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               The
Large Curd Giveth and the Small Curd Taketh Away
            

            Jacob Weisberg couldn't have
been more wrong when, in his Feb. 15 column, "Corporate-Welfare NIMBYs," he implies, with no supporting
documentation, that I am selective in my commitment to deficit reduction and
eliminating corporate welfare.

            Weisberg correctly notes I
am a Democratic co-sponsor of S. 206, a bill to establish an independent
commission to review and recommend termination of corporate-welfare subsidies.
However, he is incorrect when he states, four sentences later, "Feingold, who
is up for re-election in 1998, carries a different tune when it comes to aid to
families with dependent cheese."

            Weisberg also poses a
rhetorical question in his column, asking if my commitment to reducing
corporate welfare "would ... include, say, federal dairy supports and marketing
orders for the milk industry, which somehow escaped being scaled back in the
1996 Farm Bill?"

            I voted against the 1996
Farm Bill, in large measure because it did so little to eliminate market
distortions and bring needed reform to the antiquated Milk Marketing Order
system, or MMO, to make it more reflective of supply and demand. The current
system, instituted in the 1930s, distorts the market, discriminates against the
dairy farmers of the Upper Midwest by providing higher prices (called "distance
differentials") to farmers who live far from Eau Claire, Wis., (the city from
which these "distance differentials" are calculated) and puts Wisconsin
producers at an artificial competitive disadvantage. The current MMO system
survives because it is defended by powerful interests who are its
beneficiaries.

            I have, in fact, worked hard
to create dairy-policy reform, including introducing two bills in the
105 th Congress: S. 52, which would eliminate the distance
differential in dairy pricing, and S. 322, which would repeal the creation of
the Northeast Interstate Dairy Compact, a dairy cartel created last year that
allows six Northeastern states to fix higher prices for milk in their
region.

            I have often stated that if
the MMO system cannot be reformed, it should be eliminated, and Wisconsin
farmers have probably been more active than farmers in any other part of the
country in calling for deregulation of this system.

            Weisberg's assertion that
"federal dairy supports ... somehow escaped being scaled back in the 1996 Farm
Bill" is also incorrect. Federal dairy supports have, in fact, been cut
dramatically. In 1983, the price support was $13.10 per hundredweight (about 11
gallons of milk), and the program cost taxpayers about $2.6 billion. By 1995,
the price support had been reduced to $10.10 per hundredweight, and, while the
myth persists that the dairy program costs billions, the facts are that, in
1996, the program operated at no cost to the taxpayers. Moreover, the 1996 Farm
Bill completely eliminates the dairy price support by the end of 1999. The
dairy industry is the only commodity group to have its support terminated by
the most recent Farm Bill. Some other commodities, such as wheat and feed
grains, were provided with hefty annual guaranteed government subsidies in that
same legislation.

            So exactly what is the
corporate welfare Weisberg is talking about?

            Deficit
reduction and balancing the federal budget are serious, complex, and demanding
tasks, and the policy implications of our efforts reach across the nation, even
around the world. These efforts are not advanced by unsupported suggestions of
hypocrisy, such as are contained in Weisberg's column.

            
               --Sen. Russell D.
Feingold
            

            
               Jacob
Weisberg Replies
            

            Read Sen.
Feingold's letter carefully. He does not say he wants to end corporate welfare
for dairy farmers. He says he wants Wisconsin farmers to get a better deal.
Feingold wants to "reform," not eliminate, the Milk Marketing Order system,
though he acknowledges that it constitutes a "cartel" designed to keep dairy
prices high. Sounds a lot like NIMBYism to me. I should add that I would have
been in a better position to reflect the subtleties in Feingold's position if
his press office had returned repeated calls asking about it.

            

               Revolted
            

            I was
revolted by the reference to JonBenet Ramsay in "Thank Heaven for Little
Girls," by Larissa MacFarquhar. I felt that you were trying to capitalize
on the savage bestiality committed on a small child by whoever strangled her,
as well as the abuse committed by her parents, who put her on display in a
manner no 6-year-old should be forced to endure. When will publications such as
yours manage to develop some sense of human moral responsibility?

            
               --Oakes
Ames
            

            
               Michael
Kinsley, Socialist
            

            Michael Kinsley's recent
article "Eight
Reasons Not to Cut the Capital-Gains Tax" truly proves the adage that
liberals cannot stand success.

            Using Kinsley's analogy, if
we observe that we have too many bakers and not enough butchers, it is
reasonable to suggest that we ought to reduce the tax on butchers. Our rates of
saving and investment are staggeringly low, in both historical and
contemporaneous contexts. There is ample reason to believe that increasing the
rates of saving and investment would be beneficial to the economy. Hence,
reducing disincentives to save and invest (e.g., the capital-gains tax) seems
to make sense.

            The evidence that a
capital-gains tax would pay for itself is a bit stronger than Kinsley would
care to admit. First of all, people are going to do something with the money
they have made as a result of realized capital gains. Either they will spend
it, in which case local sales-tax receipts will increase, or they will move it
into some other form of investment, which will be taxed in turn. Having the
government take nearly one-third of the amount of your investment earnings is
way too much.

            The
purpose of tax policy should be to generate income for the government, so that
it can perform its necessary and essential functions, with the least distortion
and effect on the overall economy as possible. Kinsley seeks to remedy, through
the coercive power of government, those circumstances and conditions in society
that he finds troubling. I would respectfully suggest that this makes him much
more of a socialist than his Republican critics.

