TILTING AT WINDMILLS

...O~HECORM MENTATORS HAVE NUI rushed to embrace my position on the Lincoln bedroom, which has been, “Thank God if they are only selling hospidty and not mfluence over policy...

...But for many this will not be easy, for, over the years, they have acquired mental habits more conducive to survival in the civil service than to success in entrepreneurial endeavor...

...Fewer people are including reliance on welfare in their plans for the future...

...The innocent, whose number includes far too many supposedly sophisticated journalists and political scientists, think that political patronage is the main personnel problem in government...

...But the truth is that even at that high point of political corruption, the Nixon administration, a knowledgeable congressional staffer observed: “Sure, some politicians get jobs for [their political allies], but you could put all the Nixon-referred people on the Sequoia [a small yacht used by Nixon] and it would still float...

...At least Bill C h o n has proposed health insurance for the S million children of the working poor...

...So you can imagine how we felt when we learned from Newhome News Service columnist Constance Casey, that the NFL is classed as a tax exempt non profit-even though it makes enough money to pay its commissioner, Paul Tagliabue, $3,231924 a year...

...Where does the money go...

...A clue may be found in somedung Johnson said to his national security advisor, McGeorge Bundy, that same day: “They’d impeach a president, though, that would run out, wouldn’t they...

...People are up in arms about HMOs’ refusal to pay for needed treatments or to refer them to specialists when necessary...

...They either omitted entirely, or buried, as The Washington Post did in the story’s seventeenth paragraph, what to me was the single most alarming fact: “The operations directorate officers who performed the bulk of the CWs clandestine hiring were routinely rewarded with promotions and better assignments if they signed up a large number of informants...

...One reason was that many of them were sitting around courthouses waiting to be called as witnesses...

...This is the dirty little secret of D.C...

...You don’t have to be a female to experience the joy...

...And most of it is supplied not by real events, but by the tailor's imagination...

...But now we’re finally seeing some signs of self-criticism...

...But to have them stuck with staggeringly large legal bills seems outrageous...

...Two of the best parents I know are Mr...

...Moms...

...This also explains why it’s desirable for at least one parent to be there when the child comes home from school, there to talk to the child, to read to the child, to continue the exposure to enriching experience...

...But part of it is the psychological impact reformers had hoped to see...

...How then, could LBJ, with Russell’s support, proceed to send more than S8,OOO men to die in Vietnam...

...asked the school system’s chief financial officer, Abdusalam Omer...

...And even the conservative’s favorite newspaper, The Washington Times, recently ran an article on welfare that made the case for at least a tad of mercy in implementing reform...

...THE D.C...

...In 2002 against the Republican Tim Hutchson, who last fall won the Arkansas seat held for many years by David Pryor, a Democrat who retired...

...One reason most journalists don’t understand this is that they have never been politicians and they have no idea how hard it is to raise money without selling something...

...Part of the reason is simply a better economy that is producing more jobs...

...Finally, if you aren’t already calling Dr...

...THISM AGAZINE RARELY makes a profit, but when we do, we pay taxes...

...She’s failed three citizenship tests...

...But I continue to hope they’ll find worthier work to do...

...I continue to think that the only real scandal will be in the cases where the campaign contributions can be shown to have brought about specific actions by the government...

...I have been a politician, so I do know that most of them are convinced that they have to sell access to survive...

...The latter may require a constitutional amendment to reverse Buckley v. fileo, the stupid Supreme Court decision that said money is speech...

...But my guess is that a simple law reversing the decision would be accepted by the Court...

...SCHOOL SYStem spends at the rate of $7,389 per pupil, yet we, in the words of The Washington Post, “still wind up short of books, crayons, toilet paper and, in some schools, even teachers...

...Its grossly featherbedded bureaucracies, with their absurd oversupply of supervisors compared to doers, survive in the face of continuing exposure because they supply so much of Washington’s black middle class...

