TILTING AT WINDMILLS

...You may have heard that Dexter Manley, of the Washington Redskins, recently told a congressional committee that he had not learned to read until he was in his late twenties...

...If you're worried about the bailing out of the savings and loans, consider that you're going to have to pay to fund government pensions too (see Matthew Cooper's article beginning on page 24...

...But as a reward for productive investment, instead of mere trading, that rate could be lowered by 1 percent every two months so that at the end of 66 months, there would be no tax at all on investments that produce more jobs and better plants...

...How much of that sum will the taxpayer end up being asked to supply...

...Ideological warfare has broken out on the intellectual right...

...Take the State of Washington, where, at the age of 39, Earl Kenneth Shriner was let out of prison, even though he had murdered a 15-year-old retarded girl and in the words of one reporter, had also "savagely attacked, molested, and beaten at least seven other children...

...He said the station's coverage expressed "an infatuation with what the mayor may or may not put up his nose rather than how he spends his day—the administration of his damn government, which is a shambles ." It is typical of those in charge of journalism today that the people who run WRC didn't understand what Marash was talking about and he has resigned...

...Then ponder the recent report of the inspector general of the Department of Labor, which finds that the $1.6 trillion in private pension funds is at risk because of poor regulation and inept enforcement of federal laws...

...The James Bakers who saw the uprising in China in Kissingeresque terms—as a threat to "stability" and to "American interests"—have lost sight of the inspirational force of the freedom and democracy that are our greatest gifts to the world...

...He may have been wrong to defend boxing, but he was right to question the helicopters...

...But what Russia and China are proving is that those ideals are universal in their potential appeal...

...What we should have worried about was whether we had something to say, something we believed in enough and wanted to say enough that we would produce the work regardless of whether it would seem clever or would impress the world...

...Apple in the center to Evans and Novak on the right, there has been enormous frustration with the failure of George Bush and James Baker to articulate our commitment to the great ideals of the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights and our admiration for the Chinese students and workers who have risked their lives for these ideals...

...That we weren't insane to oppose the Vietnamese communists is suggested by the fact that the only nations that endorsed the crackdown in China were Cuba and Vietnam...

...Her husband, a navy enlisted man, was killed in an auto accident in March...

...But did you know that for bicyclists and pedestrians who are killed, the figure is 36 percent...

...It is also made by Gregory Fossedal in his new book, The Democratic Imperative: Exporting the American Revolution...

...The novelists who had not written a novel were legion...

...So far this year in the Marine Corps alone, five helicopters have crashed, with a loss of 45 lives...

...Instead of doing anything to punish Iraq, we intervened in the Persian Gulf war on its behalf...

...In Maryland, a man was paroled after serving five years and three months of a 25-year murder sentence...

...The American aristocracy, for example, has long practiced a policy of exclusion toward Jews, and anti-semitic jokes are still common in the locker rooms of WASP country clubs...

...This would effectively eliminate the focus on the short-term that has been a bane of American capitalism...

...I was struck by how many of my fellow dabblers were more interested in being thought of as artists than in doing the work that artists do...

...Equally common were the people like me, who accomplished just enough to be able to impress members of the opposite sex by saying we were in the theater...

...And for motorcyclists, the percentage who have been drinking is 51...

...That we were insane in the way we carried out our opposition is suggested by an excerpt from Paul Nitze's memoirs, From Hiroshima to Glasnost, scheduled to be published this fall...

...Charles Peters...

...The top rate has already been cut to 33 percent, so a further reduction seems unwise in light of the size of the deficit...

...Hansen was planning to tell Congress that global warming was more of a danger than the administration wanted to believe...

...Maybe you already guessed that of the people who are killed on our streets and highways, 33 percent of the car and truck drivers have been drinking...

...According to The Washington Post's Kirstin Downey, it "is now being used to build or renovate an estimated 242,000 housing units nationwide...

...We tried to make this point in an article, "Exporting Idealism," by Harden Smith, in our April 1985 issue...

...I was reminded of the way we were by an entry in the recently published Andy Warhol Diaries, in which Warhol says: "I took the book of my old paintings out and saw all the clever things I used to do, and I just can't think of anything clever to do now . " What we, too, wanted to do most back then was to think of something clever, something that would impress the world enough to permit us to be regarded as artists...

...He had joined under a law enacted around the turn of the century that permits the U.S...

...An example of how he benefits from media indulgence was provided in May by the case of the testimony of James Hansen, director of the Goddard Institute for Space Science...

