Tilting at Windmills

...Why not reduce the rates paid by consumers...

...During the service, his associates have the congregation fill in prayer cards indicating what their problem is...

...If the superintendent needs suggestions on where to go for less pricey dining, he could doubtlessly get them from his teachers...

...Recently Newsweek ran an article about Alcott & Andrews, the dress-for-success firm for female yuppies...

...With this fact established, liability for everyone who participates in the preparation or publication of the ads that make smoking glamorous, the ads that persuade young people to try their first cigarette, everyone who participates in this vile process can be held liable— tobacco companies, their advertising agencies, and the newspapers and magazines that publish the ads...

...Even the prospect of them might bring an end to those ads...

...The West Virginia Judicial Hearing Board voted 4 to 1 to exonerate him on the basis that on all but one of the occasions that the secretary was asked to baby-sit, Neely was unable to care for the child himself because he was doing work related to his official duties...

...Now from the St...

...In fact, almost everybody...who worked in the White House didn't work for the White House: They all worked for some other agency or department or bureau...

...They won't budge...

...We have noted the outrageous salaries paid public school administrators, many of whom are of the most marginal competence...

...He wins...

...Popoff in a back room, where she reads them into a microphone that transmits them to a tiny receiver in the Reverend Popoff s ear...

...The story noted that the two women who appear in the TV ads saying, "Hi, I'm Alcott," "And, I'm Andrews," are actually two actresses...

...In Maryland, where the delay effectively deprives depositors of $170 million a year and gives it to the banks, a legislator introduced a bill to reduce the "float,"(the period in which the check is not cleared) to three days...

...It all began more than three years ago, in May 1983...

...Several days later, our lawyer called back...

...I replied that I. didn't see how I could accept the gag...

...The presence of the admirals adds authority to the report's finding that the U.S...

...If you share this feeling and want a program of action to express it, please write us and we'll be glad to send you a copy of "A Neoliberal's Manifesto," which is our most recent attempt to pull together the different strands of the new idealism...

...The trouble with most packaged tours, of course, is that you are subjected to the company of a group and guide that you may not find compatible for one day, much less two or three weeks...

...It's even worse that the commission could vote 4 to 1 to endorse such an obvious travesty...

...The mayor plays poker with builders and developers for whom he has done favors...

...This otherwise excellent story did contain one revealing example of the Journal's way of looking at the world...

...At this point, I went to a lawyer...

...Most have a lot of cash on hand...

...I've finally learned the secret—or at least the secret according to one reliable source...

...She found that the projected labor force in Mexico will grow at a rate three times that of workers in the United States during the next 15 years...

...Electric utilities were hot on Wall Street this summer as investors were impressed by the difference between declining interest rates and the high, and for the most part secure, dividends offered by the electrics...

...Every President threatened to cut the White House budget...

...Indeed the more I considered the matter, the more writing about it seemed the best approach to the problem...

...It was not shown as a debt for the American Express tour but as a debt to Pan Am...

...We began calling and writing, saying we did not owe Pan Am anything, that we thought they were talking about the $200 tour deposit, which we explained we did not think we owed...

...It seems the local school superintendent, Jerome Jones, has billed the taxpayers for $62,529 in expense money during the past two years, including $200-a-night hotels, $60 lunches, and $100 dinners...

...Let me tell you what happened and you can decide for yourself...

...Their problems should be heard and responded to...

...I imagine an even worse result would be obtained at many other airports...

...But, as Rep...

...The Reverend Peter Popoff of Upland, California, has brought modern technology to bear on the problem...

...Accumulated evidence is now overwhelming," says the report, that nicotine is "a powerful, habit-forming drug...

...For those of you who prize irony, I have this juicy morsel...

...I don't think it will be hard to find such judges and juries—or even enough congressmen to turn the principle into legislation— because the most impressive aspect of our experience with American Express has been that whenever we recount it someone will say, "The same kind of thing happened to me" last week or last month or last year...

...In the past, jurors have often been persuaded that smoking is a voluntary act and therefore, any harm it causes is the fault of the victim...

...It was one of the most talked about Monthly pieces in years...

...But frankly I was stunned by a recent study prepared by Barbara Torrey at the Center for International Research at the Census Bureau...

...I strongly support a liberal immigration policy in which we err on the side of generosity to let in many of those who want to come to this country...

...The winnings are cash...

...us crazy is that no one has ever answered our complaint —no one has ever explained how we could possibly owe Pan Am anything...

...We wouldn't be part of a group, but American Express would arrange for the hotel and transportation...

...My wife and I wanted to go to Europe in June, but we were a bit short of money...

