Tidbits and Outrages
Tidbits and Outrages Thinking Like a Lawyer A familiar device of legal advocacy is known as “arguing in the alternative.” This means that a lawyer’s arguments on behalf of his client...
...kieie is a brief excelpt, reprinted from The Arizonrr Republic : “Now that we all need nuclear reactors, now that nuclear ieactois in a safe arid clean foini have been established, thele is a movenient 111 the United States opposed to the deployirierit of these reactois, “I have no evidence whatsoever that this niowement is direckd from Moscow...
...The General Accounting Office complained recently that, despite four years of complaints by Congress, the District’s bookkeeping system is in such disarray that it cannot be audited...
...Newsweek does seem to have hit upon a solution to one genuine terror suffered by The Washington Monthly family: the expiring magazine subscription...
...and that until the books are straightened out, there is no way of telling what the city’s financial condition really is...
...His lawyer offered three defenses: 1) He never borrowed the pot...
...In Wisconsin and South Carolina tax cases, however, the Exxon Corporation has been arguing-for some different reasonsthat its principal &visions are essentially selfcontained and profitmakmg on their own...
...The government’s latest attempt to make tlie trains run in tinie is incentive gayiiierits to the iailroads which ictually tun the trains for Anrtrdk, the governmentaibsidized passenger i ailroad coipoi atioii...
...How about this paragraph: “Mrs...
...the Artichoke War, Mood Rings, the Bee Shortage...
...that this letter is not popping up in everyone’s mail on Connecticut Avenue...
...Each assistant secretary is entitled to 2,840 square feet...
...An early example of arguing in the alternative is that of a man accused of borrowing a pot and returning it cracked...
...We Have No Evidence Whatsoever...
...Edward Teller, one of tlie iiiventois of the hydrogen bomb and foiinerly one of this country’s most brilliant nuclear scientists, recently gave a speech to the Pliiladelphia Society of 1.0s Angeles...
...Monthly, I’ll also wager that you didn’t know 30,000 Americans will lose their lives this year-not in combat overseas, not on the nation’s highways-but in everyday activities in and around places like Washington...
...Debits on the left and credits on the right...
...Mrs...
...It coiiies :omplete with a high ceilng, two couches, a coffee .able, a large wooden desk ind a splendid view of the “pi tol...
...in i ius t i ative dipai tmen 1. “Welsh has enjc,yetl such work flouiislied iil ri in fact--and e a d b this yeai moved iiito one of those piestigous offices that successful bureaucrats assume toward the end of theii careers...
...Office Space: Two From a profile of William J. Welsh, deputy directory of the Library of Congress, by Michael Kiernan of The Washington Star: “An oigdliizatmi man, he iwi the ordei m~it of the: accessioning unit and the ordei section in the ordei cl~vrsioii hefore be corning chief uf tlie pocessing depai lrnerit and associate directoi of the ad...
...2) it was cracked when he borrowed it...
...Washington Zoo (no relation) certainly will be disappointed to have missed this new low in “personalized” computer mailing...
...Mayflower Hotel, and Mrs...
...Where Is h.iussolini When We Need Him...
...This means that a lawyer’s arguments on behalf of his client needn’t be consistent with one another, because of the hallowed principle that the advocate’s job is advocacy, and not pre-censorship of arguments that the judge or jury might find convincing...
...No wait, it’s . . . . The District of Columbia government, about to topple into bankruptcy, apparently has taken a hint from that old puzzler about whether a tree falling in the forest makes any noise if no one’s around who can hear it...
...today there are twelve...
...Along with the general explosion of government employees has come inflation of titles-more chiefs, relatively fewer Indians...
...Although brief reference is made to “the Monthly family,” the pitch clearly is aimed at the lady of the house, whose poor little mind cringes before the terrors of modern life...
...Welsh feels that criti:ism of the federal governnent is misdirected...
...Does Nuclear Power Destroy Brain Cells...
...If this initiative passes in Galiforrua, it is likely that ten yeais frorn now we shall impot 1 -we slid have to miport an ddtlitiorial six million bairels of oil per d. d-y...
...Ripkis’ explanation: bureaucrats at different levels take up different amounts of space...
...It is led ~ I It his cotiiilry by an Ai~ericau~fl Aiab origin called Ralph Nacler...
...Even life here on seemingly peaceful Connecticut Avenue is threatened by “Those Household Death Traps...
...The raihoads, therefore, had no iifficulty in “earning” incentive payments of $11.8 million in the first eight months of 1975...
...Baffling...
...In 1976 the headquarters building holds only 3,756 bureaucrats-523 fewer-while HUD pays $500,000 annual rent for office space at five other locations around Washington...
...Dear Mrs...
...Office Space: One A perceptive man named Al Ripkis at the Department of Housing and Urban Development has discovered a Malthusian relationship between the growth of the federal bureaucracy and the growth of office space needed to 1 contain it...
...It is directed by our uwn fears a i d by our own stupidity...
...No1 do I believe that it is tiiiected from Moscow...
...Before his antitrust subcommittee, and in national advertisements, they have been anxious to insist that they are highly integrated operations, and that any attempt to break them up would lead to inefficiency and higher energy prices...
...You can be certain, Mrs...
...about a lot of baffling things like...
...And better that we should “throw it away,” Newsweek tells us, than to let it fall into the hands of some Connecticut Avenue neighbor who might not be worthy of a lifetime of Newsweek, because the offer was being extended “only to a carefully selected audience...
...No, credits on the left and debits on the right...
...Newsweek: Let us know if it works...
...The .eal problem, he told Kierian, is the breakdown of he traditional roles of io_in_e , school aid church...
...Monthly...
...The solution: a lifetime of “choice words...
...Senator Philip Hart recently caught the oil companies playing this game...
...In 1968, for example, there were six HUD employees at the assistant secretary level...
...The extra payneiits for on-time performance were instituted in 1974 ifter complaints that passenger trains were iunrling late iecause the raikoads were giving track preference to their iwn freight trains...
...Exon supplied information in the state tax cases to prove this point-information it had told Hart’s subcommittee was unobtainable because records are not kept on a divisional basis...
...Brooks Brothers, Mrs...
...A GS-5 clerk, by comparison, gets only 60 square feet...
...Radical Pediatricians...
...His observations, reported in the “Federal Column” of The Washington Star, -are as follows: The HUD building opened in 1968 with space for 4,279 people-at that time the entire department...
...But accorduig to a study by the hterstate Commerce Cornmission (reported by William [ones in The Washington Post), tlie government standards ’or “on tiwe” were set lower than the performance which ;enelated the complaints...
...and 3) he returned it in perfect condition...
Vol. 8 • May 1976 • No. 3