...Consider the case of Robert Glauber, the Harvard Business School professor who is to be undersecretary of the treasury...

...It is, according to a May issue of the association's publication, the CBA News, whether the site of its winter 1990 ski trip should be Snow Mass, Park City, or Vail...

...For years I've been wondering when the mostly Jewish neocons would wake up to the fact that they are disliked by the older conservatives...

...Guess how quickly a person convicted of first degree murder in the District of Columbia can be eligible for release...

...He proceeded to stab to death two school children...

...Whether the Post should or should not have run the article when it did, whether it would have been published were it not for the Speaker's trouble, is not my concern here...

...It's also incredibly timely...

...Liberals seem unwilling to face the fact that there are some truly vicious people out there who must be kept in prison either to protect the rest of society or to adequately punish their crimes...

...The real problem with the capital gains tax is that it makes no distinction in favor of long-term investment or between productive investment in new jobs and new plants on the one hand and trading of existing issues on the other...

...Now comes the news, from Defense and Foreign Affairs Weekly, that the Iraqi pilot who fired the missiles at the Stark was rewarded by his government with a Mercedes and 140,000 dinars (worth approximately $43,500 at the time...

...During my youth I dabbled in the world of the arts in New York...

...A couple of months ago I heard a boxing promoter reply to the American Medical Association's condemnation of boxing as a cause of needless death by asking, "Why don't they condemn helicopters...

...That they are beginning to see the light is suggested by the outraged reaction of liberal women to the Mack case...

...A foreign service officer was recently convicted by an American court of smuggling gold and is now in jail...

...What do the faculty big-shots do in their ample spare time...

...It seems there is a law that says foreign service officers can't be dismissed without a hearing...

...Low income housing has not exactly been an area in which successful government programs have abounded...

...After one year the tax would be 33 percent...

...They are right to feel sympathy for the thief who steals bread to feed a hungry family, and they are right to feel contempt for the conservative's indiscriminate harshness to the criminal, no matter how understandable his crime might have been—but the liberals are wrong to the extent that they are indiscriminate in their softness...

...Navy to enlist Filipinos...

...Last year he made $755,000 in outside income, including $300,000 in consulting fees from Morgan Guaranty...

...Liberals must learn to distinguish between the Jean Valjeans and the John Paul Macks...

...It is the low-income housing tax credit, which provides builders with substantial tax breaks in exchange for agreeing to rent at low rates for 15 years...

...Thirteen years and five months...

...We have frequently pointed out that our great universities are guilty of charging their students exorbitant tuition while overpaying an underworked senior faculty...

...Fossedal goes farther than I would, seeming at times to advocate outright intervention, but his basic message is on the right track...

...It is planning to terminate the program at the end of this year...

...This reflected the dark side of Lyndon Baines Johnson...

...The neocons say the old right is prejudiced against Jews and the paleocons say the Podhoretzes tilt too much toward Israel...

...Krulak was visibly shaken...

...His release was delayed at the last minute, but one suspects only because his victim was Theresa Saldana, an actress who is well-enough known that her protests of the release were aired by the press...

...Well, if you live or work in—or just happen to walk by—a brick building erected since then, you'd better start saying your prayers...

...I think both sides are correct...

...An administration may legitimately enforce conformity of view as to the policies its employees recommend, but it should never keep them from providing Congress with the information it needs to assess the wisdom of those policies...

...If he couldn't read, why was he admitted to Oklahoma State University and why was he permitted to stay in the university and play football for four years...

...Among journalists, for example, from Mary McGrory on the left to R.W...

...He wanted to find out why the local government wasn't working, why the schools didn't educate, why the homeless weren't housed— regardless of whether illegality was involved...

...In California, the authorities were ready to release a convict who had served only seven years of a 12-year sentence for an attack upon a woman—he stabbed her 10 times—even though he had written a stream of threatening letters to her while in prison...

...He pointed out that far more people were dying in helicopter accidents than in the ring...

...Darman's staff censored his testimony, but Darman escaped criticism even though he refused to testify before Congress about the episode...

...Glauber may be more artful than most in turning his spare time into fast cash...

...On the other hand, the foreign policy of the neocons seems to consist exclusively of positions that are either anti-communist or pro-Israel, with almost no recognition that there are other problems in the world or that there is any justice to the Palestinian cause...

...So have the American conservatives who have been too sympathetic to right-wing authoritarianism abroad and the liberals who have displayed too much sympathy for dictatorships on the left...

...One of the most heartening aspects of the American reaction to the upheaval in China has been the resurgence of democratic idealism that cuts across the ideological spectrum...

