Tilting at Windmills

...He could even have cited a precedent...

...Charles Peters...

...When Thiokol engineers urged NASA to postpone the ill-fated flight, NASA's George Hardy said he was appalled and asked them to reconsider...

...I was able to get the license plate number of the car, called 911, and paramedics arrived to take the baby to the hospital to be examined...

...The point is, he doesn't know the customers...

...The Washington Monthly's theory on this case—which we published in November 1986—is substantiated by a new book by Christa McAuliffe's mother, Grace Corrigan, which says that even though the assembled families wondered how a liftoff could be scheduled on such a freezing day—"we could see icicles hanging from the shuttle"—Christa had told her mother that the lift off had already been decided the night before...

...The car companies regularly supply their executives with a new car gassed up and ready to go in the executive's parking space...

...That's the way it should be for all of us now...

...And have any reporters told you that in addition to locality raises, civil servants can get "step" and grade increases as well as comparability increases that are based on a phony comparison between real private jobs and inflated federal job descriptions...

...Of course the press won't do this job until editors decide it is a task they should perform and until editors hire reporters who have worked in government and know how it functions...

...For those of you who share my sense that life is a close call in which disaster is just a step away, I offer further evidence that we are dead right...

...For example, Dr...

...The president needs to find a way to foster more boldness and creativity—traits not immediately associated with a cabinet led by Warren Christopher—among his subordinates...

...Newsweek1 s Steven Waldman gives this example from the campaign: When Clinton was being applauded for proposing a program that would reward national service with a free college education, aides quickly learned not to confront him with the fact that such a program would be impossibly expensive...

...This is what insiders call "message discipline...

...I know a lot of dealers and I don't see why I have to buy a car to get in touch with the dealer-customer relationship...

...A recent headline read, "Clinton Health Plan Will Cost People More...

...The same principle applies to health care providers...

...There is a simple example that I have used to show what has to be done...

...Several weeks later we were subpoenaed to appear at the preliminary hearing...

...My guess is that this is because they correctly perceive that he very much wants to run his own show and are therefore unclear what room is left for them to pursue what they think is right without express approval from the president...

...If the president himself has seemed uncertain from time to time—and to me his apparent insecurity has been the most surprising thing about his presidency—Clinton is the embodiment of resolute purpose compared to his subordinates...

...The charges involving us were dropped...

...While serving in the Army in 1945,1 was injured and sent to Ashford General Hospital in West Virginia...

...One illustration of how this lack of experience in government has handicapped Post reporters is supplied by Ann Devroy, one of the paper's White House correspondents, who has repeatedly suggested that the administration has cheated on its pledge to reduce the White House staff by exempting the OMB from the cut even though, as she righteously points out, the OMB is part of the Executive Office of the President...

...My sister was finally called in, with the suspects present...

...In the hospital parking lot, my sister and I made a field identification of the man who assaulted us...

...There are also raises for special skills...

...Bureaucracies are similar in that they too tend to be run less in the public interest than for the comfort and convenience of the bureaucrats...

...No, it said that the plan would cost some people more...

...But there is terrible ignorance in not even being aware of them...

...My sister's newborn daughter was thrown to the cement, my sister was knocked down and I was hit...

...Here in Washington, children are being shot in the crossfire of drug wars...

...Hardy and other top NASA officials didn't want to hear the bad news because they were determined to launch the next day so that President Reagan could point to this accomplishment in his State of the Union Message...

...For others, this fear can produce good results—having Les Aspin clear everything with the White House probably makes sense—but it can also stifle initiative on causes worth pushing, as when Bruce Babbitt was rebuked early on for supporting raising mining and grazing fees...

...This is a fact that the press has miserably failed to make clear to the American people...

...rental of $20 per square foot, that comes out to a savings of $10 billion...

...If you think that the industry proposals to forbid campaign contributions will solve the problem of corruption in the municipal bond industry, consider the many ways firms have found to take care of local officials who could award them bond business...

...And even that increase, mostly due to popular culture's glamorization of alcohol in the thirties, could be avoided if we refuse to repeat for drugs the absurd kinds of movies in which tipsy William Powells were depicted as charming and attractive, and Jack Norton portrayed a falling down drunk as endearingly amusing...

...Nor did a single story ask why we should give civil servants more political rights without asking more accountability from them in return...

...If you suspect I'm carrying this point too far, ponder the case of Jerry M. Brown, medical coordinator for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, who left for vacation the day after the 1989 California earthquake that collapsed the Oakland freeway and started the San Francisco fires that you will remember from television...

...Assuming an average D.C...

...Vll this reminds me that all the efforts to reinvent government will fail unless we find a way to make sure that the bad news will travel up...

...That takes the prize for resolute stupidity...

...So now you know why the bread and milk and the eggs are always in the back...

...Brown explained that he, too, had non-refundable airline tickets...

