Tilting at Windmills

...E. Fuller Torrey, a Washington psychiatrist, looked into this matter and found that the following studies have been funded by the NIMH: • Training Student Leaders for Changes on Campus...

...When police checked his files, they found that under other names, he had eight prior felony arrests...

...anyone who really believes blacks are lazy undoubtedly also thinks their achievements are either the exceptions that prove the rule or are due to patronage or affirmative action...

...Jack Anderson once noted that a reporter would turn against a source only when he had more dirt on the source than the source had to give to the reporter...

...But Paul Stewart, an instructor in criminal justice at the University of Nebraska's Omaha campus, may have subscribed a bit too enthusiastically to my advice...

...We shouldn't have these giant sitting ducks in the first place...

...The article came to us not because we had commissioned it, but because a respected former colleague, Gregg Easterbrook, brought it to us in finished form and it fit the pattern of concerns that we had earlier displayed in Kitry Krause's article on Honda in our July/August issue...

...0 ne fact that few outsiders understand about the civil service is that the pay isn't all that bad and the benefits are quite a bit better than most of the rest of us enjoy...

...Schizophrenia is the most common mental disease...

...By the way, guess who originally recommended Col...

...I can simply shuffle my papers and say, "That's all we'll cover today...

...That is a free speech right...

...The same reasons for attending the meeting make leaving before it's over unwise...

...Another supporter of the governor, who was rewarded with a nomination to be the state's energy commissioner, revealed during his confirmation hearings that he had given $18,200 to the governor's campaign...

...Its level of public morality is so low that crusading newspapers are a vital necessity...

...Does Meg Greenfield fear her car will be booted...

...Such scandals are common, in West Virginia and seven other states: Louisiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Nevada, and Illinois...

...For years we have been hoping The Washington Post would take a stand against Marion Barry, who seems to have dedicated himself to personally adding the District of Columbia to those eight states...

...And it doesn't have plain old parking, it has valet parking at $1.50 an hour with a validation stamp, $4.00 otherwise...

...We have not been uncritical of the new speaker, but on this issue, he is absolutely right and we hope he will stick to his position in the face of all the flak that he has already begun to get...

...If you create the appearance of a conflict-of-interest you have to be prepared to take some criticism...

...Fourteen years ago in our concern over the decline in the spirit of entrepreneurship, we wrote "In the culture of liberal idealism an urban planning consultancy is looked on as a desirable occupation while being a building contractor is viewed as comparatively base...

...Does such a happy situation exist anywhere else in the country...

...It is the Beverly Hills Post Office...

...But try this...

...This would put an end to short-term speculation which is the largest single root of evil on Wall Street...

...The Post was filled with exposes of the District government, culminating in a major article in August that pulled all the scandals together...

...Think how much better we would all feel if the ads were for surfboards and Club Med instead of Fasteeth and Preparation H...

...What has it spent the rest of the money on...

...To give just a few examples that came to my attention that week: A Huntington lawyer was found to have billed the Legal Service Council for 75 hours' work in a single day and for 880 miles of travel on that same day for driving to a courthouse 20 miles from his home...

...This summer it seemed that sleeping giant had finally awakened...

...Both are good papers...

...But then in September the Post's new magazine enraged all of black Washington by arguing that a store owner had a right to keep blacks out in order to prevent crime...

...It is that in sports blacks know they will be judged on their performance...

...If you say you are an entrepreneur, people ooh and ah' " While I'm pleased that the entrepreneur has become glamorous again, I worry it's just because he takes risks to make lots of money, not because he takes risks to make a good product at a fair price and creates new jobs, which is the reason he should be admired...

...One of the local scandals was, however, not of the kind that tend to be confined to the notorious eight...

...Yet since 1980 the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) has spent less that 10 percent of its budget on research related to schizophrenia...

...For one thing, this should mean that any black who manages to graduate from high school should be guaranteed a chance to go to college...

...Finally, we must, of course, do what we think is right regardless of how it looks, but if we can avoid the appearance of evil, we should try to do so...

...We're all involved!' Then, after chewing on this thought for a couple of days, they said to themselves, "If we're all involved, what can the government do...

...Now the lot is being closed to the public even then...

...and answered, "No," he revealed that he is unfit to be chief of staff at the White House and that his apparent success at Merrill Lynch must have been based on abundance of good luck, for if a bank president doesn't know what his tellers are doing, he is in danger of waking up one morning to find that his bank doesn't have any money...

