Tidbits and Outrages
Tidbits and Outrages Not Thinking Like a Lawyer A recent newspaper story about the rapid rise in malpractice judgments against attorneys and the consequent rise in malpractice insurance...
...Disputes would have to be resolved by common sense and mutual trust, rather than on the basis of who could hire the fastest gun...
...The wheels of commerce would turn more swiftly as people without special training in obfuscation and logic-chopping made clear and understandable agreements...
...Many are quietly, but desperately, trying to make job changes that will give them civil service status, and protection, if the Democrats gain control of the White House...
...This exercise in protective coloring is not new...
...Many of the political types came into government from private industry and spent hours, days and years telling anybody who would listen that the career government was an army of drones and that they-the political appointees-were working at great personal and fmancial sacrifice to make it better...
...Now that the prospect of giving up those $30,000-a-year-plus jobs looms, many of the same private enterprise champions are prepared to sell their birthrights to stay in government...
...nose figures were respectively 47 per cent and 101 per cent greater than the comparable increases in the orivate sector...
...Individuals with disagreements would have to rely on their own capacities for reconciliation and forgiveness instead of the brutalities of specially trained gladiators...
...That time is here again, and the transformation from political appointee to colorless (they hope) nonpartisan, career bureaucrat is in the works throughout town...
...The normal intercourse of life would flow smoothly, unchecked by the law’s and the lawyer’s limitless capacity to complicate and tangle things...
...What would life be like if the great law firms and the solo practitioner stayed home, clogging the golf courses and tennis courts of America...
...Now comes the Committee on Economic Development with a report indicating a similar fate awaits the rest of us...
...Four More Years Mike Causey of me Washington Post reports on a phenomenon that always seems to accompany a change of the party in power: “Preelection jitters are affecting dozens of Nixonera political holdovers in government...
...Budget Fat We recently discussed the fact that personnel costs were the principal factor in the bankruptcy of New York City...
...In the waning days of the Johnson administration, hundreds of Democratic appointees managed to bury themselves in government career ranks where they could not be found or fired by Republican headhunters anxious to clean house...
...Perhaps the most interesting part of the politician-to-bureaucrat metamorphosis is the change in thinking it represents...
...Tidbits and Outrages Not Thinking Like a Lawyer A recent newspaper story about the rapid rise in malpractice judgments against attorneys and the consequent rise in malpractice insurance premiums prompted a Wall Street Journal editorial writer to ask: “Suppose that the attorneys followed the lead of doctors in Los Angeles and other parts of the country and protested the higher premiums by engaging in a work slowdown, or better yet, a strike...
...It would be Paradise Regained...
...The pleasant consequences are virtually limitless, and include not having to pay huge legal fees...
...In the nation as a whole, the committee found that the salaries of state and local government employees increased 188 per cent in the period 1954-74 as the total number of such employees rose 152 per cent...
Vol. 8 • April 1976 • No. 2