...The belly hanging over the belt, the eyes that have slept on duty for too many hours over too many years to have any hope of ever being alert again...

...L ast year I complained about the checks that took six days or more to clear, when my experience as a teenage bank employee was that checks often cleared in one day...

...Unfortunately, when we looked behind, everyone was still marching in the opposite direction...

...But a couple of weeks later, my lawyer called and said, "We have a problem...

...Charles Peters...

...The bill was, of course, killed by a House committee...

...It is being used by at least some of them to buy up other businesses, including savings banks and drug stores...

...collection agency called I said, "What drives...

...Upon receiving notice of the cancellation, we immediately called and protested, explaining once again what had happened...

...I said, "I can't agree to that...

...Soon we were in negotiation...

...The case against tobacco and tobacco advertising has received a tremendous boost from a recent report by the Harvard School of Public Health, which concludes that nicotine addiction is akin to heroin dependency...

...The devices are also missing in a large number of short-range nuclear weapons stored on land within the United States and Europe...

...All we got were letters about the $200 we owed Pan Am...

...The answer is, of course, that it can't...

...And by early June of this year a settlement had been reached between my lawyers and those representing American Express...

...Unless we act decisively to help stimulate the Mexican economy now and in the next few years, our borders and our economy are going to be overwhelmed...

...The story did not express the least dismay about this fact, finding it not even worthy of comment of any kind...

...An unpleasant fact that medicine has not wanted to face is that some physicians do not retain their skills as the years go by, often failing to keep up with the latest research in their fields...

...If, before the fatal incident in the second-floor bedroom, Jean had written a book that had attracted the glowing reviews that her Stranger in Tivo Worlds has recently received, she would have become a celebrity in the New York literary world, he would have married her immediately, and they would have lived happily ever after...

...Do not pay disputed amount until dispute resolved...

...My wife and I would receive $3,500 to compensate for our time and aggravation, and American Express would give us a letter demonstrating that it had investigated our case and corrected the flaws in its system that had led to our unhappy experience...

...So I dropped the suit and began scribbling notes for this column...

...In our last issue I wrote about the profound unwisdom of selling the Elk Hills Naval Petroleum Reserve, as the Reagan administration wants to do...

...And for the truly bizarre among you who share my morbid fascination with the Harris-Tarnower murder, I have another irony...

...That got a response...

...Congress authorized a budget for the White House that accommodated 314 employees...

...The cards are taken to Mrs...

...The truth was that the great lumbering beast known as the Executive Office of the President employed 1,520 human beings, all of whom had to be paid and insured by somebody...

...While the administration is planning to ask between $3 to $5 billion for the reserve, the GAO points out that if oil prices ever return to the level of late 1985, the value of Elk Hills would be $9.1 billion...

...Thousands of tons of hay cut by farmers in 39 states are on their way," writes Ward Sinclair in the Post...

...Navy's tactical weapons "are vulnerable to use by terrorists" because they lack safety locking devices that could prevent those who steal bombs from being able to explode them...

...After all, I'm a journalist and it's quite likely that I will write about it...

...On the other hand, those of people at the lower levels, including such key employees as young engineers with less than two years' experience, are going up only 3.7 percent...

...No one expects a dime from the effort ." Once more I feel stirrings of hope in my soul...

...Guess where I met Marci McDonald, the author of the article on the Gotliebs in this issue?' She was placed next to me at a dinner at the Canadian embassy last winter—seating chart by Sondra Gotlieb, of course...

...Now it can be made clear to them that the smoker may have had free choice when he started, but that he soon became part of an addict population, many of whom simply can't quit no matter how much they want to...

...They had to...

...In this case the deception may be harmless, but it's an outright lie nonetheless...

...Last month an editor at Regardie's, an excellent local business magazine, called to ask me to do an article proclaiming an end to selfabsorption...

...This is an indication of how much we have come to accept advertising that lies and misleads...

...The bill would have helped hundreds of thousands of customers and harmed only 300 banks, the latter only in the sense that they would be deprived of money that didn't belong to them anyway...

...We don't ask our secretary to baby-sit...

...I now felt I had to write about it...

...What I can't understand is why, even if the duties are official, a public employee should be required to do the baby-sitting for the official...

...A small piece of evidence to support Taylor's thesis was the response to the article about Steven Rattner in our May issue...

...This has not always proved to be a winning strategy in other industries for the simple reason that it's usually better to stick to the business you know...

...The Wall Street Journal recently ran an article on this problem by Frederick Rose...