...Frustrated presidents are quite likely to explode with orders such as, "I don't care how you do it, just get it done," which heel-clicking subordinates are equally likely to execute in ways that could bring ruin on the administration...

...In this connection, did you happen to read about Anthony T. Bouscharen, one of the president's nominees to the National Council on the Humanities...

...Why not, then," the Gazette continued, "when the Federal Building's parking spaces aren't filled, which is practically every Saturday and Sunday, most holidays and in evening hours the year around, permit the public to park in them...

...S omebody tells you blacks are lazy and you try to argue...

...Then it recovered all the ground it had lost in the next three days...

...Another company may have the funds to finance a takeover on its own, but don't let the financing he done on the basis of the value of the acquired company...

...Excellent hospital, medical, and life insurance coverage is available...

...On October 28, he was arrested for burglary...

...The Gazette observed that "these parking places were and are paid for by the public, few of whose numbers enjoy parking spaces reserved for them...

...The third reason is that Reagan will have an increasingly difficult time attracting good people willing to work hard...

...If he is, you've got him, because, if he is honest, he will have to concede that black athletes work just as hard as whites do...

...The minute you're out the door, someone might say, "I think it's time we take a look at George's operation...

...We haven't had one in Washington since the Star folded in 1981...

...On November 24, as I was watching the NBC Nightly News and sipping my Geritol, I was alarmed to see a report on anti-submarine weapons that indicated the Navy was prepared to use nuclear depth charges in order to protect its carriers from attack...

...I bought them all everyday...

...The same argument applies to leveraged buy-outs by the company's management...

...I have always been an advocate of the entreprenuer who sees an opening in the market and has the creativity to fill the need with a new product, which is exactly what Nightbyrd has done...

...I n November I had a chance to spend a week in my hometown, Charleston, West Virginia, and was reminded of a fact that makes the city almost unique in modern America: it has two papers, The Gazette and The Daily Mail, one morning, one afternoon, one liberal-Democratic, the other conservative-Republican...

...To start a nuclear war to protect them is the ultimate insanity...

...Judge and jurors are forbidden to do so because of the theoretical possibility of torture, but when the rest of us know that torture is not a factor, we are correct in concluding that the witness is taking the Fifth because he is afraid of going to jail because of what his testimony would reveal...

...And you are given lengthy vacations-13 working days the very first year plus 13 paid sick days and all federal holidays...

...The executive, Lawrence Korb, was actually fired by Raytheon last month after the company received an angry call from one of Lehman's assistants...

...I have always been an advocate of getting academics out of the Ivory Tower and exposing them to some practical experience...

...This is what I have learned to call "country club wisdom" meaning that it shows sublime ignorance of the reality of the lives of the poor...

...Endless mind-numbing meetings have become the leading hazard of modern organizational life...

...Of course, I guess some people will argue that all this means is that Time and Newsweek are on the take too...

...I hope Congress will investigate...

...We created such an appearance by publishing a favorable article about Ford in an issue that also carried a paid advertisement from Ford on its back cover...

...While I think the glamour ads should be outlawed, I do defend the cigarette manufacturer's right to argue the opposite case...

...They can't put us all in jail...

...The Impact of Religious Belief on Voting Behavior...

...This was dismaying to those of us who opposed Nixon then, just as the retreat on Barry was dismaying this fall...

...The question is simple and the answer represents a problem that I think is worse than corruption—the indifference of civil servants to the public, of which the parking lot is a minor but telling indication...

...Are the Grahams worried about having their real estate assessment raised by the city...

...The solution to takeovers is to outlaw their financing by bonds issued after the acquisition...

...People who are being taken to the cleaner themselves usually don't find it difficult to do the same unto others...

...When network executives speculate about the low ratings of their nightly news programs, one explanation they offer is that the news is depressing, that people don't enjoy being reminded that the world is falling apart...

...I had forgotten how much I liked coming home at the end of the day to find the afternoon paper at, my door, and to look forward to a quiet time reading it before dinner...

...The only changes we asked that Gregg make in the article were to toughen the criticism of Ford's president, Donald Petersen, for his excessive salary, and to concede that there were still some Ford plants that were run little differently than they had been in the dark ages of the industry...

...We should publish, if not solicit, the kind of ad Philip Morris submitted...

...These messages do little to enhance the selfimage of the audience...

...It may be coming close to being true for the children of middleand upper-class blacks, but not for blacks from the ghetto...

...In this case, we had the contract for the ad before we got the article...

...In fact, an editor of Newsweek called to assure me that they hadn't stolen the article from us...

