TILTING AT WINDMILLS

...This is because of the selfishness and greed that became fashionable “In World War 11 he was presidents who have had neither the instinct nor the ability to inspire bright people to enter public service...

...As the Monthly long ago pointed out and as has been confirmed by several stories this summer, Stanford is not the only university ripping off the federal government...

...The latest example of current term, as Massachusetts voters now seem to wish, his pension will be $11 1,600...

...The impunity has been extended to cases involving Americans...

...Unless you’re a corporate CEO, I bet you didn’t get a raise like that this year...

...Over the past 30 years I’ve faithfully watched thousands of interviews after football, baseball, and basketball games in which athletes are challenged to come up with answers to usually dumb questions asked by usually white reporters...

...Ranked No...

...The subsequent derailment spilled 15,000 gallons of pesticide and destroyed all aquatic life in a 45mile stretch of the Sacramento River...

...Its dimensions should give you a clue as to how much of the federal budget goes to programs that automatically increase each year and are currently immune to our control...

...Harris Wofford, one of the few white pioneers of the civil rights movement, is clearly better than BCCI’s protector, Dick Thornburgh...

...I have a solution to both of these perplexing constitutional questions...

...Warren Brookes, the conservative columnist whose factual research is usually reliable, has put together the combined pension, survivor, and social security benefits for a senator with 19 years’ service retiring in 1994...

...I have a strong hunch that this research will be heavily dependent on tests that are biased against blacks...

...It is not currently in effect...

...an amusing comment on our ethnocentrism-“My God, that means this is really serious”-but it does remind me that when I first arrived in Guatemala in 1964, I was greeted by the news that the local military had shot and killed an American the day before, so my visit turned into a series of anxious looks over my shoulder at officers of the Guatemalan military, a dismaying number of whom seemed to have retained Manuel Noriega as their eyewear and skin care consultant...

...Even whites whose only knowledge of blacks comes from television should realize this is true...

...Indeed, I would say that on the whole, the blacks have been a bit livelier and cannier than the whites...

...I can tell you that Paul is a much better man than the press gives him credit for being...

...Does this make you feel proud...

...But even if it is adopted, concupiscent attorneys can take comfort in a loophole that accompanies the new rule: When a lawyer in a firm has sex with a client but does not participate in the representation of that client, the lawyer is not subject to discipline...

...On average, the answers of the black players have been just as intelligent as those of the whites, although there are some stunningly leaden minds in both races...

...It’s called the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences...

...Or maybe you remember the outraged response that piece prompted from NYPL’s president and chairman of the board, whose letters pleading poverty and denying responsibility for the branches ran in the September issue...

...Its mission is to provide physicians for the armed services...

...deputy administrator for enforcement of the Office of Price Administration, general counsel for the Office of Economic Stabilization, and general counsel of the Office of War Mobilization and Reconversion...

...The catch is that they have to hang around until 1994, because federal pensions are based on the highest three years of a retiree’s income...

...I n order to feel good about all the pay raises it was giving itself, Congress gave generous increases to other federal employees...

...In 1931, he defended the Scottsboro Boys, nine blacks whom many believe were unjustly convicted and sentenced to death for raping two white women...

...But the military has a scholarship program that does just that, providing 1,100 doctors for the military each year...

...But since 1981, inflation has not been a serious problem...

...He was an outstanding Peace Corps volunteer, displaying intelligence and tenacity in extremely difficult situations...

...They amount to almost $1 million more under the new provisions...

...In other words, a Robert Altman can assure the sweet young thing that if she will only accommodate his desires, a Clark Clifford will be at her side in the courtroom...

...Well, we can only guess that drafting those self-serving letters made the two top bananas feel a little guilty...

...But the actual amount of the pensions doesn’t tell anything like the whole story...

...And if the four-year term is made to coincide with the president’s, we will have a real chance of getting a House that is philosophically attuned to the president...

...It may lack charts and bar graphs, but it is based on an experience shared with millions of other sports addicts who will be able to attest to its validity...

...Although liberal whites will never come right out and say such things, much of their support for affirmative action programs springs not from the reasonable notion that cultural obstacles impede blacks, but from the secret conviction that blacks can’t compete on an equal basis...

