Only eight years old in 1963, my first understanding this was a political world came with the assassination of John F. Kennedy. A lifetime interest in politics is due, however, mostly to Richard Nixon.
It was during the time of his administration I came to learn, painfully sometimes, the United States government did not always advance democratic practices abroad, or represent the best interest of its citizens at home. This was not being taught in school. It was a time when the conflict of generations and differences of color commanded new players in the domestic power base. Nixon would recognize the advantage of harnessing the anger at times, resist it at others. It is contradictions which finally, I think, will define him.
He will be remembered as a man who presided over a somber, yet consequential change in American cultural perspective.
By not trusting people, he helped educate an American citizenry to a government deserving of suspicion.
Hugh T. Skelton
Baltimore
Regulations Needed
This is in response to Patricia Meisol's April 5 article suggesting that Maryland hospital regulation has outlived its usefulness.
Our response is: No way.
Since its inception 20 years ago, the AFL-CIO has supported our system because:
It has dramatically reduced costs. Rates in Maryland plummeted from 29 percent above national average to 12 percent below national average.
The uncompensated care provision has kept many inner-city hospitals open and has prevented "patient dumping," which is prevalent in most large cities.
Our hospitals enjoy a waiver from government-set rates for Medicare patients which prevents cost shifting to paying patients.
The Health Service Cost Review Commission enforces efficiency and effectively monitors quality.
Our system provides a great social accomplishment, granting total access to all regardless of ability to pay.
Of course, no system is perfect.
We're soon to open discussions with the hospitals to plug up holes in the system, particularly in the area of hospital-based physicians (pathologists, radiologists, etc.), who are unregulated entities and reap huge profits.
Ernest Crofoot
Annapolis
The writer represents Maryland State & D.C. AFL-CIO.
Historical Justice
. . . John W. Frece, in an April 12 article in the Maryland section headlined "Thurgood Marshall statue to be erected in Annapolis," states boldly that only two Marylanders (Justices Thurgood Marshall and Roger Brooke Taney) have sat on the U.S. Supreme Court.
In fact five distinguished Marylanders have served on the high court.
In addition to Justices Taney and Marshall, Thomas Johnson of Frederick County served from 1791 to 1793 and Samuel Chase of Anne Arundel County, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, sat from 1796 to 1811.
In addition, my wife's great, great grandfather, Gabriel DuVal of Prince George's County, served on the court for 25 years, from 1811 to 1836.
H.L. Mencken would not be charitable to Mr. Frece.
The Rev. Philip B. Roulette
Glyndon
Common Sense
On April 17, The Sun carried a story in which "Dr. Geneva Gay, Professor of Education at the University of Washington, who has extensive experience teaching and writing about cultural diversity in schools, said that improving the teaching of varied cultures is a necessity in America these days, not a choice.
"She connects poor grades with the failure of educational programs to recognize people's differences. 'If you want your test scores up, get real busy on multi-ethnic education,' she said."
In that same section, Michael Olesker devoted his column to observations of ". . . kids three years old to upper teens, sitting on front steps, riding bikes, dancing to music audible and not, some with their parents and a lot of them not, all of them hanging out, enjoying the balmy weather, and almost all of this is beautiful to watch, except, . . . it is 10:30 at night."
At the conclusion of his commentary, he observes, "The schools can hire more teachers, aim for smaller class sizes, buy new textbooks, and it won't matter" and, ". . . talk doesn't matter as long as there are parents who won't perform the simple of act of taking their children off the streets when the hour is late . . ."
The conclusion that I draw from the conflicting reasons given for poor test scores is that we need fewer educators and more people with common sense.
As good and wonderful as multi-ethnic education might be, teachers won't be able to teach with children falling asleep during school.
The problem is not the lack of multi-ethnic education but parents who have abdicated their responsibility to their children and shift the blame for their children's failure to the "system."
E. David Silverberg
Towson
A Proposal for Resettlement in Israel
The agreement negotiated between Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organization left the resolution of the more intractable issues for some future date.
The two most difficult issues to be addressed in the future are:
a) The ultimate disposition of East Jerusalem, and (b) the disposition of the settlements on the West Bank (Judea and Samaria).
It is not too early to propose and debate possible solutions to these two problems.
