TILTING AT WINDMILLS

...Upon rereading, the material seems less indulgent and more damning of the vice president than I had originally thought...

...The purpose of H.B...

...I can remember vacationing in a cabin in the Blue Ridge Mountains that October and feeling that life couldn’t get better than this...

...The “savings” Kelly claimed was the amount of interest the city avoided paying because the bonds were insured...

...I suspect that this has something to do with the persistence of conspiracy theories about the Kennedy assassination...

...So not only is the client overbilled for lawyer time-one Texas law firm instructs its attorneys to bill 115 hours a week even when they are away on vacation-but he also finds himself paying SO cents a page when a copying service might charge S to 8 cents...

...Even if you aren’t sure you’re going to vote for Bill Clinton, I urge you to give money to his campaign...

...Perhaps Boris Yeltsin will turn up a few but my guess is that not only do those MIAs not exist now, they have not existed since our prisoners were returned in 1975...

...They have their own capital with which they can launch new ventures...

...The cost: $45,498 in base pay plus $21,000 in overtime...

...Kelly spoke before the Municipal Bond Investors Assurance Corp., which subsequently received a $3.8 million fee to insure District bonds...

...TILTING AT WINDMILLS one of the military’s main arguments against accepting gay recruits is that the gays may upset the straights by propositioning them...

...w h a t e v e r happened to Hugh Sloan...

...I’ve just finished writing a new edition of How Washington Really Works, the thesis of which is that most of what goes on in government is make-believe...

...The subsidized travel of lawyers and doctors-this summer, for example, lawyers can enjoy rainbow trout fishing while supposedly attending a legal seminar in Alaska-is expanding to other groups...

...He has filed three worker’s compensation claims on behalf of himself, thus far collecting $65,000 on two of them...

...But consider what Alison Leigh Cowen of The New York Times-a name like that deserves two free drinks-dubs the “Platinum Parachute” that Time Warner gave N. J. Nicholas Jr...

...Witness the recent departures from Yale, Columbia, and Berkeley...

...736 in the Ohio General Assembly is to rename the Division of Litter Prevention and Recycling as the Division of Recycling and Litter Prevention and to rename the Litter Prevention and Recycling Advisory Council as the Recycling and Litter Prevention Council...

...A few weeks ago, the Washington CBS affiliate ran a special hour-long program on Middleburg, Virginia, where many of the richest of this area’s affluent live...

...Even the name of the Maryland unit, the Executive Protective Division, is taken from the original name for the uniformed division of the U.S...

...What else can we think when an institution of higher learning runs a conference center that everyone knows is devoted not primarily to learning, but to tennis and golf...

...The answer is that most of the wealthy had a head start through education or inherited wealth or both...

...If they have served in any capacity, it is likely to have been as jurors, which might suggest a way out of the problem...

...I n th e flurry of stories about Sharon Pratt Kelly’s 103 days of travel in 1991, one detail that stood out for me is that the District of Columbia spent $30,000 for the travel expenses of the mayor’s “security officers...

...I should have sat down and talked with him about it...

...In other words, the ,world is greased for them...

...We do a lot of business in Washington, and this really wouldn’t be a good idea for us”-but Bill Richards, the president of Budd, called Sloan in for an interview and ended up talking to him for seven hours, after which he hired him on the spot...

...In other words, since protecting the scenic beauty of the area benefits all property owners in the area, they want the state to pay them to do something that is in their own interest...

...could it really be 25 years ago...

...Why does the governor need a security staff...

...His treasury is tiny compared to Perot’s and Bush’s and, if you believe in democrac you will want to do what you can to make the playing field level...

...In the cast: of lawyers, the subsidy is paid by the taxpayer...

...For me-and for many of my friends-the year was 1963...

...Which companies and which firms are chosen is often related to which firms do nice things for the city officials who do the deciding.When I first read that the late John Mitchell, Nixon’s attorney general and a convicted Watergate felon, was involved in the municipal bond business, I told my friends that this man was not likely to be a stranger to the world of payoffs and other forms of political chicanery...

...The Washington Post’s Phil McComb recently found Sloan working in the private sector...

...She knew that look...

...It didn’t...

...The first meeting of the rechristened council will no doubt deal with the problem of what to do with all that obsolete stationery...

...In relurn, isn’t it fair for society to expect them to pay in taxes an amount sufficient to make sure that their fellow citizens get a fair chance in life...

...The fact is that a lot of companies are qualified to underwrite the bonds, many others can insure them, and many law firms can do the legal work...

...conspiracy theories about the assassination are the right poetry-because the bad guys did want to get rid of JFK and because they gained by his death...

...Follett guarded against this unhappy possibility by painting a portrait of Perot so fawning that it would embarrass even an egomaniac...

...In either case, it’s a racket...

...Why does she need security officers on her trips, even on her personal vacations...

...But if you keep plugging, you’re going to find people who love you for it and respond just as Bill Richards did...

...One is reminded of the disproportionate attention given the American hostages in Iran during Carter’s last year in office...

...His eyes were as blue as the Arctic ocean, and as cold...

