Tilting Archives - About C.P. - Respond

September 1998 - Volume 30 Issue 9

Clever Polluters - Forgotten Films - Stone Wall Fever - Movers and Shakedowners - Unmedicated Murderers

The psychiatrist E. Fuller Torrey, who often writes for this magazine, has a solution to the danger to society and themselves presented by schizophrenics like the U.S. Capitol murderer who stop taking their medication. It is that, when they have been arrested for some violation of the law or committed to a mental institution, their release be conditioned upon their agreement to report regularly to a mental health facility to make sure they are being medicated. When they violate this conditional probation, they could be picked up by the authorities and required to take medication. Torrey says 40 percent of the schizophrenics who should receive treatment are not receiving it regularly. They make up a substantial percentage of the homeless drifters we see in our streets and in our parks. If medicated, many could lead effective lives and innocent people wouldn't get shot just because someone hadn't taken his pill.

The polluters are getting pretty clever. Recently the Roanoke Times got hold of an e-mail purporting to state the views of an official in the office of Cecil Underwood, the governor of West Virginia and a long-time lackey of the coal companies and the utilities. The message urged these corporations to give the impression that they opposed a plan Underwood and nine other governors were going to present on emission control, even though the governors' plan was considerably more lenient to the utilities than the EPA proposal it was designed to supplant. Environmentalists suspect that the purpose of the e-mail was to create the appearance that the governors were cracking down on pollution even though they're actually doing what industry wants them to do.

If you are contemplating face-lift surgery, would you agree to have the two sides of your face operated on differently by two different doctors? This is what 21 patients supposedly consented to as part of a research project reported in the Journal of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery. But I tend to agree with a doctor quoted by The New York Times who said, "There is no woman I know of who would walk in and lie down for that." And it turns out that the written consent form signed by the patients did not explain that different surgical procedures would be employed. One of the participating surgeons said patients were given "an oral description" but all the one patient the Times could reach could remember is "something about a new procedure they were going to do. They said it would be for my benefit."

If you assume that most people hired for the federal civil service have passed competitive exams, you are wrong. "In the first nine months of last year, more than half of all new professionals hired by the government got their jobs through programs that allowed them to skip the entry-level exam," writes Mike Causey of The Washington Post. The reality of the civil service is radically different from what people imagine. The Professional, Administrative, and Clerical Exam is given to applicants for GS 5 or 7 entry-level jobs. But Hispanics and African Americans can avoid it if they got good grades in college, never mind what college. Furthermore, neither getting nor being promoted to a higher level job necessarily requires passing a written exam. Far from it. Most of these jobs and promotions are awarded on the basis of an evaluation of credentials and personnel files. Success in getting them is often more attributable to what insiders call the buddy system than to the merit or the party politics that idealists or cynics would suspect. You find out about the job opening through a network of friends who see to it that your application is favored, sometimes even writing the job description so that you're the only person who can fill it.

The Styles section of The New York Times recently came up with another report on trends among the suburban elite of Greenwich, Conn. You will recall the last one was a surge in the number of personal wine cellars being constructed. The latest Greenwich building craze, it seems, is walls. "Stone wall fever is spreading," reports the Times. The walls are not the one- or two-foot ornamental variety but the kind you can't see over. They cost as much as $1 million to build. And they are meant to keep people out.

Mike Causey has some other disturbing news about the civil service. Discrimination complaints have risen 56 percent since 1991. The backlog of cases in process in the agencies is up 102 percent. And the backlog of unprocessed appeals at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is up an incredible 581 percent. The typical case takes about 1,000 days. And only one in 10 succeed. Why then have they grown so much since 1991? In that year Congress passed a law that allows employees who win their cases to collect as much as $300,000 in compensatory damages. It's become the Powerball of the Bureaucracy.

Two sisters were killed last month in Arlington County, Va., by a man who was driving the wrong way on I-395 and had, according to the police at the scene, "a strong odor of alcohol." He also was driving despite two previous convictions, one for driving while intoxicated and the other for reckless driving in which alcohol was a factor. In the first case he was referred to a counselor who sent him to an alcohol treatment program at which he failed to show up. But at least his license was suspended. The next time, he was referred again to a counselor, failed to show up, and kept his license.

The same week, a Prince George's County, Md., teacher was killed by a driver who plowed into the rear of her car. This driver too had been arrested twice for drunk driving. He too had failed to show up, for which Maryland authorities rewarded him by doing nothing to apprehend him.

Just think of how many times you've read stories like these. The main fault with our criminal justice system is not the death penalty or police brutality or any of the other things one hears discussed. The big problem is screw-ups and inefficiencies that leave the guilty free to commit other crimes. The authorities have failed in one way or another, not arresting, not convicting, not incarcerating, or not revoking licenses. The result is the death of three innocent people in just one week in just two counties. Isn't it time to take law enforcement seriously and make a real effort to hire better police and reform the criminal justice system to make sure the guilty don't slip between the many cracks it now has?

