TILTING AT WINDMILLS
Peters, Charles
TILTING AT WINDMILLS Recent landmarks in the annals of American snobbery include Norris Church Mailer's revelation that when the great author asked her to come to New York with him, he said,...
...I wonder how the civil libertarian opponents of drug testing feel about suspected addicts who work at nuclear plants...
...That's a high I am a guaranteed, surefire patsy for Ronald Reagan when he is acting as our king or ceremonial leader...
...Among other things it said about the fate of the crew: "Here's the plan...
...I'm a lunatic Redskins fan, but even I am embarrassed by some of the hypocrisy of pro football...
...And I guess they now don't want to face the fact that they were warned...
...Moyers, the argument goes, lends aid and comfort to the Reaganites and to those who hate blacks when he reveals such unpleasant facts...
...If counting the number of modern buildings you admire does not exhaust the digital computer equipment with which nature endowed you, I suggest, the next time you come to Washington, you take the subway to the Dupont Circle stop, exit at Q Street, walk a block and a half north along the east side of Connecticut Avenue, and then turn and look across the street at 1718...
...My point is that they have a choice—they can be better...
...He was right...
...In - fact it produced an "Uproar at the YMCA" headline in The Washington Post...
...Another recent example of Don't Say Anything Bad About the Good Guys came from the reaction of some black liberals to Bill Moyers' television special on the black family...
...I do think, however, that time spent in combat roles should be deducted from that age...
...Does this mean, as the Village Voice's Geoffrey Stokes has suggested, that The New Yorker will now, banish from its columns all references to foreign language films as well as practically the entire repertoire of the Metropolitan Opera...
...But if we don't face the facts, however unpleasant, how can we have government programs that are based on reality...
...I very much doubt that the average American knew that the Challenger's solid-fuel booster rockets were partly composed of used parts that had survived the blast-off ditching in the ocean during previous flights...
...Right...
...Right...
...But the credit never came...
...I once had a colleague in the West Virginia legislature, J. C. Cruickshank, from Clay County, who defined the skills of a clever lawyer who was always finding some obscure flaw in J. C.'s proposals: "He could find a fly speck in the pepper in the middle of the night" Members of the bar, now is the time to put that skill to good use...
...Divide the number of retrievals, and the cost exceeds the benefit by a large margin...
...But I have great faith in their selfishness...
...Let me make clear that, while I don't like the Sandinistas, I don't like the contras either...
...Another idea that's worth trying is to go into junior high and high schools in areas where there is a high teen pregnancy rate and offer a reward of $5,000 each to every unmarried girl from a family with an annual income of less, say, than $10,000 who reaches 21 without having become pregnant...
...Do you oppose my support for the draft yet agree with me that it is wrong for the rich to escape service to their country...
...This was true of roughly 20 percent of those I represented while I was practicing law...
...We've got a bunch of guys who are nicked," he'll say, referring to men who can barely walk and are certain to require post-season surgery, "but we expect them all to be ready to play next Sunday...
...The plan is, you die...
...The attitude of "let's help that poor kid from the ghetto learn how to swim" that one has associated with Ys in the past is not exactly omnipresent at the National Capital branch...
...In this case bureaucratic inertia triumphed even over a regulation that specifically required the FAA to notify the Military Airlift Command of safety problems with commercial aircraft chartered by the military, even over a plea from an Arrow pilot to the FAA to "please, please hone in on Arrow to stop current company maintenance practices before an accident occurs...
...Joe Gibbs, the Redskins' coach, handles the problem by referring to the players not as injured but as "nicked...
...But the membership, protesting the danger of overcrowding in the pool, has risen as one to 8$625-a-month secretary...
...The credit never came...
...It is the building with the clock tower...
...Lots of jobs ride on it...
...The National Capital YMCA is what its members like to call "the country club of Ys...
...It's really a delicious idea...
...I wonder how the civil libertarian opponents of drug testing feel about suspected addicts who work at nuclear plants...
...Charles Peters...
...That is grossly inadequate, as anyone who has tried to hail a cab in Manhattan during rush hour knows...
...Television stations are being sold for prices in the hundreds of millions...
...Do they want a space cadet at the controls of a Three Mile Island or a Diablo Canyon...
...So the cabbie argues that he will lose his investment if the public allows more cabs on the street...
