Tilting at Windmills

...Does he really look forward to a similar response from the audience when several years hence another budget director describes similar shenanigans as "Darmanesque...

...Even after Doe staged a blatantly corrupt election in 1985, Chester Crocker, the assistant secretary of state for African affairs, said, "There is now the beginning, however imperfect, of a democratic experience...

...The catch is that when top managers want results fast, the message they consciously or unconsciously transmit to those down below is that they want action, not tiresome news about problems...

...Which reminds me that we haven't had an "Only in California" section for a long time, so here goes: The East County Jail in San Diego County cost $38 million to build but has walls so flimsy that inmates can literally kick their way out...

...When Richard Darman took over the Office of Management and Budget 18 months ago, there were three steps he needed to take to assure that OMB would foresee and prevent scandals such as those involving HUD and the S&Ls...

...I have long admired the care the Ohio bar devotes to its Continuing Legal Education Seminars...

...Members will stay at the Acapulco Princess, "situated on nearly 500 acres of tropical splendor" where the amenities include five pools with "everything from waterfalls to swim-up `wet' bars...

...This spring I asked a trusted friend who once worked at OMB and still knows a lot of people there to find out if the situation had changed...

...My apologies to Toby Moffett, who, contrary to what I said last month, is not an incumbent but a former congressman, and to Dale Austin, whom I mistakenly called David...

...Finally, in case Captain McLaughlin is thinking of suing the contractor who built the East County Jail, he should know that the judicial precedents are not promising...

...The second was that he was one of a handful of journalists who openly supported FDR in an era when conservatism almost completely dominated the organs of opinion...

...He adds that he makes 20 to 25 speeches a year...

...Translated from upper-class legalese, this means don't use associates when you can use partners, because we can bill a lot more for partners...

...Wouldn't you be willing to give up just one aircraft carrier to save these lives...

...Remember how the urgency to launch caused mid-level NASA and Morton Thiokol officials to suppress the concerns their subordinates felt about the defective 0-rings...

...Ironically, most of them are for minor traffic infractions...

...She visited India, Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Indonesia, and the Soviet Union...

...Anyone who knows Washington knows that the idea a couple of bright Washington lobbyists came up with over lunch one day will provide them with a comfortable retirement...

...Chancellor W. Ann Reynolds of the California State University system wanted to buy six cars for her vice chancellors, who had previously been subjected to the indignity of having to check vehicles out of the motor pool...

...In Moffett's case, my error obscured for Connecticut readers a really important point I was trying to make, namely, that one of the saddest things that's grown out of the madness of PAC money is that decent men have gotten into the game of trying to outmatcho and scare away potential opponents by exploiting their incumbency to raise campaign funds of intimidating dimension...

...Examples include 73 percent of Bill Bradley's money, 87 percent of Al Simpson's, and 96 percent of Al Gore's...

...Here's an addendum from the field of motor car magazines...

...So, if you're from Ohio, I would opt for Acapulco...

...Over their second Evian with lime, one said to the other, "If I had a book I could pull off the shelf and look up consumer warning labels and know which congressional staffer to call about it, that would make my life easier...

...David Stockman, who was once described, as Darman is today, as the smartest man in Washington, is now the butt of jokes as the man who fiddled with the books while refusing to hire the examiners who could have helped prevent the S&L disaster that was brewing...

...Regular readers will know how much I admired Mickey Kaus's attack in the May 7 New Republic on the Money Liberals who would solve all social problems with higher taxes and increased benefits...

...It was a miracle others weren't injured, including pupils from two nearby schools...

...It was no, nothing had changed...

...Charles Peters...

...But I don't want lawyers outside Ohio to feel deprived...

...Two speeding police cars ran into each other at a Washington street corner last month...

...One can't help wondering just what he has done to discharge that indebtedness...

...My concern may prove groundless if, as I suspect, most of the tax-averse liberals don't have time to read The New Republic because they're so busy perusing the financial press...

...Michael Herr's new novel based on the life of the famous gossip columnist, Walter Winchell, reminds me that Winchell played two crucial roles in American history, one dubious, the other heroic...

...There is a new champion and again we must look to the great state of California...

...The brochure states without qualification, "Please note that a seminar in Mexico is considered the same as a domestic meeting for IRS purposes," and, as all good lawyers know, that means the rest of us are sure to foot most of the bill...

...A glimmer of light was cast on the answer by a story that was buried in the back pages of The New York Times of June 1. It seems that John V. Brennan, Nixon's former military aide, and the estate of John Mitchell, the former attorney general, have won a judgment for fees due Brennan and Mitchell for negotiating the sale of military uniforms by Romania to Iraq...

...Gasoline spewed from the cars...

...The champion has to be Willie Brown, the speaker of the California Assembly, who managed to pull in $42,150 in speaking fees last year...

...Marks Bookstore RCA Building Citicorp Building danger of an increase in the estate tax so that "you could no longer bequeath $600,000 tax-free to your heirs...

