TILTING AT WINDMILLS

...But I wish the Florida lawyer had stuck it out a little longer...

...In reality, there's often too little...

...The Republicans in Congress and the President should be put to the test of reforming wefare in a way that will keep its former beneficiaries from being worse off because they go to work...

...And Adam Bryant of the The New York Times did an article on the phenomenon entitled, “Plane Crash...

...The Post seemed to feel there was little chance that an essential reform-health insurance for the working poor-will be passed...

...BACK TO PAROCHIAL SCHOOLS...

...Where, the unit was asked, is Carlos the Jackal...

...The Times seemed equally despairing of a major job program for welfare mothers...

...So, you may be interested to know, have the CIA and the DOD...

...Among those who came up dry was the United States Chamber of Commerce, whose president, Richard Lescher, is constantly moaning about regulation...

...Is there anydung more contemptible than punishing young people for doing the right thing...

...SOME people think there’s more that we can do than just learn from them...

...WOULDN’YTO U HAVE THOUGHT that, next to relatives and friends, a political candidate would be most likely to get contributions from those who share his views...

...When the GAO asked nine business groups to come up with the names of companies that were being victimized by the cruel hand of Washington, only two of the organizations offered any nominees...

...Education is like basketball,” observes Rothchild, “with a few rich teams hogging the spoils and the allstar talent...

...And of course in our own parochial schools the administrative staff is much smaller than that of the public schools...

...A member of the American Bar Association’s aptly named “Breaking Point Task Force” was recently quoted as saying that two surveys of lawyers by the task force reveal a downward slope in career satisfaction...

...I don't see any great harm in this, except that some liberal groups rival Gingrich in their lack of candor about what they are doing...

...JUSr WHAT IS THE BURDEN OF REGdation on business...

...The next step, which I admit will be a little harder to sell, is Tom Cruise at the OMB...

...But the military picked up the dropped baton and carried on until 1995, according to the columnist Jack Anderson and his associates Jan Moller and Dale Van Atta...

...And because of the drama of the plane crashes they investigate, the Board has become “hot...

...This tactic has its greatest appeal when the "who" that is avoided is "I...

...That’s what the cowards who don’t have the guts to blow the whistle usually say about the person who does...

...E]quipment, training, and medical shortcomings persist and are likely to result in needless casualties and a degradation of US...

...TO UNDERSTAND HOW BAD THINGS are at The Citadel, you have to know a fact that didn’t make it to the top of the stones about the abuse of the two female cadets...

...killing more people than three decades ago...

...Often he is differenthe has to be to have the courage to speak up...

...You may wonder how, exactly, the unit went about carrying out these assignments...

...At least one statistic is promising...

...Better regulation is needed, not less...

...FOR THIS GOOD, TO ME Kr LEAST, news, I’m indebted to a thoughtful column by John W Porter of The Portland Waine) Press Herald...

...Far too many people have fallen for the un-reality of too much government regulation...

...But to its shame, Frederic Whitehurst, the scientist who blew the whistle on the lab‘s ineptitude, remains suspended...

...The constitutional problem could be resolved by providing that the voucher could be used for private, public, and parochial schools so that religion would not be singled out for help or harm-the essential concern of the establishment clause of the First Amendment...

...Okay, you’re saying, give me a ‘(for instance...

...Now the two, writes The Washington Pods Douglas Farah, “co-host a highly regarded radio program aimed at showing that despite years of bloodshed costing 70,000 lives, reconciliation is possible...

...Ironically, it was used to finance a series of articles on money and politics...

...Vouchers will not be justified once the D.C...

...THE STYLES SECTION OF n E NEW York Times, in addition to makmg sure we have a steady supply of photographs of Brooke Astor, provides other important services, including advice for the average reader on such essentials as how to select a personal trainer...

...And the CIA, perhaps regretting...

...But the press shouldn’t let Congress and the President off the hook because we're not optimistic...

...My son is now at the year and a half point and he’s found that as he has learned how to do the job, he’s been able to reach enough students to make it all worthwhile...

