TILTING AT WINDMILLS
Peters, Charles
TILTING AT WINDMILLS BY CHARLES PETERS Barry Brings Home the Duck Come Back, Dolly Primal Gere Hooray for Cheap Chic IF YOU WANT TO MURDER SOMEone, Los Angeles is the place to do the deed....
...Don’t they really want law enforcement that works...
...The brass not only got extra discounts but also merchandise that was not available to enlisted men...
...But at last we can reveal his identity...
...The admirals and their spouses were then escorted to special bargains on such items as jewelry, crystal, alcoholic beverages, and Brooks Brothers suits...
...Opinion makers and attitude molders, whether on Madison Avenue or at The New York Times, can make us want $25 tennis shoes instead of $100 or $1,000 Nikes...
...People come in late, then go to breakfast for an hour, talk for two hours, then go to lunch for two hours, then claim fatigue or whatever and leave early...
...He is a man of many good deeds, most significantly where the Month& is concerned, contributing largely pro bono legal services that helped us survive our early financial troubles and donating the puzzle that has challenged the wits of our readers for 27 of our 28 years...
...But they have no point at all in places like Norfolk...
...ELSEWHERINE THIS ISSUE, DANTE Chinni writes about how teachers’ unions influence state legislatures with political contributions...
...He said he suspected it had a lot to do with pending scandal investigations which made the White House less than eager to appear to be meddling with the FBI...
...A FEW WEEKS AGO, 1 HAD A CHANCE to talk to a highly placed official at the Department of Justice...
...They may find they’re complaining about having too much to do, but how lovely that will be for all those who have gone too long with only time on their hands...
...Maybe they’re embarassed by the subject...
...Her credibility was not enhanced when she revealed that an LAPD detective had told her he would help her if she would falsely testify that she had witnessed one of the slayings...
...It should remind us liberals that occasionally government subsidies to private business make sense...
...IF YOU’VE BEEN COUNTing on Congress to have an open mind about amending welfare reform, ponder this statement by the bill’s author, Ronald Haskins: “The bill is not going to be fixed...
...It’s hard to read about how wonderful these hotels are without acquiring a yen to stay in one...
...The bureau’s 900 employees were asked for their opinions...
...SOMETIMEESV EN THOUGH YOU ARE the head of an organization, you find yourself powerless...
...She would usually offer to serve breakfast and dinner...
...Although much of government’s disrepute is the product of propaganda from conservative ideologues, some of it is earned...
...The Los Angeles Times has studied how the local criminal justice system dealt with 9942 homicides reported from 1990 through 1994...
...This was a factor in the decline of the boarding house in the post-World War I1 era...
...The chances of this bill being substantially altered are zero...
...Over the years, as I’ve advised the brilliant young people who’ve gone through this magazine, the subject that often emerges as most important to them is malung the right decisions about relationships...
...Put yourselfin the shoes of these families...
...And it does terrible things to the lining of your throat, esophagus, and stomach...
...What I most want to do is challenge bright people to think about thls as a real problem-to understand that they don’t have to play the cello at Lincoln Center or win a case before the Supreme Court or write a novel about the isolation of our time to make a contribution...
...I have an idea...
...Did you know that, since 1940, the number of Americans living alone has increased from 2.7 million to 24.7 million...
...It comes from my parents’ generation: an institution called the boarding house...
...AN EXAMPLE OF THE KIND OF information that we suspect Bill Clinton prefers not to hear comes from an employee survey conducted by the Navy’s Bureau of Personnel...
...If the candidates are the commercials, the commercials are likely to be dull, meaning far fewer commercials would be made, meaning candidates would be far less dependent on the John Huangs...
...A recent example comes from California, where the California Teachers Association gave assembly candidate Virginia Strom-Martin $106,000, thereby setting, according to the Los Angeles Times, “a record for a single donation by a Sacramento lobbying group in an open-seat primary...
...As for the rest, “It’s all very preliminary...
...THIS ISSUE WILL MARK THE last appearance of the Political Puzzle...
...The result is that, according to The Washington Post, “Conrail has charged a high rate designed to produce as much profit as it could have earned if it had moved the coal all the way on its own lines...
