Tilting at Windmills

...I'd be glad to do the same if you'd like' `Good idea,' said Meese...

...He has "extensive holdings" in banks, a trucking company, a nursing home, and a beer distributorship...

...Robinson's grandmother was the late Countess Consuelo DeFrasso" Now I have before me an example of how all this has changed in modern Yuppiedom...

...Candace Beebe Pert and Dr...

...By contrast, 54 percent think "Made in West Germany" is such a mark...

...I'll check my schedule and call you...

...This request has been endorsed by the state's attorney general, which helps explain a point this magazine has been trying to make for years, namely that selfprotecting bureaucrats are today's spiritual equivalent of the cold-hearted bosses of 19th century capitalism...

...Alive and Vital will use his money to hire and build, while his purchase of stock in DeadintheWater produces no economic benefit other than a commission for his broker...

...Do you remember the news item about a year ago telling how the Supreme Court's fleet of automobiles was being used for personal errands of the justices and their families...

...It is work that many have found they loved...

...Thinking about him makes me sad...

...What should you do...

...Jordan went on to describe his efforts to help those who replaced him: "I was thumbing through a box of personal memos one day when I heard the door open...

...TILTING AT WINDMILLS In the wedding announcements that couples sent to newspapers when I was growing up, whatever puffery was involved usually related to the ancestors of the bride and groom: "Mrs...

...The FAA's answer to the study: "It is entirely possible that a person could use alcohol and violate drunk driving laws but have enough common sense to know they shouldn't do it when they fly because it's a different ball of wax...

...Just because my friend didn't like business doesn't mean that you won't find that the life of the entrepreneur can be exhilarating...

...I think society should encourage him to invest in Alive and Vital...

...Three former Justice Department officials were, we charged, involved in trying to mislead Congress in a dispute involving the EPA...

...Workers in many of them must lie on their backs to take a drink of water or eat a sandwich...

...Let's start by dealing with the clear extremes...

...Oh hell, just one more and then I'll stop...

...Of all the sellout agencies in Washington, the FAA has to rank close to the top of the list in its sycophantic devotion to the interests of the aviation industry over those of the public...

...The latest evidence in support of his case comes from Jonathan Kwitny of The Wall Street Journal, who reported from Atlanta: "The AIDS laboratory for the Centers for Disease Control, set up with high hopes three years ago and staffed with leading scientists, has been crippled by ego clashes, professional jealousies, and perhaps worse...

...Robinson's grandfather was president of Harvard University," or "Mr...

...Now you find yourself doing something that is either boring or unworthy or both...

...Among them was the accuracy of his devastating description of the British coal industry...

...Why don't we try to get together next week for lunch...

...Kinsley opposes such incentives for two reasons: 1) the difficulty of distinguishing between new and old businesses and 2) if the new venture without a tax break isn't going to make more money than an investment in existing stock, it shouldn't be encouraged...

...Well, we need to move on,' Meese said...

...Ruff and Pert have published a number of seminal scientific papers...

...Charles Peters...

...a voluntary program of national service for young adults and `international competitiveness' proposals...

...I peered over the box and there were Ed Meese and Jim Baker looking around...

...Don't let yourselves be trapped in the wrong work...

...The resulting damage to their health will help assure that they remain disadvantaged...

...With their dependents, we must be talking about 40 to 50 million people who have a personal stake in preserving and expanding the functions of government...

...He will buy DeadintheWater, but his money will go to the previous shareowner, not to hire new employees or build new plant...

...Here, whatever the gray area may be, there is no question that we can distinguish between the economic benefit involved in trading an existing issue of stock and an investment that hires new people or builds better plants...

...One possibility is teaching...

...But it is also true that we raised less than 10 percent of our capital without the tax break, and reorganized to get the break only because potential investors urged that we do so...

...This last figure was among the considerations that led the West Virginia Supreme Court to order that full roof bolting be used in these mines to protect the workers...

...things can't be that bad" I couldn't get mad because I had experienced a similar reaction a decade earlier when I read James Watson's Double Helix, an expose of the culture of science that was as unflattering as my own assessment of the culture of bureaucracy...

...Let me tell you about the daring reform— "certain to anger the police union," says the Times—that is being proposed in New York...

...S ometimes I'm a little too much like a proud father in pointing out this magazine's accomplishments, so if you will indulge me in the following item, I promise not to brag again for at least two months...

...I am reminded of Hamilton Jordan's confession in his book, Crisis, of how he had ignored sound advice given him by Gerald Ford's chief of staff, Richard Cheney...

...You might also have missed the Associated Press story about a Michigan furniture company's "silver parachute" plan...

...Or suppose you went into investment banking because it seemed to be where the glamour and excitement were going to be in the eighties...

...What makes this plan news is that it takes care of all the workers, not just the top executives who are the usual beneficiaries of the generous severance pay and other goodies that golden parachute plans use to guard against the unhappy consequences of takeovers...

...If ever a public offical was the answer to the lobbyists' prayers, it's Ned Ray McWherter, the new governor of Tennessee...

