Political Booknotes
POLITICAL BOOKNOTES Let's Put America Back to Work. Senator Paul Simon. Bonus Books $14.95. Rebuilding liberalism may involve not dreaming up gimmicky "new ideas" so much as...
...In winter, they were struck by howling winds and temperatures that dropped to 40 degrees below zero...
...Mario Cuomo may be the tribune of old-style liberalism, but his welfare task force recently recommended that mothers be allowed no more than three years' cash "transitional" assistance even if they have another baby...
...That victory was crucial to the safe retreat of thousands of Marines and U.N...
...But then, in order to make his WPA jobs attractive to the welfare mothers, Simon offers them more—HO percent of their benefits...
...Fine lucidly sets forth various ways in which our judicial system is not merely failing us but actually "seems more intent on finding reasons to let admittedly guilty criminals escape than in doing justice for society...
...Medical and Social Security coverage would be part of the deal...
...Senator Simon's book thoughtfully champions the most important of these old-new ideas, the idea of guaranteeing every citizen a job through a WPA-style public works program: "[W]e have a choice of paying people for doing nothing [through welfare and unemployment cornpensation] or paying people for doing something:' The argument is so simple one wonders why Simon is the only big-time politician in a long while to have hit on it...
...Fine has been a Wisconsin circuit court judge since 1979...
...Construction of a bicycle path...
...Simon leaves that "up to the states," although he notes that "eventually most states will probably require that all but mothers with children under two or three must sign up...
...During those three years, they would be required to work or train half-time...
...Defendants accused of violating drug laws were placed on probation following their `donations' to local governments of hundreds of thousands of dollars...
...Not if the National Education Association can help it...
...Hopkins offers another major reason...
...The principle behind Miranda, that suspects should be protected from the heavy-handed tactics law enforcement officials might use to extract confessions, is, of course, sound...
...That, he says, "may not be uncommon!' A few nits...
...Plea bargaining is degenerating into the "one-law-for-the-richanotherfor-the-poor" rightly detested by liberals...
...He writes in a measured, highly readable style, with a wealth of examples from his experience on the bench...
...Ralph Adam Fine...
...James R. Dickenson...
...If One Bugle, No Drums shows U.S...
...A secure, $5.53 government job, alas, is likely to be better than any private sector job most welfare mothers can get...
...Rebuilding liberalism may involve not dreaming up gimmicky "new ideas" so much as rediscovering solid old ideas that have been foolishly discarded...
...Hopkins was the commanding officer of one of the three infantry regiments of the 1st Marine Division—the division military historians contend was one of the finest fighting forces, if not the finest ever, in the long annals of warfare...
...history...
...forces drove all the way north to the Yalu River—despite growing evidence from displaced North Koreans that thousands of Chinese troops were hiding in the villages, forests, hills, and mines of that desolate country...
...First, Simon presents his plan as an alternative to welfare, but he fudges on the crucial, difficult question of whether to require single mothers (the vast majority of adults on welfare) to take his guaranteed jobs...
...The $2,000 is supposed to buy counseling, day care for mothers, tools, building materials, and supervisors for the work projects...
...But this has been proven false in Alaska, where a resolute attorney general abolished plea bargaining in 1973...
...Although he credits tactical air support of the ground forces as the most effective backup they had, he blames the indiscriminate bombing of "strategic" targets, many of which had no military value whatsoever, for turning the North Korean civilians against the U.N...
...At least 300,000 Chinese troops were already in North Korea when the Marines and the Army landed...
...Second, there's the question of wages...
...William B. Hopkins...
...But the Korean War was also, once the unprepared U.S...
...forces suffered nearly as many casualties from heat exhaustion as from enemy fire...
...The Army commanders accepted MacArthur's assurances and neglected to put out adequate patrols and other security, which cost them tragically...
...In fact, the conventional wisdom is moving rapidly beyond this position...
...Unfortunately, the Cuomo group's excellent report has pointedly not been embraced (as of this writing) by at least one person, namely Cuomo...
