Larry T. Adams, in Monthly Labor Review (Feb. 1985), Super-
For Big Labor intendent of Documents, U.S. Govern- ment Printing Office, Washington, D.C. 20402.
For several years now, there has been nothing but bad news for leaders of organized labor. Yet, because the federal government stopped gath- ering national data on union membership after 1978, nobody was sure just how grim the tidings on union membership were.
Recently, reports Adams, a U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics econo- mist, Washington...
employers added to the impact; all told, 1.9 million union jobs disappeared.
More worrisome to organized labor is the fact that membership fell even in growing sectors of the economy. The payrolls of service indus- tries (e.g., health care, communications, and transportation) swelled nearly five million during the five-year period, but unions lost some 700,000 members. Up to half the losses were the result of federal dereg- ulation of the trucking and airline businesses, which spurred harsher competition...
"Losing Faith in 'Losing Ground'" by
Defending the Robert Greenstein, in The New Republic (Mar. 25, 1985), P.O. Box 955, Farming-
Great Society dale, N.Y. 11737-9855.
Twenty-three years ago, Michael Harrington fired the first shot of the War on Poverty with his expos6 of poverty, The Other America. Today, another book, Charles Murray's Losing Ground: American Social Policy 1950-1980, is providing plenty of ammunition for opponents of federal social welfare programs.
Murray's fact-laden...
the late 1970s. If it were not for the nation's erratic economic performance during the 1970s, Greenstein contends, the War on Poverty might have been won.
"Empirical Research on the Insanity De- fense" Henry J. Steadman, in Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science (Jan. 1985),Sage Publica- tions, 275 South Beverly D;., Beverly Hills, Calif. 90212.
In June 1984, President Reagan's would-be assassin, John Hinckley, Jr., was found not guilty by reason of insanity....
Steadman estimates that insanity pleas were entered in 0.17 percent of New York State's 127,068 felony cases in 1978.
Successful insanity defendants share certain characteristics. They are mostly male, white, middle-aged, and unmarried. The vast major- ity are either unskilled or unemployed. Their crimes vary from state to state: More than half of New York's criminally insane are murderers, but only one-quarter of New Jersey's are. Assault and burglary offenses are common; sex offenders account...
Pauline
Moffitt Watts, in American Historical Re-
view (Feb. 1985),400 A St. S.E., Washing-
ton, D.C. 20003.
"God made me the messenger of the new heaven and the new earth of which he spoke in the Apocalypse of Saint John . . . and he showed me the spot where to find it." So wrote Christopher Columbus in 1500, eight years after discovering the New World.
Columbus has gone down in history as a bold explorer and man of sci- ence who overcame the ignorance and superstition of his ti...
Maura Clancey and Michael J. Ro-
Campaign '84 binson, in Public Opinion (Dec.-Jan. and Feb.-Mar. 1985), American Enterprise In- stitute, 1150 17th St. N.W., Washington,
D.C. 20036-9964.
Conservative commentators found much fault with the three major TV networks for anti-Reagan bias during the 1984 presidential campaign. Clancey and Robinson, researchers at the University of Maryland and George Washington University, respectively, see plenty of evidence that President Reagan did indeed come off...
Stephen Hess, in Society (Jan.-As 'Leakcraft' Feb. 1985), Box A, Rutgers-The State
University, New Brunswick, N.J. 08903.
The morning newspapers often set teeth gnashing in the White House. Leaks-disclosures of inside information-are the cause of this high- level angst; they are also an increasingly common part of life in official Washington.
The fact is, says Hess, a Brookings Institution Senior Fellow, most leaks are sprung the President's own political appointees, not by ca- reer civil servants...
a given disclosure. When reports that Libyan "hit squads" had been dispatched to make an attempt on President Reagan's life surfaced in December 1981, New York Times columnist William Safire concluded that it was a White House ploy to publicize Muammar Qaddafi's "export of terrorism." No, replied Joseph Kraft in the Washington Post, the Reagan administration was too fearful of up- setting the planned withdrawal of Libyan troops from Chad to risk pub- licity that would anger Qaddafi.
A...
this definition, Clor notes, the Marquis de Sade would qualify as an admirable man. As if to answer, Mill, in his 1861 essay Utilitarian-ism, distinguished between higher and lower human pursuits, with such aberrations as the Marquis's falling into the lower realm.
But Mill never showed how a society governed the principles of On Liberty would encourage citizens to pursue "higher" pleasures. In fact, Clor says, Mill never really grappled with the reality that many people, given a choice,...