...Imagine an investor faced with a choice of buying stock from a shareholder in DeadintheWater Corp., a sure-fire 10 percent dividend payer, or buying new stock in Alive and Vital Inc., a new company that may pay 10 percent...

...Besides, I like the fries...

...Why do I hate the cigarette companies...

...He never enjoyed his work...

...What makes these Poles so admirable is that they have risked the wrath of their own communist government, which wants to hide the fact that the American airmen were doing what Soviet airmen and soldiers weren't doing...

...What else, we might ask, should promotions be based on...

...So if there is anyone out there reading this column who is still doing work he or she does not like and respect, please get out now...

...All of these businesses are regulated by the state...

...I don't want to make that mistake again...

...In many parts of the country, if you have a solid science or math major in college, you can walk in and be hired to teach...

...It is needed especially in the ghettos, where good teachers can make a real difference in the lives of their students...

...As to the difficulty of distinguishing between old and new, of course there are gray areas...

...The case for the incentive is less compelling in the prosperous service sector, especially in the case Kinsley suggests of a franchise like McDonalds that is already well established...

...The chief justice, in attacking the original news story about the misuse of the Court's cars, once again demonstrated the kind of defensive inanity that we have come to expect from our official malefactors...

...The official who ignored this order, Kenneth Faerber, the state energy commissioner, was fined $100...

...This is, unfortunately, typical of each new administration's failure to learn from the experience of those that preceded it in the White House...

...But guess what...

...It could also be argued that, if DeadintheWater wakes up and decides to issue new stock to build a new plant and create new jobs, the new issue should receive the same tax breaks given to Alive and Vital when it started...

...The last change in particular was filled with anxiety and peril, but I was finally glad I had made it, as I had been glad I made the others, for each step was taken in the search for work that would more fully use whatever abilities I possessed...

...Warren Burger, who was then the chief justice, recently acknowledged that he refused to cooperate with the investigation...

...You're right,' Baker said...

...The essential truth of Watson's indictment has, however, stood the test of time...

...In reply to the article's charge that a government car was used to pick up his daughter's laundry, he indignantly asserted, "It was my laundry...

...a change in workplace culture to link pay to performance and raise workers' stake in their companies' success...

...If, for example, in arguing for a means test for entitlements programs, you say that it is outrageous for Mrs...

...According to the Census Bureau, there are now 16,690,000 Americans who work for federal, state, and local government...

...The brave American fliers tried to help with supplies from the air but only got themselves killed in the process...

...The Soviets were just across the Vistula from Warsaw, but Stalin didn't like the democratic Poles who led the uprising, so he instructed his troops to just sit there while the rebels were crushed by the Nazis...

...Think, too, of the noise made by the machine called a Wilcox-auger that is used in these mines...

...Did you see that item in Newsweek comparing the percentage of CEOs and workers who receive year-end bonuses...

...It may be possible, but it's not nearly probable enough to comfort the rest of us...

...What can you do...

...You can be in your thirties—even your forties or fifties—and it's not too late...

...As for Kinsley's belief that The Washington Monthly would have attracted investment without such an incentive, it is certainly true that our backers have been public-spirited people who wanted to aid a good cause...

...Barney Frank has observed, "It's crazy to say that Meese is not capable of investigating them because of a conflict of interest, but he's particularly capable of saying whether they should be investigated...

...John D. Rockefeller to be collecting social security when a poor widow who has no income other than social security is not getting enough to eat, the bureaucratic liberal will reply "Ah, but what are you going to make the dividing line between those who get social security and those who don't...

...They both smiled...

...The tobacco companies should be ashamed, but, of course, they have no shame...

...Get out...

...But he never made the break...

...But even here I would not begrudge the tax break because I would welcome the new jobs that would be provided...

...the courage to raise taxes and restrain entitlements if necessary...

...And think of the dangers: in the past decade, 17 miners have been killed by roof falls in the mines...

...It also makes me angry at myself for not having done more to try to persuade him to do what he wanted to do while there was still time...

...We need the latter form of investment far more than the former, and should encourage it with favorable tax laws...

...as if that answers your argument...

...For months it has been dogged by allegations of hampered research, of political meddling, and even sabotaged experiments...

...Sixty-nine percent of the CEOs are taken care of...

...That difficulty is at the heart of my dispute with Michael Kinsley (see "Letters") about the need for tax incentives for new businesses...

...As Rep...

...One reason there is such strong resistance to bureaucratic reform is that there are so many bureaucrats...

...In its December 23 issue, the Village Voice revealed that the CIA had helped the infamous Ugandan dictator, Idi Amin...

...He was a good and thoughtful man whose time on this earth gave pleasure to all who knew him...

...I am indebted to Warren Brookes, the conservative columnist with whom I otherwise seldom agree, for reminding me recently of the crucial role Charles Dickens played in giving capitalism the conscience without which it can become cruel greed...

...He may have been motivated by a desire to destroy, not reform, capitalism, but his indictment contained truths that had to be faced...

...Black young men and women are now smoking at a rate considerably higher than their white counterparts...

...Senator William Proxmire asked the GAO to investigate...

...The trouble is that Ed Meese is still trying to protect the guilty parties...

