TILTING AT WINDMILLS

...Economists who argued unemployment must be kept at 6 percent or higher to prevent excessive inflation have had to steadily adjust their figures downward as unemployment dropped to 5.2 percent without producing the disasterous rise in prices they had predicted...

...113 million of that expenditure came from the Clinton and Dole campaigns alone...

...He was a commercial airline pilot...

...His protest of kerosene dumping got him fired by Eastern Airlines...

...there were 4,621 doctors practicing in the state...

...no hiring may be done for the 1997 summer season ...u ntil the information requested by the department” on “race/nationa1 origin and gender composition...

...Fortunately, other pilots came to his support, he got his job back, and the airlines stopped dumping the fuel...

...The power of publicity is demonstrable by the fact that breast cancer runs second to AIDS in money devoted to finding a cure...

...But few of us will be willing to support the no-fault approach until the doctors show they will get rid of the bad apples in their midst...

...Subsequent revelations have required me to revise that figure to $500,000...

...I pity the poor manager in the field-347 sites are involved, according to Ruth Larson of The Washzngton Times...

...So what can you do for the people who invest, especially when, as was the case with the Monthly, the prospect of profit was not high...

...It begins: “Thirteen months after the telephone industry was deregulated in the name of free-market benefits for consumers, the public might soon see the first tangible result of competition: higher phone bills.’’ AN UNSUNG HERO DIED LAST month...

...The tragedy is that no one remembers that we have had low inflation with low unemployment (below 5 percent) several times in our history-most recently for substantial periods in the ’50s and ’60s...

...And this month, I learned that the FDR memorial, the most important recent project of the Park Service in Washington, had not been visited by just-retired Park Service Director Roger Kennedy, or by his boss, Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt, during the four years they were in charge of its construction...

...Isn’t it the violent we most need to protect ourselves from...

...Can you help find the right doctor or hospital when he or a member of his family is ill...

...Based on what I knew then from an investigation that was certainly not excessively thorough, I estimated our total expenses at around $200,000...

...The story of how “Chiang Kaishek made huge political donations to U.S...

...One of the most powerful lobbies in Washington was called the China Lobby and was run by Chiang Kai-shek‘s Nationalists, who by then had been driven from the mainland to Taiwan...

...And an old friend tells me he’s working on a book about the Kennedys that will make me push the figure even higher...

...But I will never be convinced, no matter how much money was spent, that John Kennedy’s victory in West Virginia was bought...

...In Leonard Garment’s new book Crazy Rhythm, he describes similar feelings during Watergate: “Though Fred Buzhardt and I complained about not having access to information necessary to defend Nixon effectively, we were also protecting ourselves by letting Nixon decide what we could hear and see...

...Nevertheless, both parties have been forced to devise what The Washington Post calls “elaborate systems” to comply with the law: “Senators and House members, sometimes accompanied by staff members, hustle over to their party headquarters on Capitol Hill to make phone calls from ‘private’ turf...

...WHYD IDN’T TONYLA KEK NOW what his subordinates knew about foreign campaign contributors trying to influence the Clinton Administration...

...That sounds more like 1 percent than 10...

...FOR A COUPLE OF YEARS NOW, THE economy has been carrying on a great experiment, demonstrating that we could increase employment without increasing inflation...

...Several wealthy candidates have been defeated in state-wide races by less well-heeled opponents...

...What will natural-born klutzes like me do...

...Klutzes can learn...

...The problem is not where the calls are made but what deals are made-or implied-during the calls...

...Later in 1970, he took a stand against the practice of dumping huge quantities of kerosene fuel from airplanes which, according to The New York Times, L‘made runways greasy, increasing the risks that pilots faced when applying the brakes on landing, and contributed to the smog and poor visibility that they regarded as the most common hazard they faced...

...And underlying that problem is the need for money in the first place...

...So few Republicans seem to give a damn about providing health care for those without it, and so many Republicans seem in mortal fear of losing campaign contributions from their friends in the tobacco industry...

...WHENW .H...

...In the 1950s and 1960s, he attacked the Weather Bureau for calling smog natural “haze” when it was clear from the vantage point of pilots in the air that the haze was caused by industry and traffic...

...George Allen, is emphasizing a fact-based approach to the way history is taught in the public schools...

...I ask the question because recent Justice Department statistics reported by Jerry Seper of The Washington Times show that, although the number of defendants indicted for drug offenses rose to 21,505, the number of defendants indicted for violent crimes dropped to 8,291...

...The public needs to be fully informed about it...

...Of course, it took three hours, but I did it...

...Why doesn’t some budding H & R Block-what do those initials stand for...

...Why don’t the doctors wake up to the fact that they could gain public support for a prohibition against outrageous malpractice suits if the doctors demonstrate that they will punish the incompetents in their midst...

...A lot of people in the press assume that any good idea presented by Bill Clinton is motivated solely by cynical political calculation...

...Therefore, effective immediately...