Another Causey tidbit that should concern you is that at this moment government "has more retirement age workers than at any time in its history." Yet as Robert Worth points out in this issue, the Clinton-Gore administration, despite its alleged interest in reinventing government, has done next to nothing about attracting high-quality people to replace the retiring civil servants, at least some of whom are doing jobs that count and really need to be replaced.

I write about these matters because this magazine and Causey's column, which is buried in the Post's back pages, are among the few places you're likely to learn about them. Press coverage of the executive branch of government is, as I've often lamented, deplorable.

The same is true of state government. It used to be that state legislatures, if not the executive branch of state government, were well covered. When I came to the West Virginia legislature in 1960, top reporters from the Charleston papers attended every session. But, according to Charles Layton and Mary Walton, writing in the American Journalism Review, papers have made drastic cutbacks in their legislative coverage. "In capital press rooms around the country, there are more and more empty desks and silent phones." Why? One editor explains: "Who wants to read all this government stuff?"

If you're in trouble, you call 911. That's what you're supposed to do. But if you live in Washington, D.C., you may have to wait quite a while for an answer. "Almost 50,000 people calling for help from the Metropolitan Police Department this year heard the phone ring for at least 90 seconds" before an operator picked up, according to an Inspector General's investigation reported by The Washington Times. This means you could well have been shot, stabbed, robbed, or had the fire you were trying to report get out of control before you heard the operator's voice. If you do survive until your call is answered, there's a good chance that the voice you hear will not be warmly reassuring. Twenty-eight percent of all 911 complaints state that the operator was rude.

What is the press giving the public instead of "government stuff"? Neil Hickey, writing in Columbia Journalism Review, notes that Time's cover stories in 1997 included ones on Ellen DeGeneres, Steven Spielberg, Generation X, the pop singer Jewel, Brad Pitt, Bill Cosby, and "What's Cool this summer" while Newsweek edified us with covers on TV cartoon shows, JonBenet Ramsey, Bob Dylan, Deepak Chopra, and "Does it Matter What You Weigh?" If only the editors would expend half the energy they devote to such froth to making the great issues of government come alive for their readers! What they need to do is make clear the difference effective or inept government can make to the reader and his family in everything from getting his desperate call to 911 answered promptly to highway deaths like the recent ones in Maryland and Virginia to the nursing home scandals that a recent GAO report attributes to a failure of state and federal regulators.

If the people are not informed about what government is doing, it's hardly surprising that they lose interest in it. And lose interest they have. Where 60 percent of them voted in the 1960 elections, only 49 percent did in 1996.

Algebra has made the ninth grade miserable for millions of Americans. The result is that many of them avoid a second year of algebra and other more advanced math courses. Yet, according to June Kronholz of The Wall Street Journal, "the gap in test scores between students in private school and those in public school largely disappears if [the public school students] take upper-level math courses, beginning with algebra."

How then can ninth grade algebra be made if not fun, at least bearable? Teachers need a stronger background in math. Many have had only a few more courses than the students they teach.

But just as important as better teaching is eliminating the shock of a too-sudden introduction of abstract thinking. Only 30 percent of the material in an eighth grade math course is new, reports Kronholz, but 90 percent of the ninth grade algebra is new&emdash;"a huge blast of abstract thinking after years of easy-going arithmetic." The obvious solution is a more gradual introduction of algebra.

Algebraic ineptitude is clearly not a key to advancement in a technological society. It is a key to putting U.S. high school students near the bottom in international comparisons of math skills.

Another idea I like is starting school later in the day. Certainly no reform would command more universal support among American adolescents. Zoe Lofgren, a congresswoman from California, responding to evidence that kids need more sleep, has introduced a bill that encourages schools to start classes after 9 a.m. Many now begin at 7:30 or 8, and some students have to get out of bed as early as 5 a.m. to catch the bus.

An added advantage to the later start would be that kids would remain in school till 4 or 5 p.m., keeping them off the streets during some of the peak hours for juvenile crime.

A recruiting bonus to attract able people to teaching is still another idea I like. This proposal comes from Thomas Birmingham, a Massachusetts legislator. He wants to offer $20,000 as an incentive to outstanding prospective teachers. This would be a good way to attract the strong math majors we need to overcome the algebra problem. I should make clear that I don't believe a bonus will motivate people to teach who don't want to. But it will give an argument for the motivated to use with parents, friends, and significant others whose worries about financial matters lead them to discourage would-be teachers.

Taylor Branch, an alumnus of this magazine, has been doing some part-time college teaching while working on the third volume of his biography of Martin Luther King. Recently over lunch he talked about his students' ignorance of history, particularly that of the second half of this century. The students attribute this ignorance to their history teachers' barely making it to World War II before the school year ends. I'm sure that there's truth in this explanation&emdash;in my day the teacher seldom got past World War I.

