Tilting at Windmills

...West Virginia's tax authorities, because coal companies have so much power over the assessment process, value the state's mineral wealth, including its vast reserves of coal, at only $2.2 billion...

...But I would caution everyone involved to remember that property taxes are an important element in the overall tax system...

...His argument...

...Washington's make believe is its firm conviction that something has happened when a law is passed when in fact nothing happens until the law is carried out...

...Why shouldn't they have free reserved parking if the senators do...

...It used to be that about six weeks elapsed between the flowering of the forsythia and the appearance of leaves on most of the trees...

...But aren't a lot of the rest of us very busy, too...

...Now it all happens so close together that you still see the yellow of the daffodils and forsythia when the greening of the trees begins...

...There are sensible reasons for taking this step, mainly that it can reduce the gap between poorer and richer school districts by spreading the revenue from state-wide taxes around evenly, as county-collected property taxes usually fail to do...

...A d speaking of the property tax, Michigan and Wisconsin have moved to replace it as the principal means of funding schools...

...The Veterans Administration operates 171 hospitals, many of them underused...

...Another Post article, by Monthly alumnus Christopher Georges, tells why bright young Clinton recruits have already left the administration, quoting one as saying: "I wasn't doing anyone in America any good...

...So I hope the good guys get a good scare and not defeat in the next election...

...Indeed it seems to me that we have a trend toward late appearances by the daffodils and forsythia and earlier blooming of azaleas, dogwood, and other trees and shrubs...

...Jpeaking of coal mines, I want to congratulate Secretary of Labor Robert Reich, who not only recently went down into a mine— which I've long contended cabinet members and the rest of the Washington elite only do in the event of a disaster or a political campaign—but also for appointing J. Davitt McAteer as the nation's chief mine safety official...

...Less than 10 percent of their testimony is under oath now...

...Every two years, when senators retire or are defeated, other senators with seniority move into the vacated space if it is at all pre-ferrable to their own...

...they're merely running for other jobs...

...There is a special ambulance on call at the Capitol as well as access to bargain-priced care at Walter Reed Army Medical Center and the Naval Medical Center at Bethesda...

...Is there any nature lover out there who has an explanation of why this is happening, of why spring is happening to everything at once...

...The CBO was established, and other fact-gatherers and checker-uppers were hired...

...The answer comes from California, whose state officials are now subject to term limits...

...It is the biennial custom of senators to move into new offices...

...But did you also know that during much of the eighties, the CIA agents in Cuba and in East Germany were doubled, telling their Communist bosses what we were interested in and telling us only f what the other side wanted us to hear...

...The result is not an infusion of new blood but a game of musical chairs that simply puts the old gang in new positions...

...Congressmen make $133,600 per year...

...But don't you think Will, from his opinionmaking perch on television, has the effective power of at least 10 congressmen...

...There's no reason to tell readers and viewers who pays him what because, unlike government officials, he doesn't "exercise the power of the state...

...And a lot of people besides senators try to do good and to serve the public interest...

...To reform government, we need for Bill Clinton and Al Gore to try to eliminate the unnecessary meeting and memos, but we also need a little more courage from the bright youngsters who decide to quit too soon...

...ienator Harris Wofford is trying to stop another governmental insanity...

...I was thinking this April of a lovely line of poetry—I can't for the life of me remember from where—"daffodils that come before the swallow dares," because this spring it would have taken a very shiftless swallow not to have beaten the daffodils by several weeks...

...When an agency is young and vital, meetings are rare because people are too busy getting things done to attend meetings or to—and here's the other greatest waste of time—write long memoranda...

...Since two-thirds of property tax revenues go to education, this sum would be more than enough to rescue the state school system from the Third World condition to which the indifference of out-of-state coal barons long ago consigned it...

...The latest evidence is buried on page 51 of the May 23rd issue of Time...

...See "Surprise: The Property Tax Could Be Good For You," Joseph Nocera, May 1978...

...Six years ago an Air Force general wrote, "In recent years, we have lost three B-52s, two C-5s, two other KC-lOs, [he said other because a KC-10 had just burned] an F-4 and a C-130 in similar accidents attributed to the use of JP-4...

...McAteer was born in a mining town, has written about mine safety for this magazine, and has never displayed the slightest indication of being sold out to the coal barons...

...An incidental result of all this, at least in Washington, was a record amount of pollen, which was bad news for hay fever victims...

...That means it was there at least 11 days, and the children of the elite enjoyed what would have cost an ordinary citizen $286 in parking fees...

...There is no better example of congressional insulation than health care...

...The greatest single reform Gore could make would be to cut the number of meetings in government in half...

...I hope Arthur Levitt, the new chairman of the SEC, will take action in response to an anonymous memo that is being distributed at the agency...

...Sonny" Montgomery has been chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee—and that one had to be shut down because of earthquake damage...

...And most of us are aware of the agency's failure to prevent the 1985 escape to Moscow of former CIA agent Eddy Lee Howard and the 1987 redefection of the KGB's Vitaly Yurchenko, who slipped away from his CIA handlers by saying he had to go the men's room...

