Letters.

Party Poopers

Nicholas Thompson huffs and puffs, but he can't make much out of Republican moderates ("Extremism in the Defense of Moderation," May 2001). No matter how you slice it, Jim Jeffords, Sweet Suzy, the Big O, and Lincoln Chaffee do not remind anybody of Teddy Roosevelt. Republican moderates have been followers rather than leaders, and that's been the case at least since the heyday of Everett Dirksen, Gerald Ford, and Bob Michel. Instead of proposing and fighting for a centrist vision, they try to adjust liberal and conservative ideas at the margins. "A little bit more of this" "A little less of that" "Can't we do this a little differently?" "Can't a little bit more of this pork go to MY constituents?" That's the message of Republican moderation whether they are responding to Democratic liberals or Republican conservatives. It isn't much of a message. Moderates don't pursue it with much passion. Oddly enough, the electorate is probably more comfortable with the apolitical, anti-ideological shaving of the moderates than with the ferocity of someone like Tom DeLay or Maxine Waters. However, as Teddy Roosevelt might have said, timidity doesn't get the job done in politics any more than it does in real life.

RIC N. CARIC
Morehead, Ky.

Life of the Party

Congratulations on a great article ("Extremism in the Defense of Moderation," May 2001). A solid analysis of recent (and not-so-recent) American political history, it said what I have been groping to articulate ever since the Reagan years about the very definitions of "liberal" and "conservative" A lifelong conservative Republican, a former member of Young Americans for Freedom, a GOP precinct captain, manager of a number of local GOP campaigns, and volunteer ad nauseum, I was astonished to find that the "wing-nuts" had taken over my party, "pulled my stencil" and were vilifying me and those like me with venom spewed by the likes of Ann Coulter.

Your piece put it all back into a perspective I can live with, and reinforced my instinct that it was not my beliefs that had changed, but rather that the terms had been redefined out from under me.

MIMI MADDEN
Washington, D.C.

Wrong Hide

Your summary of weapons of mass destruction civil support team (CST) response times is reasonably accurate and, in fact, you identify the fundamental problems associated with their existence. ("Weapons of Mass Confusion," May 2001.) You have, however, completely misidentified the cause and instigator of their creation: the Office of the Secretary of Defense, with able assistance from Congress.

To be clear, the National Guard wanted absolutely nothing to do with this mission. The $10 million study was directed by Congress, initiated at least in part by the defense contractor SAIC, but to the great dismay of the National Guard Bureau (NGB).

If you read the NGB National Study, you'll find it to be much less than a proactive document for enhanced National Guard roles; rather it is a watered-down compromise designed to soothe the other 26 federal agencies. Twenty-one drafts of the "final" document were required before the Guard would forward it to Congress.

While the National Guard is certainly deserving of criticism on many fronts, it played fall guy on this one; ironically, had it been more proactive in the roles and development of these teams, it had the in-house expertise to do a much better job.

So, while I agree with much of what you and Dr. Smithson say, you've nailed a target to the wrong hide when you lay the blame on the National Guard. They not only did not want this mission, they ran screaming into the night to avoid it and, by doing so, laid themselves wide open to criticisms of this type. In fact, you should criticize them for not being more aggressive in this arena and toward accepting more appropriate roles better suited to their capabilities. My opinions are based in active participation and observation of the activities you've covered in your article.

NAME WITHHELD BY REQUEST
via email

Pork Rinds

The situation portrayed by Joshua Green ("Weapons of Mass Confusion," May 2001) is an extremely common one in Washington and produces two conclusions:

1. Pork trumps emergency preparedness;

2. In Washington, there is no risk of any management.

The Washington Monthly could print stories like this one for the next 10 years and not exhaust the possibilities.

JACK HALEY
Warner Robins, Ga.

The editors reply: We will.

Bill Padding

With regard to your article "Flatlining" in the May issue, I find that the analysis of the HMO problem does not break out the functions of the HMO. I look at mine as actuarial risk of serious illness, maintenance, and negotiated fees with hospitals. The article concentrated on the first two. I have found that hospitals will attempt to charge the walk-in cash customer the highest rate. When I walked in and asked for an estimate on the bill for a series of immunizations, I was given an estimate of $1,500, but the bill later came in for $5,000. I paid $1,500, quoting the estimate and never heard from them again. It turns out that this is what the HMO would have paid. The difference here was all the markup on the drugs. The bill represented a sixfold markup while the estimate and what the HMO would have paid was less than double. The drugs were not all that rare.

