Tilting at Windmills

...P JL rice Controls Don't Work has become the conventional wisdom...

...A JT\.s you have probably gathered, I have a tendency to brag about the Monthly children, the young—of course some of them are now middle-aged—writers whose careers were launched in these pages...

...No human being could ever 4 The Washington Monthly/May 1993 consciously create something this gridlocked and mazed...

...Unlike most media critics, Kurtz does not exempt his newspaper from criticism...

...Two other students rushed to his aid, trying to keep his head back and jaw forward sr> he- would not choke on his tongue...

...Medical technology works overtime, even when the body can't go on...

...Why, on page B-5, of course...

...Write or call today...

...Bob Schieffer, The Washington Monthly At bookstores or from mm BasicBooks ^ A Division o/HarperCollins/W>/tsAe?-5 Has our growing awareness that pictures can be fabricated enabled us to see through the artifice of professional image makers...

...A JT...

...The good Samaritans asked for a 40 minute extension of the exam time-limit to allow them a fair chance to finish the exam...

...The hopes were encouraged by his State of the Union address...

...It is that airline patronage declines in inverse proportion to the increase in flights that require a change of plane at a "hub" airport...

...She is incontinent, racked with pain, unable to drink, eat or even care...

...This volume collects their letters, Rushdie's reply, his essay on his exile, "A Thousand Days in a Balloon," and a chronology of the fatwa...

...More importantly, politicians fear a fight to the death with lobbyists...

...For instance, NBC News' John Cochran, in part of what purported to be an objective news report, declared: In 1971, Richard Nixon froze everything, not just prices on health care...

...You can learn more about Hemlock...

...attorneys who had been appointed by the Reagan-Bush administrations...

...The greatest danger of paranoia is that it takes your eye off the ball...

...The anxieties—or at least mine—were exacerbated by the report in last month's "Who's Who" that members of Clinton's Secret Service detail don't like him—I always pay a lot of attention to how a leader is regarded by his spear-carriers—and by Clinton's leak-a-phobia and evident hyper-sensitivity to criticism...

...The catch is that the CW is wrong, as is much of the "evidence" on which it is based...

...We don't go that far at the Monthly...

...My guess is that there are two reasons for this...

...What did she do wrong...

...Every administration appoints its own U.S...

...So when administration officials recently raised the possibility that controls might be part of the Clinton health plan, the media reacted by once again proclaiming the CW...

...They also demonstrated the moral character required by the profession Is Seeing Believing...

...Double-digit inflation occurred in 1946-47,1973-74, and 1979-80...

...Where did the Journal choose to run this story...

...You should read his new book, Media Circus: The Trouble With American Newspapers...

...9.95 pa, $20.00 cl At bookstores or from University of Nebraska Press 901 N 17th • Lincoln, NE 68588-0520 • 800-755CCAT ress / \I 1105 J. harassment allegation made against Juan Williams by female staffers at the Post at the time that Williams was writing sympathetically about Clarence Thomas's nomination to the Supreme Court...

...What Kurtz fails to spell out is that when a Mike Deaver, a James Baker, or a Dick Darman accepted such invitations, there was often an implied commitment by the inviting reporter to go easy on or, at worst, give adulatory coverage to the big-shot guest...

...One of the more bizarre examples of the latter occurred in the case of Army Lt...

...Frankly, health insurance executives—or even their descendants unto the end of time— do not seem to me to constitute a severe threat to the political future of Bill and Hillary Clinton or the members of Congress...

...You'll recall this advice in last month's column...

...When he stopped breathing, they administered cardiopulmonary resuscitation and saved his life...

...The grieving family looks to medical professionals for answers that may never come...

...Box 11830 Eugene, Oregon 97440 TEL: 800/247-7421...

...Clinton's first reaction to this charge was to deny it in absolute terms in a speech at Annapolis: "Those kind of stories, they're all just made up out of whole cloth...

...In 1946-47, there was a tremendous pent-up demand for products such as automobiles that were in short supply not because of previous price controls but because of wartime decisions to produce war equipment instead of cars and dishwashers and refrigerators...

...In the midst of a bar exam that was being conducted in Pasadena, California, a law student suffered an epileptic seizure, writhing on the floor and turning blue...

...One could argue that the custom is wrong and that attorneys who have demonstrated outstanding ability should be retained, but the editorial criticized Reno, not the custom...

...The latest example is a story by The Wall Street Journal's George Anders that reported, "Two new studies suggest that Canadian hospitals are providing care at costs significandy lower than U.S...

