(FORTUNE Magazine) – IT MUST BE AUGUST

The dog days are back, the doldrums are here, and this department's intuitive market research depicts the median reader right now as a sluggard lolling listlessly on the beach, waiting only for the cocktail-hour gong. So, obviously, it is time for Keeping Up's fifth annual parade of boring and unsurprising headlines. As in the past, the entries below surfaced during the year beginning the previous September, and none were allowed onto the list if they hinted that the accompanying letterpress might consternate a fellow even mildly or in any way cast new light on the existential status quo.

RISE IN DEATHS SPURS DROP IN LIFE EXPECTANCY --Wall Street Journal, September 23

INCOME TAX EVASION RIFE IN ITALY --Financial Post, April 4

MIDEAST PROGRESS ALSO BRINGS PERILS --Seattle Times, July 6

POLL SHOWS WIDESPREAD FINANCIAL CONFUSION --Money Marketing, November 17

HACKERS RAMPANT IN CYBERSPACE --USA Today, March 28

MEDICAL ERRORS BRING CALLS FOR CHANGE --New York Times, July 18

CLINTON STILL STRUGGLING WITH IMAGE --Charleston Sunday Gazette Mail, July 2

COLOMBIA PRESIDENT WARNS DRUG WARS ARE FAR FROM OVER --Greensboro News & Record, July 6

FIRST POLL OF CHINA FINDS MATERIALISM ALIVE --Washington Post, February 16

IRAQ HIT ON HUMAN RIGHTS --Sacramento Bee, November 26

AGAINST THE FLOW: FEMALE PLUMBER SAYS SEXUAL DISCRIMINATION IS RAMPANT IN AN INDUSTRY RULED BY POWERFUL OLD BOYS' NETWORK --Ottawa Citizen, January 19

MIDDLE SCHOOL STUDENTS WATCH TOO MUCH TV --Indianapolis News, September 13

OBSERVERS' FEELINGS ARE MIXED ABOUT STOCK MARKET'S FUTURE --Baltimore Sun, March 22

MILLIONS SCRIMP TO PAY THE RENT, STUDY SHOWS --Washington Post, April 29

MINIMUM-WAGE BOOST NO PANACEA FOR JOBLESS --Houston Chronicle, February 2

ALBANIA RATIONS ELECTRICITY --Financial Times, December 20

GREAT MOMENTS IN WEEKEND FUN

Michael Crawn and John Campo had been friends for nearly a decade, but they stopped speaking to each other after colliding at home plate in a Sunday afternoon softball game...

Mr. Campo was on second base and Mr. Crawn was playing catcher for the opposing team. After a hit...Mr. Campo rounded third and saw his friend waiting to tag him out at home plate. Mr. Campo slid, banging into Mr. Crawn's leg and knocking him down...

From that single play grew a six-year court battle...

The jury concluded that Mr. Campo was solely responsible for Mr. Crawn's torn ligaments...After two appeals, including one to the New Jersey Supreme Court, which sent the case [back] for a new trial, Mr. Campo settled the suit last fall for $22,000.

The costs were covered by his homeowners insurance policy, he says.

--From a news report in the Wall Street Journal.

THE ETHICS COPS

One alludes to the federal Office of Government Ethics (OGE), an agency whose name verges perilously on the oxymoronic and whose handiwork has recently resulted in the phrase "ethics, shmethics" infiltrating the language of Shakespeare. The word "shmethics," characteristically invoked by folks contemptuous of Potomac-brand ethicism, currently turns up in nine articles in the Nexis database.

Having just read through the OGE's latest annual report, one finds himself nodding vigorously at suggestions (e.g., by the Heritage Foundation) that the agency get rapidly zeroed out. The report, an eye-glazing compendium of the OGE's informal advisory letters and formal opinions, is instantly noteworthy on several counts. For openers, it takes us only through 1993, a tacit acknowledgment that nobody seriously needs to stay abreast of what those guys are talking about. Also, it consists overwhelmingly of rather technical, nickel-and-dime rulings about approved government procedures and generally seems more concerned with PR than with forestalling real conflicts of interest. Furthermore, the occasional OGE rulings that do address major-league conflicts of interest sometimes seem affected by a few conflicts of their own.

