TILTING AT WINDMILLS
Peters, Charles
TILTING AT WINDMILLS W henever you’re tempted to admire George Bush, recall his remarks after being informed of the Rodney King verdict: “The court system has worked. What’s needed now is calm...
...Here’s our monthly taxdeductible vacation bulletin: If you’re an engineer attending the American Society of Civil Engineers convention in New York, you can add four glorious days in Bermuda at the Sonesta Beach Hotel & Spa-“the only beachfront hotel with indoor/outdoor swimming pools and European health spa”-and the rest of us will subsidize a hefty share of the bill because you will be able to say you attended “two half-day sessions on the engineer’s role in facilitating sustainable economic development .” How can lthe millions of American professionals who work con games like this bear to selfrighteously condemn people on welfare...
...Yet only 16 states have laws requiring new road tests or physical examinations for elderly drivers...
...s i n c e the leak at its Bhopal, India, plant that killed 2,500 people, Union Carbide says it has made a major effort to improve its environmental record...
...Watching Clinton speak at a black church, you lcnow he’s comfortable, and so is the congregation...
...When Tsongas appeared on “Larry King Live,” a Canadian caller made the same point...
...880 came from the home phones of two of the governor’s campaign staff members...
...Can you go there...
...Similar assistance is available to congressmen, and all federal employees are eligible for generous health insurance programs...
...Inspired by reports of air travel abuse by Sununu and Skinner, a number of publications have been looking into the federal government’s fleets of military and civilian aircraft...
...Were they so greedy that they had to get out there and make the big bucks instantly...
...But when you meet these fellows for lunch as I do from time to time, you see that the cars they ride in border on luxurious, especially with a driver in the front seat...
...and both did their work with help from the Canadian government...
...They happen to be the same conditions that keep democracy from working in other ways...
...The New York Times reports increasing evidence that insurance companies are litigating legitimate policyholders’ claims instead of paying up...
...When the president needs medical attention that doesn’t require hospitalization, he is taken care of-free-by the White House medical office...
...The simple truth is that after age 75, drivers are twice as likely to be involved in an accident...
...It is in that spirit that I give him this serious warning: If he continues to oppose gays in the military, someone is going to expose the names of the many gays close to him...
...x u may recall Katherine Boo’s moving account in these pages about the marvelous work Washington’s Whitman-Walker Clinic does for people with AIDS [“What Mother Teresa Could Learn in a Leather Bar,” June 19911...
...This would give them time to adjust, relocate if necessary, and get a new job...
...In the process, The Federal Times uncovered another scandal: An audit of government civilian aircraft concluded that 237 planes are missing...
...c harlie McDowell of the Richmond Times Dispatch has always stood out from the gray men of public television for both his good sense and his humor...
...This reminds me of when Nixon tried to minimize the moral significance of Watergate by calling it a “mistake...
...Why should they worry about yours...
...Of course the operation is available here...
...And it would certainly be more objective...
...The pain could be avoided simply by doing what’s right and letting gays serve in the armed forces...
...Further revelations are more likely to appear in the major media, which will be extremely painful for Cheney and the people involved...
...Let the appeals process take place...
...and the cost of silverware, china, and kitchen equipment...
...If we must have a Republican administration, I want Dick Cheney in it...
...Instead, the cars have names like Mercury or Ford, which reek of middle-American modesty...
...We’ve got to stir the pot on this one...
...But don’t let that tarnish your faith in democracy...
...It has to do with official perks and will, incidentally, help you understand why those perks are more than a minor scandal...
...I’m indebted to Amitai Etzioni for the answer, which is: Don’t let each company do its own testing...
...instead, have an independent laboratory, financed by all the companies, conduct the testing...
...The incumbent, Gaston Caperton, won overwhelmingly in the phone vote...
...In Simi Valley, the jury, as almost everyone now realizes, was too white and too middle class...
...Now, however, the clinic is in danger of losing employees because of a radical increase-more than $300,000 annually-in the health insurance premiums it must pay...
...That’s like trying to reassure the soldier on the battlefield by telling him he has to dodge only 15 bullets instead of 30...
...I am a great believer in juries...
...Of course not...
...It will not be this magazine, but common sense tells me that some patriotic gays who know the story will become so incensed by Cheney’s apparent hypocrisy on this issue that they will make the names known...
...The second is when the jury is selected from a population that, rather than reflecting the country as a whole, is confined to one class or race or is otherwise likely to reflect the attitude of just one group...
...Obviously, there should be such requirements everywhere for drivers over 75...
