Tilting at Windmills
Tilting at Windmills T h e Carters sometimes appear to be warm human beings. More often, according to the people who work for them at the White House, the President and his wife come across as...
...E v e r y legislative measure has its advocates and opponents who paint the most glowing or depressing picture of the results of its enactment...
...How on earth can the government be made more efficient if inefficient employees can’t be fired...
...It may be that the press has gotten so carried away with its justifiable indignation at CIA misdeeds that it has forgotten that this country still needs a good intelligence agency and that the press has an obligation to criticize its inefficiencies as well as its scandals...
...You’ll never find the answer to these questions in The New Republic or The Nation or indeed in The Washington Post or The New York Times (except by Drew Middleton, whose views are too predictably right-wing...
...Is Henry Bradsher of the Washington Star right in reporting that the Russians have made dramatic improvements in their ability to track down our submarines...
...The federal government now has 73,000 employees designated GS-14 and GS-15, jobs in which modest responsibility is the rule rather than the exception, and in which the pay ranges from $30,000 to $47,500...
...So it was with the recent increase in the minimum wage...
...The same kind of thing is said whenever I express concern about the efficiency of our military...
...Opponents said it would cause massive layoffs...
...This is why we have proposed that as government jobs open up, half of them should be filled with the understanding that the new employee is subject to arbitrary dismissal...
...The only trouble was that it began with a shot of what looked like some Salvation Army bell-ringers, and the show had no evidence of wrong-doing by the Army...
...Both were wrong, according to a recent survey by The Wall Street Journal...
...Another 6.5-percent pay increase for federal employees is scheduled for October 1. The Defense Department, on grounds of saving money, and the Treasury Department, on grounds of avoiding an inflationary example, are said to favor eliminating or reducing the increase...
...No other member of the Carter family was there...
...Because Carter has been so cowardly about confronting the salary and pension problem-and the government employees’ unions-he needs a massive push from the media...
...employees realize this...
...We hope other magazines, newspapers, television stations, and networks will begin to face the problem...
...But the story that the CIA was not doing its job-providing the country with reliable intelligence about import a n t developments abroad--was at least equally important...
...Employers are simply reducing the number of working hours...
...Recently the Civil Service Commission has approved a plan to remove from civil service coverage sizable blocs of middle- and upper-level jobs so that they can be made available for women, blacks, and other minority groups...
...He then attempted to escape and was shot in the head and killed by a policeman...
...And the military is no better...
...Is retired Admiral Gene La Roque right in saying that we should stop wasting money on aircraft carriers and instead spend it on submarines and antisubmarine warfare...
...No food...
...In recent months, The New Republic and Mother Jones have joined us in protesting excessive salaries...
...According to Frank Ching, of the Asian Wall Street Journal, the government of Vietnam has set up People’s Inspection Commissions, whose members are elected by the people on a block-byblock basis, to monitor bureaucracy that, in the words of the Vietnam News Agency, is increasingly characterized by “overbearingness, au o n December 19, the CBS Evening News carried a good segment on crooked charity appeals...
...Advocates said it would mean higher income for workers...
...What they seek is protection against arbitrary firing on the basis of sex, race, politics, or simple favor4 itism...
...The guests were permitted, however, to circulate among the rooms of the mansion’s first floor...
...Write your congressman...
...They will tell you that they don’t want to be protected from firing for incompetence...
...He was searched and found to have no weapon on him...
...The average lieutenant colonel costs you $51,200 per year in salary and fringe benefits...
...But it did so on the ground that the raises were politically stupid, not that they were wrong, conceding that “it is possible to argue that the council now fears the wrath of the taxpayers for doing what was right, just as Congress did in the last round of federal pay increases...
...More often, according to the people who work for them at the White House, the President and his wife come across as cold...
...T h e r e is another aspect of federal employment where Jimmy Carter needs to be turned away from the direction in which he is heading...
...We think the government should make an equal effort to make room for the risk-taker and the original thinker...
...The most recent convert is Vietnam...
...In spite of the Post’s silence, there is some sign of movement here...
...According to the Post’s Mike Causey, Carter “has approved a plan that would prohibit federal government agencies from firing any employee as a result of efforts to reorganize the bureaucracy...
