Assistant Secretary of What?
Peters, Matthew Cooper, Jason DeParle, and Charles
Assistant Secretary of What? The secret jobs that can really make a difference. by Matthew Cooper, Jason DeParle, and Charles Peters It's November 9. You're exhausted. You've just spent two...
...But smarts is no substitute for experience...
...Right now, OMB prepares a budget worked out by separate budget analysts (who prepare the numbers) and management analysts (who look at organizational inefficiencies, like the failure of agencies to keep monies in interst-bearing accounts...
...The affluent say that they don't want their children drafted to die in another Vietnam or to be brutalized by the kind of vicious superiors who were depicted in From Here to Eternity...
...While modesty makes us reluctant to tout one of our own (Fallows is a former editor of The Washington Monthly) he, more than anyone we know, has the mix of investigative skills, government experience, and policy smarts that the next director needs...
...The candidates ought to spend $0 for their TV ads...
...Take, for instance, OMB's National Security Division, which covers the Pentagon...
...Director, Selective Service: In Washington there are many buildings and monuments that inspire awe...
...Get an international treaty to stem the emissions of carbon dioxide and other chemicals that become trapped in the atmosphere and warm the earth...
...His bureau, the OES, negotiates international treaties and as such can go to foreign capitals and work out bilateral and international agreements...
...Someone who seems poised to carry the torch i s Richard Benedick, a career civil servant in the State Department who negotiated the ozone treaty...
...You want international agreements...
...But there has been an increasing tendency of the affluent to send their children either to private or to elite suburban schools...
...And these are the big budget issues that OMB is supposed to be good at...
...But for those with an interest in policy, government work could carry its own rewards, if the sense of purpose and meaning returns...
...for the editors ?Chairman, Federal Communications Commission: In 1970, an unknown state legislator named Lawton Chiles strapped on a pair of hiking boots and walked his way from obscurity to a seat in the U.S...
...Why have we been so obstinate...
...The more thoughtful argue that compulsion is wrong in a free society...
...Have you got anything in there to keep the sand and gravel men out of it...
...The Assistant Secretary for OES needs the authority to cut nothing less than a global bargain whereby private banks ease and even forgive international debt in exchange for specific forest conservation plans...
...From Hamilton Jordan to Ed Meese we've seen what happens when novices are handed the tiller...
...Only about 3 percent of recent Harvard graduates have chosen to pursue government work of any sort...
...The sounds of your tax dollars at work...
...Its budget of $11 million is bigger than that of the American Enterprise Institute...
...Another con the Pentagon uses to get its way with OMB is the "inflation rate" trick...
...Senate...
...During World War I, as an assistant secretary of the Navy (a job comparable in rank to the ones described here), he learned how not to trust the chain of command...
...energy interests have been leaning for a better deal on underwater mining...
...That something is a sense of community and a faith in democracy...
...But there are little-known posts in the government that demand the president's interest—jobs with long, boring titles that, if performed well, can become truly important...
...Senate in New York, Green has practical experience in campaigning and a history of sticking to his principles: he accepted no PAC money, spent only $40,000 on television ads—and beat a candidate who outspent him by nearly eight times...
...The U.S...
...The GAO found that the amount of hazardous waste produced in the United States swelled from 9 million metric tons in 1970 to 247 million in 1984...
...Same with William Bennett...
...The number of shipments going abroad, according to the EPA's Office of International Activities, has jumped from 30 to 400 last year...
...To monitor those projects, AID taps scientific expertise in the Soil Conservation Service, and other parts of the Agriculture Department, as well as the Fish and Wildlife Service...
...What OMB needs is regular infusions of the best civil servants from across the government, young enough to be vigorous, confident enough to burn bridges with their old agencies...
...He offered to make himself the president's eyes-and-ears, criss-crossing the country to sound the alarm about what was wrong in the bureaucracy...
...You can leave this stuff to your cabinet secretaries or your pollsters or the people in the party...
...As a journalist, Fallows has immersed himself in the minutiae of defense spending...
...The celebrity-conscious press is likely to give her a platform for her infectious enthusiasm...
...And we're even more doubtful that George Bush has the vision to pick those we're proposing...
...With disposal costs getting higher in the U.S., American companies have found a willing market in the Third World...
...Or they could give the air time to the parties and let them parcel it out among their candidates as they see fit...
...There is no drill instructor to melt [the agencies] into one common goal," says Rep...