...At the end of August, the NYPL proudly announced its decision to provide an infusion of funds to the branches-breaking from its 90year tradition of letting the branches do or die by themselves...

...So if you can vote for him or contribute to his campaign, I urge you to do so...

...Of course, the congressmen probably think they are being modest in their demands, since the pensions of other federal employees arefully indexed against inflation...

...And I bet your future pension didn’t escalate either...

...That’s a saving not to be scorned...

...Leave the Senate as it is, but change the term of House membek to four years while limiting their service to three terms...

...the words “He had little interest” on page 8 1 of the bound galleys, during the seventies and eighties and because of a series of D i d you know that the Pentagon has its own medical school...

...Remember our June story, “Bookshelves of the Vanities,” which criticized the nonprofit New York Public Library and patrons like Tom Wolfe and Jackie 0 for gobbling up tea, salmon, and esoteric special collections while neighborhood branches closed their doors...

...This, I emphasize, is a proposed rule...

...The day of the announcement, we’ve heard, NYPL‘s publicity agents faxed a celebratory press release to a slew of major and minor media outlets...

...For instance, the members of the Senior Executive Service (SES), whose compensation last year ranged from $71,200 to $83,600, now get $84,000 to $104,500...

...This psychic shift has meant that the rest of us have been forced to endure an increasingly mediocre corps of public employees-and that the best and the brightest, who have chosen private practice over government, have often doomed themselves to moral marginality...

...He was a thoughtful senator, and he is one of the few Democrats who realize that the party has some responsibility for encouraging the entrepreneurship that will finance the social programs the party advocates...

...Because Southern Pacific had complained that previous inspections were too tough...

...Why, then, don’t we give 150 more scholarships and abolish the school...

...T h e recent obituary of Thomas I. Emerson, the eminent authority on civil liberties law, after noting that he was “a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Yale before going on to its law school and becoming editor in chief of The Yale Law Journal,” continued: “He went to Washington with President Roosevelt’s New Deal in 1933 and worked in the National Recovery Administration, on the National Labor Relations Board, on the Social Security Board, and in the Attorney General’s office...

...A simple step to control this madness has been recommended by one reputable pension reform organization: Limit indexing of all federal employee pensions (which are already more than two and a half times better than those in private industry) to the level of comparable social security recipients-which would mean no indexing above $18,000...

...How can we solve the problem of permanent incumbents in Congress without sacrificing the wisdom that comes from long experience...

...Indeed, I understand that two prominent conservative social scientists are preparing a study that is supposed to demonstrate that blacks are less intelligent than whites...

...Here at the Monthly, we’re still waiting by the fax for our copy...

...1 in Weapons Sales...

...Thus if inflation is 4.5 percent, the congressmen will automatically get a 4 percent increase, which each year will be added to the base amount on which next year’s increase will be determined...

...T h a t reminds me of another trip I made in 1964, to visit the Peace Corps program in Ethiopia...

...They, alas, cannot be redeemed, but the graduates who will be entering the workforce of the nineties might still be saved...

...My only complaint about Evan Thomas’s excellent new book, The Man to See (an excerpt begins on page 12), is that because it is an authorized biography, Thomas had to give Williams’s widow a veto over alleged factual errors...

...The Pentagon school, by contrast, produces only 150, according to Harry Nelson of the Los Angeles Times...

...But we will still have a Senate elected on the current basis to provide continuity and a brake on the passions of the moment...

...As evidence, I cite the Peters Post-Game Interview Study...

...But what is most shocking to me is that, even under the previous rules, they would-assuming the senator survived for 19 years and his spouse for five more-have totalled $2,453,916...

...Some of you may be thinking that sometimes government is the problem, and that a good lawyer should want to attack rather than serve it...

...It is only being considered...

...The statement was erroneous only to a tiny degree, so Thomas should have qualified it instead of deleting it...

...Ponder for a moment this new rule being considered by the California Bar: A lawyer shall not demand sexual relations with a client as a condition of legal representation...