            
               --Stephen J.
Konig
            

            
               Master of
Deceit
            

            It astonishes me that Ann
Douglas, in "Psycho Dramas," her review of the Sam Tanenhaus biography of
Whittaker Chambers, acknowledges that Chambers was right about everything, but
still maintains the old liberal condescension for this perennially maligned
figure. She recognizes that Chambers' Witness is "one of the great
American autobiographies," even a "masterpiece," yet still regards it as
"torrential" and "lurid." She notes Chambers' "susceptibility to ridicule and
parody," and concludes that "he was a pulp-fiction Dostoyevsky, an author he
admired above all others."

            Douglas writes as if Chambers
was not really involved in the Communist conspiracy inside this country, but
somehow fictionalized it. She implies that he was ridiculous for admiring
Dostoyevsky. Finally, and worst of all, Douglas prides herself for being able
to "believe ... Chambers' testimony against Hiss without accepting his
interpretation of the Soviet-American confrontation." She faults the
biographer, Tanenhaus, for sharing his subject's viewpoint and not doubting
"the Soviets' more or less total culpability for the long disaster we call the
Cold War." She recommends that Tanenhaus should read some revisionist works
that challenge such an assumption.

            But what is her assumption?
That there was a chance for meaningful cooperation with the Soviet
dictatorship? That its recruitment of Alger Hiss, a top official present at the
Yalta conference (which set the conditions for the Cold War by selling out
Eastern Europe) and an architect of the United Nations (which granted
independent votes to Soviet subject states of Eastern Europe), was an
exception, or a trifle? That the Communists in America were really grand old
troopers with a different vision of the future?

            She should
take time from reading revisionist works to look at the revelations of the
VENONA files, those hundreds of intercepted telegrams from Soviet agents in
America that reveal the tip of an enormous iceberg of espionage and subversion.
She characterizes Chambers as a Dostoyevskian figure, "trying to break what he
saw as the 'invincible ignorance' of a nation blinded to the 'crisis of
history' by its prosperity and misguided generous-mindedness." Here she is
right: The ignorance does indeed appear to be invincible.

            
               --Gary
Kern
            

            
               In
Defense of Alexis
            

            Jacob Weisberg's article
"Washington Swingers" was both inaccurate and unfair when it comes
to Alexis Herman, President Clinton's nominee to be secretary of labor.

            Let's start with a simple,
central factual error in the first substantive paragraph about Alexis: "After
she left the Labor Department, she set up a firm to advise companies on how to
comply with those [affirmative-action] regulations." Baloney. That was not why
she set up her business. She set up her firm to provide advice to corporations,
local governments, and nonprofits on dozens of aspects of labor and marketing
issues.

            She started this business to
see if she could make some money by making the workplace work better. This was
what she was trained to do, and what she was accomplished at. Remember, this
was at the dawn of the Reagan era. We of the policy-wonk elite were all
a-titter about the theory of federalism, public-private partnership pablum was
first beginning to gurgle from the mouth of a Massachusetts governor, and every
program to help black kids get jobs with federal help was being axed. So Alexis
hit the road, trying to help localities figure out how to get the most out of
what was left and trying to help corporations make more progress on hiring
minorities and marketing to African-Americans. Her first, most lucrative, and
longest-standing client was Procter & Gamble--a contact she had made before
she ever entered government.

            But wait--that's not the
half of the misleading errors in Weisberg's paragraph. His accusation by
innuendo when it comes to the Rev. Jackson needs to be spelled out. He implies
Alexis funneled money to Jesse Jackson when she was at Labor, in exchange for
being the beneficiary of Jackson's largess when she went to the private sector.
Weisberg further implies that there's something wrong with Jackson's Operation
Push negotiating agreements with corporations that included monitoring
arrangements.

            Most of Alexis' business did
not involve any relationship with Operation Push. But some contracts did, and
here is how they worked. Jackson and others spotted in the early 1980s that
there were no white-collar minority employees in lots of major companies, and
no black franchises in major franchise businesses. The companies realized they
had to do better or face marketplace consequences, so they set out to hire more
minorities. They then turned to Alexis for help--sometimes at Jackson's
suggestion, sometimes because other companies had recommended her firm. Her
work ended up delivering radical reductions in turnover, and that made them
more money, provided revenue for Alexis' business, and opened doors for women
and minorities.

            Now we get to the
"appearance of impropriety" card. Market Square: Alexis, as a private
businessperson, provides valuable help to a developer. He gives her an
ownership stake. Weisberg agrees nothing is illegal, but he elliptically
implies there's a problem. He implies that Herman later helped Herb
Miller--even though there is no evidence of it. He then adds in a passing shot
at Vernon Jordan--as if Vernon needs Alexis' help.

            Alexis should be and is
proud of her career before and after the Labor Department. Apparently with
little or no knowledge of it, Weisberg chose to believe the smug, cynical
view--odd that he didn't bother to check with her clients. He may dislike
anyone who goes from government to business and back, but to make it sound like
Alexis is at the head of the class for likely wrongdoing is unsupportable.

            This woman has 20 years of
real experience making progress on the critical problem of diversity in the
workplace, but Weisberg and others are making her sound as if she's been a
product of Washington, D.C., all the time. That is unfair and harms her ability
to help us all later. When she talks about teaching kids the "culture of work,"
she isn't speaking dry corporate prose, nor is she speaking the
fashion-sensitive policy prose. She's speaking with some actual experience.

            Alexis
deserves full and fair reporting and an open hearing. The Senate committee
needs to do its job and get these issues into a forum where the nominee can
respond, rather than leeching them through repeated, incorrect media stories.
Weisberg needs to do his and get a full picture of a person before he chooses
to dismiss her life's work as a trip through the revolving door.

            
               --Mark Steitz
            

            
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