...Thanks for calhg the Pleasure Club Hot Line...
...That’s why I must congratulate the District of Columbia bar for deciding to hold its 1997 convention right here in Washington...
...Other than that freedom, one more thing is needed to produce a revival of the boarding house...
...A recent example, uncovered by military investigators and reported by Bradley Graham of The Washington Post, took place at the Navy’s giant PX shopping mall in Norfolk, Virginia...
...The Chrysler bailout is another example where the government helped a giant corporation stay in business and the resulting benefit for the economy was immense...
...But then, having been so perceptive, Goodman falls into error, complaining that the campaign spots by the candidates themselves last fall were dull and unpersuasive...
...He is John Barclay Jones Jr., who for many years was a partner at Covington & Burling and one of Washington’s most prominent tax attorneys...
...Maybe you have a better idea...
...Those living in Florida are in for an interesting experience when they call the information number provided for that state...
...This is actually a scandal on top of another scandal, which is the PXs themselves...
...When one railroad has complete control over the tracks that a shipper has to use, the result can be quite unfortunate for the shipper...
...Think of how you would manage your monthly budget paying that kind of rent...
...Reversing that policy could help revive the institution...
...SHORTLYA FTER THE NOVEMBER election, I had a chance to discuss the results with a Democratic senator...
...Conrail was in such bad shape when it began to rise from the wreckage of the old Penn Central that it could not have survived without help from the federal government...
...Not only that, but the continuing legal education course offering will be “The Twilight Zone: Ethics in a New Era,” a subject not much favored on the junket circuit...
...PLACES LIKE HONOLULSUAN, JUAN, and San Francisco have-as this magazine frequently notes-increasingly become the venues of choice for the meetings and continuing education seminars of our legal, medical, and other professional societies, making it possible to turn the experience into a vacation and, equally important, charge it as a business expense, with the happier tax consequences often provided by such accounting...
...ON THE FRONT PAGE OF ITS DEcember 1 edition, The New York Times exposes how the “Wealthy, Helped by Wall St., Find New Ways to Escape Tax on Profits...
...Only 47 percent of the cases resulted in arrests and indictments for murder or manslaughter...
...This is the most disorganized, dysfunctional group I’ve ever seen...
...TILTING AT WINDMILLS BY CHARLES PETERS Barry Brings Home the Duck Come Back, Dolly Primal Gere Hooray for Cheap Chic IF YOU WANT TO MURDER SOMEone, Los Angeles is the place to do the deed...
...That’s the point, Walter...
...It also gets you drunk very fast, meaning you are more likely to do stupid things like cause auto accidents in which innocent people are hurt...
...Bringing the right people together can use every o d e of their creativity...
...The latest example to come to my attention is a continuing legal education seminar sponsored by Legal World Seminars entitled LegalIMedical Update: Changing Times-Changing Issues, featuring an eight-night cruise on the Rhine and Mosel Rivers and concluding with three nights at the deluxe Grand Hotel Victoria-Jungfrau in Interlaken, Switzerland...
...They can instead help other people meet the right mate...
...THE OFFICE OF PERSONNEL miagement publishes a guide to health plans available to federal employees and retirees...
...Morale sucks and there is no hope in sight...
...Most of the boarding houses were coed, but visiting the room of a member of the opposite sex was frowned, on...
...If Bill Clinton is serious about making government work, he’ll tell Al Gore and his reinventors to identify these bureaucratic islands and reform, eliminate, or replace them...
...He also said-and I’m afraid this accords with my experience with most administrationsthat he thought the White House didn’t want to even hear about problems in the rest of the government...
...A more common but still evil result is the poor fellow who kills himself or his soul working to get that house in the Hamptons...
...Yet Bruce Lambert of The New York Times reports that “a check of apartment listings in Nassau County shows that there are almost none for under $900 a month and very few under $1000 a month...
...He said three things: John Huang, the Christian Coalition, and money, of which he quoted Trent Lott as saying the GOP had been able to pour “$30 million into close Senate races in the final two weeks of the campaign...