...The Senate recently voted 53 to 44 to preserve its free reserved parking lot at National Airport...

...So, at the current selling price of coal of $28 a ton, the coal should be appraised at $50 billion...

...That's about four times what the average American family earns and would only seem "bad" to people who are hopelessly out of touch with the average American...

...The wealth tied up in the land grows as property values increase...

...That wealth is just as real as the wealth that comes from salaries, interest, and dividends and should be taxed accordingly...

...I videotaped it...

...Why did it take the Air Force another 20 years to eliminate this obvious danger to service personnel...

...According to a study done for Money magazine by the Harvard Medical School Center for National Health Program Studies, "49 percent of workers employed by doctors with their own practices are not offered health insurance...

...Not having heretofore considered English professors as being especially randy, I was astonished to learn that in a survey of 30,000 male and female faculty members, 20 percent of the members of English departments complained of sexual harassment as compared to 8 percent of those in mathematics and statistics...

...Tilting Windmills Those who suspect laws to protect the disabled may have gone a little too far will have their suspicion confirmed by this Associated Press story from Los Angeles: "The city has ordered an adult nightclub to remove a showroom shower because disabled nude dancers would be unable to get their wheelchairs into it...

...What would the safer JP-8 have meant to the the solders running away from the Pope fireball...

...That disdain is more easily understood when you consider that Will routinely charges $15,000 to speak before groups which happen to have vested interests in how Washington forms its conventional wisdom...

...So in order to protect themselves from the possibility of higher costs, the commercial airlines were willing to see servicemen die...

...The public pays $26 a day for a similar parking space...

...We parked what seemed like miles from the terminal...

...Senator Bradley then asked why the CBO had not sought help from number crunchers in the executive branch, of whom Reischauer had noted there are thousands...

...A time-expired state senator runs for lieutenant governor...

...The Charleston Gazette estimates that this property valuation would yield $450 million in additional tax revenues from coal companies alone...

...Another recent indication of the lifestyle of the media elite was provided by Newsweek's story about the magazine's move to another building in New York City...

...Between the 1960s and the 1990s, the size of congressional staffs tripled while most of the rest of the government stayed roughly the same...

...Not only do the members have one of the most generous health insurance programs in the country but, for an additional fee of $520 per year for senators and $275 for congressmen, they get, according to The Washington Post's Kevin Merida, "physical exams, physical therapy, X-rays, electrocardiograms, immunizations, pap smears, prescriptions, referrals to specialists and other primary care services on-site from the Capitol physician...

...There is no evidence that the nightclub had any disabled nude dancers or that any had even applied for employment...

...Here is the list of Democrats who did not get the point and voted in favor of this free reserved parking: Akaka, Baucus, Biden, Breaux, Bumpers, Campbell, DeConcini, Daschle, Dodd, Dorgan, Exon, Ford, Harkin, Heflin, Hollings, Inouye, Johnston, Leahy, Levin, Mathews, Metzenbaum, Mitchell, Mikulski, Moseley-Braun, Murray, Nunn, Pell, Pryor, Reid, Rockefeller, Simon...

...The solemnity of the oath will remind decent (and cagey) officials of their duty to tell the truth...

...It was depressing...

...with congressional tags were unloading what looked like skiing equipment...

...Maybe you'll get fired...

...The advantage of the move, according to the editor, is that this new neighborhood is more varied...

...I also hope that A1 Gore will realize that this news is true of many other agencies in the government, and the result is, as Cindy Skrzycki's report of the memo in The Washington Post puts it, "the best people are driven out...

...Make believe is, as this magazine never tires of pointing out, the organizing principle of American government...

...The tag was visible, but it was covered with ice and snow and didn't appear to have been moved...

...So Congress will not only get accurate information but will be able to reduce its staff...

...My guess is that the senators who voted for the free parking have made a serious error...

...In Washington, the question being asked is why, even in the absence of term limits, so many congressional incumbents are choosing not to run again...

...an assemblyman in similar straits runs for sheriff...

...during the 1980s, the CIA should have been getting better...

...Fifteen percent of the female faculty said they had been harassed while only 3 percent of males complained...

...The reason Congress doesn't do this is that as a result of the Johnson administration's lies about Vietnam, Nixon's about Watergate and practically everything else, and the subsequent elaborate deceptions carried out by such shell game operators as David Stockman and Richard Darman, Congress stopped trusting facts supplied by the executive branch...

...I was buried in the Treasury bureaucracy, one of about 30 people who took part in an endless series of meetings...

...Since this list includes some of my most respected friends in the Senate, I print it with regret...

...Reality lies in the implementation, which Congress investigates all too rarely...

...By the mid-1970s the Navy and commercial airlines had stopped using JP-4...

...The Monthly's solution to the problem, which we've being offering for more than a decade, is to require all executive branch witnesses to swear to the truth of the information they provide Congress...