...A better solution to the dilemma would be to pay all the neo-WPA workers the same minimum wage, but then use the tax system to supplement the wages of all low-wage workers (including private sector workers) who are heads of households...
...forces from the mountains near Chosin Reservoir...
...Until then, says Hopkins, the Koreans have been willing sources of intelligence for the Americans...
...I suspect that this will be a controversial book," Fine notes at the end...
...In summer, they were overwhelmed by heat...
...The Korean War is a big hole in most Americans' knowledge of history...
...Finally, there's the toughest political question Simon faces, namely opposition to his plan from public sector unions worried about being displaced by cheaper WPA workers...
...By restricting his minimum wage guarantee to 32 hours per week, Simon hopes to maintain an incentive for people to take 40-hour private sector jobs...
...If the ancient goal of guaranteed jobs is ever achieved, it will probably be by a leader who stresses its positive, upbeat virtues after others have pointed out the nasty, necessary, screw-the-unions and make-thewelfaremothers-work angles...
...Now, take a look at some of the projects Simon proposes for his WPA: "Repair Sidewalks...
...Let us hope that it is at least widely read and its lessons absorbed...
...Fine addresses several important areas of judicial breakdown, notably plea bargaining and the perversion of various "exclusionary rules," such as the one that was originally intended to prevent coerced self-incrimination ("No person...
...Well, Simon's a better politician than I am, and he thinks his tactics will work on enlightened unionists who realize that the quasi-full employment provided by a guaranteed jobs program would give an across-the-board boost to wages...
...Major General Oliver P. Smith, the commander of the Marine division, took his local intelligence seriously, which was one reason his division survived intact...
...Right now he's the only one...
...That means Simon would pay her $767.80 for 32 hours of work, or $5.53 an hour, though she'll be doing the same work as others making $2 an hour less...
...In California, a mother with three kids can get $698 a month in welfare (not counting food stamps...
...forces' commander, deserted him after his daring amphibious landing at Inchon...
...The "essential thrust of the decision," he writes, was that criminal investigation was no longer to be the pursuit of truth (with appropriate safeguards to prevent extortion of confessions), but rather a contest "in which one player, the police, would have to alert the other player, the suspect, if and when he was about to make a bad move?' What are we to make of a system, University of Chicago Law Professor Dallin Oakes wrote in 1970, that tolerates the following: "Where there has been one wrong, the defendant's, he will be punished, but where there have been two wrongs, the defendant's and the officer's, both will go free...
...occupation forces in Japan and the hastilyraised conscript army were shaken down and hardened by combat, the occasion of some of the finest military feats in U.S...
...Mickey Kaus Escape of the Guilty: A Trial Judge Speaks Out Against Crime...
...One Bugle, No Drums: The Marines at Chosin Reservoir...
...Judge Fine is particularly good on problems arising out of the 1966 Supreme Court (5-4) ruling in Miranda v. Arizona...
...Simon is also laudably blunt about the need to "fire those who don't show up, or do not work when they do show up...
...As a result, the North Koreans began to help the Ehinese with their supply routes—even though the Chinese, who were ill equipped for the brutal winter and therefore desperate for food and shelter, had forced many Koreans out of their homes and villages...
...Better check with the Building and Trades Division of the AFL-CIO...
...This is designed to avoid the experience of the mid-seventies CETA program, when workers were often assigned to existing bureaucracies where they either displaced regular employees or simply padded the workforce, making no apparent difference in public service...
...POLITICAL BOOKNOTES Let's Put America Back to Work...
...Fine warns us, and who can dispute him after the New York subway case of Bernhard Goetz, that either we repair our judicial system, or numerous potential vigilantes in our midst "will take the law into their own hands to see that justice is done?' In straightening out the judicial mess, Judge Fine's book is an excellent starting point...
...forces...
...Ritor grade school and high school students who need special help...
...After the three years, they'd have to take a public service job...
...when a project was finished, workers would move on to the next one...