...Besides, the other companies will not want the rogue firm to get away with siphoning off their profits with its flawed products...
...The wiseguys realize such names wouldn’t look good on government documents that might be exposed to public view...
...H ow can we prevent drug companies from concealing test results so we can know their products’ dangerous side effects and other drawbacks before it’s too late...
...Upon closer examination, one usually finds that that price covers little more than the cost of the ingredients, omitting all or most of the following items: the salaries of the cooks...
...But the results, as reported by the Charleston, West Virginia, Gazette, would not comfort me if I still lived, as I once did, near a Union Carbide plant: “It cut airborne cancer-causing emissions in half, from 3 million pounds in 1987 to 1.5 million in 1990...
...You’ve seen the headlines-“Military Likely to Escape Cuts in 1993 Budget,” “Seawolf Saved by Senate”-that suggest the Peace Dividend is shrinking faster than the rainforests...
...When The Washington Post recently looked into this matter, reporters were righteously told that the $5 covered the cost of the meal...
...By now, you are probably aware of the vast fleet of chauffeur-driven cars available to transport Washington officials to and from home (a top hundred or so executives) and to and from lunch, meetings, and appointments around town (here the number of eligible officials has been in the thousands...
...Charles Peters...
...While a few libraries are generously endowed, most, especially those in poor communities, desperately need help...
...As it happens, the two doctors who did the pioneering work that made that kind of transplant possible are good friends of mine...
...I just can’t figure out why he would say that about the bone-marrow transplant...
...When I was practicing law, I rarely saw one reach a verdict I thought wrong...
...The rest of the time they just sit there...
...Instead, let it inspire you to work to eliminate factors like economic disparity and racial prejudice that keep it from working...
...The trick is that the Ford will be a fully loaded Crown Victoria or the Mercury a Grand Marquis with all the trimmings...
...If that’s not enough to worry you, consider another fact unearthed by the audit: 99 other civilian planes owned by the government fly fewer than 100 hours each year-not even two hours each week...
...The interest of the industry as a whole in protecting its reputation for quality would weigh more heavily than the interest of any one company in getting away with something...
...The answer is a writer named Adam Gopnik and an editor named Chip McGrath...
...This particular poll, by WCHS-TV, sought to determine voter preferences in the West Virginia gubernatorial primary...
...They’re motivated, not by greed, but by the spirit of service...
...A l t h o u g h I do not agree with Dick Cheney’s conservative philosophy, I have been a longtime admirer of his competence...
...I have a suggestion...
...So nobody in the Washington bureaucracy has to worry about his health care...
...Ln a Times Mirror poll on this issue, Clinton led Bush by 7 percentage points and Perot by 18...
...But you may not realize how clever officials conceal the comfort level of the vehicles they use...
...One Cheney associate has already been outed but, fortunately for the man involved, not by a mainstream publication...
...These 2,014 calls were out of a total of 2,249 votes cast for the governor in the phone poll...
...But of all the depressing stories I’ve heard, possibly the worst, reported by Michael Kinsman of the Salt Diego Union-Tribune, is that members of the board of directors of San Diego Gas and Electric Company have awarded themselves $30,000 annual pensions on top of their $30,000 annual compensation...
...The insurance company would know, too, and therefore would be more likely to be fair in the first place...
...That experience, along with attending public schools and serving in the World War 11 army, remains one of the cornerstones of my faith in democracy...
...I don’t believe any publication has done more than the Monthly to point out Tsongas’ good side-we took him seriously last year when the rest of the press was laughing at the very idea of another Greek from Massachusetts-but I must say I was deeply disappointed by his lie about the Canadian system...
...Rarely are the cars Lincolns or Cadillacs...
...Speaking of the Gazette, one of its reporters, Phil Kabler, was enterprising enough to look behind one of the 1-900 phone polls that are increasingly being used by television to gauge public opinion...
...and 91 1 were made from the governor’s campaign headquarters...
...The reason is that many policyholders opt to abandon or reduce their claims because of the high cost of going to court...
...They insulate our leaders from our problems...
...I suspect it was part of his pandering to the Republicans, which we criticized several months ago...
...What a case for national health insurance...
...These doctors had accepted a free medical education from the Public Health Service in exchange for their agreement to serve in needy communities for two short years...
...In other words, it might be a good idea to reduce defense spending, but now is not the right time to do it...
...Tsongas said that he might be dead today if he had been living in Canada because the bone-marrow transplant he needed when sick with cancer would have been unavailable there...
...And they wouldn’t even do that...