...In the spirit of family togetherness, the plan gives the sons and daughters of the affluent an incentive to keep parents' health care costs low, perhaps by taking their parents into their home rather than letting the taxpayers pick up the cost...
...M.C...
...Saving the Oceans...
...There was a point when ocean pollution seemed like a purely local issue— an oil spill in•Santa Barbara...
...I don't know who that person is, but I do know he should be capable of the kind of exciting advocacy that I saw Sargent Shriver, a vital and energetic navy veteran in his forties, bring to the early days of the Peace Corps...
...As an alumnus of Ralph Nader's corporate accountability group, where he specialized in antitrust matters, Green has spent a lot of time thinking about corporate responsibility...
...In effect, it should be an intelligence agency in the best sense of the word, providing information on what's going on in the Department of Labor, just as the CIA is supposed to be providing intelligence on the Soviet Union...
...Then, use the OES as a bully pulpit to convince Americans to conserve like they never have before...
...Do you remember Julius B. Richmond...
...the National Cattlemen's Association has some ideas...
...There to greet you are the emissaries of Goldman Sachs, Exxon, American Hospital Supply, and Touche Ross...
...About 200 billion tons of carbon is bound up in the plants of the Amazon rain forests—carbon that, if the trees are burned, becomes carbon dioxide and contributes to the greenhouse effect...
...Twenty years after I entered the service, the beginning pay had risen to only $78 a month because there was still a draft...
...Having people out in the field with the authority to audit at random could...
...A requirement for stations to provide qualified candidates with air time isn't asking much in return...
...Most notoriously, there are the vials of medical waste...
...While being skeptical of all government programs, it must be much more than the "Abominable No-Man," as it's occasionally referred to...
...As Phillip Longman points out, today Americans spend $35.2 billion annually on nursing home care, most of that on persons over 80...
...Green, head of the New York-based Democracy Project, understands the insidious effects of money and television on politics from many angles: as a journalist, an activist, and a former candidate...
...You can't forget his Amish-style beard, and you can't Matthew Cooper, Jason DeParle, and Charles Peters are the editors of The Washington Monthly...
...The other half represents the bribe that persuades the poor to enlist and permits the affluent to avoid doing their part...
...But before you take the plunge into corporate life, another thought crosses your young mind: government service...
...To be able to say "yes" with confidence, the agency must combine the management and budget functions, forming a kind of superevaluation agency that can provide crucial, disinterested intelligence to the president about what is going on in his own government...
...For instance, when it comes to campaign spending, we do not need someone who's going to be squeamish about wringing the big PACs and special interests out of Congress...
...Since I got free room, board, and clothing, I didn't need any more...
...He told Congress that the agency was unable to conduct "firsthand observations and analysis" But Congress, fearing an executive branch equivalent of the GAO, rejected the request...
...Of course, this is what we are spending before the Baby Boom reaches retirement age...
...The six jobs we've chosen illustrate a larger point...
...The farm state governors are calling you...
...The evaluators must be the right kind of people...
...What should OMB be...
...Our choice for the next OPM director is Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, a Maryland state administrator who has extolled the service ethic in its many manifestations—from after-school volunteerism to government service by top professionals...
...You will find out that people with good common sense can come from the farm as well as the country club...
...As author of Who Runs Congress?, he is savvy about Capitol Hill...
...When it comes to international environmental issues—like the emission of ozone-depleting chemicals and ocean dumping—no single agency is taking the lead...
...The major consequence produced by burning that many trees and sending that much soot into the atmosphere: global warming...
...they borrow them—for free—from the public...
...He steered the AIDS debate in a lousy direction, but that's another story...
...You know," the president said, "to keep out the people who sell the government materials for mixing sand with cement ." Having been in charge of the Navy's procurement, FDR was wise to the shenanigans of contractors...
...in government, he served as chief speech writer to President Carter...
...The Washington Post has recently featured letters from civil servants complaining about co-workers' gumchewing habits and polyester apparel...
...But the next administration needs to do much, much more...
...But the rich and the upper middle class aren't volunteering...
...According to the General Accounting Office, from fiscal year 1982 through September 1985 the Pentagon's "inflation rate" resulted in $36.8 billion in extra spending...
...But haven't we had enough...
...A warning to the next OPM director: one tool federal workers frequently use to make themselves seem underpaid is the inflated job title, which gives to your average GS13 responsibilities that would make the president of GM quiver...
...When it comes to OMB, let's hope the next president isn't so short-sighted...
