Salary cap another form of collusion

When is collusion not collusion? When it gets written into a labor agreement.

Years ago, the owners of major league baseball teams were convicted of collusion for secretly agreeing to hold down the salaries of players. This resulted in fines and penalties of about $250 million.

It was an expensive and painful lesson, but what did the owners learn? They learned that collusion was terrific, except that they would have to find a better way to do it.

The proposed "salary cap" is a thinly veiled attempt to legitimize a practice for which the owners already have been convicted. If they can write it into the labor agreement between themselves and the players, however, it won't be illegal.

The word "agreement" is used advisedly -- in the sense of, "do you agree to hand over your wallet or would you rather get shot?"

You can call it collusion or you can call it an "agreement." As Shakespeare noted long ago, "a rose by any other name smells as sweet." If the poet were a sportswriter in the 1990s, he might not have used a rose as his example.

Sig Seidenman

Owings Mills

Kiss it goodbye

With voters considering crime our most outstanding problem, do Republicans have any idea of what their anti-crime bill opposition has done to them?

Is the anti-crime bill a good one?

Most people don't know. Voters want someone to try. They would like representation in government.

Republicans can kiss hope of legislative majorities goodbye, as they say "hello" to National Rifle Association money.

Charles Johnston

Pasadena

Nurses and 'reform'

Hospital administrators are running scared with health care ,, reform looming over their shoulders. They are "downsizing" and "restructuring," catchy buzz words for letting people go.

Unfortunately, when these layoffs occur in hospitals, not only are people out of work, but the care sick people receive is affected.

The Aug. 7 article by Patricia Meisol regarding the nursing shift in hospital care outlined this reality accurately.

She pointed out how RNs are being replaced with less skilled or unlicensed personnel or just eliminated. This seems unacceptable but inevitable in these days of "reform."

How desperate will everyone become to save a few dollars? Obviously, patient care is not the ultimate objective.

Dene Hogge

Timonium

Affordable living

Lorraine Mirabella's article, "Coming of Age," (Aug. 21) portrayed many of the reasons senior citizens choose to live in continuing care retirement communities.

However, the article's focus on one-bedroom apartments that start at $149,000 might have left readers with the mistaken impression that retirement communities are afford able only to the wealthy.

The two communities in Maryland operated by Senior Campus Living, Charlestown Retirement Community in Catonsville and Oak Crest Village in Parkville, have one-bedroom apartments with fully refundable entrance deposits that start at $86,000. Studio apartments start at $65,000 and efficiencies start as low as $56,000.

Older people achieve an envious lifestyle, as Ms. Mirabella pointed out, if they are in an active environment where they can live independently and where they have comprehensive health care available.

The rule, of course, is that this retirement option has to be affordable to middle-income seniors. Residents of retirement communities are even better served when they are offered affordable independent living options that allow them to control their costs.

John Erickson

Baltimore

The writer is chairman and chief executive officer of Senior Campus Living Life Care Retirement Communities.

Shovel it

Regarding your editorial with reference to the dirty condition of the city (Aug. 22), I agree with Mayor Kurt Schmoke that a good part of the problem lies with the people who are responsible for garbage collection.

I live in the Otterbein section of the city, and our trash is collected in the parking lot behind the townhouses.

After every Tuesday's and Friday's garbage collection, I go back there and find trash strewn all over the lot. This trash was not there before the "collection."

If something falls out of a trash can while it is being deposited in the truck, it is never, or at least very rarely, picked up by the garbage man. It is just left on the ground, whether it is a piece of paper or an apple core.

Surely the equipment on the truck includes a shovel which can be used to pick up any loose trash.

If everyone helps, including the people responsible for trash collection, the city will indeed be a cleaner more pleasant place in which to live.

Christina Mitchko

Baltimore

Smokers' rights

What is the purpose of a car's ashtray? To collect loose change and candy wrappers?

Lately when I open the paper or listen to the news, smokers are clamoring for their rights. I have had just about enough of this.

For months, while driving to work, I have followed someone who smokes. They flick their ashes out the car window, and when they are finished, their cigarette butts fly out of the window, too.

This morning was a little different. When the driver was finished smoking her cigarette, she wriggled her entire arm out the

window toward the rear of the car in such an unnatural manner I was beginning to wonder what was going on.

Then it happened. The flick. This woman went to great lengths so neither the cigarette butt, nor a single speck of ash could find its way back into her car.

Who gives smokers the right to use my world as their giant ashtray? Where do they think these ashes and cigarette butts end up?

Smokers trash my world while keeping their ashtrays clean. If they want to kill themselves in their cars, go ahead. But I do care that they have no regard for my world.

If they don't like the smell of a stale ashtray, perhaps they should quit smoking.

Jenny Ewing

Baltimore

Toughen penalties for crime

Just about everyone who is running for public office in the upcoming election has a cure for our crime problem today. What makes these people think they are smarter than Gov. William Donald Schaefer or Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke?

FTC Putting more police on the street certainly will help, but that will not stop the crime problem. The police of Baltimore City and Baltimore County are doing a great job solving most major crime in a minimal amount of time.

Let's put the blame where it belongs -- not on the police but on our judicial system, as well as our politically appointed parole boards.

From what I read, 80 percent of our crimes are committed by repeat offenders. This is a sad commentary on our judges and parole boards.

When a judge sentences a criminal to 25 years in prison, it should not mean 15 years.

How many times have we read that a judge sentences someone to jail for two years, with 18 months suspended or gives probation before verdict. In reality, the two years may be insufficient to begin with.

A teen-ager may steal a $20,000 car and in a high speed chase with police winds up crashing into a tree or the lawn of a home, endangering the lives of pedestrians, motorists and children. Yet they are released into their parents' care, given probation before verdict or a suspended sentence.

Many judges will tell you that the jails are full and there is no room for these people. Allow the judge to be the judge. Then allow the state of Maryland to put the criminals where they belong.

We need to stop treating prisons like summer camps and start treating criminals like the criminals they are.

Marvin Rombro

Baltimore