...The money goes to create a middle-class community...

...The real moral challenge for them is to make sure that selling access doesn’t mean selling out, to keep the access from turning into a bad influence on their official acts...

...In that connection, the good news in the bad news of Ennis Cosby’s murder is that millions of Americans learned that this rich, attractive young man, who had his choice of careers to pursue, was studying to be a teacher...

...We’re in the quicksands up to our neck, and I just don’t know what the hell to do about it...

...It just makes the chills run up my back...

...I suspect what’s going on in the Maryland legislature, where The Washington Post reports that “anti-HMO sentiment seems unusually strong,” is going on all over the country...

...If you want to use the phone, pull the car off the road and make your call...

...Perhaps his example will inspire at least a few of our most promising young people to put down those law school applications and sign up for Teach for America or get into teaching through some other route...

...FOR OUR “GEE, YOU WOULD THINK they could have come up with that one before now’’ department: The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations has announced, according to The Washington Post’s Spencer Rich, “that for the first time it will start considering a facility’s success rate in curing patients, and not just the quality of its staff and equipment, when deciding which hospitals to approve...

...My guess is that it is because he does plan to run again...

...The leading character is a tailor of men’s clothing, who also tailors the information he provides to the spy who recruited him...

...Many of those surplus black bureaucrats are good citizens in a city that desperately needs role models for its youth...

...HERE ARE THREE FACTS that should shake you...

...The same problems are present elsewhere-though seldom in such exaggeration form...

...As they hear their boss tell them they’re fired or a lover advising them to buzz off, the risk of an accident increases fourfold, according to a study published by The New England Journal of Medicine...

...See page 28...

...The bad news is that way too little is being done about providing health care for the working poor, including those who leave welfare and then lose their Medicaid when they get jobs as we urge them to do...

...Remember, the District of Columbia may be a parody of government, but it’s a parody based on reality...

...Jury members and witnesses are often treated with indifference...

...In the past, they have not been too keen on examining their faults...

...Not for president, but for the Senate...

...I HAVE ON THE BEEN AN admirer of the Clinton-Gore effort to downsize the government, but I could not help becoming suspicious when I read in The Washington Post that “Washington contracting firms were awarded a record $20.8 billion in federal contracts in fiscal 1996...

...Are we simply contracting out the supposedly downsized functions, replacing federal employees with those of private contractors...

...This is not the kind of story one is accustomed to hearing from the right, and I welcome it...

...ANOTHER EXAMPLE IS THRE CRONY - ism that The Washington Post recently found to be a major factor in hiring personnel for the District’s school system...

...In the long run, the solution is to get the surplus into private business...

...Think how hard you would find it to summon the courage to urge a radical reduction in the size of the institutions that pay the salaries of much of the congregation whose contributions support your church and pay your salary...

...No talkee while car movee...

...To understand this problem, imagine yourself as one of the black preachers who have much political influence in this town...

...THEG OOD NEWS IS THAT WELFARE reform seems to be working, at least in the sense that welfare rolls are dropping...

...A MEASURE To ALLOW CASINO GAMbling in New York state was defeated in late January...

...But some of their allies could not exactly be described as selfless...

...Kevorkian, ponder the fact that according to a recent article in USA Weekend, there are now 20,000 gated communities where 8 million Americans hide from the rest of us...

...But you should check what’s happening in your city or town...

...It’s not always going to be possible for one parent to be at home after school-that’s why high quality day care is so important-but our social policies should encourage the possibility of part-time work for young parents so that as many as possible can hear that “Mom...

...For example, New York and 39 other states have asked for at least partial waivers of the requirement that food stamps for the unemployed be limited to 90 days...

...The information is what he knows the spy wants to hear...

...While neoliberals constantly criticize libedsm, neo-conservatives are former liberals who have defended their new faith with the passion of the converted...

