Tilting at Windmills

...If the work didn’t pay pretty well, there wouldn’t be many attorneys out there...

...I too would be irritated by the too-quick renewal notices...

...One named William D. Owen got a state license and went right to Gork stealing credit cards and checks from mailboxes of houses he had been lured to guard...

...But what is most troubling about my conversations with Sy is how often he said “bullshit” to the lines of inquiry I suggested, even when I was identifying sources I knew would give some support to his case...

...There’s no statutory requirement that says they ever need to show up...

...LBJ wanted to show the electorate that he could be tough...

...So the television networks ran lengthy retrospective segments reininding everyone of the humiliation we had suffered ever since...

...The result was that Carter’s ratings in the polls, which had been running practically even with Reagan’s, went into a free fall, fully confirmed by the voters the next day...

...Why this burst of creativity...

...Time and again, we learn how little the White House knows about what executive agencies like the FBI and the IRS have been doing...

...Not so, says the rumor mill...

...Goodwin’s Wait Till Next Ear, in telling the story of her years as a Dodgers fan, perfectly captures a slice of life in the late ’40s and early ’SOs...

...Louis Cardinals in a crucial game in early August...

...The Cardinals, featuring Stan Musial and Enos Slaughter, had dominated the National League thus far in the OS, winning three World Series...

...Dmocratic fundraising has been inhibited by the campaign finance scandal and the Democratic NAtional Committee, instead of having money to hand out, is in debt...

...According to a recent article in The New Yoi-k Tinies, you can even find a restaurant called the Buckin’ Bagel on Main Street in Boise, Idaho...

...But it wasn’t just a couple of guys standing around...

...Another factor in my curiosity was that I had reason to believe that some of my colleagues had suspected me of Boy Scout tendencies and may not have been excessively frank with me...

...The memo says “Senate Republicans need a lot of help from their friends on the outside” and that Trent Lott’s office had told them to “get off your butts, get off your wallet.,’ There was a ray of hope that the health insurers might be reasonable about this matter...

...IS IT POSSIBLE THAT THE FLOOD of lawsuits might ebb, that the steady growth of litigation in our society might cease...

...1 HAVE AN IDEA FOR A BOOK...

...You may think you’re getting a bargain when you see those “5.9 percent APR’ offers, but the catch is that they boost the rate after a few months...

...ANOTHER ILLUStration of our point that, although an extreme version, the faults of the District of Columbia government are nevertheless typical of local government: The Washington Post reports that the District’s Department of Corrections does not monitor overtime to determine whether the hours were actually worked...

...The memo that appears on page 16 of this issue is from Melody Harned to Michael Fortier...

...Inspired by the success of Scott Turow, John Grisham, and David Baldacci, “thousands of lawyers are carrying novels-inprogress in their briefcases,” according to The Washington Post’s David Segal...

...There’s one problem with the lats, according to air-safety expert Peter Friedman: They don’t fit properly on the Pratt & Whitney engine that powers the DC-9...

...The military columnist Ernest Blazar says that readiness reports are being inflated and that troops are training- less...

...This time, they want to lull proposed bills of rights for managed care patients...

...Since it was the Spectator‘s report that originally upset her and her husband, why is she now willing to forget about it...

...The reason we do this is that we need the money...

...Government Failings Affect Lives” was the headline above a recent article in The Washington Post by Vernon Loeb...

...They would still be compensated for actual medical costs and for lost earnings...

...Beschloss confirms a hunch I had back in 1964 that the motivation for the Gulf of Tonlun resolution was not foreign policy but domestic politics...

...Managers are part of the problem-too many chiefs too many of whom are less than able, which means that the good city employees suffer for being badly led...

...One was Eugene McCarthv’s refusal to endorse him until it was too late...

...Why aren’t there more stories like this...

...But an even bigger problem is that there are too few good employees...

...When he got on base Robinson threatened to steal on every pitch...

...LBJ wanted to show the electorate that he could be tough...