...It seems we have misunderstood the United Way executives...
...One is when one side can afford to hire a much better lawyer than the other...
...The same goes for his staff...
...Why not cancel the programs but continue to pay the workers their wages for six months or even a year...
...The Rodney King verdict and the riots that followed may have helped Bill Clinton, who many people feel would do a better job of dealing wj th our racial problems than the other candidates...
...Amanda Bowman, who makes $107,000 a year as vice president of New York City’s United Way, says, “I see my career here rather [like working for] the Peace Corps...
...What’s needed now is calm and respect for law...
...Is the president of the United States really unaware that notguilty verdicts can’t be appealed...
...If you seek wealth but prefer education to commerce, hasten to California and get yourself appointed president of a university...
...both work in the Ontario Cancer Institute...
...So there would be no financial deterrent to performing such good deeds as caring for the patients at Whitman-Walker...
...Tsongas smiled sheepishly and avoided a reply by moving on to another question...
...Take Senator Tsongas, for instance,” a former dean of the McGill medical school told The New Yorker...
...Because the people who write “Talk of the Town” labor in anonymity, I asked Robert Gottlieb, The New Yorker’s editor, which staffers deserve credit for the Canadian health care story...
...Tell your friends about it...
...My own feelings are similar...
...Our politicians are either too cowardly to lead or wedded to an ideology that rejects the possibility that any government program could work...
...The doctor says the case is nothing more than “a simple breach of contract...
...If you nee:d,another example of professionals’ lack of ethics, consider the reaction of a local physician after the government charged him and six other doctors with defaulting on huge student loans after they reneged on a pledge to work for the Public Health Service...
...And it would still save a bundle on the overall price of the weapons...
...His desire to be liked b y all may be a problem, but the fact that he obviously lik.es everyone is a great strength...
...If loser-pays were the rule, the policyholder would know that, upon losing, the unfair insurance company would have to pay the legal fees...
...Congress is worried that canceling useless weapons, however desirable that might be, will add to the already high unemployment rate...
...If you live in the San Diego area, this should really tick you off, because both the salaries and the pensions are being financed by utility bills you pay...
...I hope you saw-and will respond to-his eloquent appeal on “Washington Week in Review” for aid to public libraries...
...Both are Canadians...
...As for older drivers, a couple of recent bloodbaths-in New York’s Washington Square and at Chicago’s O’Hare airport-have dramatized the danger that elderly drivers can pose to their fellow citizens...
...When it was submitted on December 20, the CIA’S Task Force Report on Greater CIA Openness was stamped “Secret...
...Or maybe it was just the fear of the American Medical Association and the health insurance lobby that paralyzes so many other politicians...
...If the costs were spread throughout the entire population, groups especially exposed to health hazards would not be faced with paying more for their insurance...
...This is why the perks of officialdom are such bad news for the rest of us...
...It turned out that 223 calls came from the home phone of the governor’s appointments secretary...
...That’s right, nobody can find them...
...But there are conditions under which the jury system breaks down...
...It is an issue that requires leadership from the people...
...T h e r e is another reason-besides cowardice, ideology, and politics-for our leaders’ lack of support for the Canadian system...
...I say this because the regents of the University of California have agreed to pay the departing president, David Gardner, who is retiring at 58, a lump sum of $797,000 plus an annual pension of $126,000...
...Are they parked and forgotten in some hangar somewhere...
...Even worse, how could he have said the system had worked in this case...
...If you subscribe to The New Yorker, save the April 20th issue...
...The average corporate director, as you know, devotes about one day every three months to his duties...
...If you don’t subscribe, get a copy, because the “Talk of the Town” section offers the most concise explanation of the Canadian health care system that I’ve yet encountered...
...The hideous overpayment of corporate executives continues to be one of the great scandals of the era, with 1991 being another year in which declining profits were rewarded with increased compensation...
...In fact, you get the feeling that Clinton gets along easily and naturally with people from all walks of life...
...Some other Washington Monthly causes supported by recent developments include loser-pays rules for court cases and re-testing of older drivers...
...But Kalbler got a list of the callers’ phone numbers...
...This would probably save money because it would eliminate duplication of testing facilities...
...the wages of the serving staff, rent for the facilities...
...When you read about a president or a congressman with serious health problems, the bulletin usually comes from the Bethesda Naval Hospital or the Walter Reed Army Hospital...
...A scam parallel to the Grand Marquis is the $5 typically charged for lunch at various executive dining rooms used by top federal officials...
Vol. 24 • June 1992 • No. 6