...Between 1990 and 1995, the number of law school graduates practicing law dropped from 82 to 76 percent...

...More importantly, we know they were ill-prepared for such exposures: They had neither adequate equipment and training to cope with exposure to nerve gas, nor safe and effective medical antidotes...

...In 1994, Congress asked the General Accounting Office to investigate...

...Recently, the employees of the National Transportation Safety Board have been providing the kind of examples that are needed...

...But, until reform occurs, we should no longer punish srudents by depriving them of an opportunity to get a better education in parochial schools...

...One report, for example, concluded that stress was the most likely culprit...

...And, in case you made the wrong choice, how to fire hm...

...Only 15 felt strongly enough to participate...

...The Learning Channel did a four-hour special...

...war-fighting capability...

...In the end, the GAO approached 51 companies...

...By way of contrast, according to last year’s report by the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future, in other countries the teaching staff ranges from 60 to 80 percent of the total...

...Each of the 16 Catholic elementary schools in the District is under-enrolled...

...schools climb out of the abyss...

...We can give vouchers to public school students to permit them to get the better education offered by Catholic schools...

...MISTAKESW ERE MADE,” SAYS BILL Clinton in semi- acknowledgement of the Democrat’s fund-raising scandal...

...What ought to scare the pants off all of us is how little that state of affairs has changed...

...I’m sympathetic...

...In reality there’s often too little...

...FOR A COUPLE OF DECADES, THE Washington Monthly has been urging parents and school boards to look at parochial schools for lessons in eficient administration, good teaching, rigorous curriculum, economy and discipline...

...We need the public to see what government workers cn accomplish...

...You may have noticed how often politicians use the passive voice in describing similarly embarrassing situations...

...But we do think they are a useful threat to hold over the heads of public school authorities and teachers to get them to reform...

...I quote from our December story: “The GAO recently assessed the US...

...Let’s hope some innovative producer will try this approach back here in Washington...

...1 AM DEPRESSED BY THE PESSIMISM of recent editorials in The Washington Post and The New Ymk Times about the prospect for health care and welfare reform...

...Salvador Samayoa a leader of the Marxist rebels...

...And we might also ask why rich schools like Yale continually hike their tuition...

...During that period it carried out 182 projects assigned by 25 government agencies...

...the information is simply too old or inaccessible or incomplete...

...The Defense Intelligence Agency made 93 assignments to the unit...

...NEB investigators are often shown on television...

...My son is a public school teacher who has encountered far too many students who could be described the same way...

...BACK TO THOSE RICH COLLEGES...

...Many other worthy institutions have a greater need for his help...

...IF YOU’RE FED UP WITH TALK SHOWS like (Crossfire,” where the two sides blast away at one another and seem to regard common ground as forbidden territory, you will be heartened to hear about a radio show in El Salvador that brings together two former enemies in that country’s civil war...

...We should give the children of Washington a chance to escape this system right now...

...Not so, says a political fundraising guide that, according to James Bennet of The New York Times, is widely circulated among Democratic activists...

...We could offer students vouchers for $3,000 and still be saving 50 percent of what it costs to keep them in the District public schools...

...Where are the Scuds...

...I’m similarly indebted to Mary Ann Lindsey of The Tallahasee Democrat, only her news is discouraging...

...Another report provided evidence to support the possibility that the combination of wartime exposures to low levels of chemical weapons and other toxins and drugs the troops took could have produced their symptoms, a hypothesis we reported in our December story...

...The reason: by saying “mistakes were made,” one avoids having to say who made them...

...schools...

...Isn’t that where we should be focusing our efforts...

...First, this report from Reuters: “The @?AA] suppressed an internal report that urged a review of ValuJet three months before one of the low-cost carrier’s jets crashed in the Florida Everglades, an FAA manager testified yesterdayl’ And this from Business Week: “The FAA simply doesn’t enforce the rules about screening mechanics,” charges an NTSB board member John Goglia...

...Remember, however, that regardless of whether low level exposure to chemical weapons made the veterans sick, we now know that many soldiers were exposed during the war...