...A modern building with a clock tower...
...The CIA, according to a dispatch from Reuters, the British news service, "backed a group of right-wing officers who pressured him into resigning and sought to isolate a group of junior officers who wanted Honduras to take a more independent line from the United States...
...I agree with the letter writer in this issue who contends that privately held companies can be just as bad as publicly held ones...
...One approach that has worked is providing contraceptives...
...Find the answer to the Medallion Ploy and you will receive The Washington Monthly's First Annual Redeemed Lawyer Award...
...After all, his article was not some internal government report hidden from everyone but NASA employees so that the rest of us could excuse ourselves for not knowing about it...
...Because their permits, like those of the, ranchers, have risen in value to the point where, in the case of the cab, they are now selling for around $100,000 each...
...While I admired Turner above all other painters, I was certainly not immune at that time to the high desirability of being "in," or "hip," as it was called in the slang of the time...
...Among the findings: "Arrow operates its fleet with many deferred maintenance items...carried for months without corrective action...
...only look at what I have responsibility for...
...A modern building with a clock tower...
...The ignorance of the man...
...But my favorite came from Wolcott Gibbs, Jr., of The New Yorker, who defended the magazine's failure to list a Yiddish play in its Goings On section by saying that "most of our readers are people who speak English...
...This is a question to challenge our great legal minds, to redeem their souls from the demeaning triviality of their daily work in behalf of the rich and powerful...
...I doubt that even the crew knew that on November 8 an accident had occurred to the booster in which a sharp, crackling noise was heard...
...In 1980, Easterbrook also wrote an article warning of the danger of the space shuttle...
...The medallion is the license to operate a cab in New York City...
...But the membership, protesting the danger of overcrowding in the pool, has risen as one to oppose this outrageous proposal...
...Important people have staked their careers and prestige on it...
...The truth he told was painful...
...When DIVAD, or Sgt...
...Interviews with Arrow management indicated that they do not have a corrosion prevention program...
...When I was director of evaluation for the Peace Corps in the 1960s, I repeatedly found that colleges and universities, including the most prestigious in the land, that were training Peace Corps volunteers, had tacked on outrageous "administrative overhead" costs to our training contracts...
...The shuttle was a heck of a parlor trick the first time, but now amounts to sending a dangerous bus to a remote town with no population...
...If you don't like it, you're at our door—we're at 1711—and are welcome to come upstairs and berate me for my tastelessness...
...But now at last the members have found an issue that excites them...
...This point is often made by those who support the present military system that permits retirement after only 20 years' service...
...For those who prefer life, even in prison, over death, it seems clear to me that the death penalty could be a deterrent...
...In fact they're probably worse...
...For example, coaches conceal from themselves the fact that they send injured players out to play even though they are exposing the players to the risk of more serious, even disabling, injury...
...Why should his or his successor's interest now prevail over the public's...
...The recent election in the Philippines, for example, seems to have been covered from the Manila Hotel...
...How then can the cab owners defend the current practice...
...But some criminals are smart, sane, and mature...
...Of course not...
...In St...
...Here again licenses granted by the public have grown enormously in value...
...I very much doubt that the average American knew that the Challenger's solid-fuel booster rockets were partly composed of used parts that had survived the blast-off ditching in the ocean during previous flights...
...And I can't believe that they would have boarded the shuttle for their fatal flight if they had known that a NASA report of the November accident would conclude that workers at the site were inexperienced and unmotivated and had been using faulty equipment...
...As a matter of fact, drug use has actually been reported at the latter facility—and not by just one employee—but by 30...
...Their number has been frozen at 11,787 for about half a century...
...I love it...
...But some criminals are smart, sane, and mature...
...But I also think we need for him to have a job...
...As one observer commented to Breen: "They may all have good reason to be here but let's face it: it's a vacation for a lot of them...
...and 'that's not part of my job...
...The choicest item about the hardship the press endured unfortunately got buried in a long story in The Washington Post...
...When asked to specify just what those charges covered, the characteristic reaction was how could we be so vulgar as to ask...
...Today the place would be mobbed...
...Is there anything other than changing values and providing jobs that can help...
...They'll come up with something...
...And the liberals are right here—there just aren't nearly enough jobs available now for male black teenagers, even those who have the best attitude in the world...