...The last thing you want to think about is your appointment to the Merit Systems Protection Board or the Consumer Products Safety Commission...
...Credit her with one of the most elegant and equitable ideas for tackling the long-term health crisis: The Pay When You Go Plan...
...If they let the government pay for dad's nursing home, they won't inherit that trust fund...
...We're not saying that he should pore over every job in Carter fashion...
...Beware civil servants bemoaning "comparable" salaries in the private sector...
...One person who's up to the job is Barbara Torrey, an economist who has worked in the Bureau of the Census and the Office of Management and Budget...
...It would require the rich to repay the most, and the poor, who leave little or no estate, would repay very little—preserving the principle that Medicare should most help those who most need it...
...Such complaints are the work of minds that think they have nothing better to do...
...Of the top 17 most heavily indebted countries, 12 are destroying their tropical rain forests at a brisk clip...
...If it's needed, is it working...
...deny he's made a difference...
...As for the other candidates in crowded metropolitan areas, stations could offer them the choice between air time and enough postage to mail a letter to every voter in the district...
...There's one easy answer to the quandary: start with the presidential candidates...
...The GAO, however, found that some agencies spewed money in the final hours of the year...
...So while the people we've picked aren't the biggest names, they know Washington...
...Just thinking about who should be Secretary of Agriculture gives you a headache...
...A typical objection to this plan is that in major markets like New York, Chicago, and San Francisco, there are too many candidates within a station's broadcast range to accommodate them all...
...The figures from the Kennedy School of Government are even more disturbing...
...The United States and the Soviet Union produce about half of the world's carbon dioxide...
...He spent only $375,000 and refused campaign contributions of more than $10...
...The FCC should also eliminate the packaging of political commercials and require candidates simply to face a camera instead, offering voters their words and ideas...
...Call them Power Pockets...
...In a memo on OMB, the political scientist wrote president-elect Kennedy: "The reason why your man ought to be programminded, not a cost accountant, is that national or presidential needs may call on him or you to say `yes...
...Carter rejected the offer, relying instead on conventional channels to keep him informed...
...And don't forget the Environmental Protection Agency has an office of international activities, too...
...And it could be more important if OMB was organized to evaluate how wisely the government spends its trillion dollar budget...
...Barring that, the good appointee needs a healthy dose of presidential indulgence, the freedom to speak from the heart even if the president won't embrace his ideas...
...C. ?Director, Office of Management and Budget: Thinking about the OMB can remind you of Stalin's question: "How many divisions does the Pope have...
...Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation: The next president will inherit one of the truly mixed blessings in our society: an aging population...
...PAC politics is bad for both parties, but as Robert Kuttner has written, it's particularly bad for the Democrats, since it increases their reliance on Big Money and weakens what should be their economic populism...
...Torrey's plan means no more free brunch...
...Hi .s performance was universally praised...
...But this summer it's become painfully clear that this is everyone's problem...
...The U.S...
...Instead OMB plays the percentage game...
...As the Nation reported, those figures may well be off because of overlapping bureaucracies within EPA: "Export of certain chemicals, like polychlorinated biphenals (PCBs), is forbidden by the Toxic Substances Control Act and is regulated by the EPA's toxic substances division which does not handle exports ." Again, the OES head needs the authority to cut through those bureaucratic lines and take action...
...But today, because the military has to meet its manpower needs solely by attracting volunteers, it has to offer beginning pay of around $600 a month...
...To persuade the nation and the Congress that such a law is necessary, we need a Selective Service director who can inspire and appeal to the idealism of the young...
...How can an obscure official with a cumbersome title make a difference...
...The rhetoric of recent presidential elections hasn't done much to help, with triumphant candidates Carter and Reagan both belittling the federal bureaucracy in-stead of aiming to inspire it...
...They know the complex latticework of agencies, interest groups, the executive branch, and the courts...
...But the prospect of constant political panhandling proved too much and he gave up his seat...
...We don't stay awake nights thinking Michael Dukakis will take our counsel...
...During World War II, when you had Bushes and Kennedys flying planes, you saw things happen...
...The new director's most powerful argument will be the need to bring the people of this country together again...
...go a long way towards eliminating waste—and striking fear into the hearts of GS13s everywhere...
...Ideally, the president will stand up for , him, loudly at press conferences and quietly on the phone to lawmakers...
...This White House office has some 550 employees, but because its job is to just say no to the other three million federal employees, the director's chair at OMB is one of the most important positions Michael Dukakis or George Bush will fill...