...I wonder why if he gives so little, he would give so much to the nation’s richest university...

...Writes the author of the article, Trip Gabriel, who did a one-night stand as a doorman at Chaos, “these two women with big hair, I didn’t have to look at the clip board [listing approved guests] to know their names could not be there...

...From 1991 to 1996, 35 senators who voted against the sugar industry got an average of $1,461 from it...

...The Center found the same held true for the timber, defense, oil and gas, pharmaceutical, mining and tobacco industries, not to mention for doctors and cattlemen...

...What’s most ironic is that all this huffig and puffing [about over-regulation] isn’t backed up with any real information and real, live examples,” Gary Bass, a local government watchdog told The Washington Post‘s Cindy Skxzycki, “There isn’t much there there...

...The secret is hair-yours if you’re a woman, your date’s if you’re a man...

...BILL GATESW, HO HAS NOT BEEN notable for his philanthropy, recently gave $15 million to Harvard, according to The New York Times...

...IT’S NOT JUST THE NATIONAL Enquirer that employs psychics...

...Many of Whitehurst’s former colleagues dismiss him as a stiffnecked weirdo...

...Not only were their tormentors not firmly dealt with, the college was actually, according to Adam Nossiter of The New York Times, pressing charges against two cadets who contacted the women’s parents to warn them of problems and who also spoke with Colonel Trez and General Poole about the abuse Miss Messer and Miss Mentavlos endured...

...I’m ready...

...Remember ValuJet...

...We don’t like big hair,” says Howard Stein, the owner of Au Bar...

...Adds a veteran FAA flight inspector, We’re handing out mechanics certificates like bubble gum today...

...The guide explains that the best targets for fundraisers are in the “power circle...

...The second problem can be solved by limiting the use of the voucher to schools that will accept the $3,000 in full payment of tuition...

...COULD IT BE THAT MY CAMPAIGN to get lawyers to do something better with their lives is succeeding...

...He wonders why he continues to be dunned each year for contributions to an institution that seems to have money to burn...

...This story should have been on the front page of the Post and every other paper in America...

...The CIA disbanded its psychic unit in 1978...

...military’s preparedness for chemical and biological warfare and concluded, ‘Units designated for early deployment today continue to face many of the same problems experienced...

...Sixty-one senators who voted for the industry averaged $13973 each...

...We must keep reminding them that the great experiment of welfare reform will not work without more jobs than the private sector can provide, and without health insurance for those who give up the cocoon of welfare and Medicaid...

...Mauricio Vargas was a combat commander in the U.S.-backed military...

...ONE CLUE AS TO WHAT’S WRONG with our public schools: Classroom teachers constitute barely more than 40 percent of school employees...

...That’s unfortunate, because education is a hell of a lot more important than basketball...

...The New Yorker ran a long piece called "The Crash Detectives...

...The psychic would be told a number but would not be told what or whom he was looking for, or which agency was seeking the information...

...By 1995 Harvard’s endowment had reached $7 billion...

...those who have a financial relationship with your candidate, a fmancial stake in [his] election and a belief that his election will increase their own political power in some way...

...A couple of years ago this magazine accepted a $50,000 grant from a non-profit...

...Given all these conflicting, and tentative, conclusions, what seems most likely is that we will never know for sure what the cause of the illnesses are...

...But there really are several hundred fasciriatq jobs at the OMB that give workers a chance to figure out what the rest of government is doing right and wrong and what needs to be done to make the system work, plus a chance to nudge the government in the right direction...

...that it had deprived itself of such an essential resource, assigned 32 projects...

...In your heart you know they haven’t been doing a good enough job...

...As REGULAR READERS KNOW, I AM somedung of a lunatic about the need to attract better people to the government...

...Because, according to Mathew Wdd of The New York Times, the airline itself did not identify problems with the contractor...

...One such place is Washington, D.C., where we have an awful public school system that rarely shows the slightest sign of intelligence-and then only in the guile with which it resists reform...