...For example, coaches conceal from themselves the fact that they send injured players out to play even though they are exposing the players to the risk of more serious, even disabling, injury...
...At the Manila, writes Tom Breen of The Washington Times: "Americans are treated to luxury rooms with fourposter beds' and color TV sets as well as restaurants that serve choice cuts of American beef...
...I share Jason DeParle's concern about the death penalty (see page 12...
...His proposal is that the presidents of Harvard, Yale, and the other 10 or 20 elite institutions of higher learning join together in announcing that their schools will not accept applicants who have not served...
...It is scandalous that we have a president so ill-informed that he can make an error like that or, to cite another equally shocking example, can call the contras "freedom fighters...
...Typical membership dues for use of the luxurious facility, located at 17th and Rhode Island Avenue, are $700 a year...
...The scientific action now is in unmanned stuff—the news from Uranus, the Space Telescope if the shuttle's problems don't delay it to death, Galileo, and the like...
...People didn't want to face it then...
...Ranchers who graze their cattle on public land pay $1.35 per cow per month against an average of $6.67 per month for grazing rights on private land...
...only look at what I have responsibility for...
...Do they want a space cadet at the controls of a Three Mile Island or a Diablo Canyon...
...So a man who has put in 15 years as, say, a fighter pilot, would be permitted to retire at 47...
...In - fact it produced an "Uproar at the YMCA" headline in The Washington Post...
...Back to the Moyers show for a moment...
...Speaking of our institutions of higher learning, hundreds of millions of dollars awarded by the government for scientific research are being siphoned off by universities for unrelated expenses, according to a report by the inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services that went unpublished until it was recently discovered by The Washington Times...
...In what might be called a corollary of Don't Say Anything Bad About The Good Guys, liberal friends tell me I shouldn't say the Sandinistas are communists because it will encourage the Reaganites to aid the contras...
...The significant thing, then, about this story is not that I was pure but how few others shared my snobbery...
...York, as it is also called, was canceled by Caspar Weinberger, I waited for someone to credit my colleague, Gregg Easterbrook, with writing the article that first revealed the weapon's weaknesses...
...If you don't like it, you're at our door—we're at 1711—and are welcome to come upstairs and berate me for my tastelessness...
...I look forward to hearing the arguments against it that the privileged classes will concoct...
...But now at last the members have found an issue that excites them...
...As oil prices went downward, I waited for someone to credit Easterbrook for writing "Pssst, the Energy Crisis Is Over," not this year, not last year, but in 1980...
...The CIA played a decisive role in the removal of General Walter Lopes Reyes from his post as commander of the Honduran armed forces...
...It is also freer to institute environmental and safety reforms not required by law and to forego short-term profit to attain long-term growth...
...Why should that recipient, not the public, grow rich from these rights...
...The Miami-based tool crib was found to be in shambles...
...The catch is that they know the criminal law enforcement system is so inefficient that their arrest and conviction is almost never a probability...
...The administration has been using Honduras as a colonial launching pad for contra attacks on Nicaragua and was outraged that the Hondurans would object...
...Had they done so, seven lives might have been saved...
...I follow the program reasonably carefully, and just don't see much point in it...
...And the whole enterprise of exploration becomes warped to the needs of a machine...
...Their first priority should be to improve the law enforcement system to the point where conviction is the probable result of any serious crime...
...With the same money we spend on the shuttle, and modern circuitry, amazing things could be done...
...So I think the adminsitration is wrong to help them...
...Don't Say Anything Bad About the Good Guys is one of the fundamental principles that guide American liberals...
...For those who prefer life, even in prison, over death, it seems clear to me that the death penalty could be a deterrent...
...The Medallion Ploy also is used by radio and television licensees...
...In this case I think the solution will not come exclusively from either conventional conservative or liberal prescriptions...
...At the ceremonies honoring the Challenger crew and the soldiers killed in the New Foundland plane crash, he had the tears flowing down my cheeks...
...They argued that Moyers shouldn't have shown Timothy, a young black male, bragging about the girls he had made pregnant and not caring about supporting their children...
...Most murderers are too young, too stupid, or too crazy—at least at the moment of the crime—to be deterred by the fear of their own death as punishment...
...They can tell the folks back home they're roughing it in the Philippines and eat prime rib at the Manila Hotel...