...If you want a clue as to why our foreign trade deficit so stubbornly resists the steady decline that was supposed to result from the falling dollar, consider the results of a recent survey of European public opinion by the Roper Organization: Eighteen percent believe "Made in the USA" is a mark of quality...

...One of the most touching news stories I've read recently was about a group of Poles who have worked for years to get a monument built to honor the American fliers who flew incredibly dangerous missions all the way across Nazi Germany to try to aid the Warsaw uprising in August 1944...

...Take the second point first...

...And you may not have to go back to school in order to get teaching credentials...

...One might ask, if the Supreme Court is above the law, why aren't the rest of us...

...We were just checking out the offices before we made staff assignments.' " `As I remember it,' I said, `assigning the offices was more difficult than choosing the cabinet...

...A treasured friend of mine died last year...

...Meese has limited the investigation to just one of the three, refusing to grant a request from the special prosecutor to expand the scope of the inquiry to the others...

...Another found his culture had been rearranged and contaminated...

...One of the most depressing facts about Irangate is the Reagan NSC's failure to use the knowledge of people in the Carter administration who had also tried to deal with Iranian "moderates...

...A very good one was supplied by a recent story in The Wall Street Journal headlined, "Tobacco Companies Target Blacks with Ads, Donations, and Festivals...

...But he was in one sense a very unhappy man...

...Don't wait, as my friend did, until it's too late...

...For example, the announcement in The Washington Post of the marriage of Dr...

...Michael Roland Ruff includes this sentence: "In recent years, Drs...

...When my book, How Washington Really Works, was published in 1980, two reviewers dismissed it, saying, in effect, "It can't be true...

...They urinate from a crouch ." Think for a moment about the dust and darkness that go with these horribly cramped conditions...

...Whatever you decide to do, the point is to decide and move...

...Needless to say, Meese never called...

...If you've been wondering whatever happened to neoliberalism, here is a summary of the views of the Democratic Leadership Council, which includes such people as Bruce Babbitt, Charles Robb, Richard Gephardt, and Sam Nunn...

...Increasingly, school boards like those in Connecticut and New Jersey no longer require education degrees...

...The ancestral advertisements have yielded to plugs of a more practical kind...

...He spent his life dutifully managing family businesses that he had inherited...

...But why should we countenance the insanity and injustice of the extremes just because we're going to be confronted by difficulty when we reach the middle...

...I know it can be done because I've done it— changing the kind of work I did three times in my adult life—leaving the theater to enter law and politics at 27, leaving the law to become a Peace Corps bureaucrat at 34, and leaving the government to start this magazine at 41...

...I was recently reminded of what an ugly business mining was, and still can be, by a column in the Charleston Gazette by my old friend Don Marsh, who described what is called "thin-seam" mining: "A typical thin-seam mine is no higher than 28 to 42 inches...

...By the way,' I said, `I told Jack Watson to tell both of you that Dick Cheney gave me some good advice four years ago that we ignored...

...It will allow, again according to the Times, "the Commission to make promotions, based on performance...

...After the December meeting of the council in Williamsburg, The Washington Post's Paul Taylor wrote: "If the council has its way, the party will be selling a strong but lean defense...

...I would suggest one other key figure in this humanizing process—Karl Marx...

...Suppose you became a lawyer because your parents wanted you to do something respectable...

...Seventy-eight percent of the workers get nothing at all...

...Of course, if you do want to be an entrepreneur and don't have enough money of your own to start your business, you are not going to find it easy to get the financing...

...As long as investors are confronted with advice like Jane Bryant Quinn's "Think Twice Before Taking the Plunge On New Stock Issues" and Money magazine's "Why Initial Stock Offerings Are Bad Bets" (see page seven of "Tilting at Windmills," July/August), many of them are going to need the encouragement of a tax incentive to take that risk and make that otherwise bad bet...

...At times he talked about doing other things, such as becoming a doctor, and one could sense his excitement at the prospect...

...For example, a recent study by the inspector general's office of the Department of Transportation indicated that as many as 16,000 airplane pilots have continued to fly even though their driver's licenses have been revoked or suspended for drunken driving...

...That's not even counting the military, which would add another two million or so to the total...

...He wants the state to pay his fine and his attorney's fees and expenses— $6,899— in connection with resisting the order...

...Hope we didn't interrupt you,' Meese added quickly...

...Let me count the reasons...

...Maybe you would like to start your own enterprise and make a good product and give people jobs...

...This is especially clear in the manufacturing and production areas of our economy, where the stimulus of new enterprise and new imagination is so badly needed...

...Finally it was too late...

...that range from increased investment in research and education to policies on trade designed to avoid the label of protectionism while guarding industries against unfairness...

...They would, I believe, have given something without it, but they gave considerably more because of it...

...Modern bureaucratic liberalism dearly loves those gray areas because they excuse its failure to try to make needed distinctions...

...That news was first printed here three years ago...

...One researcher ordered a technician to throw out the virus cultures his colleagues were using...

...Another story of ours ("Mutually Assured Corruption: The Justice Department and Ann Burford's EPA," Daniel Benjamin, January 1986), turned out to be true enough that the attorney general had to refer the case to a special prosecutor...