No Prison
It is unfortunate that comments describing mental health facilities as "prisons" were reported in the Dec. 17 article, "Best friend recalls 'my Jackie'."
The comments were obviously emotionally charged and express only personal feelings and not fact.
Mental health facilities are not "prisons." In fact, anyone who visits the Sheppard Pratt Health System would find a humane, caring environment where individuals receive tremendous support and encouragement in putting their lives and families back together.
They would also discover that of all the mental health and substance abuse services we offer -- including outpatient, day treatment programs, community-based treatments, home visits, residential living and inpatient -- only 1 percent are involuntarily in treatment.
And of those few who enter involuntarily, most remain in that status for no more than a few days.
That means the thousands of individuals we treat in any given year willingly seek help and assistance from Sheppard Pratt. We provide proven therapeutic programs that assist individuals to take back control of their lives.
We are located not only on our Towson campus, but out in the community where the services are most needed. The comments did a disservice to those in treatment and to those who may be searching for access to treatment.
Accurate information might have instead turned this article into something that would have helped our friends, co-workers, loved ones or neighbors who are struggling with a curable psychiatric disorder, instead of hindering them and making them feel like common criminals.
Steven S. Sharfstein, M.D.
Towson
F: The writer is president, Sheppard Pratt Health System.
Attack the System
Many commentators on welfare reform have advocated measures such as reducing monthly grants or limiting the time a mother can spend on welfare, based on a commonly shared perception that the current system is being abused by welfare recipients who refuse to work despite the opportunity to do so.
However, a careful look at the current welfare system reveals that the welfare mother is in general acting rationally to the incentives with which she is faced, and that welfare reform should focus on reversing these perverse incentives.
Many will be shocked to learn that working welfare mothers (not lawyers, doctors, brokers or captains of industry) comprise Maryland's highest tax bracket.
Except for a short-lived deduction, for every dollar a working mother on welfare earns, her monthly grant is reduced by a dollar.
Effectively, her tax rate is 100 percent, a disincentive to work at any income level.
Additionally, should she earn enough to disqualify her from the welfare caseload, she stands to lose Medicaid and child care benefits (both lost after one year) as well.
Consequently, under the status quo, the optimal strategy for most welfare mothers involves not working, collecting the full amount of their monthly grant and spending as much quality time with their children as is possible.
These are the incentives which have bred dependence. The problem is not the welfare mother, but the system in which she is forced to operate.
The solution, therefore, does not involve punishing welfare mothers, but attacking a well-intended, poorly crafted system which fails to reward hard work.
Baltimore
Healing Hands
I read Frank Roylance's Dec. 10 article on chiropractors that quoted Dr. Donlin Long. Obviously, Dr. Long has never seen the Silverman AV MED study. The study casts much doubt on his position that chiropractic "won't change the outcome" of recovery from acute low back pain.
AV MED, the largest health maintenance organization in the southeastern part of the United States, conducted a study to determine the cost-effectiveness of chiropractic care.
They sent 100 patients with low back pain to the Silverman Chiropractic Center. Of those patients, 80 percent had been unsuccessfully treated by physicians.
After chiropractic adjustments, 86 percent of those patients had their ailments corrected, and none of the patient's conditions worsened. Plus, there were 17 patients with diagnosed disc problems which were corrected by chiropractic.
The author of this study (a medical doctor himself) concluded that the use of chiropractic treatment saved the HMO $250,000 in surgical costs.
While this is one of the most recent studies to show the cost-effectiveness of chiropractic, there have been many others over the past several years.
It is my hope that with continued education, skeptics of chiropractic will see that their beliefs are unfounded.
Joseph Del Rosso, D.C.
Columbia
Speed Limit
Buried deep in your Dec. 16 edition was a report that Gov.-elect Parris Glendening is in favor of raising the state speed limit on rural interstates to 65 mph.
He apparently stated, according to your paper, "that he supports the idea because people who drive 55 mph are more of a road hazard than those driving faster."
Excuse me? If I'm not mistaken, the governor's first duty to the citizens is to enforce the laws, not to call people who obey the law "road hazards."
Not only is this label offensive to the thousands of Marylanders who obey the traffic laws, it is dangerous. It serves only to encourage irresponsible drivers who choose not to observe the posted speed limit.
