TIDBITS AND OUTRAGES
Tidbits and Outrages For Their Own Good Remember when you had faith that the government would try to do the right thing? Well, the National Institute for Occupational Health and Safety has...
...If they go back to the local school system, they have more trouble, they have to work harder and they get less pay.’ “Another person who does program evaluations for the Office of Education said, ‘OE simply will not accept an unfavorable evaluation of a program...
...What should YOU do...
...And suppose President Carter’s scheme to tax the sale of so-called gas-guzzlers and give rebates on economical models were already in effect...
...What would that be...
...We were there to represent an enormous great sector ,f American life...
...But we must say our anxieties were aroused by this report, which appeared in the back pages of The Washington Post a few weeks ago: “At the instigation of Rep...
...I don’t know Wane around here who wants to monitor.’ ‘‘The one cardinal rule at OE, several employees said, is to make sure that all the money available does, in fact, get spent...
...When the employee asked about it, she said, the answer was simple and direct: ‘We had money left over in the budget and We had to spend it somehow.’ ” Cutting Back Last year we published an article called “The Firemen First Principle,” the point of which was that bureaucrats, when faced with a budget cut, will cut muscle instead of fat because the bureaucrats themselves are usually part of the fat...
...That doesn’t mean I never saw them...
...Well, the National Institute for Occupational Health and Safety has the names and addresses of 74,000 workers who stand a greater chance than the general public of developing cancer...
...Children need someone to discipline them...
...When the State Department announced that it was :onternplating the abolition of the Government Advisory Zommittee on International Book and Library Programs, ‘or example, the committee’s current chairman, Leo N. 4lbert’ said it will be a “tragedy” if the committee dies...
...In fact, according to some Office of Education employees, very little hard evaluation ever gets done...
...I went fox hunting with them.’ ” Zero’s the Base, 3ut Sky’s the Limit We all share the a w n - stration’s high hopes for cero-based budgeting...
...Of course I saw them...
...I think children are better brought up with a governess...
...that it has all but abandoned most of the city’s 1,400 public parks to armies of drunks, junkies, and juvenile delinquents...
...And after all, Winston didn’t marry me to be a maid...
...Socialite Backs Day Care To bring a touch of glamour to the lives of our readers, we have pledged to bring them from time to time news of life among the beautiful people...
...Winston Guest...
...Singleton compared the vacancy rates for supervisors and workers: For five categories of supervisory positions paying from $17,000 to $25,000, the vacancy rates were, respectively, 22, 15, 13, 12, and 0 per cent (the 0 was for the $25,000a-year jobs...
...It administers 120 programs, compared with fewer than 35 in 1965, and each theoretically requires regulation, evaluation, and monitoring...
...According to David Burnham of h e New York Times, Dr...
...This repbrt is taken from an article by Sally Quinn in The Washington Post about Mrs...
...Education and the Bureaucrats’ Welfare Here’s another item that got buried in the back of me Washington Post-a description of the Office of Education by Bart Barnes that deserved more prominence than it got: “Charted by Congress in 1867 essentially to gather statistics on education, the Office of Education has broadened its scope dramatically in the past 15 years to the point where it now funds programs ranging from bilingual education to compensatory education for poor children to vocational education...
...Or you could be a bit less patriotic, splurge on a larger Ford Granada compact, and still get $225 back...
...Its members nclude people like Douglas Dillon, former Treasury secre.ary and currently chairman of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, Alan Pifer, president of Carnegie Corpora.ion, George Romney, former Cabinet member and business :xecutive, Yale University president Kingman Brewster, eecently named ambassador to Britain, and David Cohen, )resident of Common Cause...
...The ZBB presentation..for three of NASA’s 10 units was as big as the wfiole normal NASA budget book...
...If you turn in an unfavorable evaluation, they’ll just rewrite it .’ ‘‘ ‘Other than making sure that states got their money and making sure it was spent, b r e was no real role for the Office of Education,’ said another official...
...The Treasury Department has an Advisory Commit.ee on Private Philanthropy and Public Need...
...You could stuff yourself, your spouse, two kids and dog into a Chevrolet Chevette minicar and pocket a $400 rebate...
...Cohen says he :aUed it a ‘slap at the private, non-profit world.’ “Pifer, two other members of the committee, and a rreasury staffer assigned as the committee liaison spent heir lunch break drafting a crisply phrased memo of xotest to the Treasury secretary...