...Alas, Lindley explains, “he was too old (and life too short) for the rudeness, lack of discipline, and stunning indifference that his students conveyed each day...

...YOU MAY HAVE NOTICED A stream of stories about Gulf War Syndrome lately...

...Take the FAA...

...The Monthly has opposed vouchers because we fear that they would inflict too much damage on the public schools...

...The contractor that screwed up wasn’t investigated by the FAA...

...We also think in those cases where the public school system is truly abysmal, vouchers should be offered now...

...MY old friend John Rothchild wrote a piece in the December issue of Fortune pointing out that his alma mater, Yale, has an endowment worth $4.86 billion, up from less than 1 billion in just the last 15 years...

...It constitutes, in the words of The New York Ernes, “a medical catastrophe...

...MALARIAIS A DISEASE THAT afflicts poor people in the Thrd World...

...Just this January, Peter Jennings in a “Solutions” segment of ABC’s World News Tonight, explained the virtues of Catholic schools, including the fact that they “appear to do more with less money-about $2,400 per year per student compared to $6,000 in the public schools...

...These are the people the candidate names when asked, ‘Who owes vou or will benefit’ directly or indirectly from your election...

...TILTING AT WINDMILLS BY CHARLES PETERS Psychic Spooks The Breaking Point Task Force Bubble-Gum Mechanics Tom Cruise at the OMB Big Hair Bigots ALTHOUGH THE GOP HAS A VALID point that campaign finance reform can’t make any real progress until Democrats acknowledge what the labor unions do for their party, I wonderare the Republicans willing to be equally upfront about what the Christian Coalition does for them...

...The latest example was a January 12 piece that told you how to avoid being turned away by the doorman at Manhattan’s trendier clubs...

...The usual objections to vouchers are (1) the First Amendment and (2) the fear that the vouchers would be used to subsidize rich parents who would send their kids to fancy private schools anyway...

...Yet a recent British study found that where $3,274 is spent on AIDS research for each fatal case of AIDS, only $65 is spent on malaria research for each fatal case...

...Last year she wrote about a lawyer who had decided to become a public school teacher-news that so delighted me that I passed it along to Monthly readers...

...TWO MORE EXAMPLES OF WHY WE need a tougher FAA...

...during the Gulf War...

...Now, after four months in the classroom, he has quit...

...IF YOU’RE TEMPTED TO FALL FOR the typical politician’s pitch that money buys access, not results, ponder these fmdings by the Center for Responsive Politics...

...Too many people have fallen for the unreality of too much givernment regulation...

...The program has, according to Farah, “a civil question-and-answer format and simple discussion of national problems...

...In other words, if ValuJet did a piss-poor job of monitoring its contractor, the FAA wasn’t going to find out-and a lot of people were going to die...

...The top 17 of our institutions of higher learning have a combined endowment that, according to The Chronicle ofHgheY Education, is greater than that of 422 schools that trail them...

...In recent years the message seems to be getting across...

...Their tuition averages only $2,000, less than a third the per-pupil expenditure of D.C...

...WHEN MY FELLOW liberals complain about Newt Gingrich's use of tax exempt non-profit funds for political purposes, they should remember that many liberal organizations do the same thing, including magazines like Mother Jones, the Nation, and The American Prospect...

...The psychic would then relate what came to mind...

...He’s now certain that teaching will be his life’s work...

...It’s a Job for Tom Cruise...

...According to the Anderson column, the technique employed was “remote viewing.’’ “Generally,” the column explains, “it consisted of two people in a room which was often darkened...

...A RECENT REPORT OF THE INSPECtor General of the Department of Justice, according to Pierre Thomas of The Washington Post, “criticizes some basic procedures of the FBI lab and highlights some two dozen cases in which there were problems with possibly contaminated evidence and other FBI laboratory procedures.’’ To the FBI’s credit, three of the guilty officials have been transferred...

...If you read them all, you likely came away with the sense that the only thing known for sure is that we still don’t know what’s causing the ailments afflicting thousands of Gulf war veterans...