I saw this again later when I paid $150 for a test where the HMO paid a negotiated $130 and the theoretical standard price was $450. This was a smaller clinic so the cash price was about the same as the negotiated price.

I question the ethics of padding the bills of the cash customer to attempt to claw back what they have given away to the prepaid plans. Hospitals can be as unethical in padding the bills up as the HMOs are at grinding them down. I do get tired of bargaining with providers and let the HMO do it for me.

OWEN GALLAGHER
Hudson, Mass.

Get A Job

I agree with many of the expressed views in The Washington Monthly on higher education. However, the article, "Doc'd," by Paul DeMoulin (May 2001), just doesn't ring true. There are many problems in doctoral education, but generally speaking, the unemployability of new Ph.D.s is not among them.

During the period Dr. DeMoulin cites in the article (late 1980s), I was the department chair of computer science at the University of New Orleans. I spent a good deal of my time recruiting faculty, as we had numerous vacancies to fill. Our situation was such that we would have given strong consideration to hiring someone in a related discipline--electrical engineering, for example. And a dissertation topic such as "The Physics and Modeling of Gallium Arsenide Cells" would have been a reasonable research area for hiring someone into our department. In the hiring pool I would get after national advertising, there would typically be between 100 and 150 candidates for positions. That may sound daunting, but when you took a second look at the pool and found that it consisted at the 95 percent level of non-citizens or non-residents, it meant that there might only have been five or 10 candidates that I could legally hire. And I know from my experience in the discipline that virtually every computer-science program faced the same numbers game--and that our electrical-engineering colleagues were in almost the same boat.

The dangers of tightly linked relationships with corporations, of total reliance on research productivity (as measured by external grants) for promotion at many universities, and of college athletics dominating the university agenda are all real problems that we must address. Unfortunately, Dr. DeMoulin's remedies are pretty silly: "Exit the research business, disassociate the labs from the school, terminate doctorate degrees, and focus on classroom instruction" I for one believe that my own teaching--at the undergraduate level as well as the graduate level--has benefited from the fact that I have tried to continue to be active in research. Had I not been able to bring the results of an active research program into the classroom, my students would be learning material from the 1970s, and in my research field, this would be almost akin to saying I would be teaching techniques from the 1870s or 1770s.

WAYNE PATTERSON
SENIOR FELLOW
Howard University
Washington, DC

Nickel and Dimed

Nickel and Dimed is the title of a new book which we feel Washingtonians, in particular, should take time to read. It is a reminder of the very substantial underclass in our city, many from Central America, who toil long hours at menial jobs to make our lives so very comfortable. They work in our kitchens, clean our offices and bathrooms, wash our cars, mow our lawns, take care of many of our needs. They do it quietly, often unseen, without complaint, and without much reward.

Washington exudes wealth. While the earnings of the city's professional classes, including government workers, reach astronomical new levels, the underclass are lucky if they get a minimum wage, luckier still if they can work two jobs to make ends meet. While we typically complain about the level of our health benefits, they usually receive none. They are afraid to complain, for fear of losing a job they need more.

Nickel and Dimed, by Barbara Ehrenreich, is not specifically about Washington, yet it probably applies to Washington more than any other city. You will recognize the people she writes about. They are the working poor. And they are all around us. In more ways than we probably care to admit, they make Washington work.

If you don't buy the book (a steal at $23), at least read Katherine Newman's review in the June 10 Washington Post Book World.

"Amid all the talk of economic prosperity and declining welfare rolls," writes Newman, "it is easy to forget that most poor people work at jobs the rest of us would never consider. They bend over toilet bowls, endure the heat and grease of low-budget restaurant kitchens and the monotony of repetitive jobs that leave behind a trail of miseries--bad knees, aching backs, damaged skin."

This kind of toil is often invisible, she notes, because it takes place behind the scenes in middle-class homes, health clubs, office buildings and eateries. "And the low-wage workers who put bread on their own tables by cleaning up after the better-off are rendered invisible by race, language and poverty."

The book's author examined this invisible world by working in these kinds of jobs in various parts of the country for nearly a year. She gives us an insider's look at the dark side of our "new economy." Or as Professor Newman puts it, she "opens a window into the daily lives of the invisible workforce that fuels the service economy [and] forces the reader to realize that all the good-news talk about welfare reform masks a harsher reality."

The book's full title is Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in Boom-time America. Try it.

John Adams Associates Inc.
public affairs consultants
Washington DC