Tilting at Windmills

...Timothy's Episcopal Church in Washington before he left for treatment, he said a few words I couldn't believe he would get away with: "I've had to look my human weaknesses straight in the eye, had to realize that I spent so much time caring about and worrying about and doing for others, I've not worried enough or cared enough for myself...

...But then it was put on hold for three minutes and 40 seconds while a recorded apology played 10 times...

...I've subsequently learned that the rule is based on a study of private, not commercial airline, pilots...

...Controller: "Roger...

...IRS employees gave taxpayers erroneous replies to one question in three last year, but the budget for answering telephone tax questions will be increased from $317 million to only $330 million, or less than 5 percent...

...One company, however, went even further, offering to pay the FERC $1.25 million for the privilege of transcribing the hearings...

...The next step is to do the reporting that will go behind the quotes to determine whether they are true or not...

...If you doubt my contention that the American legal system's principal beneficiaries are American lawyers, consider the recent suit by CBS shareholders against CBS alleging that the company was mismanaged from 1983 to 1986...

...4.5 million was transferred from CBS's insurance company to the CBS treasury, $1.5 million went to the shareholders' attorney...

...The suit resulted in a judgment of $6 million against CBS...

...We need some of those hotshots who have been wasting their lives on Wall Street and in big-time law...

...Treasury...

...He did get away with it...

...L the speech Marion Barry made at St...

...What exactly did that mean...

...I've heard of people waiting 20 and 30 minutes...

...It may be that it's too late to morally reprogram most of them, but a substantial minority must have enough basic decency to be horrified by the lives they've been leading...

...Another source told Berger the bureaucracy "could be cut down dramatically...

...Charles Peters...

...Out there somewhere there must be at least one foundation head bright enough to fund a major effort to help these talents get into work that counts . . . . If you need to understand why some civil servants need to be replaced, consider the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission employee involved in this story: When the FERC solicited bids recently for transcribing its hearings, three companies offered to do the job for free...

...There are too many inferior or marginal talents in government...

...Geraldine Ferraro has told an interviewer: "I would love to be back in Washington...

...Among the many recent triumphs of the art, one that struck me as especially brilliant was the deputy sheriff's wife in Mississippi Burning...

...Speaking of corruption, the coming trial of two Barry associates, David E. Rivers, a city official, and John Clyburn, a local contractor, should provide a good window into how the kickback racket has worked in the District of Columbia during the past 12 years...

...When your television set gets hooked up to a cable, you find yourself watching more movies than you have in years...

...to Make Breakthroughs...

...Last year, Californians who were angered by their inability to get state employees to answer phone calls persuaded the state's legislature to pass a law requiring that bureaucrats answer the phone within 10 rings...

...It's a game doctors play...

...If you've heard about "code gaming" at all, you probably assume it is an activity of the fellows at the National Security Agency, the CIA, the KGB—or perhaps something the Walker family plays around the fire on a cozy winter evening...

...I congratulate the Times for having gotten this far...

...Then came Joseph Berger, "In School Bureaucracy, Despair at the System," in which one interviewee tells of "redundancies" that have been allowed to collect over the years: "There are lawyers and budget officers and building specialists in separate bureaus, like the High School Division, when the board already has its own offices of legal services and budget operations, and a division of school buildings...

...We don't have to go as high as taxes were then, but, among other things, a rate of 38 percent for incomes above $100,000 —which is what the rate was just three years ago—rising to 50 percent for incomes above $300,000, much less than the top rate of the forties and fifties, seems fair to me...

...So the FERC leapt in the air with delight and accepted the offer...

...But I was wrong...

...But the lesson to be learned is not that regulation itself is bad, but stupid regulation is bad...

...Thanks to Pat Moynihan, one of The Washington Monthly's oldest concerns—the unfair burden that the Social Security tax imposes on low-income workers and on struggling businesses—is now widely recognized...

...The world is becoming so much the same that, instead of getting the Thomas Jefferson of Bulgaria, we may be left with half-priced Gorbachev Birthday Sales and Midnight Madness at the Minsk Mall . . . . And, since I'm in a wet blanket mood, I might as well give you this cheery news about the "reform" regime we have installed in Panama...

...There it might not help the FERC but would help all American citizens...

...What is your alternate...

...I also want to congratulate the Times on another story that the editor had the courage to run on the front page because it was important, even though it wasn't pegged to the day's news...

...When the caller complained, the state employee who finally answered offered this comfort: "That's actually not bad...

...Buried in all the heartening stories about the explosion of freedom behind the Iron Curtain were two sentences from an East Berliner that I found chilling: "People don't care about all the new [political] parties...