...when he was fired a few months ago: $15.8 million in severance pay plus a secretary, an office, and $6 million in life insurance through 1994...

...In Maryland, even the state’s comptroller, Louis L. Goldstein, has a driver-body guard...

...Your example inspires nervousness or jealousy in lesser souls...

...A few days later, it was revealed that William Donald Schaefer, the governor of Maryland, has a 19-member security staff, which ran up a bill of $190,000 in overtime pay alone over the past two years...

...Most employers weren’t eager to take on a whistleblower-“Why don’t you give us a call when it’s all over...

...His job search wasn’t easy back then...

...A concern about Ross Perot: The most persistent preoccupation of his public life has been the rescue of supposedly surviving Vietnam MIAs...

...Officials iit Boston University seem to have: been so impressed by reports such as the previous one that, according to the Boston Globe, they .me considering building a $!i5 million resort and conference center complete with hotel, golf course, swimming pool, health club, and spa...

...I would urge everyone who faces tough moral choices in his work to attend closely to this story...

...One argument opponents of national service use is that the service required is usually for the young...

...the Monthly overemphasizes the role of class snobbery in modem America, but I invite you to ponder the fact that Times readers who present the Hash Dancers ad get a free drink, while Post readers have to pay for everything...

...I f you want another reason not to embrace Ross Perot too quickly, read Ken Follett’s On Wings of Eagles...

...Obviously Americans have a fictitious view of what the job of a university president is really like...

...tendency of state and local governments to imitate Washington...

...So I see the choice as being between In our hearts, we know that the Perot and Clinton, and as of now it looks as though Perot is the pricklier of the two and therefore the less likely to learn from his critics...

...But he may have gone a bit far...

...Its ad in the Times offers “100 international female entertainers” and “corporate and private parties...

...If somebody’s asking you to sacrifice your personal integrity, then they don’t deserve loyalty or respect...

...But back then we knew that they were real and alive...

...I also endorse Sloan’s advice to -Charles Peters...

...It was the quality that cut him out from the herd, made him different from the muss of men...

...Another example of state misgovernment comes from Missouri, where settlements under the workmen’s compensation law soared from $3 million to $30 million in the past eight years...

...I do need to do that...

...Secret Service...

...At the MBTA, it’s both the taxpayer and the subway rider who foot the bill...

...I’ve often wished that I could have started this magazine in 1961, not because Kennedy was flawless, but because I thought he would have responded to tough criticism that was dedicated to encouraging the triumph of his virtues over his vices...

...Life is seldom instantly generous to the morally courageous...

...The explanation for this is that the private lawyers appointed by William L. Webster, the state’s attorney general, to defend against worker’s compensation claims are from the same pool of lawyers who file them on behalf of their clients...

...It seems that firms are now using overhead items like copying, phone calls, meals, and even pens and folders as profit centers, with generous markups of the cost of each item...

...She had seen that determination, that strength, in him when she hadfirst met him, at the Naval Academy in Annapolis...

...That October it seemed as if we had a president who was both brave and wise, who could muster the combination of firmness and reason needed to navigate the Cuban Missile Crisis and then negotiate the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, who could stand up to the big steel companies and corrupt labor unions, who could inspire a spirit of service among our best young people, and who learned from the Bay of Pigs how to stand up to the CIA and the Joint Chiefs...

...The Wai‘l Street Journal editorial page recently featured an article by Herbert Stein, Nixon’s chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, saying in effect: Wh,at’s wrong with the top I percent of Americans getting 70 percent of the wealth if they earned it legally through their labor and investment...

...a young person confronted with similarly suspicious activities at work: “You have a perfect right and should always ask why, and you should be very nervous when somebody tells you that it isn’t any of your business...

...Remember that this is payment An incidental fact noted by Bill McKibben in his fascinating The Age of Missing Information is that “a higher proportion of Americans reported being very happy in 1957 than any time since...

...The Budd Company, an auto-parts manufacturer had hired him after he left CREEP...

...o n e of Sharon Pratt Kelly’s trips was to Naples, Florida, where she stayed at the Ritz Carlton Hotel...

...But last month, it ran a good article by Sharon Walsh on overcharging by law firms...

...Americans pay six times more...

...The right poetry, however, is not always the truth...

...Why not have shortterm or part-time tasks that citizens could perform as part of their national service commitment...

...It certainly confirms my own observations...

...The answer to the problem of propositioning, then, is not to exclude gays, but to throw out anyone, gay or straight, whose propositioning becomes insistent enough to amount to harassment...

...One example is the authors’ account of how assiduously Quayle followed up on his legal reform initiative: “In an interview just before the initiative was made public, Quayle volunteered that ‘I’ve got to sit down with Joe Biden [the Democratic chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee] sometime just to see how interested he is in cooperating.’ “Yet nearly four months later, as Congress was preparing to adjourn for the year, Quayle said he had not gotten around to seeing Biden...

...This account of the rescue of the EDS hostages in Iran was commissioned by Perot, who retained the right to review the manuscript and fire the author if he didn’t like it...