...The lesson for managers everywhere is that when you tell your organization to rush—which you often must do, given the normal bureaucratic tendency toward lethargy—you also must take special steps to make sure you hear about the problems created by the pressure to produce results fast...

...Twenty-seven thousand children die each day on this planet from causes that could have been prevented or treated effectively—from diseases they could have been immunized against, and from diarrhea and from pneumonia, both of which could be cured...

...Although American foreign aid has enjoyed some success, as, for example, with the Marshall Plan, all too often it has been a story of large sums squandered on one corrupt tyrant after another...

...The plans called for concrete walls four to seven inches thick, but "what we've got," according to Sheriff's Captain Benny McLaughlin, "is drywall, empty space, and four inches of styrofoam...

...This year, I'm happy to report, the State Bar Association quickly settled on one setting as just the place to crack the books—Acapulco...

...Why should wealthy New Yorkers and Californians be able to influence an election in Tennessee...

...You will begin to see the income potential when I tell you that the book costs $199.50 and there can be many more volumes, since more than 13,000 congressional aides are not yet included...

...On many of these trips, our legislators not only have their expenses paid but also receive honoraria...

...Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft...

...In June the answer came back...

...Remember our article on journalistic honoraria...

...So far there have been 11 escapes...

...This may have been slightly preferable to having Mrs...

...We were actually subsidizing a third of Doe's annual budget...

...Recall last year's long debate as members considered whether Vail or Aspen would be more conducive to the pursuit of legal scholarship...

...In his later years he became an increasingly demented McCarthyite...

...One thing you may not realize is that these groups often pick up the tab for the lovely wife as well...

...The Times also notes that "former Vice President Spiro T. Agnew played a role in the transaction...

...The amount claimed was $3.3 million...

...Does this make any sense at all...

...Senator Alan Dixon of Illinois, who owns a condominium in West Palm Beach, managed to get his roundtrip airfare from Washington to Florida paid for on five separate occasions during 1989...

...The Washington Post's Dale Russakoff explains why: "Washington offices of businesses and law firms generally don't have to check with headquarters before making purchases of under $200...

...So Reynolds bought Tauruses at a total cost of $99,998.70...

...So when test results said the compressor hadn't failed short-term tests, middle-level executives rushed the glad tidings to their superiors, soft-pedaling evidence from lower-level employees doing the testing that the windings on the motors were discolored, that bearing surfaces were worn, and that some parts had a black oily crust—all of which indicated that the compressor would fail over a longer period of operation...

...The absurd tragic truth is that the chases look like so much fun in the movies that cops can't resist turning on the siren and flooring the accelerator at the slightest excuse...

...The Queen Elizabeth 2 is offering two continuing education programs on its August 4-9 Atlantic crossing...

...The impact was horrendous," said a witness...

...The result is, according to Bradley Inman of the San Jose Mercury News: "Many developers are setting up new corporations for each project they build and dissolving the corporate entities when the projects are complete...

...Seventeen of the 31 senators running for reelection this year are receiving more than half their campaign funds from outside their own states...

...The immunizations and treatments needed are cheap...

...According to the World Health Organization, they would cost only $2.5 billion for one year...

...Papers filed in the lawsuit," according to the Times, "indicate that the deal was put together at two meetings, one at the Four Seasons Hotel in Washington and the other at the Hotel Scribe in Paris...

...gave Doe's government more aid per capita than it gave any other country in Africa...

...The result is The Almanac of the Unelected, a guide to 660 congressional staff members, telling what subjects they work on and providing short biographies, even including whether they root for the Redskins or the Capitols or the Bullets so that the lobbyist can come up with the right small talk...

...Five policemen were hurt, two critically...

...The latest example to come to light is the on-his-way-out president of Liberia, Samuel K. Doe, who, according to The Washington Post's Blaine Harden, "presided over a decade of secret executions and public cannibalism, rigged elections, and raging egotism...

...This sort of thing happens far more often than most people realize, and the toll is almost unbelievably high...

...Last November, Jason DeParle reported in these pages that as of that time, none of these steps had been taken...

...David E. Davis Jr., the editor of Automobile, says, "If Ford or Volkswagen want me to speak to dealers at a sales convention, my fee is $5,000...

...But the American Lawyer's Steven Brill has uncovered a memo from Rodney Dayan, the co-chairman of the firm's management committee, that suggests that, alas, even a name like Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft, not to mention one like Rodney, is no guarantee against chicanery at the bar...

...A law firm with a name so reeking of the soundest respectability surely would not stoop to bilking its clients—or so most of us would assume...

...In certain circumstances" and "may be partially deductible" do not inspire serene confidence that the taxpayers will be stuck with the bill...

...He thus became indebted to Pratt & Whitney, BellSouth, the Olin Corporation, Barnett Banks, Inc., and the Chicago Board of Trade...