...The dismaying extent to which the once-proud ACLU has gone in the defense of rights of wealthy individuals and corporations was examined by Joshua Wolf Shenk in “Steve Forbes, Joe Camel, and the ACLU” in our April 1996 issue...

...In John le Carrk’s new novel, The Tailor of Panama, one sees the natural result of the CIA’s approach to recruiting agents...

...It has enacted the Massachusetts Children’s Medical Security Plan, which insures children whose parents earn too much to qualify for Medicaid but too little to pay for private health insurance...

...If the leaming circuits don’t get established then, they aren’t going to be...

...But if you put all the people involved in the buddy system on the carrier Enterprise, it would sink.’’ IN THIS ISSUE, SEE PAGE 22 WHERE we discuss why we favor the incomecontingent student loan over Pel1 grants and tax breaks as a means of financing higher education...

...While there are 51 million children enrolled in public schools,” ABC’s Peter Jennings reports, “only 6.5 million parents are enrolled in a parendteacher association...

...But Republicans are opposing even this modest program...

...And we certainly don’t spend money that could go to pay taxes on outrageous salaries for our executives...

...I remain convinced that he and his wife did little wrong in the Whitewater real estate deal...

...1 HAVE A SI’RONG HUNCH THAT the HMOs are in for a tough time...

...As Colleene Johnson put it in a letter to Time: “One of life’s greatest joys is hearing ‘Mom!’ when your firstgrader bursts through the door after school...

...It goes to salaries...

...Russell: “It does me, too...

...Indeed, according to a recent study reported by Elisabeth Rosenthal in The New York Times, the problem is growing: “One quarter of New York City residents under 65 now have no health insurance at all: the exact figure is 24.8 percent, up from 20.9 percent five years ago...

...Why, if we insure poor kids today, they argue, look out: Before long, every American may have decent healthcare coverage!“ The problem is not going to go away...

...What were originally merit systems have gradually turned into buddy systems in which job descriptions are tailored to fit one’s friends-or friends of friends-and a vigorous search for the ablest candidate is rarely conducted...

...So attention will be paid...

...There is also good news from some states that are acting to soften the law’s horrible features...

...and what the hell we’re going to get out of his doing it...

...Thirty years ago “to develop a meaningful philosophy of life” was a major goal of 82 percent of college freshmen, according to a study by UCLA and the American Council on Education...

...Courts tend to run for the convenience of judges, court clerks, and lawyers...

...The policy is now being changed so that the officer who was spending a whole day waiting to testify is now called just an hour before he is to go on the stand...

...As a volunteer, Dora doesn’t qualify for the work exemption...

...Johnson mentions a sergeant he knows who he realizes might have to serve in Vietnam: “Thinking about sending that father of those six kids in there...

...TILTING AT WINDMILLS BY CHARLES PETERS LBJ's Fear of Impeachment The CIA's Number Game Clinton for Senator The Buddy System Donald Trump, Moralist The Non Profit NFL IF BILL CLINTON CAN'T SUCCEED himself, why does he continue to behave like a politician running for office...

...They now owe more than $2 million...

...The boss has never been paid more than $24,000...

...If we are going to spend federal funds now on education, I would concentrate on enriching pre-school and primary schools...

...Now the figure is down to 42 percent...

...The problem may be worse in Washington, but it is also widespread in the federal and other state and local civil services...

...The program, financed by a 2s-cent-a-pack increase in the cigarette tax, was enacted over the veto of the state’s Republican governor, William Weld...

...One state, Massachusetts, has done something about the problem...

...My position on the Lincoln bedroom has been,"Thank God if they are only selling hospitality and not influence over policy...

...It is important, by the way, that the Department of Education take the lead in making it easy for bright people who know their subjects to get into teaching without having to endure mindless education courses...

...This isn’t an easy problem to solve...

...To top it all off, most of the HMO members are solid middle-class citizens, the hnd of people who can not only vote against you, but contribute their money-and influence with friends and neighbors-to your defeat at the next election...