...PRIVATESE CURITY GUARDS HAVE become a big business...

...They are used to muffle the noise made by jet engines...

...This would make a great project for Doris Kearns Goodwin or Wchael Beschloss, whose remarkable talents are on display in two books published this fall...

...The control board keeps saying the problem is one of management...

...I wouldn’t be a bit surmised to learn that this is true in a good many other states...

...Many wear uniforms and look just like regular police...

...In Virginia, the Democratic candidate for governor, Don Beyer, misrepresented his opponent’s stand on abortion...

...Why then did they have, according to reporter Willy Stern, a closed door meeting in Kansas City last September “to discuss DC-9 hush kit issues...

...Many are incompetent...

...I first went to Ebbets Field in 1947 to see the Dodgers play the St...

...The way it is now, an ax-murderer . . . can come to California to be a securitv ward and we would never know it...

...Both work for the Health Insurance Association of America, the outfit that sponsored Harry and Louise...

...The reason is that having a policy carried out in the right way is just as important as having the right policy...

...In Hubert HumDhrev’s case I , there was not one dagger...

...y the Desert One fiasco-did to Timmv Carter in 1980...

...As we reported last month, three HMOs, including HIP Health Insurance Plans, came out for “legally enforceable national standards” to protect managed care patients...

...They went on to win the pennant that year and became the league’s top team for the next decade...

...I’m delighted to report that there is indeed a glimmer of hope...

...There is one anecdote in Sy’s book that I repeatedly warned him rang of falsity...

...THE CLINTON WHITE HOUSE’S ignorance of what the government is doing has been a major concern of this magazine...

...He was awkward with pols, not a Tip O’Neill, not the kmd of guy to sit around headquarters regaling the boys with tales of campaign shenanigans...

...The other friend, who knows the most about what was spent in the state’s largest county says that sum was $25,0000...

...Andrew Tobias recently explained what the effect of such a reform would be...

...What drives me around the bend is that we are wasting money on having these people take home movies of White House social events-money that could be used for employees who are really needed...

...Samuelson recently wrote that Anitrak‘s ridership is “stagnant...

...They’re too busy writing novels...

...The motivation for the Gulf of Tonkin resolution was not foreign policy but domestic politics...

...SPEAKINGO F THIS CITY, IT’S clear that the D.C...

...Instead, his book shows that he relied heavily on information supplied by two ex-convictsneither of whom worked in the Kennedy campaign...

...And a Wisconsin paper that was investigating a drug-dealing court clerk found that elected county officials are not required to report sick days or absences from the office for any reason...

...Of the White House communications agency, former Deputy Chief of Staff Harold Ickes says, ‘‘I knew little about it...

...The man who knew the most about the state-wide expenditures says the total figure, although higher than I had origninally thought, was less than $1 milion...

...But I hope now that you understand, you’ll send your check as quickly as your own circumstances permit...

...But the Democrats were not without fault in their losses...

...Pardon me, but isn’t that an increase of 3.1 million...

...Such exotica was unavailable in Charleston, West Virginia, where I had grown up...

...The alarm he sounded could awaken HMO patients to their need to fight for their rights...

...They are a large group that includes many of the kind of respectable, middle-class citizens that legislators are wary of offending...

...Motorists, under the reform, would get the lower rate in return for giving up the right to sue for “pain and suffering...

...SPEAKINOGF SAFETY ISSUEST,H E Federal Railroad Administration recently issued a report confirming the concerns we expressed in our October issue about safety practices of CSX...

...But the resemblance, as they say in Hollywood, may be purely coincidental...

...But Clinton has seemed much more interested in the formulation of policy than in its implementation...

...But the world has changed...

...Roughly a third of the planes have been equipped with hush kits made by ABS Partnership...

...PENTAGON OFFICIALS KEEP assuring us that readiness remains high...

