Female-Headed Household
Ben Wattenberg (Opinion * Commentary, Sept. 23) refers to "the rise of the FHH (female-headed household) that plagues us today." Having raised two children on my own to be college-educated, tax-paying, productive adults, I took exception to this phrase. I know many women who have successfully managed households and raised fine children on their own. No plague here.
Rather than lump all FHHs together and refer to them in a pejorative manner, one needs to pay attention to the educational and socioeconomic level of the mother. An educated woman with a good job or profession is well-equipped to provide a nurturing and stimulating environment for her children.
On the other hand, both single mothers and two-parent families who are poor, uneducated, uninterested in education or cultural activities will produce children who are like themselves.
Let's be fair to hard-working women raising children and not compare apples to oranges. Judgments should be made based on socioeconomic factors, not automatically along gender lines.
Carol Calvert
Baltimore
Ashamed of City
The front page story Sept. 22 reporting on the HUD audit of the Baltimore City Housing Department evokes an extraordinary sense of tragedy and loss in those of us who have worked with many dedicated city and state employees to identify and solve the difficult problems of lead-based paint poisoning.
That Baltimore, the city where childhood lead poisoning was first clearly defined and where the first effective programs of prevention were instituted 50 years ago by Huntington Williams, should come to this terrible pass is one of the saddest events imaginable in public health.
Too often we are tempted to consider problems like lead poisoning insoluble. This is understandable, although never a rationale for paralysis. But when we knowingly contribute to such problems, through neglect, oversight or malfeasance, this is unforgivable. The irreversible damage that may have been done to children through the failure to prevent their exposure to lead paint in city housing will rest heavy on all of us as we bear the burden of their lost potential for the rest of their lives.
This news made me for the first time ashamed to come from Baltimore.
Ellen Silbergeld
Baltimore
Yeltsin's Vision
The steps which Russian President Boris Yeltsin proposed in his speech to the United Nations General Assembly read like a blue print for progress in the world on a number of fronts and make obvious good sense. He has linked together measures to deal with several of the most destabilizing issues we face today. His vision for the future is like a breath of fresh air in stark contrast to the stale atmosphere of the Clinton Defense Department which seems still stuck in the Cold War mentality.
Included in Mr. Yeltsin's outline were further reductions in the number of existing nuclear weapons, ending production of nuclear munitions and nuclear weapons materials, a comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty by 1996, extending the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, regulating weapons sales, initiating a treaty on nuclear security and holding a conference on converting military factories to civilian use.
The period since the first nuclear weapons were used has been one of the most, if not the most, tense and unstable eras human civilization has known. There has been peace only in the very limited sense that nuclear weapons have been used only as threats. There have been continual wars using conventional weapons -- indeed, armed conflicts continue to rage today and seem to be proliferating.
Nuclear weapons are one of the most destabilizing influences in the world today. The recent Persian Gulf war was fought at least partially to counter the perceived threat of Iraqi nuclear weapons development. The arms race in the Middle East and the associated tension in that region are at least partially due to Israel's possession of nuclear weapons. Thinly veiled threats by the United States to resort to military measures to force North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons program clearly demonstrated how de-stabilizing nuclear weapons really are.
It is time for the Clinton administration to wake up and realize that, contrary to the popular wisdom, nuclear weapons are not, and never were, a stabilizing influence in the world. It is just plain foolish in today's world to hold on to the tattered security blanket of nuclear weapons.
J. Wayne Ruddock
Baldwin
Carter Deal
The column by Roger Simon, Sept. 21, headlined "Haiti accord makes Jimmy Carter look good; GOP ticked off," suggests that Simon says things only a true Democrat wants to hear.
If the Haiti fiasco leaving Lt. Gen. Raoul Cedras in power makes Carter look good, some of us lost our rose-colored glasses. The same goes for the Korea deal.
Nothing is really settled in either place, and both will cost us billions as we try to buy our way out one way or another.
As to Mr. Carter being a good carpenter for Habitat, I can only vouch that he does get photo ops when he works at it. The other volunteers stay full term without them.