...Not a single story discussed the issue of accountability or explored the possibly more desirable alternative of letting civil servants choose to participate fully in politics if they are willing to surrender their jobs when their party loses...

...But what any thoughtful student of government knows that The Washington Post doesn't is that the OMB examiner staff should be increased, not decreased...

...I once again came up from San Diego...

...Back to a point that I was making about Bill Clinton: Often, government officials don't want to hear the bad news...

...If Soviet radar had been more efficient and had detected those launches, we would all be cinders today...

...Every story I read, not only in the Post but in other papers as well, framed the issue as being between those who favored political participation by civil servants and those who feared such participation would result in a politicization of the service...

...And of course the mistakes made with alcohol and tobacco must be avoided by prohibiting advertising that makes the consumption of any harmful substance seem attractive...

...Ask anyone who has wasted hours and days in the hurry-up-and-wait of jury service...

...It has $4.9 billion less than is needed to pay the pensions it owes...

...But I'm happy to report that The New York Times, which we've often cited as a sinner on this issue, recently atoned at least partially by publishing an excellent op-ed piece by Melvin Konner making the case for the Canadian system and pointing out that under the current American system, "insurance companies, like Las Vegas casino owners, skim many billions off the top of our health care dollars, offering in return only inefficient administration...

...One way to do this is to make sure the press systematically takes a good hard look at government agencies so that the officials of those agencies will know that it is probably futile to try to contain the bad news since some pesky journalist is likely to come along and report it to the world...

...The costs of some of these trips, by the way, have been paid by investment firms that want to be hired by the board____ I'm afraid I have to add my favorite paper, The Charleston (W...

...As a result, a robber went free...

...Why did they go ahead with the tests...

...People who can pay will pay anything that is asked to stay alive...

...The new president of Ford says, "I have never bought a car in America and I don't see why I should do that...

...Having read all the earlier items in this column that have been critical of bureaucracy, new readers may wonder how on earth I can advocate having health care run by the government...

...If the average is around 250 square feet, then the government will no longer have to pay for 500 million square feet of office space...

...My sister and I waited four hours to testify...

...Youngsters barely into adolescence are lured by the big money into serving as dope runners and hit men...

...TTie word was out that today was the day—definitely...

...A^hen you go to the supermarket, why do you have to walk to the back of the store to find the items you need most...

...In 1971, a New York judge had dismissed a jury in mid-deliberation because the day had arrived for his trip to Europe to begin...

...This raise is supposed to protect civil servants who work in places like New York City where the cost of living is especially high...

...Managerial employees who range from GS-12 to GS-18 in rank have traditionally been entitled to between 150 and 400 square feet of office space...

...We were unable to testify, however, because no one at the court could find the suspects—who had been in jail since July 4. "A new preliminary hearing was set...

...Because the tests had been scheduled...

...One artful way to deal with this difficult matter is to have the subordinate make clear when he floats a trial balloon that he is not speaking for the president...

...See David Segal's article in this issue, page 18.] Another example of the media's failure to understand government has been the reporting of the Hatch Act liberalization that was enacted this fall...

...Tentativeness appears to be the trait that is most characteristic of the officials below Clinton in the new administration...

...William Collins, whose wife Martha Layne Collins was governor of Kentucky, has been charged with getting $1.7 million from bond underwriters in the form of such exotic transfers as investments in his horsebreeding business and a $35,000 piano handcrafted in Germany that Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette, a New York firm involved in Kentucky's bond business, thought would make a dandy present for the doctor's wife____ Last month I wrote about how my wife and I couldn't face buying a new car because we can't endure haggling with auto salesmen...

...This won't end addiction but it will eliminate the enormous illegal profits that attract criminals and lead to violence...

...GM executives get one every 3,000 miles, which is of course usually too early for problems to crop up...

...The American system, with its many insurance company bureaucracies, is less efficient than the Canadian...

...The car was spotted by police helicopter and officers on the ground apprehended the suspects...

...I was a private, but we were in the same hospital being treated by the same staff...

...A simpler example of what the press doesn't know comes from the reporting of the locality pay raise agreed to this fall by the president and Congress...

...Now comes an explanation of one reason why we must all undergo such torment...

...Finally, not one of the stories examined the case for a tenured civil service as opposed to the case for an accountable, meaning removable, bureaucracy...

...The reason the state has to act to control health costs, as the Canadians do, is that because of the life-or-death power of medical providers, ordinary market forces won't hold prices down...

...In 1963, for example, I got three raises from the Peace Corps...

...One missile, according to Scott Sagan's new book The Limits of Safety, was actually fired from Florida over Cuba toward the south Atlantic...

...And no reporter points out that the figure on which the differentials are based leaves out the value of the generous package of benefits civil servants receive...

...But if we let them get away with having a different program, then we may be doomed...

...He knows a lot of dealers for God's sake...

...They had even written a suggested insert for the speech that was scheduled for the evening of the same day the launch was to occur...