But there's also evidence that history is not as well taught as it used to be. In a recent survey, students did much worse than adults, getting half of the answers right, where adults got seven out of 10. For example, two-thirds of the youngsters compared to a third of the adults did not know that Patrick Henry said "Give me liberty or give me death" rather than Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, or Paul Revere.

Speaking of Monthly alumni, Gregg Easterbrook recently explained in The New York Times why the world's leader in space, the USA, had to use Chinese launchers to put American satellites in orbit. The reason is that our space program has concentrated on big ticket items and has neglected to build lower-cost launchers. The result is that it cost $10,000 to $12,000 a pound for NASA to launch a satellite. The Chinese can do the job for $4,000 to $5,000 a pound.

The bureaucratic imperative behind NASA's preference for big ticket items is that high cost projects make it easier to justify large agency budgets and government agencies have a natural tendency to seek big budgets if for no other reason than to support promotions and pay raises for their employees.

Did some of your favorite movies not make the American Film Institute's 100 Best list? Certainly they ignored some of mine&emdash;"Seven Days in May" with Frederick March and Kirk Douglas, "The Producers," with Zero Mostel, "My Little Chickadee," with Mae West and W.C. Fields, "The Man Who Would Be King," with Sean Connery and Michael Caine, the original "Lolita" with James Mason and Peter Sellers, "Ship of Fools," with Lee Marvin and Vivien Leigh, and "The Americanization of Emily," with James Garner and Julie Andrews. The last was unusual in being both very funny and a great antiwar film.

So, speaking of antiwar films, what about "Saving Private Ryan"? Conservatives say the movie fails to acknowledge the noble purpose of World War II. If, however, you take Private Ryan as a symbol of the rest of us who were saved by the sacrifices of those who died in Normandy, then Spielberg's "war is hell" message is not inconsistent with believing that this war saved mankind.

The danger posed by high-speed police chases has been a frequent target of this column. But I must say that, among the many forms of mayhem and havoc these chases have caused, I have never encountered one like what occurred on April 13 in Suffolk, Va. A patrol car engaged in hot pursuit of two teenagers went out of control and plowed into the Bennett's Creek Station Branch Library where it caught fire. By the time the fire was extinguished the roof had caved in and all the books that were not out on loan were destroyed.

Herman I. Kraus is the principal owner of the Bedford Gardens apartment complex in Brooklyn, N.Y. The complex is serviced by a number of enterprises that are also part of the Kraus empire. The rent checks go to Kraus Management. The guards come from Kraus Security. Maintenance is performed by Kraus Maintenance. Legal problems are handled by the firm of Kraus & Kraus.

Kraus seeks rent increases and subsidies on the basis of the expenses incurred by Bedford Gardens "nearly all charged by his own companies," according to Randy Kennedy of The New York Times, who also notes allegations that "many of them charge two to three times what other companies bill for the same services."

If these allegations are true, is this not a case study in why a market economy needs watchdogs and sometimes requires more, not less regulation?

Charles F.C. Ruff, the White House counsel, "unfailingly refers" to Bill Clinton as "my client," according to Ruth Marcus of The Washington Post. Several of his predecessors have viewed their role similarly. And, in my view, they have been wrong. They have a higher duty and it is to serve the public interest and to never hesitate to tell the president when they think he is not serving that interest. The country comes first, not the man.

But this does not mean they cannot make their advice confidential. I agree with Judge David Tate's dissent in the Bruce Lindsey case: "No president can navigate the treacherous waters of post-Watergate government, make controversial official legal decisions, decide whether or not to invoke official privileges or even know when he might need private counsel, without confidential legal advice." There needs to be someone on the White House staff whom the president can feel absolutely free to confide in, otherwise, the loneliness of the job could become unbearable.

Last year a tax break for the wealthy got enacted into law accidentally. It benefits only estates worth more than $17 million. So a mistake was made. Surely it will be corrected. Not so fast, says Bill Archer, the Republican chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. He has insisted that the break be kept. Could this have anything to do with the fact that he represents a district that, according to The New York Times, "is one of the wealthiest in the country"?

If you've moved recently, there's a very good chance you were overcharged and not just a little bit. Consider what happened to Joel and Elizabeth Smith, a couple who recently moved from Chicago to Columbia, Md.

The moving company estimated the cost would be $2,800. But when the van arrived, the Smiths were told the bill was $5,500. What's more, the driver demanded cash, which they had to scramble to raise.

This story was told by The Washington Post but the problem is nationwide. Both overcharging and the demand for cash are now common. According to a book we reviewed several years ago, a third of Americans move every year. I have no idea if that figure is accurate but even if it's only one tenth, that means 20 million people are likely to be victimized each year.

Why are such practices permitted? The answer in a word is deregulation. The federal government used to regulate moving companies. You could complain to the Interstate Commerce Commission if you thought you had been cheated. Even though the ICC was not a model of efficiency, the possibility of having complaints pile up in its files was enough to deter most moving companies from the kind of flagrant abuse we're seeing today.

~Charles Peters