Strategies for the Inner Harbor
As an Inner Harbor resident (Scarlett Place), I was pleased something might be done about the sadly vacant Power Plant. I pass this building each day and keep hoping someone will come up with a creative idea for it.
But now Alex. Brown & Sons has politely turned down Mayor Kurt Schmoke's offer of the space, and that is disappointing.
SportsCenter USA wants the rights for a "sports-themed, virtual-reality" entertainment center. Why not a "reality-reality" sports center?
The cavernous Power Plant could easily house an ice rink, bowling alleys and indoor tennis courts.
Another thought, would it be possible to move the Museum of Industry into this space? It would certainly be an appropriate location. This fine museum is so far off the beaten path it is often ignored as a downtown attribute.
Concerning the Fishmarket, to refer to it as "boarded-up" is an understatement. This fine, former entertainment center is a bashed-in eyesore. With the windows and doors broken through it is on its way to becoming an unauthorized homeless shelter.
But why put a "children's" museum there? Why not a museum that children will find attractive? Placing the adjective "children" in front of anything automatically makes people over the age of 12 want to shun it.
As a lucky Baltimorean who visited the Fishmarket when it was open, I though it great.
Although Gov. William Donald Schaefer decries offices moving to the Inner Harbor, I disagree. Any profitable use of vacant property is advantageous to the city.
Hopefully both the Power Plant and the Fishmarket will one day enjoy a well-deserved renaissance.
R. E. Nester
Baltimore
Gun registration
Marylanders have been slow in filing gun registrations to comply with Maryland's newest gun-control law. There is good reason why only 10 guns have been registered to comply with the new law.
Mike Pretl of the gun-grabbers group, Marylanders Against Handgun Abuse (MAHA), is quoted as saying, "I suppose it means many of the people who use these pistols plan to use them illegally." Wrong! It means most honest citizens do not trust government gun-registration programs.
Gun-grabbers will say, This is America and honest gun-owners have nothing to fear from government. Wrong again!
We need only look back in recent history to see Americans do need to fear government-produced "gun-registration lists."
In the 1980s a mayor of San Francisco decided gun registration would allow police to track "criminal" weapons. This mayor promised he would never take an honest citizen's guns.
He kept his promise. But, "government's foot was in the door."
After taking office, new Mayor Dianne Feinstein decided San Francisco should ban the possession of all handguns. Anyone owning a handgun was to take it to a police station and drop it off. No compensation provided.
How would you feel owning a customized competition pistol worth over $1,000 and being told to drop it off for destruction?
When less than 1 percent of handguns were turned in, the mayor ordered police to use "gun registration lists" to determine who owned the handguns.
Former Mayor Feinstein is now U.S. Senator Feinstein (D-Cal.). And she is still pushing for more gun-control, including "registration."
Hunters, who may not own a handgun, may see nothing wrong with gun registration.
They need to look at New York City. In 1967, rifle owners were required to register their rifles. Then in 1991, a law passed banning certain rifles. Thousands of honest citizens, who obeyed the "registration" law, were suddenly stripped of their right to own rifles.
Honest gun owners: When government or groups like MAHA tell you registration lists will not be used to confiscate your firearms, do you believe them? Based on history, I don't.
Aleta Handy
Severn
Social investments
It continues to amaze me how outsiders want to tell pension fund trustees what investments to divest.
In 1986, as president of the Baltimore Retired Police Benevolent Association, I opposed divestiture in South Africa for several reasons: The retirees would have been hurt monetarily; pension funds should not become involved in social issues and, finally, it would open the floodgates for other social causes.
Since then we have had Northern Ireland and a nuclear proposal as pension issues. Now there is talk of tobacco. What next?
I do know one social investment proposal that will not reach the council floor. That is the Timothy plan, which screens out companies directly or indirectly involved in vice, alcohol, tobacco, gambling -- and abortion.
Attorney General J. Joseph Curran Jr. only touched the tip of the iceberg when he said "[the investments are] ill-advised and arguably hypocritical and just plain wrong."
If that is true, what about the city, state and federal governments balancing their budgets on taxes reaped from tobacco products?
If it is wrong to invest pension money in the tobacco industry, isn't it more wrong to operate the government on taxes from the tobacco industry?
Joseph E. Seigmund Jr.
Baltimore
Gay review
The majority of Evening Sun readers are not interested in articles about homosexuals and their lifestyle. When will your editors realize that?
Perhaps it will become clear when the public gets so disgusted that it turns to other sources of information.
Recently you ran a most obnoxious review of a film called "Zero Patience" ("Zero a musical sendup of AIDS angst," July 22). The reviewer described "a musical number [that] is sung by two male rectums."
Real great stuff for a family newspaper! Please, no more.
Jack Kelly
Baltimore
Moving the poor
The Move to Opportunity plan which would bring poor and under privileged inner-city residents into established middle class communities has come under dispute, and not without good reason.
Most Americans are hard working and seek justifiable reward for their efforts. A reward that should entitle them to make decisions about the kind of lives they want to lead, the kind of neighborhoods and homes they want to live in, and the kind of schools they want for their children.
And this is their right, for the reward of labor confers the privilege to decide.
But all that is changing. The government now is forcing its own decisions down the throats of property owners and the wage-earning middle class.
It is officials who are deciding the demographics of our neighborhoods, dictating the ratios of people to live there, and determining what subsidies they will receive -- all without the input of those on whom this disaster will fall.
When has there ever been a successful precedent for such planning? Social engineering has become the bane of our lives.
Witness the recent happenings in St. Louis and Springfield, Mass., where two beautiful, modern, air conditioned projects with a variety of amenities were built for people with no vested financial interest, and a history of crime and asocial behavior. They dynamited and ruined it.
Tens of millions of dollars were squandered, neighborhoods have been destroyed and no one has benefited -- not even the under-privileged whom the social engineers have been engineering to help.
Are good people not entitled to be outraged without being labeled "bigots" or called "prejudiced?"
When America caves in to the screams of unfair labels, she caves in to a lie. It is better to identify and speak the truth.
Color is not the underlying issue dividing our people. Values, culture and economic class are. It's always been that way, and probably rightly so. It follows the law of human nature that people will gravitate toward each other naturally, on grounds of commonality. The birds of a feather theme is acted out daily.
Real and desired integration -- which I am all for, as are many Americans -- has to evolve naturally, not be forced by law.
What our legislators are telling us when they attempt to impose the sort of population manipulation the MTO plan holds is that they are effete.
Unable to solve the problems of the inner city, they decide to spread the problems around: A little less here, a little more there.
If we are serious about improving our cities, we have to start not by spreading the mud around but by rewarding the efforts of those doing something useful.
A dose of tough love and the expectation of higher standards would go a long way for all of us.
Ellie Fier
Baltimore