...If you have once been a bureaucrat, as I have, this is a truly delicious feeling...

...In West Virginia, I have always suspected that one factor is its long-time status as an economic colony, the continuing victim of exploitation by giant coal companies...

...The fourth reason is that as the administration goes into its last two years, even its most dedicated members start casting an eye to the future and begin to worry less about their work and more about polishing their resumes and calling up old friends to see what might be available on the outside...

...On the outside they constitute almost as large a share of those people we call "the homeless...

...How can a company be in better shape if it has to take on the burden of paying off a large debt to in effect pay for itself...

...You will then understand my delight at a recent article in The Wall Street Journal which ran under this headline: "Do as I Do: More Consultants Quit Profession to Start New Businesses," and which contained this comment: " 'You don't get a. lot of oohs and ahs at a party if you say you are a consultant,' says an ex-consultant...

...In any event, there must be some brilliant anthropologist, who will take on the task of figuring out why these eight states are so much more crooked than the rest...

...A young man who works in our office and read the foregoing said to me "Don't they know that anyone who really wants to go to college can manage it one way or another...

...Of course, the situation I enjoyed most was the one in New York of my student days at Columbia in the forties...

...His company is meeting a growing demand from such groups as professional athletes by selling drug-free urine for $49.95 a bag...

...An official said the steps were taken as a precaution against terrorists...

...But, even though it would have been embarrassing to do so, I think we should have run the ad if it had come in on time...

...Its victims occupy half of the beds in this country's psychiatric hospitals...

...It argued that, on free speech grounds, cigarette ads should not be abolished...

...Self-Regulation in Altruism...

...Tenant Organization: Mobilization and Consequences...

...Here in Washington, the Smithsonian, which has 20 million visitors annually, has recently restricted its parking spaces to use by its employees only...

...North to the White House...

...So no matter how desperate you may be to get out of there, you know you have to stick it out to the bitter end...

...For many of the Reaganites, that time either has arrived or is coming soon...

...Thanks very much everybody...

...Legislators were curious as to how this was done since the state law forbids anyone to give more than $1,000 per candidate, per election...

...It is the content of the commercials, not the news, that is the problem...

...So we're back where we began...

...In addition, because there are only two years left to the term, reporters are beginning to be less protective of their sources...

...This is why of all the joys of running my own business, the one from which I derive the keenest pleasure is that I don't have to sit and endure when I get bored in a meeting...

...Another fellow who may have carried my advice too far is Jeffrey Nightbyrd of Austin, Texas...

...Many stones they overturn will have nothing under them, but they will find enough dirt to keep the administration's reputation thoroughly soiled...

...What some sophisticated senior at an elite suburban high school knows is not known by the ghetto 16-year-old...

...It is therefore essential that the president and his chief of staff take special care to learn how such instructions are being carried out...

...But I'm glad to report that there is at last one federal facility where the public can park...

...This is why I was at first relieved that a recent ad for Philip Morris came in too late for us to publish...

...My guess is that the fellows were sitting around a table discussing terrorism when someone's brain lit up with, "My God, this could solve the employee parking problem...

...Anyone who has served in a government agency in Washington knows that next to protecting and expanding their salaries and benefits, no issue arouses such passion among government employees as dividing up the available parking places...

...He has issued a report rebuking Lehman and other Navy officials for putting pressure on Raytheon, a large defense contractor, to stop one of its executives from criticizing the military...

...In an ad headlined "Federal Jobs $12,862-$72,300," the Federal Job Digest says the "benefits and job security are quite outstanding...

...It will, of course, fill the top slots, but most likely with over-the-hill types more interested in having distinguished titles to cap their listings in "Who's Who" than in doing real work...

...Although he conceded that no threats had been received, he explained that "in light of continuing and totally unpredictable international incidents around the world, this step is necessary as a reasonable and prudent precaution...

...When the story first broke, everyone on Wall Street said "My God, this is going to be terrible...

...Ask him if he's a sports fan...

...On just one recent news program, there were plugs for a bran cereal that restores regularity, for a garment that solves bladder control problems, and for a substance that causes dentures to adhere to the gums...

...While they have the same printing plant and business staff, they are separately owned and vigorously competitive editorially...

...Charles Peters...

...When Donald Regan asked, "Does a bank president know whether a teller is fiddling with his books...

...If we expect them to make an effort in areas other than sports, we should show them that the effort has a fair chance of being rewarded...

