Tilting at Windmills
Tilting at Windmills The funny man on the White House speech-writing team is Jerry Doolittle. Unfortunately, because of the need for official piety, some of his best efforts do not see the...
...The Gay The Washington Monthly/September 1977 Rights advocates can be tiresome, but from time to time something happens that reminds us that they do have legitimate grievances...
...He doesn’t want staff members barging into his office with exciting new ideas...
...If you want to get money from Washington, the time to try is at the end of the fiscal year when federal agencies panic that they might leave unspent any money appropriated for them this year, thus providing Congress with an excuse for reducing next year’s appropriation...
...Instead, he appointed as Secretary of Defense Harold Brown, the man who as Secretary of the Air Force under Johnson had written the infamous memo on the three ways to fire Ernie Fitzgerald, the man who had blown the whistle on the C-SA...
...The Frank Ikards had signed up for a place at Edgartown, ‘but it’s so much fun where we live, I wish we weren’t going away,’ said Jane...
...But by the end of the movie, everyone realizes he is right and he is hailed as a hero...
...lawyer Bernard Gordon and spouse...
...More seriously, Will has shown a consistent disdain for the unruly poor-from his comments on the Hearst free-food riot to those on the last time the lights went out in New York (those people, he said, “lack the character traits necessary for life in a free and lawful society...
...Johnson continues: “No matter...
...Our indifference to these veterans has to be one of the real scandals of our time...
...There may be a Bronx High School of Science and a Fiorello La Guardia School for the Performing Arts, but nowhere is there a special program for students interested in politics and government . Our political skills will determine our survival, but few high school students take any courses in politics...
...Most of them drink too much and have an excessive amount of macho in their character, but they are free spirits who can tell the bank president to go to hell and not wake up frightened the next morning...
...Only in the reorganization group in OMB and in the domestic staff at the White House is there any hint of urgency, of exciting tasks at hand...
...The old causes are seen as part of a duespaying past...
...and Mrs...
...One reason they don’t is the dismal state of the art of teaching about public affairs...
...It’s back to the womb,’ she says...
...But no one was studying politics...
...But Fitzgerald then exposed another Air Force scandal, illegal spending on the $800-million Advanced Logistics System...
...It’s summertime, and the living is easy...
...This is an annual rate of $422,550.00...
...So for once, instead of a pious and totally hypocritical exchange of “we want to work together” between the executive and legislative branch\es, we may have a genuine case of cooperation in the public interest...
...Jimmy Carter’s in charge...
...We’re desperate,’ one black woman cried...
...Sixties liberals were wrong to concentrate their anti-war fire on the bombing...
...Such has not been the path of the whistle blower in the federal government...
...On a recent television show, Will put someone down for using “the language of a locker room at a not very good country club...
...Look for it as you pass through Wilmington on the train...
...Charles Peters...
...We hired him...
...Wgi therefore want to congratulate Richard A. Pettigrew, a presidential assistant working on reorganization, who recently did something members of the executive branch almost never do...
...The first $500,000 will be spent on painting the buses to give them a new design and logo...
...A Carter in-law hired as a Washington lobbyist for Coca-Cola...
...They don’t have to get along with the corporation executive or the union leader...
...Desperate for jobs.’ “ ‘I need this job bad,’ Bernard Meeks declared...
...Our favorite is his tribute to the late Werner von Braun: “He aimed for the stars but sometimes he hit London...
...Instead of treating Congress as an enemy to be threatened or cajoled, he asked it for help...
...Ormaybe they sense their leader doesn’t want them to care...
...Can that call to arms, we’ve got the stereo blaring and the air-conditioning humming.’’ The administration’s indifference to the problem of self-absorption, its lack of effort to stimulate concern for others, is illustrated by the fact that it 6 has taken eight months to appoint a Peace Corps director...
...When it was time to apply for summer jobs in New York City earlier this year, thousands of youngsters lined up the night before-at some spots 15 applicants for each job...
...Tell President Carter that black people here are trying to get a gig,’ declared one woman...
...I guess this shows what the unemployment situation is in this community.’ “While the State says unemployment is only 4.3 per cent for the Chicago metropolitan area, for the city itself it is 5.8 per cent-and, the mayor’s Office of Manpower says, the rate of black unemployment in Chicago is 10 per cent...
...The night before some of the owners of the Kalorama Square houses were sitting around their joint pool when the Ikards remembered they had enough chili to feed everyone...
