Play or pay
Baseball owners and players have entered into a complex contractual arrangement which goes far beyond the principal actors. It is a social contract which directly affects municipalities, vendors, local economies, etc. in a very real way.
The present and future endless strikes are utterly irresponsible blows to the body economic with disastrous consequences for everyone. The owners and players should be required to post a performance bond. Either play or pay.
Marco Sampson
Baltimore
Suckers, arise
Many in the sports media are questioning whether the owners or the players are more responsible for the baseball strike. While both deserve some of the blame, I believe the major culprit is the fans. A national sports commentator referred to the fans as "impactless" before the strike. At this point, we're not just "impactless," we're a bunch of suckers.
The greed that is now running rampant in major professional sports has been fostered by an extraordinary growth in revenues in the past 10 years. These revenues have come from manyfold increases in ticket prices, enormous growth in rights fees for broadcasting events and booming sales of officially endorsed products.
Who has willingly gone along with the increases in ticket prices? The fans in record numbers. Who has stayed on the sidelines, helpless to do anything when rights fees exploded, especially in professional football? The fans and non-fans alike, who pay higher prices for products advertised on these events. And who is purchasing all those expensive products that are officially endorsed? Need I answer?
It's time we recognized the power we fans could wield by acting collectively. Begin by attending less sporting events. In particular, baseball attendance must drop to send a message to the owners. Follow this by carefully noting the sponsors of each game you watch on television. Assiduously avoid purchasing any of their products, until rights fees are significantly reduced. Finally, buy endorsed products only for the kids, who still see the players as heroes.
If we do this, we could put an end to the greed that is destroying major professional sports and place ourselves squarely in the middle of the player/owner business equation. The pressure we fans could bring to bear might return a lot of sanity to the situation, and bring back some of the respect these sports have lost. Let's at least try to return financial equity to the games; and rehabilitate the sports we all used to cherish - like baseball.
Jim Beller
Rockville
Canadian health
A Canadian newspaper informing Canadians, not an ad from American insurance companies, illustrates how the Quebec Province health system rations health services. A few excerpts:
* At the end of 1993, there were 23,000 patients on waiting lists at 102 hospitals in Quebec, and the numbers fluctuate very little each month.
* At one hospital, 3,226 children were waiting for operations, 1,670 of whom needed surgery within 90 days. The balance, 1,556, will wait longer than three months.
* 626 cancer patients on waiting lists for urgent operations and 276 other cancer patients waited an average of six weeks for treatment, but one was kept on a waiting list for eight months.
* A survey of all provinces showed that the period from the time that the general practitioner referred the patient to a specialist until the patient saw the specialist, and the time to treatment obtained, varied from 4.1 weeks to see a specialist and 6.4 weeks to obtain treatment in Quebec -- the best -- to 5.9 weeks to see a specialist and 11.5 weeks to treatment in New Brunswick.
This is the health care that some clowns in Congress are proposing to ram down the American public's throat.
Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D.-W. Va.)said we were going to get a health bill whether the American people want it or not. Rest assured, our bureaucrats would foul up a Canadian-type health system worse than the Canadians do.
rank Heddinger
Pasadena
Boat lift disaster
Calling the deal President Clinton and Cuba's Fidel Castro agreed to a "foreign policy triumph" puzzles me ("No Boat Lift This Time," Sept. 12).
Once again, Mr. Castro has been able to meddle in our domestic affairs and adjust our immigration rules.
Although some believe a minimum of 20,000 Cubans entering this country each year is a benefit, this taxpayer thinks otherwise. The word "minimum" is misleading. Where is the cutoff point?
Although many Cuban refugees will be children, the majority will be adults. How can this country create enough jobs to handle such an influx? As a taxpayer who is required to support this nation's malignant welfare system, I resent more people being put on the dole. If we take a minimum of 20,000 Cubans per year, by the year 2000 we will have more than 120,000 new, non-English speaking citizens.
In the past, immigrants came to this country without safety nets and took their chances. Now the "huddled masses" we import are provided the finest medical care, education, welfare stipends, food stamps and all the other entitlements.
Why should Cubans remain a "special category," as you insist? Fidel Castro came to power by popular demand. The fact that his revolution went sour is not America's problem now that communism has been relegated to the dustbin of history.
Finally, do you really see the 35,000 Cuban refugees at Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere returning home without protest?
Perhaps President Clinton has scored some points in the international community, but it is a sorry loss for the hard-working citizens who already support an out-of-control immigration program.
Rose Ellen Nester
Baltimore
Just ignore Schaefer's swan song
To Marylanders who suffered through Gov. William Donald Schaefer's two terms, his blasting of 1994 gubernatorial candidates (The Sun, Sept. 8) is a classic case of the vindictiveness of an ineffective retiring government official. This
guy has been a disaster for Maryland.
Mr. Schaefer loudly proclaimed during both of his campaigns, "We don't need any more taxes!" Then asked for huge tax increases almost the day each of his terms began. Remember Linowes?
His claim that nothing his administration has done has fostered a bad business climate in Maryland is ludicrous. How about his motor-fuel tax hikes and his stubbornly clinging to the 55-mile speed limit on rural interstates and the revenue traps they engender?
Truckers go miles out of their way to spend as little time in Maryland as possible and avoid buying fuel or over-nighting here.
How about the nation's highest real estate settlement costs? And Maryland's ranking as the fourth most taxed state?
If the Maryland business climate is so good, why did McDonnell Douglas Corp. and others seeking access to Washington spurn our state to settle in Northern Virginia, Pennsylvania or even West Virginia? Why is London Fog leaving the state?
His junkets to attract overseas business have been largely ineffectual and at times nonsensical. (Is it coincidence that he always combined them with vacations? I have to pay if I vacation in Europe; I'd love to have the taxpayers foot the bill.)
He returned from his 1991 junket to Kuwait at the end of the Gulf War holding up a piece of paper and claiming it was an agreement that virtually all Kuwaiti reconstruction materials would be funneled through the Port of Baltimore.
It was comedy worthy of a Mark Russell skit. Maryland has gotten no (or very little) port business from Kuwait since 1991.
The governor's budgetary robbing Peter to pay Paul must result in loss of services and loss of state aid to the subdivisions, which will translate to higher city and county taxes for generations.
The thought of succeeding Mr. Schaefer is enough to chill anyone's gubernatorial ambitions. Let's hope the voters' choice
meets with his approval, because otherwise this spiteful would-be king is likely to muck up the transition and make cleaning up his mess more difficult.
Chuck Frainie
Woodlawn