...During a visit to the Mekong Delta region, where the Vietcong were deeply entrenched, I saw our artillery bombard the countryside with lethal fire...

...This tenderness toward violent criminals is one of the great shames of modern liberalism...

...A continuing failure of American journalism is illustrated by the case of Dave Marash, an anchor on WRCTV here in Washington...

...In 1965 Dow Chemical introduced a new product called Sarabond, which it said could quadruple the strength of mortar used in brick construction...

...Vicious crimes such as his should never be punished so lightly...

...What was shocking to me, and I think to most people who read the story, was that Mack had been released after serving only two-and-a-half years...

...WRC does a good job of investigative reporting where criminal conduct is involved...

...So what is the Bush administration doing...

...Almost everyone agrees the program is a success...

...But he's still receiving his government salary of $63,433 a year...

...And for the same reasons: respect for his competence and gratitude for his leaks...

...But three years ago an idea came along that has seemed to work...

...There is a practical as well as a moral reason to make a distinction...

...How can we possibly justify telling his widow and two children that they can't continue to live in this country...

...Following his release, he cut off the penis of a seven-yearold boy...

...For the nonviolent, punishment should, as much as possible, consist of restitution to the victim and mandatory community service...

...Hasn't he already received a hearing before a judge and jury and been found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt...

...But legions of others enjoy light teaching loads and evince more interest in devoting their free time to entrepreneurial activity than they do in undertaking pure research, which was the justification for the reduced teaching loads in the first place...

...One thing they do is make more money...

...Take the case of Eleanor Palisoc, a native of the Philippines whom the INS is trying to deport...

...In this case, Darman behaved in the tradition of Oliver North, and he deserved the same kind of criticism that the press gave North...

...Nitze, it should be remembered, is not known for excessive solicitude for communists: "Our 'harass and destroy' operations consisted of the indiscriminate use of artillery in the countryside, with Vietcong and villagers alike falling victim to the barrage...

...After being briefed on the difficulties the Marines were encountering in locating and engaging the Vietcong, the president had risen from his chair, his face dark with anger, and with his fist pounding the desk for emphasis, exclaimed: 'Kill the goddamn bastards, kill 'em, kill 'em, kill 'em!' " Richard Darman, like his former boss, James Baker, has long enjoyed a "most protected official" status with the Washington press corps...

...In other words, the investor would be able to get his principal back if he sells in less than a year but he would get no profit...

...Sarabond, according to The Wall Street Journal, has been found to corrode "the steel of embedded bolts or other structural steel, causing facades to peel away and bricks to plunge to the street below . " Dan Rostenkowski, the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, is said now to be leaning toward the Bush administration's proposal to cut the capital gains tax, a proposal that he heretofore has opposed...

...What issue is so important that the Columbus (Ohio) Bar Association is polling its members to ascertain their views...

...What isn't in doubt is that the trip will be tax deductible...

...This problem has been dramatized recently by the case of ex-Speaker Jim Wright's assistant, John Paul Mack, whose brutal attack on a young woman was exposed by The Washington Post 16 years later...

...The liberals' embarrassment at our shortcomings in achieving our ideals here at home and at our mistakes in attempting to intervene militarily abroad, combined with their fear of cultural imperialism, have led them to think it is wrong for us to advocate our ideals around the world...

...Unfortunately, similar tenderness seems to be the rule in many other parts of the country...

...On one side are the traditional conservatives such as Russell Kirk, and on the other, neoconservatives such as Norman Podhoretz...

...Why can't he be fired...

...He had planned to make the Navy his career, and, at the time of his death, had already served eight years...

...Yet it seems only the boxing promoter—and the Monthly (see "All Aboard Air Oblivion," Gregg Easterbrook, September 1981, reprinted in February 1989)—speak out against the danger...

...It is stupid to waste jail space on nonviolent criminals when there is not enough room for the violent, many of whom represent a real danger to the rest of us...

...But Marash wanted to do more...

...Within the hour I visited a hospital and watched while a parade of dying and injured children were brought in for treatment, the innocent victims of our indiscriminate barrage...

...General Krulak, a tough marine general who had fought at Guadalcanal and many other battles in World War II and killed many an enemy, came into my office one day after briefing the president...

...As for the long-term versus the short-term problem, why not start out, as Warren Buffett has urged, with a 100 percent tax on capital gains for investments held less than a year...

...Speaking of American ideals, one of the agencies that consistently seems to have trouble remembering them is the Immigration and Naturalization Service...