...I remember how delighted and relieved I was when the only favor asked by Warren Buffettwho had sunk $82,000 in the magazine and who I did not know well enough to be sure of what he might expect in return-was to be introduced to Katharine Graham...

...Then, still with no increase in inflation, Alan Greenspan cut this great experiment short by increasing interest rates...

...Remember, Jay Rockefeller lost his first race for governor...

...Now I see what they mean...

...They will credit Greenspan with taking a tough stand on inflation...

...BLESSS ENATORO RRINHA TCH, A Republican from Utah, for coming out for an increase in the cigarette tax to pay for health care coverage for uninsured children...

...That should be forbidden...

...SPEAKING OF INCURIOSITY, last month we noted how successive secretaries of education have managed to ignore what’s been going on under their noses in the District of Columbia schools...

...This time by a front-page story in The New York Times by Mark Landler...

...The conviction rate for each was 86 percent...

...Can you help the contributor get his daughter in the college she wants to attend...

...The latest is the decline of the full-service gas station...

...What we require is patient instruction...

...That shouldn’t be deemed a bad thing, even by believers in choice, of whom, by the way, I am one...

...If you want to live honorably in politics and not sell influence over your official acts, you are always desperately searching for “clean” favors you can do for those who have helped you...

...Allen’s concern is exactly what mine has been: that students can’t think about history without having facts to think about...

...Technological advances like e-mail or more traditional support systems that take messages, called secretaries, are not available at the NSC...

...Geological Survey...

...The words are from Richard 111, but the thought must have been what Bill Clinton was trying to impart to Thomas “Mack” McLarty and Erskine Bowles, when they came to understand they should “take care of” Webster L. Hubbell...

...Tilting at Windmills BY CHARLES PETERS William III Clean Favors Dialing for Dollars The First China Lobby Natural Born Klutzes "SAY THAT 'TIS DONE AND I WILL love thee and prefer thee for it...

...Candidates spent $400 million on television commercials last year compared to $25 million in 1972...

...THE LAW THAT SAYS GOVERNment officials can’t raise money in government buildings seems pretty silly to me...

...According to Eamon Javers of The Hill, CBS has four lobbying firms, Capitol CitiesABC three, and NBC two plus the 17 employed by its parent, General Electric...

...The best way to reduce the need is to require broadcasters to give free time to candidates and to make that grant of free time conditional on the candidates’ not buying time for those manufactured commercials that cost a bundle to produce and are almost always mendacious...

...He will become even more sanctified than Paul Volckerand all future Fed chairmen will think they must behave the same way if they too yearn for any respect...

...This, despite a study by Harvard researchers that estimated 80,000 deaths caused annually by medical negligence, mainly by doctors...

...Nobody ever bought 20 percent of a statewide vote in West Virginia and that is what Kennedy’s margin was...

...Certainly if adoption into a good family were a more likely prospect for the baby, fewer women would choose abortion...

...She couldn’t get through, she says, and gave up...

...I have since learned that such a law is already in force in at least three countries-Switzerland, Brazil, and Israel...

...ANOTHER JOURNALIST I USUALLY admire, Al Kamen of The Washzngton Post, recently fell into error when he ridiculed Bill Clinton for reminding a group he was addressing that the hero of the movie Dante’s Peak worked for the U.S...

...AUDENC ALLED OUR era “the age of anxiety,” he must have been thinking of fellows like me...

...I imagine myself trying to put gasoline in the tank and causing a major conflagration as I spill fuel just as another customer is lighting his cigar...

...THATDE REGULATION IS ALWAYS devoutly to be desired, sacred writ among conservatives, has once again been cast in doubt...

...His colleagues have been telling me that Hatch is a better man than he appeared to be during the Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas hearings...

...To their great credit, Bill Clinton and FCC Chairman Reed Hundt are supporting free time...

...DO FEDERAL PROSECUTORS HAVE their priorities straight...

...The great progress made recently in treating AIDS is another example of the point made by Michelle Cottle and Sherri Eisenberg in their article on rebuilding the Santa Monica Freeway...

...This kind of happy ending is, alas, not always the fate of the whistleblower...

...During the 1960 Democratic primary in West Virginia, I was similarly incurious about what my colleagues in the Kennedy campaign were spending...

...I’m not in a good position to feel righteous about what Lake and Garment didn’t see...

...Now we will not find out how low unemployment will go without inflation, because even if there is no inflation, the credit will go to Greenspan for raising interest rates...

...My guess is that the law was designed to protect career civil servants from being shaken down by the political appointees who are their bosses...

...and reviewed by the department...

...But even Bennet, whose work I usually admire, can yield to the temptation that seems to overwhelm most of his fellow journalists to emphasize news of scandal instead of news about solutions...

...Does it really make any moral difference if Al Gore leaves his office and goes across the street to use the pay phone in a restaurant...

...You look for that innocent favor...

...In early March, just when summer hiring for the national parks was getting in full swing, Washington ordered all hiring stopped “because concern has been expressed about the diversity composition of our seasonal work force...