...The Washington Times recently revealed that the Clinton administration has dumped 25,000 unread, unprocessed resumes out of the 40,000 it received from citizens hoping to serve as a part of the new administration...

...comparable mystery is why the Clinton adrninistration and Congress have similarly ignored the news from Canada...

...Prices went up, not 100 percent, but considerably less than 20 percent in the 1973-74 period...

...The only serious (meaning double-digit) inflation we've had in this country in my lifetime was not caused by price controls...

...So why is the money in the budget...

...Most of the time, however, they were smart enough to realize that they could learn from the leaks and knew the worst error they could make was to let press criticism distract them from concentrating on doing the things that count, like creating and getting enacted a health program that is universal and affordable...

...Neither of these factors had anything to do with price controls...

...Hemlock is the leadership group in the Death With Dignity movement...

...The 500 other students who were taking the exam and who did not respond to the victim now know that they made the smart choice...

...I have a theory that has nothing to do with the usual economic explanations...

...Politicians don't like making such enemies...

...This is wrong—way wrong...

...This is believed to aid in source development and to confer bragging rights over rival news organizations...

...PICTURE PERFECT THE ART AND ARTIFICE OF PUBLIC IMAGE MAKING KIKU ADATTO "A frightening reminder of how easily we can be influenced by the images generated by advertising, still photography, and the movies...

...Since the present law permits Jason and Jennifer's parents to slip them a cool $1.2 million tax-free, the estate tax, as regular readers know, seems to us an ideal opportunity to raise revenue and decrease the deficit without doing any harm...

...Even our most senior officers earn less than the average physician...

...Raising the public's share of the roughly $200 billion that gets passed on annually from the present pitiful 6 percent to even 25 percent would yield a neat $50 billion a year for deficit cutting, health care, and other urgent needs...

...There is a Hemlock chapter near you...

...An example from his book is his account of the sexual To whom it may concern, Edited by Stwt MicDonogh In motlition with ArtlclilS The Rushdie § Letters ! Freedom to Speak, Freedom to Write Internationally renowned authors write public letters to Salman Rushdie, responding to the most extreme example of censorship in modern times...

...The estate tax was much higher in the forties, fifties, and sixties, when economic growth and employment figures were much better than they have been in recent years...

...Maybe, you think, the whole matter can be handled by a phone call or exchange of faxes...

...I was reminded of it again when I read with approval what Henry Cisneros said after the first inspection of his new realm at the Department of Housing and Urban Development: "This is an Alice in Wonderland world...

...Ask for Introductory Packet F. THE HEMLOCK SOCIETY U.S.A...

...Sad scenarios like this are played out every day all over the United States...

...Warren Buffett has pointed out the irony of the wealthy sitting around complaining about the debilitating effect of food stamps while simultaneously setting up their children with a lifetime supply of food stamps called stocks and bonds...

...Kurtz criticizes practically everyone involved, most notably Len Downie, the Post's executive editor and Kurtz's boss...

...According to the director of the California Higher Education Policy Center, the new campus is not needed...

...New directions in social legislation are often the result of leadership from the public at large...

...But when Nixon lifted the lid after two years, prices doubled...

...Buffett is against inherited wealth, period...

...In this important book, Kiku Adatto concludes that, in spite of our growing sophistication, we continue to be moved by the pictures we see on television, in movies, and in photographs because they tap into ideals and myths still alive in our culture...

...The lesson for the innocent is don't think just submitting a resume, however gilt-edged it might be, will get you a plum job...

...But what made me even more uncomfortable was that the Annapolis speech went on to accuse reporters of focusing too much on rumors instead of on the successes of his administration...

...T A he dumbest thing that a new administration can do is to be defensive...

...Will a higher tax sap the initiative of parents eager to make money to pass on to their offspring...

...In the latter two cases, an actual or perceived shortage of oil was the main cause...

...hospitals without compromising patients' treatment...

...There is also some intriguing evidence from the military that professional salaries can be controlled over a long period of time without impairing the quality of the professional involved...

...One of Kurtz's recent columns, however, did not seem to me to go far enough...

...Journalists who are quick to see a conflict of interest in others are blind to their own---- Last month I complained about the American media's apparent predisposition to ignore, downplay, or conceal good news about the Canadian health system...

...That's how Janet Reno and Bill Clinton will reveal their true colors...

...There is, however, some evidence, such as New York's experience with rent control, that price controls won't work indefinitely...

