its own theater...
...Incidentally, it has its own theater, with 285 seats...
...These expenses are, it should be remembered, those of executive department agencies under the control of the great budget-cutter himself...
...citizens...
...But most farmers are good people, the kind of people society should want to help when they're in trouble...
...The country club bigot whose enthusiasm for tax shelters is exceeded only by his contempt for welfare mothers is much more typical of the dominant group in the Republican party today...
...In fact some of them were incurred to boost production to meet what at least some officials said would be increased demand for exports...
...The truth is that there have been only a handful of such people on the American right...
...When a tax is based on profit, as in the case of the corporate income tax, they have little or none to pay...
...But, according to The Washington Post, only six of the 43 new congressmen showed up for even part of the two-day session...
...Their quiet but effective influence will be hard to resist without Reagan's forceful advocacy of change...
...Hitting It Big & Kissin' It Goodbye" was the headline and "No Kids, No Job: Women at Home Just for Themselves," the subhead over a recent article by Stephanie Mansfield in The Washington Post...
...Asked why he was working at the SEC, he answered that the experience he gained there would enable him to return to private practice as a "doyen" of the securities bar "with an income of $400,000 a year!' Why so much money...
...The administration believes that Jeane Kirkpatrick increased support for the United States in the United Nations General Assembly...
...The theory of the case was that civil servants are servants of the executive, not of the legislative body...
...Soldiers can dress for action and freeze, or dress warmly and look, feel, and move like the Pillsbury doughboy...
...citizens than to U.S...
...A nother factor in corporate incompetence is the growing tendency to reward managers without regard to performance...
...How did the State Department react to these inconvenient numbers...
...Amtrak is an example...
...S peaking of higher education, The New York Times reports a disturbing trend away from need-blind admission and toward offering extra aid as an inducement to the best students...
...There may be some who borrowed so recklessly that they deserve to fail...
...They live in lilywhite enclaves...
...One reason for the companies' indifference to quality may be that their major stockholders don't care either...
...Have you heard about the Panting case...
...An increasing proportion are going to foreigners who come here to study but who will take their knowledge back home...
...But our physicians, never so determined as when their fees are threatened, have come up with a new tactic...
...Then my blood began to boil at the thought of the audience I was addressing, and I added, "to which American conservatism succumbed long ago...
...But what really happened, the lawyer explained, is that the prime minister had asked him for a loan...
...T he Internal Revenue Service has 2,400 employees who are supposed to give you tax advice if you give them a call...
...In the last decade alone," writes Patton, "the percentage of the increase in the average chief executive's spendable income probably doubles that of foremen and hourly workers...
...Remember there is nothing wrong with a society deciding through its elected representatives that certain institutions are worth preserving even though they may require a subsidy...
...The George Wills want to put a Burkean veneer on American conservatism and pretend that there are a lot of Henry Stimsons out there on active service in peace and war—men who are profoundly moral and socially responsible even though skeptical about the wisdom of the masses...
...It concerns a British civil servant named Clive Ponting who was charged with passing to a member of Parliament documents about the sinking of the Argentine cruiser, General Belgrano...
...I f you have heard that the number of doctorates in science and engineering has risen steadily since 1979, you might have concluded that our technological future couldn't be rosier...
...A survey of institutional investors, reported by Skip Wallenberg of the Associated Press, found that of the 12 factors mentioned by Wall Street's heavy hitters in determining their choice of stocks, product quality ranked dead last...
...The family farm is an even more important one...
...The self-criticism we've been engaging in should continue, but it shouldn't keep us from pointing out the sins of the opposition...
...I began by saying "liberals have fallen victim to the politics of selfishness...
...Every woman lawyer I know hates it," said one...
...She also has the freedom to accompany her husband on business trips...
...This is disastrous for struggling enterprises...
...While I admire Stockman's stands on military pensions and the SBA, I think he is heartless in his attitude toward the farmers...
...He sighted the gun and squeezed the trigger...
...But the truth is one can live quite nicely in Washington on $49,000 a year...
...Well, Science magazine has bad news for you...
...It might be added that our glossier institutions tend to be supported by wealthy people for whom the charitable deduction saves 50 cents in taxes for each dollar contributed, while working-class contributors to a parish church get radically less from the deduction, if they can deduct at all...
...But I tell you, my friends, that every one of them was the moral superior of A. B. Chandler...
...A recent issue of Washingtonian magazine explains: "This is a status-conscious town in which creating a good impression and the right connections can make all the difference in a career...a premium is placed on living in the right neighborhood, driving the right car, sending the kids to the right schools, taking the right vacations...
...Edward Pritchard died just before Christmas...
...Keep out the Blacks...
...But what has this revolution led to...
Vol. 17 • April 1985 • No. 3
