Views of the Crime Bill
In your editorial, "Mugging the Crime Bill" (August 13) condemning the vote by the House against President Clinton's crime bill, you say Rep. Kweisi "Mfume was both realistic and right in giving a higher priority to a ban on 19 assault weapons that are ravaging inner-city neighborhoods. . ."
This statement is factually incorrect and misleading.
1. The bill banned approximately 175 gun models, not 19.
2. The guns banned by the bill are virtually never used in the commission of the types of crimes "that are ravaging inner-city neighborhoods."
So why is the president still insisting that the ban remain in his bill? Perhaps crime isn't the only thing he wants to control.
Richard T. Seymour
Baltimore
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Every TV news commentator I heard or editorial writer I read last week with something to say about the Republican trashing of the crime bill has labeled it a stunning defeat for President Clinton.
Well, it was a stunning defeat all right but not only for the president, who is trying to bring some sort of sane control to the rampant crime and killings on the street, but also for every non-NRA law-abiding citizen who believes, unlike Rep. Newt Gingrich, that it is a lot better to have 100,000 new police officers on the beat than 100,000 new assault weapons instead.
Representative Gingrich wants 100,000 new assault weapons made available to anyone who has the money to pay for one. (Like rich drug lords, for example?)
When Newt Gingrich wins, we non-NRA law-abiding citizens lose.
John D. Venables
Towson
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I read that the crime bill was blocked in the House. This is not bad -- some of its provisions would be a mistake. Expansion of the list of death penalty crimes is going in the wrong direction. We should move to abolish the death penalty.
Assault weapons should not be in civilian hands. Yes, I'm a rifle owner, but those things have no place in sport.
I'm glad to see that first-time non-violent offenders are off the mandatory minimum sentence list, but I think all mandatory minimums should be eliminated. Let our judges use their judgment.
I also think that we should seriously consider decriminalizing drug usage. The high dealer profits have led to gang violence over "turf" and have driven addicts to crimes they would otherwise not have to commit in order to get money for their habit. This "prohibition" mentality is creating criminals. Better we should use our resources for addict treatment and public education about the dangers of drugs.
We have a higher percentage of our population behind bars than any other country in the world. Our money should go, not to housing people at a cost of $42,000 a year per person, but to removing the causes of crime -- poverty, desperation and ignorance. Eliminating prisoners from Pell Grant eligibility represents only 1 percent of the grant money. These men will get out some day, and if they couldn't make it on the street before, wasting their time in prison isn't going to help. Education is their key to a useful life.
The "tough on crime" crowd sings revenge at all costs -- and those costs are too high, both in money and in wasted human potential.
ohn D. Fogarty
Columbia
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Let me see if I've got all this straight. After 225 members of Congress -- including 56 Democrats -- voted against his crime bill, President Clinton still can find no fault with the legislation. No siree. According to him, the bill's death is the fault of the National Rifle Association and the Republican Party. This is, of course, the same NRA which the administration gleefully pronounced dead after the ban on so-called assault weapons was passed as separate legislation by two votes a few months ago.
Also according to the president, members of the Black Caucus who voted against the crime bill, because of their opposition to capital punishment, are to be commended for their principled stand. At the same time, congressmen who took seriously their oath to defend the Constitution -- which, the last time I checked, includes the Second Amendment -- in the face of intense media pressure and anti-gun demagogy, are to be scorned for having taken the easy way out and kowtowing to the evil NRA.
This criticism, of course, comes from a man who many Americans doubt would know a principle if he were locked in a room with it.
Is it 1996 yet?
Giffen B. Nickol
Bel Air
Traffic Safety
We all know that tailgating is unsafe and illegal, but it is virtually unenforceable.
Imagine yourself traveling on the beltway at 50 miles an hour and the driver decides to follow approximately two feet from your rear bumper. As you come up over a rise, there's an accident just ahead and you are forced to stop suddenly.
Because the driver behind you is tailgating, he cannot stop in time, so he slams into you at approximately 50 miles an hour.
Now ask yourself, what are your chances of survival (not to
mention your car's) if that vehicle is a standard-size car? What about a van or a truck with over-sized tires and a front bumper as high as your rear window?