...O u r national ignorance about government extends even to the people who work within it, For example, most members of the executive branch do not understand the Congress and most members of the Congress don‘t understand the executive branch...
...But while we pray that Mr...
...Gi$ is a musician’s word for a job...
...I n the old movie, “On the Waterfront,” Terry Malloy, the character played by Marlon Brando, is rewarded with the scorn of his colleagues and even physical beatings for blowing the whistle on racketeering in the longshoremen’s union...
...Mostly, people are enjoying the life made possible by their new prominence and their high salaries...
...A recent article in The Washington Post describes students working in chemical laboratories, creative writing, computer mathematics, environmental science, madrigal singing, painting, and playing musical instruments...
...It means that plaintiffs’ attorneys, whose main source of income is auto accidents, will have to find other work...
...N o - f a u l t aut om o bil e liability insurance is clearly an idea whose time has come, but society will pay a price for its enactment...
...for now, they just don’t seem tocare...
...We need courses that describe how the government really works...
...Here’s another truth about the way the system works that doesn’t get into the political science textbooks...
...He asked the members of Congress to let him know what federal programs weren’t, in the opinion of their constituents, working...
...This led them to relax their efforts when Johnson halted the air war...
...The one crucial fact not mentioned in the story is that Frank Ikard is the number-one lobbyist for the oil companies: “As hot as it was Sunday, one couple was bemoaning the fact that they were headed for Martha’s Vineyard the next day...
...But things are changing...
...the Philip Whites...
...Carter promised in his campaign that he would turn every whistle blower into a Terry Malloy...
...Whereupon other edibles were produced from other houses, and they had an impromptu party...
...Fitzgerald got his job back, not through Carter, but through a law suit...
...K a1 o rama Square inhabitants include newsmen Scotty Reston and Phil Geyelin and their wives...
...He also says he ranked first in a speed reading class conducted in the White House...
...For one agency, the Federal Railroad Administration, 42 per cent of the contracts were issued in the last ten days of the year...
...Powell and Jordan, whose style is influential with the rest of the White House staff, affect a fifties cool about causes...
...There was not the slightest evidence that this woman had failed in any of her duties...
...This means giving tough sentences to the violent and keeping a wary eye on those who are not dangefous but who look upon larceny as a lark...
...and Mrs...
...Soon to move in are former EPA chairman Russell Train and his Aileen, and Rep...
...Will will discover mercy, liberalsmust face the fact that some of the poor have been so brutalized that, in the words of William Raspberry of The Washington Post, “Some of them may be beyond turning around...
...They say Admiral Turner of the CIA is the kind of pol who constantly uses your first name: “Now tell me what you think, Joe...
...Will to write a column that acknowledges the truth of this Ap story, dated July 22: “CHICAGO-The crowd of 2,000 surged into a new supermarket, hungry for work, not food...
...In fact, the only way the publication is predictable these days is in its staunch refusal to admit that Israel can do wrong or the Arabs right...
...One indication of how accustomed we have all become to enormous legal fees is the lack of press comment about the $35,202.50 bill that Philip Lacovara’s firm submitted to the House Ethics Committee for the month of June...
...D,o intelligent conservatives have to spoil their act with snobbery...
...In Los Angeles, a handful of civil service openings also drew long lines-and last year, one opening as an elevator mechanic’s helper for Los Angeles drew 9 1 7 applicants...
...A recent report from Fort Rucker, Alabama, said that Army Spec...
...The House Veteran’s Affairs Committee recently voted to raise benefits for Vietnam veterans...
...I want you to know, Joe...
...This is something that congressmen who analyze their mail know a lot about...
...Protecting ourselves against them may be the only answer...
...Think about 8 that for a while...
...In fact his unwillingness even to see younger members of the staff was recently the occasion of a memo of protest from one of his junior aides, Jane Frank...
...Lest you think this is sheer speculation on our part, the Government Accounting Office has just reported #hat 65 per cent of all government research and development contracts were issued in the final month of the most recent fiical year...
...These lawyers stand out in America as part of the dwindling breed of people who are truly independent...
...There is an absence of ardor in the new administration...
...We think so...
...She’s shattered, she says, when the answer comes back over and over: their most perfect place is alone in their private rooms at home where they can shut the door, turn on the TV or lock themselves into their stereos...
...It helped bring the North Vietnamese back to serious negotiation and it didn’t kill anyone...
...Carter believes in the downward flow of ideas-downward from himself...
...4 Marie Sode was mustered out of the service for “homosexual tendencies” because she married a transsexual...