...It seems that someone has dared to propose taking in more people...
...The catch is that they know the criminal law enforcement system is so inefficient that their arrest and conviction is almost never a probability...
...Their first priority should be to improve the law enforcement system to the point where conviction is the probable result of any serious crime...
...They are capable of being deterred, but only if they think it is probable that they will be arrested and convicted and that their punishment will be severe...
...As for factories in space—often given as a reason for having the shuttle—we'll never see it...
...In carrying out its antiSandinista mission the adminstration is also up to no good in Honduras...
...Paul, Minnesota, high schools, that simple step reduced pregancies by more than 50 per cent...
...Most murderers are too young, too stupid, or too crazy—at least at the moment of the crime—to be deterred by the fear of their own death as punishment...
...As a matter of fact, drug use has actually been reported at the latter facility—and not by just one employee—but by 30...
...We have retrieved a few satellites, yes...
...The report said of the workers: "The general attitude was one of 'I was doing something else at the time...
...It is the building with the clock tower...
...The General Maintenance Manual, which covers the subject of maintenance training, was completely inadequate...
...How can the public obtain justice now without doing injustice to the licensees...
...This is why I think those who want to be tough on crime should stop wasting their time arguing for the death penalty...
...This would cost a lot less than welfare and has the virtue of certainty, which I think is just as important in rewarding virtue as it is in punishing crime...
...You may have gathered from Ken Weiss's article on appraisals in last month's issue that the institutions charged with regulating our banking system leave something to be desired...
...The best thing I've seen written about the future of the shuttle was by Fred Reed in The Washington Times: "What, looked at with hard eyes, do we get from the shuttle...
...It seems that someone has dared to propose taking in more people...
...Let me illustrate with a quote from an investment analyst explaining why the Louisville Courier-Journal could make more profit than it is now yielding: "Family-owned businesses are not as aggressive in ratesetting or in cost-cutting as publicly-owned companies...
...I think we need a change in Timothy's attitudes, as the conservatives contend...
...They argue that if, for example, you say one union is corrupt you will give ammunition to the enemies of all unions...
...Membership interest," says the director, Herman Cohn, "has been very low in youth activities, in the food for the hungry drive we have at Christmas...
...If counting the number of modern buildings you admire does not exhaust the digital computer equipment with which nature endowed you, I suggest, the next time you come to Washington, you take the subway to the Dupont Circle stop, exit at Q Street, walk a block and a half north along the east side of Connecticut Avenue, and then turn and look across the street at 1718...
...The costs and difficulties are so great that it is cheaper to find substitutes on earth for whatever we thought we had to make in orbit...
...It was that CBS had a "huge eighteenthfloor suite" at the Manila "with a private indoor swimming pool...
...I doubt that even the crew knew that on November 8 an accident had occurred to the booster in which a sharp, crackling noise was heard...
...But the fellow who has spent his entire career in a swivel chair should not be permitted to profit from our desire to reward the man who put his life at risk...
...A Los Angeles radio station purchased for $800,000 in 1952 is said by the Los Angeles Times to be "worth at least 50 times that today...
...And I can't believe that they would have boarded the shuttle for their fatal flight if they had known that a NASA report of the November accident would conclude that workers at the site were inexperienced and unmotivated and had been using faulty equipment...
...For many years I have contended that Never Leave the Cities Where the Good Bars Are is the guiding principle of life in the foreign service and the CIA...
...This is why I think those who want to be tough on crime should stop wasting their time arguing for the death penalty...
...We've got a bunch of guys who are nicked," he'll say, referring to men who can barely walk and are certain to require post-season surgery, "but we expect them all to be ready to play next Sunday...
...What was noteworthy about that morning was that the temperature was 11 degrees...
...Servicemen aren't the same as postal clerks," writes John Byron (see "Letters...
...So the FAA knew something was wrong with Arrow Air...
...I love it...
...Her only previous job had been as a $625-a-month secretary...
...In other words, while Wall Street presses the publiclyowned company to maximize short-term profits, the familyowned enterprise is freer to reward its employees with generous compensation and doesn't have to gouge its customers with the highest possible prices...
...If so, William E Buckley has the answer...
