LETTERS

...Using grossly out of context quotations to put down a gifted writer—while, of course, "revealing" the compassion and dedication of the reviewer—is beneath your magazine's usual standards of fairness and intellectual honesty...

...Both Eliot Wigginton and Sometimes a Shining Moment come very close to fulfilling the ideals about teaching and educational reform espoused in The Washington Monthly...

...2. Your longstanding idea of repairing this flaw by giving the break only to those who invest in new businesses is impossible, both practically and conceptually...

...See "Tilting at Windmills" for the editor's reply...

...Watergate was part of Nixon's plan to carry every state...

...I was a little surprised that Mr...

...Peters to refer to the division's charges as a "smoking gun" is to blur the distinction between accusations and evidence...

...Ohanian consistently misrepresents both the book and its author...

...Wright's piece is ominous because it reveals how completely Americans have learned to block out whatever reality does not fit in with their "images" MARGARET HALSEY White Plains, New York Lawrence Wright's article was straight to the point and brought back fond memories of old but losing campaigns against Nixon...

...If they think so, they'll make the investment— not as some kind of public service, but to make money...

...But the reason I had no idea is simple: some time ago I installed a sincerity testing device on my telephone...

...Actually, Nixon was known as Tricky Dick right from the beginning of his career and Watergate was well under way when he ran successfully for president a second time...

...Glastris didn't mention the existence of such devices, more commonly known as telephone answering machines...

...Granted, this may not be an economically feasible defense against solicitation for everyone, but I suspect that a solicitor would rather get a recording than have to wade through his sales pitch and be turned down...

...The Monthly is a wonderful magazine and an important civic institution...

...If they guess right, why shouldn't they pay the same tax as anyone else...

...4. You should be especially uncomfortable in bringing up The Washington Monthly as an example of the benefit of special tax breaks for new businesses...

...The liberals may have fallen out of love with Third World revolutionaries, as Stein says, but they haven't given up their attacks on "reactionary" regimes, or their implicit argument that it's better to lose to the revolutionaries than to oppose them by "immoral" means...

...This teacher/author and his latest work reflect the kind of commitment to genuine public service, to analysis and self-criticism, to effective strategies for achieving idealistic goals and to sustained good works that your magazine repeatedly endorses...

...DAN CAMERON New York, New York Foxfire deserves better I was very surprised and disappointed that a magazine of The Washington Monthly's quality would publish Susan Ohanian's cheap shot review [December] of Eliot Wigginton's fine book Sometimes a Shining Moment: Twenty Years of Teaching in a High School Classroom...

...1. The capital gains break, as you know, applies not just to creative new entrepreneurs, but to anybody who made a capital profit: on a share of GM stock, on a Krugerrand, whatever...

...But much of the antiwar movement jammed South Vietnam's lack of civil liberties down our throat, and we weren't inclined to make the excuse that Saigon "is not Washington, D.C...

...There's no reason to suppose the government knows better than the market when risks are worth taking...

...Only those callers who sincerely want to reach me are allowed through...

...Here's why you're wrong...

...All transactions made between Pacific Bell and its unregulated affiliates conform to existing state and federal regulations which are designed to prevent the kind of cross-subsidies that Mr...

...Pacific Bell strongly contests the Public Staff Division's charges of cross-subsidies, which are currently being reviewed by the CPUC...

...realized there were few political scientists interested in Congress based in Washington...

...From factual errors (Foxfire isn't, and never has been, an "alternative school"), to character assassination (such as her false assertion that Wigginton's attitude toward students is even more Draconian than Education Secretary William Bennett's), Ms...

...Gore's gambit Headline-chaser Albert Gore Jr...

...Even if it was tax breaks that enticed investors to fund the Monthly (which I doubt), the same tax breaks have encouraged other investors to pour millions into non-economic ventures without the Monthly's extrafinancial virtues...

...3. Even if you could define and isolate "risky" investments, why should the government especially reward these (and, to make up the revenue, especially burden other investments...

...That's the practical problem...

...LETTERS Capitol gains My question regarding venture capitalists' whining about tax reform, in particular the elimination of the special break for capital gains was, "Why should the government favor one kind of investment over another...

...JONATHAN P. SHER Chapel Hill, North Carolina No smoking gun I would like to call attention to Charles Peters's claim that the "first smoking gun" has appeared to support charges that the regional telephone holding companies are subsidizing their unregulated businesses with ratepayer money ["Tilting at Windmills," November...

...What venture capitalists do is try to decide whether the potential return is worth the risk...

...DANIEL PURNELL San Francisco, California Go Cardinals...

...It is my feeling that Ornstein needed Catholic University more than Catholic University needed Ornstein...

...All this would be water over the darn if the Vietnamese experience hadn't repeated itself in Iran, and didn't threaten to repeat itself again in Central America...

...Clever accountants will have no trouble helping people reincorporate all the time to qualify for special breaks...

...There is no "real" Nixon, just the images and memories of those who loved him and those who hated him...

...The liberation forces turned out to be far worse for American interests, and for their own people, than the corrupt, unrepresentative regimes we'd been propping up...

...The conceptual problem is: there's nothing necessarily creative and entrepreneurial about new businesses, per se...