...In the desperate fighting around the Pusan Perimeter in 1950, U.S...
...The North Korean army was destroyed, and South Korea's territory was restored, but MacArthur convinced himself and most of his subordinate Army commanders that there was no reason to believe that the Chinese would enter the war even if the U.N...
...Hopkins's battalion made its surprise attack in the middle of a snow storm on the Chinese 178th Regiment that held the hills over the Funchilin Pass...
...Although the Marines were outnumbered three to one, the Chinese regiment was nearly destroyed...
...Dodd, Mead, $17.95...
...The excuse for plea bargaining is usually administrative necessity: without it our courts would be hopelessly clogged...
...Maybe Simon's the one...
...But the unions, especially AFSCME, were paranoid enough about job competition in the late seventies to make sure CETA workers didn't perform anything particularly useful, even though labor didn't have an explicit veto over projects...
...Simon has clearly thought about the complexities attending his simple idea...
...But this "police action," which lasted from 1950 to 1953, was a bloody business—nearly 55,000 Americans and almost a million Koreans and Chinese died on the harsh Asian peninsula...
...shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself' = Fifth Amendment) but is now frequently used to exclude voluntary confessions...
...Plea bargaining, as Fine shows, is mostly institutionalized laziness— helpful to prosecutors who would rather spend a week on vacation than in the courtroom, and of obvious benefit to defense lawyers...
...Although the Marines and Army were to attack from different directions through the mountains, their commanders couldn't communicate directly with each other, but had to go through headquarters in Tokyo—one of the main reasons we were defeated in North Korea...
...Simon hopes to appease the unions by giving them a veto in the local councils that decide on work projects, and by promising them lots of supervisory jobs and other high-wage work building highways, sewers, and the like, in a separate program...
...Work projects would be selected by local businessgovernmentlabor councils...
...The tactical brilliance of General Douglas MacArthur, the U.N...
...The true cost would be far higher and it's better to say so up front...
...Dropouts would have to get their equivalency diploma first...
...Algonquin, $15.95...
...That's quite a bargain...
...Tom Bethel...
...He would, for example, allow 18- to 25-year-olds to claim the jobs only if they'd graduated from high school...
...AFSCME might have something to say about that...
...The sentences were also more severe...
...And a lesson that was forgotten in the Grenada operation...
...The rate of Chinese artillery fire increased substantially...
...But that's expensive, and although Simon admits his plan will cost money, he doesn't admit it will cost a lot of money...
...But a better way to fight police-state tactics—one that won't result in clearly guilty criminals being set free—is to punish severely officials who engage in beatings, unwarranted searchings, and the like...
...It was a lesson that should have been heeded 15 years later in Vietnam...
...Simon's higher-pay-for-morechildren scheme doesn't seem fair (especially to mothers slogging it out for $3.35 an hour in the private sector...
...In obscurity, it ranks right down there with the War of 1812 and the Spanish American War...
...Specifically, he estimates a net cost of only $8 billion a year, before subtracting the value of all the public works and services...
...I suspect a more pointed assault on union narrow-mindedness would encourage such enlightened behavior, but there's room for both Mutt and Jeff here...
...Unions are the answer to the mystery of why the Democrats dropped the WPA idea in the first place...
...They'll have little incentive to look for private work...
...Forget it...
...The problem is that, especially for mothers with several children, welfare benefits are already way above the minimum wage in high-benefit states, which also happen to be the biggest states (New York and California...
...Under the new regime, the disposition time for felonies in Anchorage, declined from 192 to 90 days...
...forces at their best, it also shows some of their leaders at their worst...
...Simon's guaranteed jobs would pay the minimum wage, or 10 percent over welfare benefits, whichever is higher, for 32 hours of work a week (leaving a day to look for private sector work...
...But Simon puts the cost of each job at $6,000 in wages and $2,000 in administrative overhead...
...Courts in Florida and North Carolina recently permitted the ultimate quid pro quo," Fine writes...
Vol. 19 • March 1987 • No. 2