We all know that we can't stop tailgating, but we can change drivers' attitudes and force them to be more responsible for their actions.
Why not charge higher registration fees and higher speeding fines for larger vehicles?
Catherine D. DeKowski
Forest Hill
Breast-feeding Ills
Thank you for printing Jonathan Powers' Aug. 12 column, "The Baby Killers Are Still at Large." I agree wholeheartedly with his conclusions, but I feel I must correct some important misinformation in the piece.
"Poorly educated women" mixing formula with contaminated water and dirty bottles are not the only -- or even the largest reason -- for widespread illness and death in bottle-fed children. Much higher rates of bacterial infections, such as ear infections, pneumonia and meningitis, as well as serious diarrheal illnesses are seen in bottle-fed babies in all cultural groups worldwide, including the United States.
Infant and child mortality is lower in developed nations because antibiotics and other treatments, such as intravenous hydration, save these children. Poverty anywhere can lead to the dangerous practice of over-diluting formula which can eventually starve infants or lead to serious electrolyte imbalances.
One of the most important properties of breast milk is its antibody content; these are the body's proteins that fight infection. In breast milk the mother passes her immunity from certain infections directly to her infant. Antibodies form in response to exposure to germs, so the antibodies the baby gets will protect best against germs in his own environment. This is true the world over.
Here in the U.S., formula is marketed in similar ways to those described in the column: mothers are tempted by free samples, by advertisements portraying cherubs bottle-fed by lovely models and, worst of all, by pediatricians and obstetricians who distribute coupons, ad-filled magazines and samples of formula.
Only a concerted effort to support breast-feeding mothers, to educate the public about the very real risks (and costs) of bottle-feeding and to curb unethical advertising practices can create real change here in the U.S., in practices and perceptions.
#Catherine Washburn, M.D.
Baltimore
Only in America
Ah, America. What a wonderful country!
Where in the whole world can a man earning $26,000 a year
watch a man earning $26,000 a day go out on strike?
I wonder whatever became of common sense.
ames T. Wright
Baldwin
Evident Dangers
Dr. James P. Richardson's Aug. 15 article arrogantly implies that the collective wisdom of American juries is inadequate to pass judgment on the medical establishment. I disagree.
How many years did the American public listen to the tobacco industry deny that smoking causes cancer before medical evidence "proving" the link finally came to light? How long did we listen to asbestos manufacturers and suppliers minimize or deny the dangers of the product before we banned it? How many women were prescribed DES drugs and IUD contraceptives that made them infertile or worse, while manufacturers and physicians denied any casual link between the product and the injury? Now Dr. Richardson would have us believe that continuing to use breast implants is OK -- until the victims come up with better proof of the danger involved.
It takes many years for scientific "proof" to be developed and published. When the industry controlling the purse strings for research projects doesn't want certain facts to come to light, it takes longer for the truth to surface.
Lawyers for injured consumers bring the dangers of products into the open. Our judicial system provides compensation for the injured victims if they prove their cases by preponderance of the evidence. Evidence will not even be submitted to a jury unless it passes judicial scrutiny first.
We should not let lack of funding for medical research prevent women from being compensated for injuries caused by defective drugs and devices. Moreover, the suppliers of these products should pay for the harm they cause, not Medicaid, Medicare and private health insurance.
Putting the responsibility for dangerous drugs and devices where it belongs would go a long way toward reducing health care costs in America. Let the jury system do its job.
obin Page West
Baltimore
Bigotry is Bad -- Unless It's Politically Correct
Samuel L. Banks' Aug. 13 letter defined racism in politico-economic terms, saying that a group must have the power to execute its bigoted beliefs in order to qualify as racist.
Yet this arbitrary definition raises a difficult problem that is not very amenable to Mr. Banks' simplistic statement or his willingness to tie responsibility for racist beliefs to economic and social power.
Let us assume that in the Brooklyn borough of New York City a Korean merchant, an African-American attorney and a Puerto Rican plumber each hold a blind, unreasoning hatred for the other two. Who would be the racist there?
In Brooklyn, the borough president, chief of police and a significant portion of the government are African-American.
Is the Korean merchant a racist? He has no economic or political clout to implement his beliefs. Yet he can hate equally well. So can the Puerto Rican plumber.