...This is the story originally told by Hubert Humphrey in The Education of A Public Man in which he said Cardinal Cushing had told him that the cardinal and Joe Kennedy had agreed on a way to counter West Virginia’s anti-Catholicism: “We decided which church and preacher would get $200 or $100 or $500.’’ It does seem, from what I’m now told, that some of my Kennedy campaign colleagues found the month before the primary to be an appropriate occasion for a gift to Protestant clergy...

...It was 850 people, by a considerable margin, as Michelle Cottle points out in her article beginning on page 10, the largest group of White House employees...

...There are 60,855 of them in Los Angeles county alone...

...In either case, the plane would crash...

...airlines...

...But now Jaclue Robinson had joined the Dodgers...

...In New Jersey, Democrat James McGreevey continued his party’s tradition of selling out to the trial lawyers lobby...

...It’s one that has Bobby Kennedy at a post-election party showing a county leader who had only requested $5,000 for his organization “a little black book,” pointing to the figure $40,000, and saying, LLYouc ould have gotten this.’’ Anyone who knew Robert Kennedy knows that that story just doesn’t fit him...

...REPORTST ELHLo w D.C...

...The Cardinals’ pitchers were rattled and the Dodgers won that day...

...The airlines and the FAA say they aren’t worried...

...So the Republicanstogether with their co-conspirators in the press-have succeeded in tarring the Democrats with the campaign finance scandal...

...According to Richard Berke of The New York Times, the Democrats "still owe more than $15 million" because of the scandal...

...They lost the elections in Virginia, New Jersey, and Staten Island in Dart because the Republicans had so much more money to spend...

...WHAT DO YOU THINK “HUSH kits” are...

...But now it appears there will be a major effort to defeat such standards...

...RFK was awkward with pols, not a Tip O'Neill, not the kind of guy to sit around headquarters regaling the boys with tales of campaign shenanigans...

...No, none of the above...

...Iturned to the two friends from the campaign who I felt both knew what they were talhng about and would tell me the truth...

...AND SPEAKING OF DEMOCRATS selling out, there is no better example than House Democrats who almost succeeded in torpedoing a bill to save Amtrak because their union supporters didn’t like a provision that would end up to six years of severance pay for employees who lose their jobs because there is no longer enough for them to do...

...There were three...

...According to Money magazine, the lowest interest rate people who pay their bills in full can get is 11.4 percent...

...in 1996 it was 19.7 million...

...One service...

...official told the Los Angeles Times...

...We should be grateful to Robert Pear of The New York Times, who uncovered the Harned memo...

...But I had enough respect for Sy that I went back to old associates in the campaign and rechecked my recollection...

...Because by making her reputation an issue, it opened the door for the defense to, in the words of Ferguson’s lawyer Bill Bristow, “determine what her reputation was...

...The reason is that an increasingly large number of lawyers don’t have time to file suits...

...IT would be about political daggers in the heart-events that doomed otherwise promising candidacies...

...Election e , eve happened to be the first anniversary of the h a n takeover of our embassv in Tehran...

...I FEEL SORRY FOR THE DEMOCrats...

...Second was Jacqueline Kennedy’s marriage to Aristotle Onassis just a ‘month before the election, which took the bloom off the rose of Camelot...

...Let’s hope that means a real commitment to safety and not an effort to silence a critic...

...the u Au- Force, is trylng to make it sound like there is more training than there actually is: “The service now counts multiple training maneuvers during a single flight as separate training events...

...It’s a tough job and a lot of people get into it without realizing what it’s all about...

...David Baldacci offers this explanation: “The majority of lawyers are disillusioned with their practice or fed up with the law...

...Among the planes that need them are the 600 DC-9’s owned by US...

...Tilting at Windmills BY CHARLES PETERS Hush Kits Legal Literati Buckin' Bagels Remembering Robinson The Humphrey Daggers PAULA JONES WANTS TO DROP her lawsuit’s claim that her reputation was damaged by Trooper Danny Ferguson’s allegation to The American Spectator that she had told him, after leaving the Little Rock hotel room, that she was willing to be the governor’s girlfriend...

