Nobody Cares?

The nation is facing an unprecedented $4 trillion national debt and a projected $400 billion deficit.

Millions of Americans are out of work and the economy is in a prolonged tailspin and the Congress, paralyzed by wave after wave of scandal and divisive partisan politicking, has been unable to pass any meaningful legislation.

Undaunted, our above-it-all Senate is making plans to spend $18 million to modernize its subway shuttle so that the ranks of the privileged can save a few minutes travel time.

Meanwhile, ordinary folk endure crumbling roads and deteriorating bridges because of inadequate federal funding.

How many times and in how many ways are politicians going to communicate to the people that our necessities are less important than the trappings of power and privilege? Doesn't anybody up there on Capitol Hill care about this country and its people?

Pat Rybak

Glen Arm

Non-Choice Ticket

It's remarkable that the Democrats in Congress are ready to endorse someone like Bill Clinton, when they must know he cannot possibly win over George Bush.

With a selection like this, most of us should simply write "none of the above" on our ballots and hope they can come up with someone we and the rest of the world can respect, trust and support.

At this point, with Paul Tsongas out of the running, there is simply no one on the ballot for us to vote for. Certainly I cannot vote for Mr. Bush -- I'm thankful I didn't vote for him last time. Nor for Mr. Clinton. It's a non-choice.

I have always believed voting was a sacred privilege and responsibility. But this time I'm not sure it's worth going to the polls, except for the congressional candidates. What does one do regarding the apparently unavoidable slate in November?

Something should be done regarding the cost of running so the presidential candidates don't have to be billionaires to run. Surely there are honest men somewhere in the country who could do the job and do it well. But because of the high cost of running, we are unlikely ever to find even one.

Marianne H. Hart

Ellicott City

Misleading

Gilbert A. Lewthwaite misled your readers when he likeneJerry Brown's flat tax proposal to Margaret Thatcher's poll tax.

While Mrs. Thatcher proposed a flat tax, Mr. Brown proposed a flat tax rate. With a flat rate income tax, taxes rise as income rises.

Mr. Lewthwaite is guilty of bad reporting, and could also be accused of unfairly denigrating the Brown proposal through use of this confused and irrelevant comparison.

Rob Bonney

Pasadena

Governor Was Right

I am responding to your editorial "Schaefer on the Sidelines." (April 12). Governor Schaefer's a man of great foresight, a man who has spent virtually his entire life in a love affair of sorts with the state.

You are right to the extent that among his many stellar accomplishments Governor Schaefer has brought a renewed commitment to higher education, a $1 billion transportation plan and a big boost to school aid.

At the same time, this is the same man who just two short years ago warned all the counties about then-impending fiscal doom.

And everybody laughed at him. People called him a poor manager and his popularity was at an all-time low. (The press didn't help much either.)

So he listened and he changed his style. He took a more hands-off approach. He let the legislative branch do what it was supposed to do. And he let those elected by their colleagues lead, and look what happened.

And now you want him to change back?

Can't you ever just say "Thank you, governor. Maybe you were right"?

Kimberly A. McCoy

Severna Park

Salman Rushdie's Rights and Yours

Kaukab Siddique's complaint about this newspaper's coverage of Salman Rushdie's recent visit to the United States (letter, April 9) is marred by the dangerous bad logic that has become familiar in such complaints.

On the evidence of Mr. Rushdie's novel, "The Satanic Verses," Mr. Siddique declares, its author is a "purveyor of hate literature" who "obviously hates his people, their religion, and their way of life."

To many readers of the novel -- including not only its literary admirers and detractors, but literate Muslims who find the book offensive on ethnic or religious grounds -- these propositions are not at all obvious.

What is obvious in the novel is that Mr. Rushdie does not regard "his people, their religion, and their way of life" as above criticism. To the fundamentalist mind, evidently, such an attitude not only equals hate but warrants death.

"Muslims in America will have to stand up for their rights to stop this sort of thing from happening," says Mr. Siddique.

What sort of thing? The publication of works they find offensive? News media coverage of a celebrated writer driven into hiding by a sentence of death from a foreign government for his writings?

One would hope that Muslims in America -- and Christians, Jews, Buddhists and non-believers as well -- would stand up for Mr. Rushdie's right to speak his mind without censorship or repression (not to mention the Imam's death sentence), whether we like what he says or not.

The "establishment media unite to ram [Mr. Rushdie's] book down the public's collective throats in the name of freedom," the letter continues. No one is obliged to read the thing; nor does its availability here mean that "Muslims in America are only second-class citizens."

It means only that American Muslims, like other first-class citizens, may not dictate what their fellow citizens are permitted to read.

"But for Imam Khomeini's fatwa, [Mr. Rushdie] would have been paraded all over the country. . . The U.S. government will make a serious mistake if it decides to endorse Mr. Rushdie and his book. It will be like saying that the rights of a billion Muslims across the world do not exist."

Not so: Had the Iranian leader not sentenced Mr. Rushdie (a British citizen) to death for writing "The Satanic Verses," that novel would by now have passed from the attention of all but its literary critics and admirers and a small fraction of the fundamentalist minority of the world of Islam.

The U.S. government does not endorse writers and their works. One hopes that it will strongly endorse the freedom to write, and strongly oppose the persecution of any writer, anywhere, for exercising that freedom, whether we find the results admirable, offensive, a bit of both or neither.

This is not only "the American way," but the way of every non-authoritarian government, whatever the prevailing religion of its citizens.

John Barth

Baltimore

Look Back, Please

I am delighted that Dunbar high School was named the Number One basketball team in the county.

As the players go on to enjoy riches and fame after their high school years are over, I hope they will remember to make Dunbar and the community their beneficiaries by endowing programs to assist students not athletically inclined to also realize their potential in other fields.

They could use their money and contacts to make Dunbar a model educational institution and enhance the opportunities for all young people in their neighborhoods.

Henry J. Knott Jr.

Baltimore