...And of that handful, only two—Winchell and Drew Pearson—enjoyed wide circulation...

...GE thought it had developed the compressor of the future and rushed it into production...

...Third, and most important of all, the examiners need to understand that their highest duty is not to juggle numbers to meet budget targets but to determine whether the programs they oversee are working and are needed...

...In Sacramento, Governor George Deukmejian named as a deputy affirmative action expert, at a salary of $59,274 a year, one Ernest Wayne Michael, whose previous experience was in growing rice and raising pigs...

...It also flourishes in state capitals around the country...

...Of course, fund-raising is not always the purpose of these trips...

...For example, the "Money Update" column in the June issue warns readers about the Dear Reader, The Washington Monthly can be found in the following newsstands in Manhattan: World Trade Center Pan Am Building St...

...Senators have to travel in order to raise such funds, which helps explain why they accepted more than 500 expense-paid trips from corporate or trade groups last year...

...Vanderbilt at the top, but it did immense harm in causing everyone to think like a press agent...

...They were recommended for it by Richard Nixon in a letter to his friend Nicolae Ceausescu...

...Their favorite publication has to be Money magazine, which combines moderately crusading advice to the consumer—how to keep your Jaguar dealer from overcharging—with fiscal positions that would fit comfortably into any Republican platform...

...Yet between 1980 and 1985, the U.S...

...Stephen Solarz, the spouse of the chairman of the Asian and Pacific subcommittee of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, got four trips abroad paid by private groups last year...

...An Ultra Deluxe outside cabin for two is available for just $10,380...

...Marty Russo, for example, got free trips to three golf tournaments plus $1,151 in golf-related gifts...

...Sometimes they're just for good, clean fun...

...The California Court of Appeals has ruled that a homeowner who discovers his house is falling apart can't sue the builder if the builder has dissolved his corporation...

...TILTING AT WINDMILLS How have the alumni of the Nixon administration made out since the disgrace of Watergate...

...It did fail, costing GE at least $450 million...

...One was to hire about 400 more examiners, enough to make sure the examiners could cover the executive branch thoroughly, spending sufficient time in the field to be able to spot serious operational problems as they cropped up...

...The QE2 people use some weasely language about tax deductibility...

...Does he really think he's in demand because of his eloquence...

...But I was afraid they were becoming paralyzed by conscientiousness...

...For example, Mrs...

...Indeed, when in recent budget negotiations Darman dismissed some obvious fiscal flummery as "Stockmanesque," everyone laughed...

...A word of caution...

...How did Mitchell and Brennan secure this lucrative assignment...

...Smoke rose from the wreckage...

...These mistakes embarrass me, each for a different reason...

...But these readers will also understand how troubled I was by Kaus's failure to appreciate the aid and comfort his arguments could give to another—and to me now more dangerous—group of Money Liberals, those who have grown affluent enough to share the traditional aversion of the wealthy to income and estate taxation, however worthy the cause for which the tax revenue would be spent...

...Last year, NBC news reported that 250 people annually are killed and thousands injured as a result of these police chases...

...Getting a name wrong is always bad, but when you do it while trying to congratulate someone, it's like the time they misspelled your name on the first medal you got at camp...

...Another was to change the kind of person who is hired as examiner—from the bright and well-educated but inexperienced in government to the bright who either have the experience to know where the bodies are buried or who have the investigative skills to find them anyway...

...So, if you admired Roosevelt as I did, you were grateful to Winchell at least until April 12, 1945...

...A recent report reveals that 32 senators kept $35,000 each in honoraria...

...It's like one of those benefit concerts where you can't believe even more legends are waiting in the wings as still another strolls onto the stage...

...At the same time it tells you how to buy a "sinuous Donghia sofa" without having to pay the usual 33 to 40 percent markup on the $3,500 wholesale price...

...This practice is not confined to Washington, however...

...The ability to avoid the burdensome regulations affecting official purchasing has long been one of the most prized of bureaucratic skills...

...He's the Baltimore writer who picked the Kentucky Derby winner all the other experts didn't...

...The first was that he was the pioneer in placing the celebrity at the peak of American culture...

...The memo, concerning a subject dear to the heart of the legal profession—how to increase billable hours—contains these seemingly innocent words: "The suggestion is that retention and use of senior associates who are not destined to make partner detracts from the use of underemployed partners...

...Purchases of more than $100,000 have to be reported to Sacramento, where they might excite undue interest on the part of legislators and other public officials, not to mention the press...

...What had Mitchell and Brennan done to earn this sum...

...Incidentally, the $199.50 price represents another version of that game those California State officials were playing with the Tauruses...

...If you are a student of why organizations go wrong, you will find illumination in the tale of General Electric's faulty refrigerator compressor...

...However, she realized that because the state was cracking down on faculty salaries and other expenses at the state universities, it might not be wise to attract attention to the purchase of the cars, especially since she was already giving the vice chancellors salary increases of from 15 to 26 percent...