...Are people drawn to the board to meet this enormous challenge...

...It has long been my conviction that the purpose of the American legal system is to serve not the cause of justice but the convenience of lawyers, judges, and court employees...

...So the poor souls went off to their deaths all because a bunch of officials in Washington didn't want to hear the bad news that the O-rings in the Challenger's booster rocket might contract cata-strophically in cold weather...

...It's funny that the media increasingly seems to understand the need for reporters who cover the law, medicine, and business to have some expertise...

...The assistant district attorney never spoke up on our behalf...

...I drove up from my home in San Diego...

...The Canadian plan costs less to administer, and again contrary to the impression left by most of the media, it offers you the right to choose your own doctor and has the enthusiastic approval, according to poll after poll, of roughly 90 percent of the Canadian people...

...One day as I was talking to a friend in the lobby, I accidentally backed into another soldier— he was General Dwight D. Eisenhower...

...One reason is that as long as congressmen and civil servants have the same program as the rest of us, I am confident that they will make the system work...

...While legalization may actually result in some increased addiction, the evidence from the period after Prohibition suggests that this increase won't be overwhelming...

...The two most unappreciated (by the media) facts about the case of the temporary secretary of the Army who was caught shoplifting at the PX are (1) the blouse and skirt he snatched were valued at only $30, which to the average woman demonstrates what a deal armed services personnel have in their PXs, and (2) the temporary secretary was on duty only because Bill Clinton didn't get around to appointing his secretary of the Army until mid-September...

...Clinton has my sympathy because this is not easy to do while maintaining a firm grip on the reins of government and avoiding the appearance of an administration in disarray, but he's got to do it if the administration is to be successful...

...The typical executive has "never had the experience of haggling over price and trade-ins, or fussing with matters like auto insurance or registration nor has he had to endure the charms of service managers or the fear that strikes in the heart of almost everybody who confronts the cashier who says the repairs cost far more than expected...

...These questions are, to be sure, not simple...

...According to James Bennet, who covers Detroit for The New York Times, it is because auto company executives never buy cars themselves...

...Clinton is so full of good will and genuine concern and is so obviously one of the most intelligent and well-informed men ever to occupy the White House—in other words, his potential is so great— that one feels a special obligation to try to alert him and his friends to the characteristics that keep him from realizing that potential...

...It is even possible to get several of these increases in one year...

...The sum of the costs is certainly more—when you take a look at the small print, it adds up to $4,700...

...Did the story say that...

...Janet Reno seems to be the only exception to this rule, enough of one that some in the White House are said to regard her as a loose cannon...

...The pathetic frustration of last month's New Yorker who was trying to get a pothole filled is echoed by this letter written to the Los Angeles Times about one woman's experience with the California justice system: "On July 4, my sister and I were mugged in front of her apartment...

...Another of those traits, and one that is equally dangerous to Clinton's presidency, is his distaste for hearing the bad news...

...Gazette, to the list of those who have misrepresented health reform...

...In 1962, at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis, when each side was poised to go to war at the slightest hint that the other was contemplating a preemptive strike, some genuises on our side launched test firings of two intercontinental missiles...

...The District of Columbia employees pension board is in terrible trouble...

...As a result, we realized that we had to set their salaries ourselves and not let them charge us whatever they wanted...

...We were told that new charges would probably not be filed...

...According to The Washington Post, "A seat on the board is coveted because the perks include trips to educational conferences at exotic locations in the United States and abroad...

...Another example of this problem is supplied by the Challenger disaster...

...But in government the assumption is that anyone can do it...

...In this regard it is absolutely incredible that The Washington Post refuses to let its reporters take leave for a year to participate in the White House Fellows program, which is one of the best ways an outsider can get a quick immersion in how Washington really works...

...The copy read, "shirt-tails and sneakers, collars and cuffs, elegance and nonchalance, black and white, fall 1993 is a purely personal unconventional mix that proves individual style is more than just the sum of its parts...

...At this time, one of the defense lawyers requested that her testimony, and subsequently mine, be disallowed, as we had not participated in the lineup and now that my sister had seen them in court, it was prejudicial...

...The only way to end this horror is to legalize drugs...

...Society long ago realized that it could not let policemen, firemen, soldiers, and sailors set their own salaries because they could use their own life-or-death power to hold us up...

...And consider Clayton J. Powell, Jr., the Washington attorney who recently told the court that he had to desert his client in mid-trial because he had a non-refundable plane ticket to Jamaica...

...But what no one reports is that there are no corresponding pay cuts for places like Alabama, where the cost of living is low...

...If A1 Gore and Bill Clinton really do get rid of 200,000 midlevel managers, the salary savings will be substantial and the savings on rent are not to be sneezed at...

...The answer—for which I'm indebted to Vince Staten's new book, Can You Trust a Tomato in January?—is that a 1964 Department of Agriculture study found that it is not the time shoppers spend but how far they walk that determines how much they buy in the store...