Meanwhile, the African-American lawyer may be black, but he can sue the pants off the other two. Is he a racist?
What if the same scenario were moved to San Juan, Korea or Zaire? Is Mr. Banks claiming that the same bigoted personalities would be absolved from the "racist" label depending on the geographical location where they are doing their hating?
And how does Mr. Banks classify the taxicab drivers of Washington, who are overwhelmingly low-paid, non-white and non-Asian, yet who often refuse to pick up young African-American males?
Finally, how would Mr. Banks rationalize the conflict in Rwanda between Hutus and Tutsi?
Did the Hutus' hatred of their Tutsi neighbors only become "racist" when they attained power? Now that the Tutsis seem to be ascendant, is the Hutus' bigotry no longer "racist"?
Why not just call anyone filled with unreasoning hatred for others a bigot? Each individual then would have to weigh his or her own prejudices without the shelter of politically approved righteousness.
Lewis Lorton
Columbia
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Samuel Banks' verbose diatribe pontificating that "there is . . . no such animal as black racism" is totally off the mark.
If he would put down his thesaurus and pick up his dictionary, Banks would discover that racism has nothing to do with power. It has everything to do with prejudice, and prejudice is not exclusive to those in power.
Would he deny that Louis Farrakhan and Khalid Muhammad are racists solely because they are black? Their statements regarding whites in general, and Jews and Catholics in particular, certainly qualify them as racists of the most virulent kind.
Coming closer to home, Samuel Banks has defended indicted former Comptroller Jacqueline McLean in previous correspondence to the editor of The Sun.
I would remind him that one of her first acts in office was to summarily abolish the civil service positions of the top-level white males and Jews in her office. Considering Banks' hypothesis, this could not have been racist because black racism does not exist.
As a rose by any other name is still a rose, racism by anyone -- white, black, or otherwise -- is still racism.
Adrian W. Osnowitz
Baltimore
Third World Cities
In Perspective August 14, Professor James A. Dorn questioned the motives and value of the U.S. Agency for International Development's (AID) efforts to transfer its Third World development experience to Baltimore and other impoverished American cities. It would be a shame if his rhetoric -- directed mainly at aid spending and "the failed vision of the Great Society" -- diverts readers from the valuable lessons to be learned from the cities of the Third World.
When Vice President Gore and AID officials came to Baltimore last June to discuss "Lessons Without Borders," their emphasis on health care distracted many observers from the lessons of enterprise. Certainly the successes of immunizing children in Haiti and Egypt warrant our attention here. But we should at the same time ask ourselves how much good we are doing if the children saved are not being given also the education and sense of opportunity and confidence needed to achieve meaningful, productive lives.
I have worked in several Third World cities and believe firmly in the proverb that newcomers to the field of international development soon hear, "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach him to fish and you feed him for a lifetime." Like all such homilies, the lesson is overly simple but nevertheless powerfully important: Progress is most likely when we give people the tools to work toward their own solutions rather than telling them how we will solve their problems.
Take the case of housing. In cities like Lagos and Jakarta (to name just two examples) vast slums fester. The residents typically have no clear ownership of their homes, and without sewers, supplies of clean water, reliable electric power and the other services we take for granted, they have little chance to improve their lot. Success has come from giving residents both incentive and opportunity to benefit from their own labor.
Establishing clear ownership, making minimal immediate upgrades to services and provision for more in the future, and then providing financing for small loans to buy building materials have led to progressive homebuilding and neighborhood enhancement. People build savings and equity in their homes and feelings of accomplishment and power to make change happen. The houses may not initially meet building codes, but they offer vastly improved quality of living for their residents.
Assistance to small-scale businesses is another success. Training and, again, small-scale loans have enabled many people who otherwise had no resources or employment to become viable vendors, distributors, manufacturers and repairers. Even if many of these small enterprises fail to grow, they give people "hands-on" understanding of how the economic system works. A few may succeed spectacularly and become a source of solid jobs in their communities. The businesses may not initially meet the standards that banks typically like to impose on their borrowers, but they offer work, opportunity and hope where these commodities have been sorely lacking.