...A RECENT STUDY REVEAL,ED FEWER than 10 percent...

...And the real challenge for the rest of us is to take the money out of politics by such devices as giving free TV time to candidates, outlawing the expensive manufactured commercials that exaggerate the candidate’s virtues and his opponent’s vices, and putting a $100 limit on contributions...

...Among the legal immigrants being dropped from the rolls is Dora, an 86-year-old immigrant who, writes the Times’s Cheryl Wetzstein, “has faithfully volunteered in the kitchen of a Miami senior citizen center for 13 years...

...Time’s recent cover article, “How a Child’s Brain Develops,” made a convincing case that these are the years that are crucial, when we should give our maximum effort to teaching and exposing children to a wide variety of experiences that open windows, because the evidence is that this is the period when the child’s brain is growing the most, when it is being wired for a lifetime of learning...

...The balance in the legal defense fund on December 31 was $94,066...

...In one, Johnson is talking to one of the most powerful hawks in the Senate, Richard Russell, then the chairman of the Armed Services Committee...

...THOSEW HO KNOW ME WILL understand how undelighted I am by the news, reported by David Segal of The Washington Post, that the Bureau of Labor Statistics projects (‘the number of lawyers in the United States will grow by 28 percent between 1994 and 2005, roughly double the rate of increase expected for other occupations...

...HAVEYO U HEARD ABOUT THE DANger you’re in from those drivers with one hand on the steering wheel and the other holding a cellular telephone...

...Two of them, recorded on the same day in 1964, will make you weep...

...Prominent among them was that great moralist, Donald J. Trump, who it is suspected was not enthusiastic about having competition for his own casinos in New Jersey...

...Does this mean the number of agents was their standard for success rather than the quality of the information obtained from them...

...She’s not a citizen, but not because she hasn’t tried...

...The SSI check is “all her income and she’s terrified of losing it,” explains the Times...

...Doesn’t this remind you a little bit of those hospital accreditors who looked at the doctors and equipment rather than at the success of the treatment...

...of the District of Columbia’s police officers were available to patrol the streets...

...More than 2 million Maryland residents, which the Post notes is more than a third of the state’s population, are in HMOs-and they are “flooding lawmakers with unhappy tales...

...I have a solution...

...AS INFURIATED AS 1 CAN GET WITH Bill Clinton-as for example in the case of his last-minute decision to make Federico Peiia secretary of energy (see page 16), I feel sorry for him because of all the legal fees that threaten to bankrupt him...

...They may have subsequently made errors in trying to control an investigation that they shouldn’t have had to endure in the first place...

...SOME TAPES OF LYNDON JOHNSON'S phone conversations were recently made public by the LBJ Presidential Library...

...Th e number of children without insurance has gone up twice as fast as the number of adults...

...As you might expect, a coalition of religious groups played a major role...

...The loans have the distinct advantage of being loans, meaning money that will be repaid, not gone forever as with the grants and tax breaks...

...THE STORIES ABOUT THE CIA’S dropping more than a thousand of its secret informants have tended to focus on the murderers and criminals who were serving on the CWs payroll...

...Republican Congressmen like John Kasich are taking on corporate welfare, which the GOP, in its zeal to get welfare mothers off the dole, had long neglected...

...Their position seems to be, in the words of my friend Matthew Miller, “that insuring kids is just the camel’s nose under the tent, the beginning of the slippery decline into socialism...

...In the meantime, the percentage of freshmen whose top goal is to be well off financially has risen from 40 percent to 74 percent...

...MAYBET HERE IS STILL HOPE FOR American conservatives...

...The only support for Buckley v. &le0 comes from the rich who want to buy office, from interest groups that want to buy office-holders, and from what used to be called, in a bit of Marxist invective that has unhappily vanished from political discourse, their “running dogs” in the journalistic and legal communities-among the most appalling of whom is the ACLU...