You have to wonder about the OGE's conflicts. The agency was established in 1979, a symbol of Carterite purity, and originally resided within the federal Office of Personnel Management. (Symbolizing Bushian purity, the OGE was transformed into a separate agency in 1989.) It now stands at the pinnacle of what is reverently termed "the federal ethics community," a gang that consists mainly of Designated Agency Ethics Officials and their staffs, who are now situated all over the executive branch and are prepared to supplement the OGE's high-level advisories with informal on-site handholding anytime an ethics emergency threatens. Among their numerous chores, the ethicists must often rule on whether actions engaged in by senior Administration officials are legal and appropriate. Is it too obvious to mention that the characters making these often controversial borderline calls are themselves part of the Administration?

A few months back, there was a dustup about the Presidential Legal Expense Trust, the issue raised in a lawsuit being whether this entity--a vehicle for contributions to help pay the Clintons' burgeoning legal bills--was a public body and had therefore broken the law in declining to hold open meetings. The OGE opined that no such meetings were required and that the trust could be considered private.

A year ago the Senate Banking Committee began its first round of hearings on Whitewater. (The second round is under way as we tap these keys.) In an eyebrow-raising coincidence, OGE served up its judgment on a crucial question the day before the hearings opened. The question: Had White House staffers violated any ethics regulations in their repeated meetings with Treasury officials about Whitewater matters? OGE's report said it could find no fault with the meetings, enabling presidential counsel Abner Mikva to issue a statement quoting the agency as exonerating the White House.

Transportation Secretary Pena currently has a bit of a problem arising from this poignant cluster of facts: (a) His name is still being used by the investment advisory firm he set up before coming to Washington; (b) Pena Investment Advisors gets business from Chrysler and other corporations affected by Transportation Department regs; (c) although Pena sold his stock in the firm before coming to Washington, he has left open the possibility that he will return to it after leaving government. Queried about these possible conflicts by the Los Angeles Times in July, the Secretary said his department's ethicists had told him he was okay--and need not excuse himself from dealings affecting Chrysler--because he had sold the stock.

One expects shmethics in the dictionaries soon enough.

THE TROUBLE WITH DYING

Speaking as a potential decedent, we would say that something quite interesting is afoot in our nation's capital. There is suddenly a fair chance of reducing estate taxes (by raising the exempt amounts), as provided in legislation already passed by the House. Even more fascinating, there is an interesting long-shot chance of eliminating national estate taxes altogether, as several other countries (Canada, Israel, Australia) have done in recent years.

You possibly recall that Reagan's 1980 campaign featured a pledge to abolish the estate tax , but once Ron was in office he elected to settle for a lot less (mainly an increase in exemptions), and by 1983 his Treasury Department was putting down the few Republicans still talking repeal. The repealers seem to have more clout nowadays. They include such diverse forces as House Majority Leader Dick Armey, Governor Bill Weld of Massachusetts (which has in fact repealed the state tax), Jesse Helms (co-sponsor with Arizona's Jon Kyl of a Senate repeal bill), and various members of the economics profession who have been banging away at the estate tax in Capitol Hill testimony. The recent White House Conference on Small Business was dominated by groups demanding repeal of the tax, and the official transcript of Treasury Secretary Bob Rubin's appearance shows "(chorus of boos)" when he said the Administration was against repeal.

The scholars recently deploring the estate tax on the Hill have tended to lean on certain obvious propositions. One is that the tax does not raise much gross revenue ($11 billion to $15 billion in recent years), and the cost of extracting this loot from the corpses of America is extremely high. Audits are numerous and aggressive, and every IRS district office has a separate section devoted to estate and gift taxes. Furthermore, the efforts of rich folks to wriggle out of the tax leads them to steer their resources into untaxed trusts, foundations, charities, and superconspicuous consumption. Stanford's C. Douglas Bernheim is perhaps the most often cited of economists believing the net proceeds of the tax are negative.

The most memorable testimony assayed by your servant was delivered not by an economist but by law professor Edward J. McCaffery of the University of Southern California. McCaffery focused hard on the incentive for the rich to do anything but save and invest when looking at 55% tax rates on everything over $3 million, and in the process he explained a lot about the 1992 presidential elections.

McCaffery observed that anybody looking for a way to spend huge amounts of money might consider running for President. Campaign-finance laws make it hard to spend a whole lot on other people's campaigns, but if it's your own, you are in the clear. Ross Perot, worth $3 billion in 1992, knew his estate would have to give up most of it to the IRS or some charitable institutions--but also knew, one has to assume, that a $60 million presidential campaign enables one to have some kicks with the money while still alive. On McCaffery's analysis, $33 million of that $60 million would have gone to the feds if Ross had merely voted for a Republican or Democrat, as most people do. Even if they get all agitated about NAFTA.