Washington Monthly - September/October 2014 - 10

·L·E·T·T·E·R·S·
It's the Staff Cuts, Stupid

s a former bureaucrat, congressional staffer, and privatesector policy person for the last five decades, I can attest to
how much bad American policy goes uncorrected by the Congress,
as detailed in Paul Glastris's article "The Big Lobotomy" (June/
July/August 2014).
In my twenties, I was an associate staff director of a Senate
committee when I discovered that the Post Office Department
(now the U.S. Postal Service) had been charging the American
people 30 percent more for an "air mail" stamp even though for
thirty years all mail had been delivered by air. Their explanation,
before we forced them to eliminate it? The overcharge produced
many millions of dollars for their budget.
A House staffer and his boss found that the Department of
Commerce, where I was an assistant secretary, was granting export licenses for implements of torture sent to foreign tyrants.
Our bureaucrats' justification, before we stopped it? The practice
had created sixteen manufacturing jobs
in Michigan.
In 1974, Turkey used U.S. military aid
to invade the Republic of Cyprus and kill
4,000 Cypriots. President Richard Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger decided to ignore the law that required
that such aid be immediately terminated if used aggressively. As Senate staffers, we told Kissinger's top lawyer that
America's actions must be consistent
with the laws of our country. He responded that if that was what we wanted, then
we would have to change the law to conform to the administration's actions. Thanks to Congress and a few staffers, the legislative branch overruled Kissinger and Nixon and terminated that
military aid.
Without strong congressional oversight, a lot of bad American
policies go on forever.
Andrew Manatos
President
Manatos & Manatos
Washington, D.C.

aul Glastris's "The Big Lobotomy" is great piece chock-full of
lots of good data. It shows how mindless the Republicans have
been. Keep up the good work.
Alan Morrison
Washington, D.C.
Via the internet

September/October 2014

It's the White Working Class, Stupid

ear Stanley Greenberg,
I admire you and your work, but I have two objections to
your story ("Why the White Working Class Matters," June/July/
August 2014).
First, you write that many people, none of whom you name,
"are asking whether Democrats can build a national majority ...
while paying scant attention to the so-called lunch-pail economic and material issues that are traditionally of greatest concern
to working-class whites." Who proposes paying such scant attention? I can't think of anyone.
Second, the set of people being discussed varies from paragraph
to paragraph. Throughout, whites without college degrees are in it,
but women and Millennials are only occasionally included. Sometimes the set is only of middle-aged and elderly men. The white
working class is then hawkish, uninterested in gender equality,
against gay marriage, and suspicious of means-tested government
programs. Other times, the set is of people with low-wage jobs who
are disproportionately female and young. I think an editor should
demand a formal definition of terms of art central to the article.
Robert Waldmann
Monte Compatri, Italy
Via the internet

Burned

just read Lina Khan's excellent article "Thrown Out of Court"
(June/July/August 2014). Well researched and well written, the
article suffers from one glaring misstatement-the reference to
the McDonald's hot coffee incident as a prime example of frivolous litigation: "Stories documenting Americans' fabled zeal for
lawsuits are legion. There's the one about the old lady who sued
McDonald's over a cup of coffee that was too hot."
The author clearly did not delve into that incident, nor has she
seen the film Hot Coffee, which documents the woman's injuries
as very serious and the lawsuit as anything but frivolous. The victim was under a gag order while McDonald's promoted her public ridicule.
Lina Khan's article well covers a vitally important issue, and I
hate to see it diminished by a simple slip.
Ethan A. Scarl, PhD
Tewksbury, Mass.
Lina Khan responds:
Mr. Scarl is correct about the seriousness of the case brought against
McDonald's. It was discussed in a previous draft of the article but was
inadvertently cut. We regret the omission.

Washington Monthly - September/October 2014

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