...CSX then hired the FRA's safety chief...

...He opposed a reform, favored by Christine Todd Whitman, that would have made it possible for state motorists to lower their insurance bills...

...Something you give to parents of infant children...

...Isn’t that impact what really counts the most-from the irritation of long waits in multiple lines just to arrange a driver’s test and have one’s vision checked to the lifethreatening wait for an ambulance that takes twice as long as it should to reach your side...

...But the credit card business, which, with more than 6,000 issuers of just the VISA card, seems extremely conipetitive, does not prove their point...

...THEM OST COMMON COMPLAINT from our readers is that we ask them to renew almost as soon as they have subscribed...

...IN RECENT YEARS SY HERSH, who’s an old friend-we first met when he attended one of those planning sessions for the Monthly in 1968-has called me five or six times to ask me about the 1960 West Virginia primary and share his findings about what the Kennedys had done to win...

...So Harry and Louise and their pal, Trent Lott, just might lose...

...Far too much reporting is devoted to stories of waste, fraud, inefficiency, and corruption that fail to show the impact of the apparent scandals on people’s lives...

...inany more are mediocre...

...Beschloss’ book Taking Charge contains his transcription of Lyndon Johnson’s White House tapes from 1963 to 1964 and Beschloss’ annotations, which are the most fascinating footnotes I have ever read...

...In fairness to Sy, I have to confess that I have discovered that one of his anecdotes is essentially true...

...As a result, the Democrats lose elections even though there is probably more evidence against the Republicans in terms of their official actions-namely roll call votes by congressmen-being influenced by campaign contributions...

...Or perhaps distributed by the White House to potential witnesses before grand juries and congressional committees...

...An obvious examDle would be what the Iran-hostage crisis-and most particular...

...I suspect the reason for this failure is that no one wants to face the large number of marginal employees in the city government...

...His proof: “It was 16.6 million passengers . . . in its first full year...

...The addition of even 100 of the right lund of employees at the Office of Management and Budget could significantly improve its ability to serve as the eyes and ears the president so desperately needs, but doesn’t seem to want...

...I say this as one who lived in New York at the time and was also a baseball fan...

...Well, they’re coming back, and you better not believe them this time...

...So Hersh‘s estimates of $2 to $4 million seem more than a little bit off...

...His figures on what the campaign had spent were much higher than my own estimates...

...REPORTERSA LSO DISCOVERED that the Wisconsin official in question, who seemed to spend much of his time on cocaine, would in January become eligible for a lifetime pension with free lifetime health insurance even though he was only 58 and had only worked for the county for 15 years...

...A bad fit could cause a tailpipe door to fly open or fly free and knock off the plane’s tail...

...And finally, there was the sabotage by Anna Chennault, at John Mitchell’s urging, of the Vietnamese peace talks the weekend before election day...

...Now we learn they don’t even know what’s going on in the White House itself...

...In Michigan, where a similar rule is in effect, there are only one-third as many claims for whiplash injuries as in other jurisdictions...

...control board, even though it’s now been going for more than two years, is a long way from straightening out our local government...

...MARKET ENTHUSIasts tell us that competition always benefits the consumer...

...Because we started out under-capitalized and don’t get much corporate advertising and don’t even seek cigarette or liquor ads, poverty is the great constant of our life...

...SPEAKINGO F MY EXPERIENCE IN New York in the OS, it was the first time I had encountered a bagel...

...REMEMBEHRA RRAYN D LOUISE...

...And not long ago, a Marine told me that when a battalion from his regiment is assigned a mission, it has to strip two other battalions of men and eauiDment in order to make itself truiy ready...

...Amtrak is caught in a vise between its 21,200 union members who cling to outmoded work rules and excessive wages, and its critics like Robert J. Samuelson, who insist that it make a profit or be allowed to go under...

...At Covington & Burling, Segal found “no fewer than five attorneys” writing fiction...