...The only acknowledgement of our trouble came from occasionally sympathetic phone operators, who seemed to have the power to push a button temporarily reinstating us but not to look into our problem any further...

...They want to gag you completely...

...The superintendent says, "I don't know where you can go and buy a meal, a dinner, for under a hundred bucks...

...What if all West Virginia officials used their secretaries as babysitters while away from home on official duties—which could literally be every time they go to the office...

...It turned out we had to cancel the tour...

...Our banner thus raised, we invited the legions to join us in a mighty movement of moral regeneration...

...While I was working at the Peace Corps, one of the secretaries in Bill Moyers's office at the White House was on the payroll of my division...

...id American Express try to bribe me not to tell this story...

...Speaking of terrorists, did you know that security guards at Dulles Airport failed to recognize hand guns in 25 percent of the bags used in a series of spot checks carried out by the airlines...

...A customer should be entitled to a reasonable response to a reasonable complaint within a reasonable time...

...Neely fired her...

...This is why Mario Cuomo deserves high praise for advocating periodic reevaluation of physician competence...

...The tour required a $200 deposit, which we signed for, using our American Express credit card...

...Then the "Outlook" section of The Washington Post ran an article on its front page titled "The Coming of the 'We' Decade...

...But it only needs a few imaginative lawyers and a few responsive judges and juries to establish it as part of the common law...

...Since then, the General Accounting Office has issued a report that confirms the stupidity of the proposed sale...

...If I could have figured out any conscientious way to do so, you can bet I would have grabbed the money and run...

...No one has charged a cent...

...But, a charge for $200 showed up on our July bill...

...Between 1983 and 1985, we went through this cycle three times, making innumerable phone calls and writing innumerable letters, trying to straighten things out...

...The young woman we talked to said "Obviously something has gone wrong, I'll try to take care of it...

...The final cancellation in March 1985 was accompanied first by a threatening letter from an American Express attorney and then by a threatening call from a collection agency...

...And in a few months our card was cancelled even though we had never had a problem in the 20 years we had held it...

...A law suit can take years and monopolize your time' and energy in a way that is highly detrimental to everything else in your life...

...Peter Benchley, who served as a speechwriter in the Johnson White House has written a Washington novel called Q Clearance that explains a quaint White House practice few outsiders are aware of: "None of the president's writers worked for the White House...

...Maybe the time is really ripe at last...

...Phillip Sharp points out, the continuing sales are still costing the taxpayers more than $300,000 a day...

...TILTING AT WINDMILLS n March 1980 we published a special issue with a cover headline proclaiming "The New Idealism...

...But if you'll accept the gag, they're willing to double the money...

...The brochure provided that in order to get your deposit refunded you had to cancel 45 days in advance if the tour was "escorted," otherwise within 30 days...

...Please read our letters before you threaten us...

...I'll think it over and call you back tomorrow...

...The probability of nuclear terrorism is increasing" says a recent report by the International Task Force on the Prevention of Terrorism, a group that includes Admiral Stansfield Turner, the former CIA director, and Admiral Thomas Davis, a former assistant director of the Arms Control Disarmament Agency...

...George Will a neoliberal...

...They were dealt with automatically and nothing they said or did could reach the . computer...

...That night I had sweet dreams of what we could do with that $7,000...

...There's nothing more bracing than a cold bath of red ink...

...It's just a friendly game, of course, so no record is kept of the sums involved...

...After dutifully serving as a sitter in the Neely home on 11 occasions, she respectfully declined on the twelfth...

...We received no response...

...His proposal, which would require that doctors be examined every six years, makes sense, which, of course, means that it is opposed by the American Medical Association...

...Several months went by and the card was cancelled again...

...We never got an answer to our letters...

...I was convinced that Americans were sick of the selfishness of the seventies and ready for the challenge of a life of commitment...

...He is among the most brilliant young legal thinkers in the country, but self-criticism is definitely not his long suit...

...I could not do the article but was delighted that he was thinking along such lines...

...And, of course, the checked baggage is usually not inspected at all...

...Louis Post Dispatch comes evidence that they're taking us to the cleaners with their expense accounts as well...

...The IRS will never know...

...American Express not only doesn't want you to reveal the amount of money you're getting" (a condition I had agreed to), "they don't want you to write about the case at all...

...But I'm now beginning to be optimistic again...

...The only other use for the extra cash it mentioned was paying increased dividends to stockholders...

...Its central point was concern over the lost idealism of Rattner, and of the best and the brightest he typifies...

...His reply: "I don't have time...

...Remember Richard Neely, the West Virginia Supreme Court justice who required his secretary to perform not only her ordinary duties, but to babysit for his child as well...