...has been received...

...LET ME SAY ONE MORE WORD IN defense of the Clintons’ use of the Lincoln Bedroom as a political favor...

...But why should the location of the phone from which the official solicits other contributors have any significance...

...IF YOU LIVED THROUGH THE ’50s and ’60s there is another interesting fact that you will be aware of: Now is not the first time the Chinese have tried to buy American politicians...

...I have an idea...

...For his last run for office in 1990, [former Senator Paul] Simon rented a one-room office with a phone on Massachusetts Avenue...

...But The Washington Pods report of the Clinton-Hundt free time story ran on page Z To the credit of The New York Times, its story of the event by James Bennet ran on page one...

...But it’s comforting to remind ourselves that occasionally the good guy does prevail...

...The best solution to the problem of excessive malpractice verdicts is a no-fault system that will compensate for disability and lost earnings but not for the infinitely inflatable damages for pain and suffering that eloquent lawyers wring from too many juries...

...I’m like a character in a Woody Allen movie-with a new worry every day...

...LAST MONTH I SUGGESTed a prohibition on talking on your car phone while the vehicle is moving...

...NOT LONG AGO WE POINTED OUT how little money was spent on malaria research compared to AIDS...

...The terrible job done by the medical community in policing itself is what justifies those medical malpractice lawsuits that physicians detest...

...Anyone who wants to engage the ablest young people in the summer knows you have to move fast, and that later than April is often too late...

...For his stand against the Weather Bureau, Guthrie had his pilot’s license suspended for 60 days...

...But a generation of economists and business reporters have come along with no memory of these events or the truth they proved...

...Now comes the National Journal with figures that show heart disease, breast cancer, diabetes, and Parkinson’s disease all get far fewer dollars per person afflicted than goes for AIDS research...

...Clinton should do more, not less, to call attention to the important work many civil servants doand much, much more to attract the best young people to government service and find places for them in the era of downsizing...

...Does it really make any moral difference if A1 Gore leaves his office and goes across the street to use the pay phone in a restaurant...

...Maybe,” speculates Mary McGrory, “Lake let it be known that he wanted to be spared the sordid details of the commander in chief‘s passing of the hat...

...There seem to be two reasons this story was not played more prominently...

...His name was W. Lain Guthrie...

...congressmen and their parties” was recently retold by the China Times, in a story we learned about from the Associated Press...

...The power of money in the state is real but not as great as outsiders tend to think...

...And he was a whistleblower...

...Opposed to them is the powerful broadcasting lobby...

...Indeed a chart that accompanied the Post article showed no state taking disciplinary action against more than one per cent of its physicians...

...You have similar concerns when you’re raising money for a political magazine...

...THECO MING BAT-I-LE FOR FREE T V time will be crucial to the political health of the Republic...

...That means prison space is being allotted at a rate of more than twotoone to drug violators over violent criminals...

...MARYM CGRORHYA D ANOTHER observation about Tony Lake’s ignorance that is worth repeating: “The single most bizarre detail in this huge anthology of weirdness comes from Attorney General Janet Reno’s failed attempt to tell the national security adviser about the Chinese deviltry...

...THEM OST EFFECTIVE MEDICAL board in the country is in Mississippi, a state that disciplined about 10 per cent of its physicians,” reports The Wnshington Post...

...SPEAKING OF TEACHING, THE state of Virginia, under the leadership of Gov...

...Assuming you’re a reasonably decent fellow, you don’t want to sell influence...

...We shouldn’t make fun of him for at least taking a step in the right direction...

...my guess is Herman and Ralph-offer a course in how to fill your tank...

...On a day when Clinton made an appearance at a political fund-raiser and gave a speech about reforming public education, Bennet devoted the first four paragraphs of his article to the fundraiser and did not get to the most interesting element in Clinton’s speech-‘l\/lr...

...I once managed to change a tire...

...Nothing seems to stimulate effort like the glare of the public spotlight...

...In recent years, an emphasis on thinking about broad social trends far too often left students bereft of factual mooring...

...SPEAKINGO F THE PARKS ERVICE, its headquarters bureaucrats just did one of those things that big shots in Washington do that drive subordinates in the field ’round the bend...

...The Post then proceeded to support its conclusion with this statistic: “Mississippi officials last year imposed 45 serious disciplinary actions such as license revocation or restriction...

...ANOTHER GOOD PROPOSAL BY Bill Clinton that was buried by the press was the plan he announced in February to double the number of children adopted from foster care...

...Clinton also appealed today for schools not to waste money on bureaucracy that could be spent on teaching”-until his 11th paragraph, just three away from the closing sentence about the President’s plans for weekend golfing...

...Call if you want to help...

...Revoking the license of the bad doctor would protect society more effectively than a jury verdict that is paid for by his malpractice insurance and that permits him to continue butchering patients...

...The other reason is that many feminists are less than eager to promote adoption because they fear it implies that unmarried pregnant women should choose adoption over abortion...