...Where are the radical intellectuals and populists who used to advocate soaking the rich...

...His secret was that, in addition to serving as executive director, he also was modernization director, contracting officer, and purchasing officer for the Authority and received salaries for each job...

...The catch is that a lot of people will have died while "the market" is working...

...102 will be audited...

...In "Welcome to New York City, Chancellor (but Please Hold)," Felicia R. Lee tells of the first days on the job of the new Schools Chancellor, Joseph A. Fernandez...

...The sad fact is that the rest of Africa is littered with wreckage of economies destroyed by socialism...

...Give the investor back his principal plus reasonable interest But let's stop rewarding his greed by paying off the interest that was unusual...

...L ever there was an example of the folly of incrementalism, next year's IRS budget is it...

...These people obviously aren't fans of "Yes, Minister...

...My guess is that they are, but why leave the reader in doubt...

...Guillermo Endara, the new president, has for years been a director of a Panamanian bank frequently used by the Medellin gang...

...This year the IRS will audit 97 of every 10,000 returns, the lowest figure in history...

...If they are guilty, what public interest is served by allowing them to avoid testifying...

...And why should the taxpayer be stuck with paying off CDs at those unusual rates...

...We would run out of fuel now...

...Certainly settings are much more authentic than they were when practically everything was filmed on the back lots of Hollywood...

...No one pointed out that he cared so much about the people of Washington that he gave them a government riddled with incompetence and corruption, presided over by a mayor whose only major concern other than personal pleasure was reelection...

...By law, he explained to The Washington Post's Dale Russakoff, the money would have to go into the U.S...

...Franklin, located in the small town of Ottawa, Kansas, managed to grow into one of the largest savings and loans in the country by offering unusually high interest rates, which it attempted to finance through investment in high-risk mortgage futures, much as Lincoln had attempted to use dubious junk bonds to pay its interest...

...Avianca: "Uh, it's Boston, but its uh, uh, full of traffic...

...The reason was that because so many rich oil and gas companies want copies, the transcriber has been able to make money just by selling copies of the transcripts...

...We've got to make it a lot easier to fire bad teachers and bored civil servants and to quickly hire—as with alternative certification—the able, regardless of their formal credentials...

...The extra dollar the rich man makes would not be confiscated...

...You can imagine how pleased I was, after spending 21 years trying to persuade the press to cover bureaucracy, to see two stories about it recently made the front page of The New York Times...

...What worries me is that too little of the world upheaval may be anchored in real democratic commitment and too much of it driven by a yearning for freedom to consume...

...What made them think these firms had the magic ability to pay such unusually high rates...

...While deregulation, bad managers, and advisers like Greenspan and Angell must rank as the main culprits behind these scandals, the depositors themselves should not be free from blame...

...Controller: "Say again your alternate airport...

...By, for example, using the code for a three-centimeter mole to describe one of two centimeters, they can increase their income by $190 for the same surgical procedure...

...Now comes the news that the co-architect of the interest-rate hedging techniques that helped wreck the recently seized Franklin Savings Association was Wayne Angell, who is also one of the Federal Reserve governors in Washington...

...The FAA keeps telling us that the Avianca crew didn't declare a fuel "emergency...

...Wasn't there an investor greed factor in all this...

...I was, however, depressed by the recent publication of a statement Mandela made about the ANC in an interview last year: "We all accept the need for some form of socialism to enable our people to catch up with the advanced countries of the world and to overcome their legacy of poverty...

...So what improvement will be made next year...

...What is still overlooked is the Monthly's solution to the problem—finance Social Security with an increase in the income tax on affluent individuals and corporations...

...Every one of us who has ever had a really good teacher knows what an exciting and rewarding (in every sense but financial) career teaching can be...

...Otherwise they would not have been surprised at this result of the new legislation: A call to the state Department of Motor Vehicles was answered after just two rings...

...The latest revelation in the HUD scandal concerns one Paul Marguglio, who as executive director of the Passaic, New Jersey, Housing Authority was paid a total of $246,000 for one year's work...

...So the argument should not be between regulation and no regulation but between stupid regulation and intelligent regulation...

...In fact, it's none of the above...

...Controller: "How long can you hold and what's your alternate...

...Of course the FAA does not apply the rule to private pilots, even though they may be flying business aircraft jammed with passengers...

...Whatever the reason, their silence is deafening...

...If the white agents are innocent, why take the Fifth...

...Now, casting is a recognized art—"Casting by" is prominent among the list of credits at the beginning of almost every new film—and the result is a vastly more varied and truer and realer supporting cast...

...Public service...