...But I think it will have an edifying effect on the straight males, for they will find out what women have to endure from them...

...In May, according to the Boston Herald, “a band of Metropolitan Boston Transit Authority retirement officials jetted out . . . to sun-splashed Disney World for a pension fund seminar, but they were virtual noshows at the conference’s working sessions...

...Yet it wrongly describes the events of the assassination...

...E r an other illustration of the superiority of the Canadian health care system to the one in the United States, compare the out-ofpocket costs of Canadians and Americans who are 75 and over...

...One time, the lawyer claims, he hurt himself opening a file cabinet...

...When I think of the current candidates, I know there is no chance that George Bush will respond to such criticism...

...The municipal bond business is an area of potential corruption that too many city hall reporters have neglected out of ignorance...

...Tutoring underprivileged youth is a good example of a great need that could be met by part-time service...

...I have no doubt that this will happen from time to time...

...Similar savings could have been realized by insuring the bonds with any reliable company...

...Another claim involved “ove.rexertion with briefcases...

...I am indebted to Barbara Lippmann of the New York Daily News for spotting an interesting difference ‘in the ads a Broadway club named Flash Dancers runs in The New hrk Times and The New York Post...

...The point has merit, especially when one considers that since the mid-sixties, the educated and affluent elite of this country have generally avoided any kind of service, military or Peace Corps, so that there is a vast number of qualified people under SO who have never served their country...

...He came into the kitchen with his face set...

...It was not just anger: He was not the kind of man to dissipate his energy in a display of bad temper...

...Having begun the race ahead of the rest of us, many are able to buy investment and legal advice unavailable to the masses...

...T h e weekly Washington Business section of the The Washington Post is noted more for press agenting than for serious critical journalism...

...A month later came the Kennedy assassination, followed quickly by Vietnam, Watergate, and the death of the optimism about America and its future that had peaked for me and so many others in 1963...

...He also happened to be the most generous contributor to the attorney general’s political campaign...

...Thus attorney A from the clique has a good reason to approve a high settlement for attorney B, who is also a member, because next time attorney B may be in a position to approve a high settlement for attorney A. The result is that settlements from one clique member to another were three times larger than when lawyers from outside the club were involved...

...When he got that look in his eyes you could no more stop him than you could stop a railway train on a downhill gradient...

...It seems that the big issue among the landed gentry there is that they should be given tax reductions in return for granting scenic easement...

...Clearly there is little chance that they exist in a number that could justify the priority Perot has accorded this matter...

...It meant he had decided to do something, and he would move heaven and earth to get it done...

...One illustration of Follett’s hagiography: Margot pricked up her ears when she heard Ross say damn: it was most unusual for him to curse, especially in front of the children...

...Her expenses were paid and she received an honorarium of $2,000...

...The reality is a combination of miserable money grubbing and boring faculty meetings that is driving incumbents away in record numbers...

...How, you might wonder, can a lawyer have a work-related accident...

...Why, they say, should everyone else escape...

...In the case of Kennedy’s death it rightly portrays the struggle between the good in Kennedy and the bad in his enemies...

...Maybe makebelieve is taking over education, too...

...One of AARP’s most lucrative businesses (more than $100 million in profits annually) is the sale of health insurance to the elderly to supplement Medicare coverage...

...Jury duty is accepted because it takes a bearable bite out of the life of a mature adult...

...not for success, but for failure, and you get a glimpse of what’s wrong with corporate America today...

...Their real estate is usually assessed at a lower percentage of value than i.hat of the average citizen...

...Kelly insists, “I did the speaking for just one purpose-to achieve a savings for the District, which we did...

...Post readers, on the other hand, get an easier-todecipher message: “One hundred topless international dancers” featuring “Lotta Curves (Miss 1992 Melons...

...By the way, that comparison of Canadian and American health costs for the elderly helps explain why the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) doesn’t want the United States to adopt the Canadian system...

...One member made $500,000 suing the fund last year...

...He was &e of the geniine heroes of Watergate: the assistant treasurer of CREEP who had the courage to resign when the aroma got gamey-and subsequently had the courage, although he and his wife (who was still working for Nixon) were clearly scared to death, to give crucial information to Woodward and Bernstein...

...Sometimes you probably think And sometimes I’m sure you think we complain too much about executive compensation...

...Oh, he had other qualities-he was smart, he was funny, he could charm the birds out of the trees-but what made him exceptional was his strength of will...

...The practice has become so absurd that even the football coaches at many state universities have police details assigned to them on game days...

...It was a look of inflexible determination...

...They receive entitlement benefits they don’t need and that are financed by a disproportionately high tax burden on the average citizen...

...r e Washington Post’s BroderWoodward articles on Dan Quayle have just been published in book form...

...I f you doubt that a democracy depends upon a well-informed public, consider a recent Yankelovich poll in which 38 percent of adult Americans said they would most like their child to grow up to be a universitypresident, as opposed to only 7 percent who chose president of the United States...

...They are able to get laws passed that also ease their path to additional wealth...