...The other, dealing with the failure of the CIA to predict Saudi Arabia’s crucial behavior at the time of the Arab oil embargo, was a back-page item...
...It is the way the clever administrator turns disaster into a budget increase...
...Now is the time not only for the media but for the taxpayer to join in...
...Charles Peters...
...William Ray was arrested for stealing a $7 pair of shoes...
...One told of the CIA’s use of reporters, and it, reflecting journalism’s fascination with itself, received major attention...
...All of us who enjoy comedy owe an eternal debt to Donald Barnes, chief of the State Department’s Language Services Division, who selected the Polish interpreter for President Carter’s recent trip...
...On the other hand, Richard E. Fields, a criminal with a history of violence reaching back to his childhood who had murdered a technician at St...
...Surlier souls might question, however, why Barnes chose a Russian speaker to translate Polish and why he ignored the many fluent speakers of Polish who work for our government, including those in the Slavic Division of the Library of Congress and in the Foreign Service Institute, which is part of Barnes’ own Department of State...
...And you can bet that there will be congressmen who, instead of asking why Barnes didn’t get a Polish speaker from the Library of Congress or the Foreign Service Institute, will move to give him enough money to hire fluent translators of every known language so that “this President, this country will never be embarrassed again” . . . Two major stories about the CIA appeared in the press during December...
...During the Christmas holidays, for example, the Carters had a party for the families of the White House staff...
...In fact, the Army is generally more honest and has a less overgrown bureaucracy than most American charities...
...Is W. R. Taylor, editor of Jane’s All the World’s Aircraft, right in saying that the cruise missile isn’t much better than the Nazi V-1 the British learned to shoot down with regularity in World War II...
...Reasonable federal...
...No drink...
...Surely, you think, there must have been beer and peanuts, or potato chips and coke...
...The President was not there...
...I n December, The Washington Post attacked the New York City Council for voting pay raises for the city’s top 51 elected officials...
...The problem is that such protection, to be complete, requires exhaustive hearings that can be manipulated by the incompetent to outlast all but the most determined supervisors...
...But they were empty...
...Let him know what you think of this ridiculous waste...
...In fact, the federal pay increases in the last 16 years have been scandalous, as has the Post’s lack of opposition to them...
...Hardly anyone is being fired, but few workers are making more money...
...Elizabeth’s Hospital, was found not guilty by reason of insanity and returned to the hospital where his presence is a daily comfort to all the members of the staff who testified against him...
...Perhaps it can increase its revenues this year by suing CBS for libel...
...We think this will have the added benefit of attracting more adventurous types to a government service that the appeal of tenure has packed with cautious people who seek security above all...
...So at last there is some kind of force working within the government against these annual raises...
...Barnes’ defense-that he didn’t have enough budget to hire a full-time Polish speaker for his staff-is a bureaucratic classic...
...w h e n e v e r I write something like the preceding item, some frienrd will tell me our liberal readers will think I’m pro-CIA...
...There were platters and punch bowls aplenty...
...T h e Washington Monthly was founded on the belief that the main enemy was not communism or capitalism but bureaucracy, and we’re always pleased when others join us in that perception...
...No Carters...
...I find this tragic because it is essential that liberal intellectuals rejoin the defense debate they left for understandable reasons early in the Vietnam war...
...A Kentucky Fried Chicken employee who was working 23 hours a week and making $53, is now working 18 hours and getting $48 . . . . Washington recently witnessed two dramatic demonstrations of how not to handle criminals...
...Carter was not there...
...Government salaries and related pension costs (see Marjorie Boyd’s article in this issue) are drastically limiting this country’s financial ability to meet pressing problems of unemployment and health care...
...Since as reasonable people we must concede that unpleasant fellows might seize power in a country that has the potential of waging war against us, don’t we want an intelligence agency that can let us know what the unpleasant fellows are up to and a military that can protect us if things get out of hand...
...Much of the CIA’s manipulation of the press was deplorable (although we can see absolutely nothing wrong with a reporter who in an unpaid, voluntary, and patriotic capacity gives information to the CIA) and deserved exposure...
Vol. 9 • February 1978 • No. 12