...This principle is not firmly embedded in the law today...

...What I had hoped to accomplish with the suit was to establish the principle that in this computerized age people cannot just be ignored as my wife and I were...

...But all Presidents quietly restored those cuts by fishing in the federal bureaucracy for slots to fill with their own people, who, thenceforth, never set foot inside the department that paid them, never met their nominal bosses, never performed a single function related to their 'job description...

...We called again, and again it was reinstated...

...Not only does Mexico have the capacity to create financial chaos here by defaulting on its debt, but it also threatens to flood our borders with immigrants far beyond our capacity to absorb, and also beyond our capacity to keep out...

...The tragedy of William Rehnquist's nomination to be the Chief Justice of the United States is that he was wrong on the great legal issue of his time, which also happened to be the great moral issue of his time, and that he has been wrong throughout his life...

...The challenge to the oldtime faith healer was to impress the congregation by showing seemingly intimate knowledge of its members and their problems...

...The average utility executive is not likely to bring instant expertise to the sale of Tylenol, Crest, and Tampax...

...Too many of the security guards I've encountered look like they were hired at a convention for retired deputy sheriffs...

...This fact will provide important ammunition for lawyers who are bringing suits against those who sell and advertise cigarettes...

...Unfortunately, the increased money was clearly a bribe— or so it seemed to me—since it was conditioned solely on my not writing about the case...

...When the rest of us go to work, we either arrange for a spouse to take care of the child or hire someone to do it...

...Yet the Mexican GNP is only 5 percent of ours.- How is such an economy going to absorb that exploding workforce...

...It is maddening never to get a straight answer...

...He wrote American Express...

...In such cases packaged tours are tempting because they are often cheaper than a trip you can quickly put together on your own...

...On other occasions he would rely on statements that are likely to be true of a high proportion of the adult population, such as, "I know how you've suffered from hemorrhoids" or "There have been times when you've been disappointed in love...

...The reaction to the article showed a lot of people are thinking the way we are...

...Sometimes the healer would be briefed in advance, so that he could draw oohs and ahs as he unctously intoned, "Mary Jones, I know how you've been suffering from that pleurisy...

...But it's just possible that the mayor's steady success at the table is not accidental...

...They again refused to give any explanation: We decided to sue...

...We did so 32 days before we were to leave...

...While the economy has been stagnant this year, salaries and bonuses paid to top executives are up 6.9 percent...

...But, before you call your broker, I suggest you find out what they are doing with that cash...

...And I speak as an unindicted former coconspirator in the process...

...In fact, except for some nuclear segments of the industry, utilities are enjoying unusual prosperity...

...In a few weeks we got the usual monthly statement from American Express with a notice at the top, "Your card has been reinstated...

...Written by Paul Taylor, a Post reporter, the article's main point was: "Instead of Me-Decade materialism and muscular patriotism, the new mood seems to be about things like a national sense of community, moral revival, civic virtue, and the imperative of doing good...

...Today, the situation is not better, it's worse...

...While the exact numbers may vary, this practice has gone on at least since I arrived in Washington in 1961...

...It's too bad Justice Neely never understood this...

...A few large damage awards might induce a rebirth of the morality among these various parties...

...And then came the tremendous response to the drought in the Southeast...

...You may be interested to know that he has managed to totally escape any kind of punishment, even a slap on the wrist, for his action...

...We felt the "on your own" was clearly otherwise...

...The great mystery surrounding the mayor of an eastern city is not whether he's on the take, but how he manages to do the taking without leaving the slightest trace of evidence...

...I used to assume it was x-rayed somewhere in the bowels of the airport, but I've since learned that assumption is wrong...

...You may deem that a distinctly unlikely possibility, but I invite your attention to two recent headlines from Will's column: "Listen to Bill Bradley" and "Credit Gary Hart with Ideas...

...Nuclear Hijacking: Now Within the Grasp of Any Bright Lunatic" was the title of an article we published in January 1973...

...So, when in exploring the possibilities, we found an American Express brochure that listed both "escorted" and "on your own" tours, we were delighted and signed up for an "on your own" trip to Italy...

...In another development, John Herrington, who heads the Department of Energy, has responded to criticism here and elsewhere that the Elk Hills oil was currently being sold at less than half the going price by announcing that production will be cut by 16 percent...

...Most Presidents did make cosmetic cuts...

...When the...

...The craziest thing about the administration's preoccupation with Nicaragua is that it diverts attention from Mexico, which is our most important Latin American neighbor...

...I don't think they and all the others like them are going to take it much longer...