...And as James Gustave Speth, president of the World Resources Institute has pointed out, we have leverage...
...And as the winner of the 1986 Democratic primary for the U.S...
...If word of that unsafe troop carrier were presented to the secretary of the army by his son—rather than in a 362-page report from the General Accounting Office—quick action would be more likely...
...This rate, of course, becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy as defense suppliers find that they can get away with charging the Pentagon ever more...
...Remember how little time it took for the inferior P-40 to be replaced by the excellent P-51...
...Unless we come up with solutions, we face the gloomy prospect of more busted budgets (government and individual), lousy institutional care for the elderly poor, and resentment between young and old...
...OMB has no real mechanism for evaluating specific weapons systems, nor for keeping watch over those who are supposed to be doing evaluation within the Pentagon...
...The next administration needs to wage an all-out war to lure top people, not only from the Ivy League but from a thousand different and diverse backgrounds...
...Instead, 0M13 evaluators should ask: "Is this program needed...
...James Fallows is our choice to be director of OMB...
...Those over 80 now constitute the fastest-growing age group...
...Political action committees increase their grip on the system, promoting special interest politics...
...During the 1960 transition, Richard Neustadt understood this...
...But From Here to Eternity was about an allvolunteer army with the same class structure as today's, and draftees would never have been sent to Vietnam if there had been influential parents to object...
...It was a mistake...
...Lack of discipline discourages not only managers but other workers...
...While we're wary of the inside respectables, we're just as suspicious of the face that's too fresh...
...That's because of the role that television advertising plays in inflating campaign costs...
...Discipline: "THUMPA, THUMPA, THUMPA...
...If an appointee is going to bring provocative ideas to his office—ideas guaranteed to earn him the wrath of interest groups, Congress, and the civil service— then he needs the president's support...
...Three-quarters of its graduates take jobs outside the government...
...And they reap huge profits while doing so...
...The upper classes have been avoiding service by, in effect, having society bribe the poor and the lower middle class to do the serving for them...
...If a draft was instituted, the pay could be cut in half...
...In 1985, the Environmental Protection Agency spent 54 percent of its budget in the final quarter...
...Cut the international deals so that Third World countries can get their economies into this century and not contribute to international pollution...
...Today C. Everett Koop has made that office important by banging the drums—sending everyone in the country a pamphlet on AIDS, going mano a mano with the New Right on sex education, wrestling with the tobacco lobby...
...Dennis Eckart, an Ohio Democrat who was an observer to the international agreement on the ozone...
...While OMB prepares alternatives to the Pentagon budget requests, the previous year's funding level (plus inflation) is the starting point for negotiations...
...This office is the brains of HHS, filled with economists, actuaries, mathematicians, and others who can help map out a long-term care plan for the next century...
...In the White House he played rivals Harold Ickes and Harry Hopkins against one another, asking each what he thought of the other's latest proposal...
...remains the chief obstacle to passage of the Law of the Sea treaty which contains strict provisions on the dumping of radioactive wastes in the seabed and the dumping of toxic waste at sea...
...Who wants to be the one person in the office working late if everyone else is cutting out at 4:30...
...Chiles is leaving at a time when his average senate colleague is raising $10,000 a week, every week, for all six years of his or her term...
...Throughout the government there are lesser-known posts with rich potential—positions that, if administered with that rare combination of vision and street-smarts, can make all the difference...
...Now comes appointment time...
...They let the government pick up the tab for much of their parents' care, and they get to enjoy a large estate...
...Fallows understood—early—that Carter had become hopelessly insulated from the problems of his administration...
...Obviously, the increase in life expectancy strains the public health care system...
...In the United States, there's no shortage of civil servants who deal with the deforestation abroad...
...He was Jimmy Carter's Surgeon General...
...Here's to hoping he has the chance to make a clunky title a household word...
...Medicare recipients almost always receive benefits far in excess of the contributions they've paid in—and some of them then leave substantial estates...
...Meeting the demand for their care would require the construction of one 220-room nursing home every day for the rest of the century...
...But sometimes the president should focus on the trees as well as the forest...
...The federal government should "be content to hire competent people, not the best," wrote Terry W. Culler on the op-ed page of The Wall Street Journal, while "the brightest and most talented people should work in the private sector...
...While few people realize it, the place to strike a blow for democratic restoration is the FCC...