...If you require any more evidence, consider the explosion of personal ads in magazines and newspapers in recent decades...
...Please have pen and paper ready to write down information on how you can connect to women and girls right now...
...AS A FORMER ENLISTED PERSON, 1 have always been suspicious of special benefits for the brass...
...One other point about Conrail...
...IF YOU WANT A DOWNtoearth illustration of the plight of the working poor in this country, consider that there are 42,277 families in Nassau County, NY.,m alung less than $20,000 a year...
...An aching loneliness transparently underlies so much of their provocative prose...
...Yet they seem unwilling to recognize that their situations reflect a broader problem and reluctant to address it in their writing...
...uses for its coal shipments...
...Often a few outsiders would be invited to fill out the table, which usually had about a dozen places...
...Typically, a widow with grown children would decide to rent her empty rooms...
...I wish the Times would do travel articles, not about the Ritz of today, but about today’s equivalent of the London of the 1950s, which was filled with bargains h e $14 rooms at the Ritz or $90 suits on Saville Row...
...So room and board would be ideal for them, if the sexes are permitted freedom of interaction...
...This is the not-on-my-watch syndrome which rules presidents and other administrators, who may suspect there is a lot wrong down below, but, rather than look into the problems and try to do something about them, prefer to keep the lid on and their fingers, crossed, and pray that things don’t blow up while they’re in office IN THE FIGHT BETWEEN CSX AND Norfolk Southern over control of Conrail, the big thing the Surface Transportation Board should make sure of is that, whichever side wins, the loser should have open access to Conrail’s tracks so that competition will be preserved and none of the parties will be seriously hurt...
...The latest example is the need for matchmakers, which I regard as a critical social problem...
...Haskins, the staff director of the House Ways and Means Committee’s Human Resources sub-committee, who The New York Times says “largely wrote the welfare law,” was speaking at a conference organized by the American Public Welfare Association, held in Phoenix in early December...
...In case there was any doubt in his listeners’ minds, Haskins added: “It’s the law of the land and will be the law of the land for at least the next four years...
...A district attorney’s manual,” reports the Times, “tells novice prosecutors to expect at least one witness to recant in every gang case.’’ Police ineptitude is another important factor...
...I’m convinced most people hate to eat alone in restaurants...
...WHILTEH E DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA continued to crumble, our distinguished Mayor Marion Barry-who is just about as distinguished as Ronald Haskins is open-mindeddecided that the thing to do was take a 10-day trip to Korea and China...
...And as long as that is true, the Rush Limbaughs will have just enough truth on their side to make their broadsides credible...
...If this inflexibility is as typical of the Republican congressional majority as I fear it is, God help the poor...
...John Barclay is retiring...
...The most promising prospect for a Chinese venture in Washington,” writes The Washington Post’s Steven Mufson from Beijing, “is for an outlet of a state-owned chain of roast duck restaurants...
...LAST MONTH I COMPLAINED ABOUT the increase in smoking and drinking by role models in the movies...
...Conservatives who concentrate on bashing government instead of trying to improve it might ponder this bad police work...
...The failure of witnesses to testify is a major cause of the low conviction rate...
...It is answered by a woman who, accordmg to Mike Causey of The Washington Post, says: “Hi sexy...
...For instance, Conrail owns the final 15 miles of tracks that the Pittsburgh Power & Light Co...
...The urgent need for thousands of Dolly Levis could not be more clear...
...If this inflexibility is as typical of the Republican congressional majority as I fear it is, God help the poor...
...Gere even drinks his whiskey straight, a throwback to the 1930s, when drinhng straight whiskey was a sign of manhood...
...I was fortunate enough to serve in a government agency that was mostly composed of dedicated and enthusiastic hard-chargers...
...Later I had a chance to ask a White House official why this lack of interest...
...What are the results of his trip...
...I know a lot of people, especially the young, have difficulty paying rent for an apartment...
...If you’ve heard Los Angeles prosecutor Gil Garcetti‘s boast that his office has a 93 percent conviction rate, you may wonder how the 16 percent could be accurate...