...And yet neither included the key ingredients of ZBB-priority evaluations and spellingout of the consequences of various funding levels...
...the committee members inanimously approved it...
...One executive committee member asked Hay, ‘What do we tell prospects they will get for their $5,000?’ “Hay’s answer was, ‘Nothing, except a sense of participating in something worthwhile.’ “Hay did stress that there would be special seminars with Cabinet members and other government officials for the $5,000 donors, but characterized such meetings as ‘dialogues.’ “Patrick O’Connor, a longtime party fund-raiser, Washington lawyer, and now council executive committee member added: ‘You are going to get first-hand, inside information from Cabinet members.’ ” Heroic Sacrifice Charles B. Camp of The Wall Street Journal has to win the prize for asking - and answering - the obvious question that occurred to no one else: Just how tough is Jimmy Carter’s gas-guzzler tax...
...They come from state and local school systems and most of them are making over $30,000 a year here and that’s more than they’ve ever made in their lives...
...John F. Finklea, head of the Institute, thinks that informing the workers “might do more harm than good...
...Max Baucus (DMont...
...The best proof so far that we weren’t just imagining things has come from Donald Singleton of the New York Daily News, who studied the New York City Parks Department and found it “so short of basic manpower, so top-heavy with supervisory and administrative officials...
...Tidbits and Outrages For Their Own Good Remember when you had faith that the government would try to do the right thing...
...Once started, programs are likely to continue forever, regardless of their value to children, because they mean jobs for bureaucrats...
...Guest is known to her friends, expressing relief that Nelson Rockefeller had the “breeding” to do what had to be done at Attica, Quinn wrote: “C.Z...
...rownsend Hoopes, the president of the American Associaion of Publishers, joined in protesting the possibility of ibolition, citing the committee’s sponsorship of such ssential programs as International Book Year in 1974 and Promotion of the Reading Habit in 1975...
...The size of the CPSC budget presentation expanded by 100 per cent...
...Altruism Isn‘t Dead The members of the Democratic National Finance Council-each is pledged to give or raise $5,000 a year for the party for the next four years-were in town for a luncheon last month...
...he employee recalled sitting in an office toward the end of the fiscal year when a complete set of new furniture arrived unexpectedly...
...I had a governess for my children...
...Romney warned that the President would be making a grave political mistake’ in abolishing the philanthropy :ommittee while leaving others in existence...
...What really got under my skin vas being compared to a special interest group,’ complains ’ifer...
...Here’s his answer: “Suppose you’re in the market for a new car...
...It has not hotified them, even though early warning can result, in a qure or prolonged life...
...The morning before the lunch there was a meeting of the council'^ executive committee, whose members have to bring in nine other $5,000 donors...
...After quoting C.Z., as Mrs...
...They are very security conscious, they don’t want to take chances, and they have no place to go...
...For 98 per cent of the people here, they’ve never had it so good,’ said one OE employee...
...Here, according to Urban Lehner of The Wall Street roumal, was the reaction when Secretary of the Treasury Michael Blumenthal suggested that, since the President was .rying to do away with official advisory committees, it ;hould reconstitute itself as an “informal” group: “Dillon expressed ‘shock,’ says a fellow member...
...Then again, you could just buy a full-sized Buick LeSabre sedan and take the consequence...
...Guest is absolutely against criticizing people’s children, she says, but she wiU say this...
...It was covered by Walter Pincus of n e Washington Post, who wrote a report that we commend for its lessons on how far political financing reform still has to go: “Jess Hay, a banker from Dallas and chairman of the council, called the pyramid fund-raising operation a new dimension in Democratic Party involvement for the business and professional community...
...the entire budget of the Consumer Produce Safety Commission and a small piece of the National Aeronautics and Space A dm ini s t r at ion budget were prepared this year using Georgia-style ZBB techniques...
...For the workers, the attendants, the laborers, the gardeners, the pruners and cutters, and the custodians, the vacancy rates were 92,57, 53,31 , and 93 per cent A Tragedy and a Grave Mistake The President is finding out that it’s not going to be easy o cut back on those 1,175 government advisory commitees...
...Besides, I couldn’t go around with Winston, traveling, doing all the things he wanted me to do if I’d had to stay home and take care of the children...
...The Office of Education declined to comment on the charges from the employees, who asked that their names not be used...
...A $90 rebate...
Vol. 9 • June 1977 • No. 4