...If you need a window into the mentality of the officials who preside over the official theft from the poor that is carried out by state lotteries, consider this statement by Joseph B. Jason of the Maryland lottery agency: "They know from day one the only way out of the ghetto is to win the numbers game...

...Is it possible that people really believe higher taxes on the wealthy would discourage economic growth...

...If that's not true of everyone, it certainly is of me...

...Here's the conversation between a crew member and a New York controller 40 minutes before the plane crashed: Avianca: "I think we need priority...

...That better life comes from loving and being loved and from doing work you enjoy and respect...

...Next, when he complained that his floor was dirty, he was told that vacuuming was done every other day...

...Guillermo Ford, the second vice president, is part owner of the Dadeland Bank of Florida, which, according to The New York Times, "was named in a court case two years ago as a central financial institution for one of the biggest Medellin launderers...

...And casting is much better today...

...That's all we can do...

...This is an excellent example of why people hate regulation...

...It also does not apply the rule to commuter pilots—and they fly passengers every day...

...There would still be economic incentives...

...Uncritical admirers of the Fifth Amendment may be interested to learn that white FBI agents in Chicago are taking the Fifth to avoid testifying in a suit alleging racial discrimination by the FBI against a black agent...

...I've got some suggestions for them: First—start your own business, the primary purpose being not to make money but to create jobs and deliver a high quality product or service without harming the environment or endangering worker health or safety...

...To get these people into teaching and public service fast we've got to blast out the various guild rules designed to protect inferior incumbents...

...The result was, just as with the stars, the personalities of the character actors dominated each of their roles so that when you went to the movies you had the feeling that you were encountering the same people over and over again...

...I would love to be part of the decision-making process with reference to what's going on in this country...

...Since I usually belong among those who believe older is better in music, art, and architecture, I have been surprised to find that at least in some ways I like the new films better than the old...

...Even brilliant men of good will, such as Tanzania's Julius Nyere, saw their dreams thwarted by an economic doctrine that simply does not work...

...Last month I complained about the FAA's rule that requires pilots to retire at 60 even if they are in excellent health...

...You of course know about Alan Greenspan's involvement with—and endorsement of—Lincoln Savings & Loan...

...As they fill out insurance forms, doctors choose various codes to describe what they have done for the patient...

...The affluent would still lead a comfortable life...

...They just want to buy things...

...He would be able to keep 50 cents of each of those dollars...

...Among the unfortunate developments described by the story was the tendency of corporate raiders to cut research budgets first as they seek the cash flow to pay the debt incurred by their buyout...

...But the Thompsons of the civil service never stop to think of things like that . . . . Like practically everyone other than the neo-Nazis, I was delighted by the South African government's recognition of the African National Congress and by the release of Nelson Mandela...

...Last month, I urged a much higher estate tax on large inheritances and I have yet to get a single letter agreeing with me...

...If we do what the foes of regulation want us to do—let the market decide—we will let an unsafe airline fly until its record is so frightening that its passengers desert...

...If so, all they have to do is look at the experience of the 1940s and 1950s to realize that high taxes and growth are not incompatible...

...James E. Thompson, the FERC's procurement director, said the money wouldn't do the FERC any good...

...What we need is not a free market but a fair market...

...The new attorney general, Rogello Cruz, has been a director of a bank owned by one of the bosses of the Cali drug gang in Colombia...

...This one was headlined "A Corporate Lag in Research Funds is Causing Worry—High-Tech Edge at Stake—Economists Say New Pattern Cuts Chances for U.S...

...My guess is that most of them have joined the enemy and now are hoping the capital gains tax will be lowered so they can buy that BMW...

...Avianca: "Yes, sir, well, we'll be able to hold about five minutes...

...I was delighted to see an op-ed article in The New York Times called "Next, the 'Flee Decade,' " predicting that the thirtysomethings will abandon their single-minded focus on money-making and seek a better way...

...Second—teaching...

...Avianca: "It was Boston, but we can't do it now...

...Noticing that his office windows were dirty, Fernandez asked that they be cleaned...

...Besides, wise men throughout human history have discovered, as Michael Lewis did at the end of Liar's Poker, that "the proposition that the more money you earn, the better the life you are leading, [is] refuted by too much hard evidence to the contrary...

...He was told that union contracts specify window cleaning once a year...

...In the old days, each studio had a stock company of character actors—e.g., Frank McHugh and Alan Hale at Warner Bros., Lewis Stone and Keenan Wynn at MGM—who were just as regularly cast in supporting roles as the studios' stars were in the leading parts...

...Then when he asked for some yellow highlighter pens, he was told that they would take four weeks to order...