...The escalating role of money in politics has a host of antidemocratic effects...
...The Pentagon uses its own estimate of inflation and—guess what?—its rate is higher than the consumer price index, which is used in most government programs...
...D. ?State Department, Assistant Secretary for Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs: It's becoming more and more obvious that pollution—whether it's acid rain in Lansing or record-breaking temperatures in Sioux Falls—is the result of complex, international problems that can't be solved in Washington by a few good bills and a couple of tighter regulations...
...At times his understanding of the system could be eerily sharp...
...Another ill that has continued under all OMB directors, Democrat and Republican alike, is the end-of-the-year spending spree...
...For instance: Cooling the skies...
...In seeking to turn the office into a bully pulpit for citizen obligation, Townsend, Robert Kennedy's daughter, won't be hampered by her family name...
...When reporters from Industry Week asked if OMB kept tabs on fourth-quarter spending sprees, they were told "no...
...Their children are missing something important, just as are those poor kids who only get to know other poor kids in the ghetto...
...As Curtis Gans has written, slick and deceptive television ads have the power to "wreck . a lifetime of loyal, effective public service and with it the stability upon which American democracy depends...
...The plan is not only sensible, it's delicious...
...the Commerce Department, 38 percent...
...Politicians spend everincreasing amounts of time raising money, rather than thinking or legislating...
...Under Torrey's plan, they would be required to repay some of that largesse through a final estate contribution...
...You just concentrate on the big jobs, like Treasury and Defense...
...Right now the children of the affluent have the best of both worlds...
...When I was in the Army, I was paid $50 a month...
...We need the force of law to make sure that some burdens are shared...
...I wish people would volunteer...
...We are more likely to get rid of those weapons that don't work when it is the children of the influential who will be complaining about them...
...You've just spent two months pledging allegiance and two years traveling from Des Moines to Pennsylvania Avenue...
...As the end of the fiscal year, September 30, approaches, agencies that have money on hand quickly find a way to spend it, lest they come in under budget and find their appropriation cut for the next year...
...Several years ago, a former OPM executive from the Reagan years went as far as to argue that top talent has no place in government...
...But far from being a pleasure, it's taking all your energy...
...They are housed in a small, commercial office building that could be in any office park anywhere...
...No, no recruiters are scheduled this fall, a placement officer says, but there is a Federal Job Information Center downtown...
...With comments like that, it's little wonder that so many bureaucrats perceive their work as meaningless...
...Such ideas may sound radical, but virtually every European democracy provides candidates with free air time...
...FDR owes much of his greatness to his experience as, of all things, a bureaucrat...
...Under the Reagan administration, the office has earned far less scorn than Donald Hodel's Interior Department...
...As head of the Senate Budget Committee, Chiles was in a position to raise the formidable sums needed...
...Take the problem of deforestation, the clearing of trees in the Third World to make room for growing populations and to pay foreign debt...
...He filled the Power Pocket...
...The Floridian who wins this year's senatorial contest will probably spend about $6 million...
...These are not the staid names from permanent Washington—fixtures like Robert Strauss, Zbigniew Brzezinski, James Schlesinger, Anne Wexler (see "The Powers that Shouldn't Be: Five Washington Insiders the Next Democratic President Shouldn't Hire," Paul Glastris, October 1987...
...The modern federal bureaucracy dates to the Roosevelt years, when its exponential growth was animated by the twin missions of fighting the Depression and the war...
...Keyserling, caught off guard, said he didn't understand...
...That's a requirement that every station could meet, and it would establish an important principle of public service...
...There's an old yarn about the agency's professionalism that goes: if an occupying army of Martians invaded Washington, OMB would work around the clock to insure an orderly transition to power...
...It is a regular practice in Brazil where the forests being cleared can be as large as Texas...
...Nobody is giving marching orders...
...Charles Schultze, Lyndon Johnson's budget director, tried to get field offices for the Bureau of the Budget, the precursor to OMB...
...We think Mark Green is an ideal choice to head the FCC...
...You polish up your Thom McAns and slide on down to the placement office...
...These are all lessons that badly need to be learned by young people today and they are all lessons that can be learned in a military in which rich and poor serve...
...This turns out to be an unmanned kiosk, decorated in pale green papers that say "Job Notice" That settles it...
...Indeed, it was fear of just such opposition that kept Lyndon Johnson from drafting the rich...
...The waste and the immorality are so blatant that one wonders how anyone can justify not having a draft that takes both rich and poor...