...If that sounds extravagant, they cost anywhere from two to five cents each...

...Or did the Post commit one wrong to atone for another...

...Jim Wright deserves praise for urging that the top tax bracket be kept at 38.5 percent after this year, instead of allowing it to drop to 28 percent as scheduled...

...The reason is instructive...

...There we had four afternoon papers, the World-Telegram, the Post, the Sun, and the JournalAmerican...

...If you point to successful blacks in government or business, the person will remain unconvinced...

...I have an explanation...

...You have to be a real fool to swallow this one...

...If they have the ability and make the effort, their chances for success are roughly equal to those of whites...

...Ronald Reagan has presented us with a fine assortment of clowns, crooks, and borderline talents...

...For example," continues the ad, "as a new federal employee you receive virtually automatic annual pay increases plus cost-of-living increases...

...Among the explanations the commissioner gave was that his six-year-old son made two $1,000 donations from his birthday money...

...I think the real reason is that they don't enjoy being reminded that they are falling apart...

...Another way to reform Wall Street is to tax, as Warren Buffett suggests, at 100 percent capital gains on stocks held less than a year...

...If we are asked to run such an ad again we will do so...

...There is absolutely nothing wrong with members of the general public inferring guilt from an invocation of the Fifth Amendment...

...The angry reaction to the magazine seemed to cause the Post to pull back from the Barry story...

...I know this sounds absurd, but it is, alas, the precise truth...

...This feast was only interrupted by the night, for in the morning we could turn to the Times, the Herald-Tribune, the Mirror, the News, and, my favorite, a lovely left-wing tabloid called PM...

...The kind of cigarette ad we have opposed and never solicited is the one that makes smoking glamorous...

...The reason for the problems of ghetto youth are, of course, complex, and need to be attacked in a variety of ways...

...I can assure you, however, that the editorial content of The Washington Monthly has never been influenced by the prospect of gaining or losing an advertisement...

...In 1981, he published an article in Human Events which, except for one paragraph, was by curious coincidence identical to one published earlier in Commentary by Walter Laqueur...

...Bureaucrats, both corporate and governmental, feel they have to attend because other people will think they have lost status, or try to infringe on their turf, or propose them as the most worthy victims of a budget cut...

...A prominent political supporter of the governor was found to have received a state loan of $455,000 and to be leasing offices to state agencies for $7,100 a month...

...It concerned the closing of the federal parking lot in Charleston, which previously had been reserved for federal employees during the day, but it was at least open to the public at night...

...In other words, in our hands the article got tougher, not kinder...

...He would not have called had there not been enough similarity to arouse suspicion...

...Who wants to work for an administration on its last leg, when it's a wobbly leg at that...

...For this reason, we don't think we have a right to be careless about appearances...

...John Lehman, of course...

...This is simply not true in other fields...

...Why is it that these states are especially susceptible to corruption...

...But I am confident that the most important of these is to make clear to the kid that he will have a fair chance...

...In addition, in many positions you are eligible for merit bonuses...

...Because a large number of senior citizens watch the news, many, if not most, of the commercials are addressed to them...

...It is also interesting to note that not long after Gregg's article appeared, both Newsweek and Time, in their November 24 issues, came to pretty much the same conclusions Gregg had...

...I f you create the appearance of a conflict of interest, you have to be prepared for some people to assume that the conflict is real...

...West Virginia is especially fortunate to have papers like the Gazette and Mail because it needs them more than most states...

...In the White House, this truth applies with special force...

...For if we had run it, I know it would have disturbed many of our readers who had been used to our railing against cigarette ads and would assume we must have finally sold out to the tobacco industry...

...What studies did it deem more urgent...

...Do you recall that when the Boesky scandal was revealed in November, the stock market plunged downward for two days...

...It reminded me of October 1972 when, three weeks before the election, Woodward and Bernstein made a minor misquotation of Hugh Sloan and the Post then retreated from the entire Watergate story until President Nixon had been reelected...

...TILTING AT WINDMILLS T here are four reasons why I strongly suspect that Reagan will not recover from Irangate...

...You may be 60, but you don't want to be reminded of it...

...One news commentator after another solemnly assures us, "If they take the Fifth, we shouldn't conclude they are guilty!' Why shouldn't we...

...You are part of a generous pension and early retirement program...

...The Post even ran an editorial endorsing Barry...

...I continue to be able to restrain my admiration for John Lehman, the secretary of the Navy, and am pleased to report that in at least one respect the Inspector General of the Department of Defense shares my feelings...