...If I were black, I would be driven craziest by whites’ assumption that blacks aren’t as bright as they are-or as Stephen Carter puts it in his new book (see Gary Lee’s review on page 55), that “the smartest students of color [are] not considered as capable as the smartest white students...

...This would actually stand a chance of being enacted because it offers the congressman something-the good news that he will have to endure the anxiety of campaigning only every four years instead of every two-in return for swallowing the threeterm limit...

...I have this hunch because all my life experience indicates that blacks are just as intelligent as whites...

...There was no sense that it should be annually adjusted upward...

...This means, among other things, that if you are hoping to be promoted into one of these jobs in the next couple of years, you don’t stand a chance...

...It also means that in 1994, there will be a mass exodus from the ranks of the SES...

...Before and after his government service, Tom Emerson did just that...

...Did you see the headline in The New York Times: “US...

...Charles Peters...

...The key to the increase is a new requirement that congressional pensions rise every year, without a vote, by the amount of inflation minus 0.5 percent...

...TILTING AT WINDMILLS As you probably suspect, current codes of legal ethics provide less than complete protection of the public...

...Fair enough...

...If that sounds extreme, recall that through the sixties, pensions weren’t indexed at all...

...But retired members of the SES are going to live almost as well as retired congressmen...

...More than any other attorney, Williams endowed the hired-gun lawyer with glamor and even respectability...

...I urge them all to ponder what Dean Acheson said (see James Reston’s forthcoming memoir, Deadline) when Reston asked him if he liked being back at his law firm after having served the government: “I hate it...

...I sit here getting more money for more people who don’t need it or deserve it...

...The tragedy is that it would be extremely uncommon among the graduates of the past 20 years...

...Thus after one finds a line drawn through the words “in clients who couldn’t pay...

...Then the double-digit inflation of the seventies made indexing seem necessary...

...Williams loved to excuse his defense of the Jimmy Hoffas by saying that everyone is entitled to counsel, and he did take a few cases that weren’t lucrative, but on the whole he saw his lawyer’s duty as being to represent only clients with fat wallets-or high profiles...

...Senate seat to which he was appointed by the governor of Pennsylvania after the death of John Heinz...

...And if that doesn’t get your dander up, contemplate the social justice of making the taxpayers shell out a similar sum when Jay Rockefeller retires...

...A pension was a fixed sum you knew you would receive for the rest of your life...

...as a matter of fact, to the extent it has been a problem at all, the indexing of government pensions has been one of its causes...

...If you have ever been in Guatemala, you will both understand and be chilled by the following report from Lee Hockstader of The Washington Post: “The Guatemalan military, which ruled the country through a succession of dictatorships until 1986, remains largely autonomous, and no officer has ever been prosecuted or convicted for a human rights violation...

...Two weeks after that derailment, another Southern Pacific train went off the tracks in Ventura County, California, spilling 440 gallons of poisonous hydrazine., . . H ow can we get a more responsive government without totally abandoning ourselves to the political passions of the moment...

...I ask all the lawyers reading this: Wouldn’t you feel better if you had done what Emerson did rather than devoting your life, as Edward Bennett Williams did, to being a hired gun for anyone, however slimy, who would pay your enormous fees...

...And in 1965, he argued before the Supreme Court the case that overturned a Connecticut law banning the sale of contraceptives...

...In other words, the library may have felt trapped into doing its duty this once but certainly doesn’t want to set any precedent that might require generosity on a regular basis...

...Perhaps library officials feared we might notice that the NYPL‘s burst of beneficence was explicitly restricted to “one time only...

...T h r e e weeks before a train from the Southern Pacific freight yard at Colton, California, derailed, an official of the Federal Railroad Administration canceled an inspection of the yard...

...There I met two good men who are now running for office-Paul Tsongas, who was then a volunteer, and Harris Wofford, who ran the program and is now running for the U.S...

...Yet the scholarship program and the school cost the same: $114 million each...

...Such a record of government service was not uncommon among the outstanding law graduates of Emerson’s generation...

...If the $18,000 limit is adopted- in other words, if only $18,000 of each pension is inflation-proofed-the actuarial liability of the total pension system would be reduced by more than $500 billion...

...Conservatives are less hesitant to speak frankly about the matter...