...To be sure, the agency has always teemed with the best and the brightest of civil servants...
...By contrast, today's federal bureaucracy is suffused with a culture of caution-too often, it attracts workers concerned more with job security than with what the job accomplishes, One measure of that caution is the quit rate, which is less than 2 percent at the GS12-15 level...
...I wish compulsion weren't necessary...
...The talent scout ought to be director of the little-noticed Office of Personnel Management...
...Television stations don't "own" the airwaves...
...The education secretary isn't exactly the most pivotal member of the cabinet...
...But Bennett, of course, came in and gave a boost to the reform movement—fueling important debates on awarding teachers merit pay, teaching great books, and controlling the costs of higher education...
...Leon Keyserling, then an aide to Senator Robert Wagner, recalled an occasion when the president buttonholed him: "I just want to ask you one question about the housing bill...
...ANOTHER ONE BITES THE DUST...
...Is it any surprise that not enough talented people want to work in government...
...And with the right kind of FCC leadership, they could...
...Reagan doesn't buy the whole Koop agenda, but he hasn't shut him up either...
...But this is most certainly not the feeling one has when looking at the offices of the Selective Service...
...Incidentally, I have a strong suspicion that a fair draft will produce a better military...
...When I was growing up, the social classes mixed in the public schools...
...To counter these forces, the next OPM director will have to tackle not only recruitment but also: Pay: To attract people with technical skills— accountants, engineers, nurses—we may need to boost federal salaries, since for these people government usually holds no inherent allure...
...Deforestation accounts for a fifth of the world's carbon dioxide emissions...
...It's up to the State Department and the United Nations to negotiate treaties on the greenhouse effect...
...Remember, federal jobs were once considered exciting work...
...When Alan Cranston spent $13 million on his 1986 senate race, TV and fundraising consumed 83 percent of his budget...
...M.0 ?Director, Office of Personnel Management: Let's say you're a go-getter of a young college grad out to make your mark on the world but unsure where to start...
...The problems need to be confronted in Brazilia, Prague, and capitals around the world...
...It would be nice if people volunteered to pay taxes, but they never have...
...The question should not be just: "Well, should we add or subtract 3 percent from last year's budget...
...Bullying Citibank into such a position will be no picnic but there's little choice...
...Discussions between OMB and the Pentagon brass focus only on the real rate of growth...
...In his book, The Defense Game, Richard A. Stubbing, a former head of the division, describes how OMB can get conned by the brass...
...You will not make the error of the liberal who assumes that the poor are all deserving any more than you will that of the conservative who thinks they are all lazy or dumb...
...The Agency for International Development spends $120 million to promote environmentally sound projects...
...Both Carter and Reagan fed us the line that to make Washington work we darn well needed someone from outside the Beltway to kick some horse sense into those bureaucrats...
...That sense no doubt contributed to the doubling of complaints before the Federal Labor Relations Authority from 1978 to 1983—covering such vital matters as the positioning of cubicle partitions and the placement of office coffee pots...
...Unfortunately, yes—at least in the Department of Labor, where that tune was one of many filling the corridors a few years ago after a union contract gave workers the right to play tape decks at their desks...
...When you've actually known people from all walks of life, you're not going to believe that any class has a monopoly on virtue or vice...
...I hope, though, that the modest quarters and the modest prestige of the Selective Service will not deter the president from naming a first-rate director, someone who believes that the burden of military service should be shared by all classes and who favors a fair draft that will take rich and poor alike...
...D. ?Health and Human Services...
...If you're talking atmosphere, you're also talking NASA's Earth Sciences Systems Committee and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration at Commerce...
...has been shameless in the export of toxic wastes...
...after all, town councils and state legislatures run our schools...
...Ninetytwo days of trekking across Florida brought him the voter appeal he needed...
...M.C...
...This supple understanding of government has been the signal quality in the best of our leaders...
...The person in charge ought to be the Assistant Secretary of State for Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs...
...your staff is bickering again...
...She understands that when you have people fighting the mafia, searching for cancer cures, guiding passenger jets from the skies, or performing countless other government tasks, you don't want to settle for the "merely competent ." Her 1986 run for Congress made the service ethic a campaign centerpiece...
...Doing our part...
...Private sector, you think, here I come...
...But none of these analysts undertakes a systematic evaluation of programs: no one judges what really works and what doesn't, what's needed and what isn't...
Vol. 20 • October 1988 • No. 9