...The predictable result occurred in 1990 when a Kentucky woman named Andrea Turner was shot five times in the back and killed by her soldier-husband, who had been released three days earlier from a prison term imposed because of his previous abuse of his wife...

...Even sillier is the time Senate staff members waste in moving...

...The disadvantage: "Saks Fifth Avenue and the Four Seasons are no longer a five-minute walk away...

...Yet by now practically everyone knows that Aldrich Ames' treachery began in 1985 and went undetected for the rest of the decade...

...What's happening is the incumbents are not retiring from public office...

...The senators say the privilege is justified because they're very busy doing good deeds for the public...

...Its budget grew by leaps and bounds...

...Why not refuse to attend pointless meetings...

...This cost $859,000 in 1993 alone...

...A group of teenagers in a Mercedes (A MERCEDES...

...Will said, "the pay isn't good...

...The reason he did is that there wouldn't be any need for the CBO and many other congressional staffers if Congress made effective use of the information-gathering potential of the executive branch...

...That such a thought might occur to their constituents crossed the minds of senators in the most immediate peril of such a possibility is suggested by the fact that 22 of the 26 senators up for reelection this year voted against the free parking perk...

...I dream of the day when all of the talk show hosts ask—as a few have begun to do—why the rest of us don't get the same kind of health care Congress does...

...If we institute term limits nationally, what will be their effect on incumbents who have reached the limit...

...But instead of quitting like a coward, why not be brave and try to do things right...

...The congressional Mercedes was still there...

...Instead of quitting, why not try to change things...

...By the way, for those of you who believe men tend to get overheated more than women, the survey says you're right...

...This is something voters will get mad about...

...West Virginia explains why wealth can be hoarded in real property...

...They don't want to pay for health insurance for their employees...

...w ant to know one reason so many doctors hate the Clinton health plan...

...Killing time before her flight, I checked the VIP parking spaces near the main terminal...

...But something has to wake them up to the fact that the rest of us want our representatives to have the same problems we do...

...When The Washington Post's Howard Kurtz asked Will whether he saw a conflict between accepting steep fees from insurers when he regularly comments on health reform (and in fact takes the group's line that there is no health coverage crisis), Will said no...

...Robert Reischauer, the director of the Congressional Budget Office, was asked to explain why it took his staff 12 weeks to work up the numbers on the Cooper-Breaux health bill, he replied it was because his staff was so small...

...I went to National the next day (one of the joys of retirement is that people think you have nothing better to do than meet them at the airport), and the car was gone...

...And remember George Will's dismissiveness about six-figure congressional salaries...

...In May, for example, Will gave a paid lecture to the Health Insurance Association of America, the lobby that funded the "Harry and Louise" ads eviscerating the Clinton plan...

...Reischauer avoided answering...

...The document charges that the SEC wastes time in endless reviews of even the most routine actions and that rigid middle managers live by the rule of "that's the way we do things...

...Roberts agreed "the pay is bad...

...I was back four days later...

...Especially after they read this letter—for which I'm indebted to The Washington Post's Mike Causey—from a retired civil servant who obviously felt he too had served the public interest and wondered why he didn't get free parking, as well: "I took someone to National Airport this winter...

...Charles Peters...

...It concerns a 1982 law that required military prisons to notify the victim of a crime when the perpetrator is scheduled for release...

...As long ago as the Vietnam War, fuel fires and explosions were, according to The New York Times, "far more likely with JP-4 than any other fuels...

...Yet in what congressional observers say is a classic example of the power a committee chair can wield, only one of those hospitals has been closed in the 14 years that Rep...

...And few, certainly not wise guys like Stockman and Darman, will risk a perjury indictment...

...Some of the 23 soldiers who died at Pope Air Force Base would have escaped the fireball if it had not been greatly intensified by JP-4 jet fuel the Air Force was using despite the fact that it had been abandoned years ago by the Navy and by commercial airlines...

...Several other states are seriously considering similar moves...

...I know you're saying more women go into English than math, but these figures are percentages...

...Last year a Pentagon survey of 13 prisons discovered that not one was complying with the law...

...On which wall should we hang the picture of the state capital...

...Then still other senators move into the offices the movers have vacated...

...The next week I was back at the airport and the car was still there...

...I found one answer, given by George Will and Cokie Roberts on a recent David Brinkley show, less illuminating about the early retirements than about the values of the media elite...

...Because commercial airlines were fearful that a switch to safe fuels by such a gigantic consumer as the Air Force would cause the price of those fuels to increase...

...If an able-bodied person could have been up there doing it, a disabled person should have been able to, also," said Ron Shigeta, chief of the Los Angeles building department's disabled-access division, who added, "That's what it comes down to—you're denying people the opportunity...

...JP-8 spreads at the rate of 10 meters a minute while JP-4 races 230 meters in the same 60 seconds...

...Estimates of the recoverable coal in West Virginia's hills range from 36 billion to 54 billion tons...

...The royalty paid to the landowner when coal is mined from his property is 5 percent or more...

...Am I close enough to the senator's personal office...

...Which office should Jennifer get...

...its number of employees increased by a third...