...The reporters wanted the White House to waive the rule for the annual dinner given by the White House Correspondents' Association...

...The request was denied...

...And, since the Canadian plan would destroy the American health insurance industry, that industry will fight like a cornered rat to escape its fate...

...One we were among the first to publish is The Washington Post's Howard Kurtz...

...General Barry R. McCaffrey, who alleged that he was insulted by a woman at the White House who replied to his "good morning" with "I don't talk to the military...

...We simply want to reverse the absurd decline in the number of estates that get taxed at all—down from 10 percent to 3 percent in just the last dozen years...

...Yet we have managed to provide them with a comfortable, if not luxurious, living that has, at least during my lifetime, meant that compensation has not been a major reason for leaving the military...

...Janet Reno Starts Badly" was the headline over an editorial in The New York Times condemning Reno for having dismissed the U.S...

...But if you read Ed Rogers' piece ["Transition Admission"] in our January/February issue, you know the Republicans did the same thing...

...The evidence says no...

...P.O...

...L /loyd Bentsen recently inspired a sigh of relief from the affluent audience of PBS's Wall Street Week when he assured host Louis Rukeyser that there was no danger of an increase in the estate tax...

...No public figure in memory has been so capable of arousing both our highest hopes and our deepest anxieties as Bill Clinton...

...The truth is that price controls worked to halt inflation in the 1971-72 period and even more efficiently and dramatically in the 1943-45 period during which wartime inflationary pressures were tremendous...

...But that doesn't mean they can't be used to bring a temporary halt to the kind of inflationary spiral we have had in health care costs and give the country a chance to attack the underlying causes of the spiral...

...And often they're right...

...But sometimes you have to make enemies...

...There were two factors in the rise...

...The major cause was the OPEC price increases of 1973-74...

...The smartest thing it can do is admit what's wrong...

...The only difference is that instead of having to deal with a harried bureaucrat in a grim and grimy welfare office, Jennifer and Jason will sit in leather chairs in the paneled office of a trust department vice president...

...OK, that was a bit severe, but I couldn't resist...

...Authors include Nobel laureate Nadine Gordimer, Margaret Atwood, Saul Bellow, Peter Carey, Gunter Grass, Mario Vargas Llosa, Norman Mailer, Jose Saramago, Gertrud Seehaus, Tom Stoppard, William Styron, Paul Theroux, Dragan Velikic, and Arnold Wesker...

...It's better to get everyone under the same tent so that no one, as LB J so delicately put it, is outside pissing in...

...The central transaction of the dinners," writes Kurtz, "is the wooing of powerful or merely famous guests to sup with a particular news organization...

...The "market" is in vogue among liberal policy makers, and the Canadian plan does not emphasize competitive forces...

...FDR and JFK occasionally descended into this kind of petulance—remember that, in response to critical stories, Kennedy cancelled the White House subscription to the New York Herald-Tribune and Roosevelt awarded the Nazi Iron Cross to a columnist from the New York Daily News...

...Why has the airline business suffered in recent years...

...Charles Peters When Death is Preferable To Life Someone you love is dying...

...This was his account of the White House correspondents' rebellion against Clinton administration policy that prohibits government officials from accepting fancy meals paid for by lobbyists and journalists...

...TILTING AT WINDMILLS I—/eon Panetta, who as the director of the Office of Management and Budget is supposed to be above such things, has tucked $100 million into the budget to build a new state university on the grounds of Fort Ord, which is scheduled to be closed...

...Toll-free with credit card 1-800-331-3761 Available in Canada from HarperCollinsGwMiiiZjJ May 1993/The Washington Monthly 5 they aspire to enter...

...This took 40 minutes...

...hy is it that government employees report in sick one-third more than the average worker in the private sector...

...It's perfectly possible that no one will ever look at the resume unless it is accompanied by phone calls and letters from influential sponsors...

...The minor one was that the economy was stimulated in 1972 in order to assure a prosperity that would help Nixon's campaign for re-election...

...Instead of criticizing her for the firings, the Times should focus on whom the administration hires—on the kind of lawyers it chooses to replace the departing incumbents...

...Clinton later made a big point of publicly jogging with—and promoting—the general, which doesn't exactly sound like he was truly certain the story was false...

...It may of course be only a coincidence that Fort Ord is located in the district Panetta represented in Congress...

...attorneys...

...A few layovers in one of these hideous places are enough to make you wonder if there's any other way you can get there, or do you really want to go enough to endure the hassle...