...Bill Moorhead, D-Pa...
...If you read Sally Quinn’s recent series on the Arabs in London, it was clear that the author was staying at the Savoy...
...They aren’t breaking any laws...
...Disturbing signs that this White House gang is just like all the rest: Carter’s decision to go with the maritime lobby on the oil cargo preference and media advisor Gerald Rafshoon’s role as manager of the maritime industries’ advertising and public relations efforts in behalf of the bill...
...Environmental Action magazine seemed to us to capture the spirit perfectly when, in an article about environmentalists who have gone to work for the administration, it ran this headline: “Laboring in the public interest pays off...
...Of course it’s still possible that the congressmen won’t take the time to answer or that Pettigrew will simply file away their replies...
...H a y n e s Johnson of The Washington Post recently wrote about a teacher who asked her students to describe their most perfect place...
...For example, a course on lobbies could begin with this marvelous item from Betty Beale’s column in The Washington Star that shows exactly how the “we’re all just friends” lobbyists ply their trade...
...If they did, he said, black unemployment here would be more like 20 per cent-and even higher among unskilled young black men...
...Jody Powell’s purchase of a $1 1 5,000 home without a down payment...
...Their ability to win large judgments for accident victims-and large fees for themselvesgives them an immunity from the pressures that make most people conform...
...Dennis McAvoy, research director for the manpower office, adds that the figures don’t include those too discouraged to keep on looking forwork...
...This has infuriated all the Air Force team players, and Fitzgerald is again isolated, with Brown’s apparent approval, from any real responsibility...
...First we had William Buckley, now George Will...
...The White House has given a lot of publicity to the reduction in the size of its staff...
...The other participants were probably worried about eye faults...
...Carter thinks he wants the broadest range of opinion, but by confining its transmittal to the two or three senior aides through whom everything flows, he’s guaranteeing he won’t get it...
...There has not, however, been any mention of the 163 employees who work at the White House but are listed only on the records of other executive agencies...
...Is there an anti-poverty project perfectly suited to the energy level of the average civil servant...
...They seldom ask one...
...They don’t have to butter up big clients...
...The Washington Area Council of Governments has begun a $1 0-million project to improve its transportation by Greyhound bus between the District and Dulles Airport...
...another the right questions...
...He’s leaving us alone, and that suits us fine...
...Without ardor, without rhetoric, without ideology, without drama, he’s leading us...
...Even when they get to college, they seldom take more than one...
...Lorenzo Chew...
...They are called “detailed personnel” and represent a hallowed way of hiding White House staff that seems to be continuing in full force under Carter...
...Politics is equated with Tammany Hall and political science with dull essays by Seymour Martin Lipset (see page 12 of this issue...
...It’s certainly clear he doesn’t want them to think...
...There were seven applicants for each job...
...Ruskin was right about Turner...
...If you stopped reading The New Republic because you thought it was too predictable, try it again...
...At last-a big office, a big salary, and a big title...
...These people are just looking for a job,’ said Police Sgt...
...Carter says he never suffers from jet lag...
...T h e most depressing news about the President has to be the report that he calls foot faults on his opponents when he’s losing at tennis...
...Unfortunately, because of the need for official piety, some of his best efforts do not see the light of day...
...The number of public employees has climbed to 17.4 million . . . .Nixon was right about the mining of Haiphong Harbor...
...There are now 160,000 public school students enrolled in special programs for the intellectually gifted...
...Those of us left behind in organization America will mourn their loss...
...Lloyd Bentsen...
...A recent article about the isolation of affluent Washington is the kind of thing we thought appeared only in The Washington Monthly, but under a new managing editor, Michael Kinsley, almost every issue has at least one fresh article...
...Chicago is also not the only city with such a situation in the inner city...
...We still can’t understand why Carter doesn’t propose gasoline rationing to deal with the energy problem instead of taking the inflationary route of higher prices...
...It’s called the Sunday Breakfast Mission...
...One yearns for Mr...
...I’ve been out of work for nearly five years.’ “This was Chicago’s South Side on a day when 300 jobs, most of them part-time and paying only $3.05 to $3.90 an hour, became available...
...But the new benefits still don’t cover the tuition, much less the living expenses, of many of the recipients...
...That’s his job...
...But the real slaughter was going on down below with Westmore1 and’s search-and-destroy missions . . . . Journalism used to be the worst paid profession...
Vol. 9 • September 1977 • No. 7