Who is Mr. Simon kidding? All of the past presidents are millionaires in their own right without the perks of office, and knocking their speaking fees is silly. Even Gen. Colin Powell takes in $60,000 for an appearance, and he hasn't been elected yet. I would vote for him myself.
To quote Roger Simon, "At least the way Clinton has worked it out, Cedras is no longer going to be in power even if he does hang around Haiti." If that is the way Clinton has it worked out and Roger believes it will work, pity poor Aristide and his people.
Better yet, pity poor American soldiers and us taxpayers.
Albert F. Kwiatek Sr.
Baltimore
Killer Gas
With carbon monoxide being the No. 1 reason of poisoning in the nation, you would think that more people would be interested in having its cause eliminated from the residences we all live in, but this is not true.
Many politicians see it as an issue but, due to special interest groups, fail to vote in any legislation to have it found and removed from our homes. Only a few energy suppliers test routinely for CO.
The medical community will not test for it unless the patient is "aware" of poisoning and asks for a carboxyhemoglobin test or unless the symptoms are physically noticeable (blue skin). All in all, no one seems to care for the 1,500 people who die from this killer each year or the over 10,000 people diagnosed with this poisoning each year.
With the cold fall weather setting in, many Maryland residents will be turning on their combustion heating units without any knowledge of the potential dangers awaiting them.
Carbon monoxide testing and prevention must become mandatory.
Linda Cooper
Baltimore
Condom Bingo
I was amazed to read in the Sept. 4th Sun that college students have to be taught about AIDS; they are being taught through such intellectually stimulating methods as condom bingo, happy hours, quiz games and safe sex parties, and what they are being taught is that sexual promiscuity is fine as long as it's "safe."
No wonder, as the article continues to report, that two-thirds of the estimated 12 million new cases of sexually transmitted infections anually in this country occur among those who are under 25.
They're just doing what they've been taught.
Carole Frank
Columbia
No More Immigrants for Three Years
Three cheers for our gutsy president! If he will now provide us with a new foreign policy for our relations with all the rest of the world, our country will at last be on the road to economic recovery.
What we need is a three-year moratorium on all immigration.
Millions of people in developing countries around the world think they would be much better off in our country than in theirs and would risk almost anything to be here and even believe they have a right to U.S. citizenship because ours is a nation of immigrants.
We have news for them. We were a nation of immigrants when they/we were needed for the development of new frontiers, but new frontiers are long gone. In their place we have extensive unemployment and education problems that could be at least partially solved if we did not permit the entry of either better educated or "we'll work for less" foreigners. We also have vast health care, crime and ethnic animosity problems and, undermining every solution, the world's largest national debt, which continues to grow unremittingly.
In short, we already have too many needy, desperate and/or politically at risk citizens and too many extensive and intensive problems to justify the continuing addition of other countries' burdens to ours, and we need time and money to put our own house in order.
A three-year moratorium on all immigration, legal as well as illegal, would provide both: Think of all the money to be saved with the elimination of the partial or total support of hundreds of thousands of additional residents!
We could trace the actual use of substantial sums we contribute annually to innumerable countries in order to enable them to raise their standards of living so that their citizens are content to stay where they are.
We could also reorganize the Justice Department's Immigration and Naturalization Service -- we hear regularly that it is the most inefficient and corrupt bureau in all of government.
The INS could start immediately making every effort to protect all of our borders from illegal entry. By the end of the moratorium they should be equipped and trained to return boatloads of people (however large or small the boats) to their shores of embarkation, to track down and expel all those with expired temporary visas (students, for example) and to return to their own side of the border all who try to walk in, drive in or swim across to our country, even the women who wish to give birth to American citizens -- by ambulance if necessary.
All of this would be accomplished with greater dispatch if our allies with similar immigration problems would join us in their own three-year moratoriums and if the United Nations would establish regional and/or continental councils to consider the difficulties of individual countries within their borders and, where appropriate, seek financial aid, industrial guidance or business advice from the developed nations -- whatever it takes to encourage all people in the developing nations to stay put.
Alice Muth
Towson