...TILTING AT WINDMILLS Recent landmarks in the annals of American snobbery include Norris Church Mailer's revelation that when the great author asked her to come to New York with him, he said, "Don't bring any of your Arkansas polyester clothes," and Mona Molarsky's confession in The Nation that having visited North Plainfield, New Jersey, "I'll probably never watch ballet, listen to Mahler, or read Wallace Stevens in quite the same way again...
...Again, these are for rights conferred by the public— rights, like those of the rancher to use the grazing land or of the cab driver to cruise the city streets—that are granted at little or no cost to the original recipient...
...Because they have opposed national service on the grounds of the compulsion that would be involved, and because Buckley's proposal involves no compulsion, their task will not be easy...
...Joe Gibbs, the Redskins' coach, handles the problem by referring to the players not as injured but as "nicked...
...When reformers try to eliminate this subsidy, they are confronted with the argument that, when the rancher bought his property, he paid more than he ordinarily would have paid because the property carried a grazing permit with it...
...In a not-unrelated development, a reporter for The Washington Post found 200 people waiting in line one morning for the doors to open to the National Gallery of Art's Treasure Houses of Britain exhibit...
...It also is widely honored by American journalists abroad...
...The attitude of "let's help that poor kid from the ghetto learn how to swim" that one has associated with Ys in the past is not exactly omnipresent at the National Capital branch...
...Now I am perfectly willing to concede that among those 200 freezing souls, some were moved totally by a love of the works of art they were waiting to see...
...Notice that there has been little interest in the shuttle from business...
...This is what I have come to call the Medallion Ploy, in honor of the New York cab drivers who have raised it to a high art form...
...Such investments perpetuate themselves: Soon you find yourself committed to a space station because you need some use for the shuttle...
...I agree with the Reagan administration's proposal to increase the civilian retirement age from 55 to 62...
...The National Capital YMCA is what its members like to call "the country club of Ys...
...But then came the press conference, where despite all-day briefings by his staff, he indicated that both sides were equally corrupt in the Philippine election...
...and 'that's not part of my job...
...But I would venture to say that more than a handful were motivated by something more like snobbery—an identification with upper-class Brits or the sense that the exhibit was the "in" thing of the moment in Washington and that they would prove their taste and with-it-ness by being there...
...Most of them should retire at the same age as civilians...
...I can recall on a similarly freezing winter day attending the great 1947 Turner exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, surely one of the most important of that decade, and being struck by the fact that I was almost alone in that vast building...
...It was published in this magazine, where it could be read by journalists, congressmen, and White House staff members, people who should have been alarmed enough about it to pursue inquiries of their own about the shuttle's safety...
...Suppose one of the solid fuel boosters fails...
...If you were left in doubt, consider the case of Lynn Maree, who was able to buy the Ranchlander National Bank in Melvin, Texas, with the help of her boyfriend, who used post-dated checks to buy two $1,000 certificates of deposit that he then altered to read $100,000 each and used as collateral for a $200,000 loan...
...Membership interest," says the director, Herman Cohn, "has been very low in youth activities, in the food for the hungry drive we have at Christmas...
...But the fact is that most of those who retire are clerks—or, to be more precise, roughly 90 percent are performing administrative or support functions at the time of their retirement and are not in combat roles...
...But did it tell the Army...
...They are no improvement...
...This was true of roughly 20 percent of those I represented while I was practicing law...
...In all the reams of copy about the accident, I have yet to see a single acknowledgement of this article...
...Typical membership dues for use of the luxurious facility, located at 17th and Rhode Island Avenue, are $700 a year...
...he was first...
...The report said of the workers: "The general attitude was one of 'I was doing something else at the time...
...I share Jason DeParle's concern about the death penalty (see page 12...
...You may recall that the plane involved in the Newfoundland crash that took the lives of 285 American soldiers was operated by an organization called Arrow Air...
...My motives weren't pure, either...
...I'm a lunatic Redskins fan, but even I am embarrassed by some of the hypocrisy of pro football...
...In March 1984, Arrow Air had been inspected by the FAA...
...To the extent that the latter is the motive, it represents a tremendous change in America...
...They are capable of being deterred, but only if they think it is probable that they will be arrested and convicted and that their punishment will be severe...
...Our investment in the shuttle is huge...
Vol. 18 • March 1986 • No. 2