...For many of them, this is not a family issue at all, but one involving freedom of speech, and creative license...

...By allowing the Gore name to be attached to this divisive gambit, the senator has seriously weakened his credibility...

...If this corespondent had had parents with sobriquets like Dirty Trickster Dad and Laundered Money Mom, wild horses would never have dragged the admission out of her...

...It was quite accurate, as I remember it...

...In Vietnam at least, that meant handing power to people who would and did murder women in the last stages of pregnancy on orders...

...Distinctions of this sort are precisely what make the current tax code such a complicated mess full of perverse incentives...

...Morris is an alumnus of Catholic University...

...Riskier investments require the promise of larger returns...

...DONALD L. WHITE Washington, D.C...

...I never get any of those dinnertime interruptions...

...J. ANTHONY MORRIS College Park, Maryland Mr...

...Those feelings, and the prospect of having to live through the spectacle that called them forth again, make me understand the neoconservatives a lot better...

...It is disconcerting to see that the well known and widely respected Washington Monthly would permit the little known and little respected Steven Waldman to characterize unfavorably the well-known and widely respected Catholic University ["The King of Quotes," December...

...To this date, there is no proof that Pacific Bell has subsidized its unregulated affiliates...

...Peters refers was actually an investigation conducted by the Public Staff Division of the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC...

...The Longest Shot," John Eisendrath, November] may be a whiz at foreign policy, but he's a bit soggy in his thinking about domestic issues like music censorship...

...He would equal George Washington's first and America's only unanimously elected president...

...The New Republic, September 22...

...For Mr...

...Gore and his media-advisers should take heed: millions of voters spanning several generations are enthusiasts for rock...

...had a terrific opportunity" and...

...The audit to which Mr...

...In short, the market itself rewards risks that deserve to be rewarded...

...A final decision on the Public Staff Division's allegations will not be made until sometime next year...

...What is a "new business...

...But strictly as an investment, it is a risk that has not so far (and it's been 18 years) paid off...

...I hold the theory that Nixon had determined to carry every state in the 1972 election...

...the best thing I ever did...

...A defense mechanism I enjoyed, and was properly horrified by, Paul Glastris's "Dialing For Dollars" in the December issue...

...It works wonders...

...While the division is paid to represent ratepayers before the CPUC, its findings do not reflect any official CPUC position or ruling...

...That will never change...

...Wigginton is far from perfect (as he readily concedes) and his book is not the final word on education in America (nor does it claim to be...

...Or will you add "small businesses" or "family businesses" or "new product lines" to "new businesses" as categories that qualify for your special break, thereby starting back down the road to the present madness...

...Stein takes a friendlier tone toward Vietnam's new masters than I suspect he would toward any "reactionary" regime that came to power under similar conditions...

...If they guess wrong, they pay no tax...

...Since, it seems, all solicitors are manifestly not sincere, they never reach me...

...I simply leave mine on all the time...

...JEFFREY M. LANDAW Baltimore, Maryland Images and memories Lawrence Wright's candor is something to marvel at when he reports that his mother and father were just like Richard Nixon ["Why We Liked Dick," December...

...JOHN D. STACKPOLE District Heights, Maryland An ex-dove's rage Jeff Stein praises Robert Shaplen's book on Indochina ["The Morning After," December] because Shaplen "declines to jam Vietnam's lack of civil liberties down our throat...

...MICHAEL KINSLEY Washington, D.C...

...Peters suggests...

...The irony is that you have chosen to trash an individual and a publication that deserve to be celebrated in your pages...

...Your answer ("Tilting at Windmills," October) was, "tax incentives are needed to help these fellows decide to take the risk" of starting new businesses...

...I had no idea that the telephone solicitation business was such a big deal...

...The burglary was illogical in ordinary terms, since defeat of McGovern was a foregone conclusion, but in Nixon's mind it was necessary to deny the Democrats every state, which was quite a different objective...

...What sense does it make to give a subsidy to a new McDonald's franchise, while denying it to, say, a small but established family firm that wants to branch out into a new product line...

...Did not Waldman report that Norman Ornstein believes his decision to become a member of the faculty at Catholic University was a pivotal decision and from that base Ornstein...

...However, both the author and the book tower over the rising tide of educational drivel in the debate about public schooling...

...He would vindicate his loss to Kennedy in 1960...

...To take an example in your column: if an investor faces the choice between a surefire 10 percent return on stocks and bonds or a longshot 10 percent return on some new venture, that is the free market's way of saying that the new venture probably isn't a good idea—either for the particular investor or for society...

...As an ex-dove, I find it hard to look back at Vietnam and its aftermath without rage, disgust, and a distinct tinge of shame...

...Whether he understands it or not, his wife's campaign to slap warning labels on records has gotten out of hand already, escalating from "voluntary" compliance by record companies to aggressive boycotts by so-called "consumer protection" groups and arrests of artists on obscenity charges...

...So for that and other reasons, we cut off funds for the war, and guess what...

...And his last line of defense, "Not all communist dictators launch holocausts," is as limp as I ever want to see...

...Nevertheless, thanks for saving me from a career in the law...