# Other Comments

## Over the Limit

RUNNING A PROFITABLE AIRLINE is a notoriously difficult business, but squeezing more passengers onto fewer aircraft and into smaller seats has crossed the threshold. Business travellers unite! And demand: "Give us back our leg-room." You have nothing to lose but your air miles.

-Financial Times

## Giant Leap Backward

THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT in Russia lacks the financial resources to exert effective authority over the life of most of its citizens. Such political power as influences the country has passed largely into the hands of the nation's 89 governors. But the effect of the Yeltsin administration's mismanagement is that it has discredited democracy in the eyes of ordinary people—most of whom had immense expectations of it when it came to Russia eight years ago. Although its scope is much narrower, democracy's rule seems to them just as arbitrary and unpredictable as was that of the previous one-party dictatorship.

-RICHARD PIPES, Wall Street Journal

## Drunk With Power

PRESIDENT NIXON opened negotiations with the wine steward seconded by Kissinger. "That wine sounds interesting. What do you think, Henry?"

"I believe that '64 was a fine year, a wet season," Kissinger bluffed.

"We have a fine, rare selection," the steward said quickly. "Please let me select something for you."

A huge bottle was brought. There was a ceremonial opening. Nixon sniffed it, swished it around in his glass and invited Henry's opinion while Bob Haldeman, Ron Ziegler and I tried to keep straight faces. Our "experts," Nixon and Kissinger, proclaimed it outstanding. I had the feeling neither one knew what he was talking about.

-JOHN EHRLICHMAN,

Witness to Power

## Double Life

A WRITER IS, at the very least, two persons. He is the prosing man at his desk and a sort of valet who dogs him and does the living.

-V.S. PRITCHETT

## Think About It

SOME PEOPLE SAY that employers have a social responsibility to commit themselves to providing more assured employment. But would this social responsibility extend to paying workers as much as they would get without that commitment? And, if it did, would investors have a social responsibility to provide as much capital and on the same terms as they would without the

employment commitment? And would consumers have a social responsibility to buy as much product if the commitment entailed higher prices? And who would have a social responsibility to the people who did not get employed in the first place because it would have entailed too large a commitment?

-HERBERT STEIN,

American Enterprise Institute

Where I live, you can't drive for more than two minutes without passing a soccer, football or baseball field. They are no longer the exclusive purview of school grounds. Do you wonder if kids are more athletic now than when we were young? They're not. It's just that they can't play dodge ball in the street anymore because our overwhelming tax burden has sent mom to work and the kids are now in day care.

-KERRI HOUSTON,

Institute for Policy Innovation

## Link to Liberty

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY is the enemy of the totalitarian state, and blocking it becomes increasingly difficult when people with laptops will be able to tap into digital networks over a cell phone and download what they want within seconds, even in rural China. The Internet is the technology of freedom.

-DONALD LAMBRO, for the Heritage Foundation

## Solid Foundation

I THINK building my shed kept me sane while I waited for surgery.

Maybe it's a man thing, but there's something about laying one board on another, pounding the spikes in, and having the whole thing hold up. Doing that brings order from chaos. Standing with the rain beating on my plastic roof and everything bone-dry inside suggested that maybe I could make it on my own if everything went to hell around me. Shelter, I told myself—I can provide shelter. It's a start.

-HOWARD MEANS, *Washingtonian* ■

© THE NEW YORKER COLLECTION 1999 LEO CULLUM
FROM CARTOONBANK.COM. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

"Remember, the enemy of your enemy is your friend."

36

Forbes ■ September 6, 1999