...One case was dismissed because the cops had misplaced the key document...
...When instead they encourage expensive chic, the worst result can be one kid killing another for his Nikes...
...There are some budding flowers, budding fruits that we hope to work hard on...
...Here is a sampling provided by Rowan Scarborough of The Washington Times: “They only rate you on how much butt you kiss...
...And they are not going to be lonely again with all those people around...
...I asked...
...The mayor said he had to make the journey because “the culture of these countries is that they want mayors and governors to come...
...Originally established to provide merchandise for military personnel and their families at remote outposts where there were no other stores, they once filled a real need...
...I have never seen such flagrant disregard for responsible employee behavior...
...The reason the 16 percent is also true is that, in the other 84 percent of the cases, the hller is not found, the case is dismissed before trial for lack of evidence, or the charge is plea bargained to manslaughter or less...
...I hope they’ll realize that wanting to help people find happiness is nothing to be embarassed about...
...A week later on the front page of its December 8 Travel section, the Times advises these tax avoiders on ways to spend their profits with an article entitled, “Learning to love London Deluxe,” describing in mouth-watering detail the Dorchester, the Ritz, and the Connaught, where rates range from $378 to $502 per room per night, breakfast for two from $62.50 to $70, and dinner for two from $141 to $176...
...I bet you weren’t aware that the mayor is an anthropologist on the side...
...I am confident that there will be more Korean tourists coming to America...
...Just the boost the Washington economy has been looking for...
...This is most common in gang slayings, which account for 40 percent of the county’s homicides...
...Personnel stationed near the entrance of the mall were required to announce flag officer arrivals over hand-held radios, using the code words ‘sugar one, two, three, or four’ to denote one-star to four-star arrivals...
...A recent example is Primal Fear, in which the heroine, Laura Linney, smokes, and the hero, Richard Gere, drinks...
...The catch is that this yen inevitably leads to another yen-for an income that will pay for it, which in turn leads people to the kind of tax dodges the Times deplores...
...The 93 percent is true, but only of the cases that actually go to trial...
...Three others were lost because it was discovered that the key witness the police had identified in each case was one woman who happened to be a prostitute, a crack cocaine addict, and a paid police informant...
...What went wrong...
...He said that back in mid-October, he was confident his party would win a majority in the Senate...
...During the conversation, I asked him if the White House had made any effort to improve coordination between the FBI and the CIA, traditionally a vexing problem both in Washington and in the field operations of the two agencies...
...This is why I believe in cheap chic, a world in which the products and services we yearn for are affordable, where you don’t let yourself be conned into being obsessed with $1,000 Gkes, as affluent Japanese are these days...
...But in some of the other agencies we dealt with, and too many that I’ve since become aware of, there were and are islands of misery like this Navy bureau...
...Often, Lambert adds, landlords require initial payments of “$S,OOO or more to cover the first month‘s rent, security deposit, and broker’s fees...
...The question about these seminars is always: Couldn’t the participants learn more if the seminars were held back home in a business-like setting instead of among the distractions of beautiful scenery and the other diversions of tourism...
...Maybe you think I’m just the Bob Dole of the left, romanticizing days gone by...
...He was a colleague of mine in the Kennedy administration, serving with great distinction at the Justice Department, which was then the kind of place where good people were proud to work-the kind of place I want all’government to be...
...I can sense you are skeptical, so let me assure you that there appears to be a real possibility that a flower might actually bud...
...He said no...
...Goodman suggests that if negative messages could only be delivered by the candidates themselves, there would be far fewer negative messages...
...I have gone for years unable to talk any of our editors into doing some articles I’m excited about...
...It’s for today’s lonely widows-and widowersto wake up to the fact that running a boarding house would be a great way to get involved with life apn...
...AS FOR CAMPAIGN REFORM, Walter Goodman of The New York Times has come up with a sublime elaboration of the old Monthly proposal to require all political commercials to be unmanufactured presentations of the candidate talkmg, with no film clips or other fancy stuff...
...Just 16 percent resulted in murder convictions...
...And they gave them...
Vol. 29 • January 1997 • No. 1