There are problems, of course. At any one time, such programs can reach only a small fraction of the people who might benefit. The costs of serving many small accounts are relatively high in proportion to total funding. Entrenched bureaucracies that see threats in new institutions and the successes of others can make progress maddeningly slow. When money passes through hands that have long had little, some may "stick" along the way. Such problems are manageable and, in a nation that has spent billions on failed thrift institutions, small matters if progress can be made.
These lessons have not gone entirely unnoticed. There are programs here, for example that seek to train people in the
building trades, first to rehabilitate housing in their neighborhoods and then to be employable in the broader marketplace. But these sorts of efforts have for the most part been focused on immediate jobs.
Fast results are valuable, but what Baltimore needs is more of the kind of vision, commitment and comprehensive effort that gave birth to the city more than 250 years ago and spawned the Inner Harbor renewal. We should teach people to build -- in the broadest sense -- not so they will take on carpentry as a trade, but because they will come to know they can make changes for themselves, their children, and generations beyond.
The experience of Third World development efforts offers many lessons, but the most important are that perspective is needed, answers are not simple, and progress may be slow. Nevertheless, progress is possible. We must define the path and make our commitment to the longer term and begin to teach people to fish.
ndrew C. Lemer
Baltimore
Take Your Hot Rod to the Track
This letter is in response to Clark Woods' letter ("Speeder Crackdown Is For Revenue, Not Safety") in your Aug. 6 Saturday Mailbox.
Mr. Woods' points are that enforcement of speed laws is purely for revenue purposes, speeding is not unsafe, cars such as his which are built for high performance may safely go twice the legal speed limit and should be allowed to speed and that his use of a radar detector is only because his car would be selected from among a group of speeders due to its bright color and equipment.
Finally, Mr. Woods describes the sophisticated equipment law enforcement officers must properly use to accurately pinpoint the exact level a speeder is traveling.
Mr. Woods probably fits into that exclusive group of drivers who believe that public safety laws are not for them. They know how to drive fast; it's the other drivers in foreign imports or minivans who can't speed safely.
Our highways are engineered for the specified speed limits with margins of error because they know some drivers need to drive at high speeds on them -- to catch speeders.
Except for race drivers whose skills require them to drive at high speeds on tracks specifically built for high speed, individuals speeding on public thoroughfares endanger not only the driver's life but the lives and property of those traveling the same.
Traveling 80 mph ("in light traffic"?) leaves little response time if upcoming vehicles don't get out of your way or to prevent a deer from landing in your lap. You should see a picture of a car which has only grazed a deer. Take your hot rod to the track.
It is a national policy after thorough testing for safety that 55 mph is a safe high-speed limit.
Federal highway funds for distribution to states are therefore tied to states' citizens adhering to this law.
States such as Maryland find excessive abuse of safe speed laws in some areas. This results in selective speed detection and apprehension areas.
Consequently, it is to Marylanders' best interest to hold the speed down, or highway improvement costs will have to come from our pockets.
I seriously doubt that revenue from speeding tickets, even if the fine is not waived in traffic court, scratches the surface in the labor, fuel and speed detection equipment costs resulting from law officers trying to stop excessive speeders.
The fines posted on highway signs listing the dollar value for fines are meant to discourage you, the speeders, driving home (no pun intended) the impact (again, no pun intended) on your wallets should you be caught speeding in that area.
If revenue were the purpose, I'd think they'd confiscate a speeder's car to send for public auction to bring in needed money for law enforcement efforts.
None of the speed detection errors from equipment misuse in examples cited in Mr. Woods' letter were for drivers not even close to following the speed limit.
The closest was a vehicle which could have been stopped for actually going 65.9 mph instead of a reading of 70.1. This is 10 miles per hour or more faster than the speed limit; the driver is still speeding excessively.
If the man from Rochester was going 65, 74 or 80, what complaint can he possibly have for being caught driving far more than posted speeds?
Finally, I agree with the dislikes of Mr. Woods for drivers who tailgate or pass other vehicles on the shoulder, etc.
Perhaps if concentrated efforts weren't necessary to catch offenders in noted high-speed areas, law enforcement officers could nab these individuals, too.
Charles Herr
Baltimore