The sooner proposals are defined, analyzed and discussed, the better chance there will be that eventually an agreement, acceptable to both sides, can be reached.
It is in this spirit that I make the following proposal.
There are now approximately 125,000 Palestinians residing in East Jerusalem. There are also approximately 125,000 Israelis living in the settlements.
My proposal is simply to arrange an exchange of the Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem with the Israeli residents of the West Bank settlements.
It is likely that some adjustments will have to be made in connection with this swap to make it workable.
These could include the following:
1. Israel may insist on retaining a number of settlements it deems essential for Israel's security;
2. To obtain Palestinian agreement to this arrangement, it may be necessary to grant them some special rights in the Dome of Rock -- el Aqsa area;
3. The East Jerusalem area may have to be rebuilt and modernized in order to be made attractive to Israelis moving there.
Now, why may this proposed exchange be acceptable to the two parties, when an unhinged solution would be rejected?
The answer is that it provides important incentives both for the Israelis and the Palestinians that are absent in other plans. Some of these are:
1. It offers to the Palestinians for self rule or possible eventual statehood an area unencumbered by scores of Israeli settlements.
2. It provides for thousands of Palestinians modern well kept housing, in a country setting, many containing gardens, pools, sport facilities and other desirable features.
3. It permits the Palestinians now living in Jerusalem under Israeli rule to move closer to their brethren and live under the jurisdiction of a Palestinian authority.
4. Israel achieves its goal of maintaining Jerusalem as an undivided city, easier to govern because of the greater homogeneity of its population.
5. It eliminates for Israel the nightmare of providing security to the Israeli citizens living in the far-flung settlement locations.
6. It provides the present settlers in the West Bank an opportunity to move to the center of Israeli cultural, artistic and religious activity; and to those settlers who have an ideological and sentimental attachment to the land of Israel an opportunity to move to Jerusalem, even a greater emotional and religious attraction.
7. It eliminates the myriad problems connected with the administration of a Palestinian territory, pocked with scores of Israeli settlements, and the provision to the inhabitants of these two antagonistic groups personal security, transportation, water, electricity and other necessary services.
Harry Polachek
Rockville
Over-Fishing Caused Stocks To Decline
Asta Bowen's cutesy attempt (Opinion * Commentary, April 22) to link the decline of frogs and the decline of fish stocks around the world within the context of man's destruction of the world environment reflects another of many misinformed attempts to link any change in some natural population or ecosystem segment to man's globally intrusive activities.
The reality with regard to fisheries is much simpler: Fish stocks decline when you remove more from the water than those remaining can replace.
This simple truth seems difficult to get across to those whose livelihood or recreational interests are dependent on the species and those political appointees responsible for management of these resources at the local, national and international level.
It would be humorous, if it were not so serious, to read the assessments of fish stocks of the northeastern United States prepared by our country's leading fisheries biologists over the past two decades.
One would find that the scientists definitively concluded many years ago that important stocks, such as cod and haddock, which are now described as collapsed, were being harvested at unsustainable rates and were, more than 10 years ago, at severely depressed levels.
It was not ocean collapse. It is the lack of social and political will on the part of those exploiting the species and those responsible for what was once called wise use of the resource.
When one looks over the devastated fish stock landscape around the world, a few gems glisten in the darkness.
The political willpower shown by Maryland's Department of Natural Resources, and in particular Lee Zeni, the former head of the Tidewater Administration, in forcing the acceptance of a moratorium on the harvest of striped bass during the 1980s is without doubt the sole reason that we saw more juvenile rockfish in the bay in 1993 than had ever been recorded.
The tens of millions of dollars spent studying the effects on rockfish of acid deposition, toxics, predation and an array of other phenomena that fisheries managers and environmentalists alike craved to blame for demise of the rockfish have produced a pitiful return on investment in terms of their contribution to stock restoration that palls in comparison to a simple management action of fishery closure.
The once beautiful weakfish stock in Delaware Bay and along the East Coast is presently virtually collapsed.
The weakfish decline was noted and witnessed by the same commercial and recreational fishermen and fisheries managers occupied with saving striped bass.
No significant actions to significantly restrict harvest were taken during the very obvious and well documented decline. I guess it's because PCBs, or asbestos, or ozone depletion, etc. devastated the stock.
William A. Richkus
Catonsville