According to the governor-elect, if you get stopped for speeding, now you can just tell the police, "I'm sorry I was driving over the speed limit, officer. I didn't want to be a 'road hazard.'"
The governor-elect insults those drivers who every day make Herculean efforts to stay under 55 mph, to avoid tailgating, to signal when changing lanes, to stop completely at red lights and stop signs, to drive defensively and, last but not least, to exercise some small measure of courtesy to other drivers.
He insults everyone who obeys the laws as written, not as they could be in the distant future.
Raising the speed limit on rural interstate highways is probably a good idea, but that is not the point.
The reality is that the speed limit is, has been and, for the foreseeable future, remains 55 mph. If you want to change it, run your little demographic studies, poll the legislature and change it.
But in the meantime, don't tell me I'm a "road hazard" because I respect the law.
Steve Holcomb
Bowie
Al Smith Quotes
In his Dec. 16 column, Jack W. Germond quoted Al Smith, former governor of New York and Democratic candidate for the presidency in 1928, as saying, "Nobody shoots at Santa Claus."
Mr. Germond went on in his analysis of Mr. Clinton's speech to misrepresent the meaning of Smith's axiom.
Mr. Germond contended that Smith's remarks have been "honored by politicians" and used it in reference to cutting taxes.
In fact, Al Smith made this remark in a 1936 campaign speech against Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal, likening government giveaways of the New Deal, not tax relief, to Santa Claus.
The remark hinted at Smith's understanding that the Republican candidate, Alf Landon, was unlikely to win election in 1936.
Another famous quote from Al Smith is more applicable to Mr. Clinton's recent speech: "No matter how thin you slice it, it's still baloney."
John A. Cadigan
Hunt Valley
What It Takes
Headlines screamed Baltimore will received $100 million from Washington. Whoop-de-do!
I wish I could be as enthusiastic as Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke, Sen. Barbara Mikulski and Sen. Paul Sarbanes.
Reporter Eric Siegel writes that the 6.8 square mile area targeted for this generosity accounts for 21 percent of the murders and 23 percent of the drug arrests.
There is an implication that all this will be turned around once the money arrives.
How, then, does one explain the crime in the somewhat though certainly not really affluent neighborhoods?
How does one explain these once well-kept communities with gracious lawns, gleaming houses (without burglar alarms then) now turned around into what approaches some of the areas targeted for federal largess?
While not wishing to rain on the mayor's parade, nor wanting to be accused of stereotyping, one must face reality.
We are not going to change appearances until we change attitudes. Attitudes toward neighbors, toward communities. Attitudes that assume responsibilities.
This means that City Hall must do more than write contracts and sign checks to implement the federal handout.
City Hall must -- and must has to be emphasized -- have corollary programs of education of what it means to be a good citizen in Baltimore.
Skip the 30-second sound-bite ads on TV and the billboard ads. It will take more than that.
Richard L. Lelonek
Baltimore
Why That $100 Million Won't Save Baltimore
It would seem that Santa Claus, in the guises of Henry Cisernos, secretary of housing and urban development, and President Clinton, decided to stop by Baltimore this holiday season and drop off $100 million of Christmas cheer.
Will this money truly benefit the masses of Baltimore citizens, especially the depressed African-American community in this city, or is it just another visit from the "ghost of Christmas Past" as in the "War on Poverty"?
As unpopular as this point of view may be, I don't believe that Baltimore's problems, or those of any other city, will be solved by massive cash transfer schemes from the federal government to the cities. That movie has already played. Only a foolish commander would try to fight a new war with the last war's tactics. Massive federal outlays to urban America are a thing of the past.
We experienced this in the 1960s and, quite frankly, that is one of the reasons why the cities have become so dilapidated.
Bill Clinton should know better, but these grants also seem a good way to reward political constituencies, before the new crew takes over on Capitol Hill.
As a black man, who was born and raised in the public housing projects of New York City and who was present and on board for the "War on Poverty," the "Great Society," "Model Cities", etc., I have had the opportunity to see close-hand that the massive intervention of the federal government in urban localities does not work, especially for the masses of people in the community.
Even though the claim is made that this particular program will have local input, it still follows the same stratagem of throwing money at a problem.
There is also another point to be made: The problem with America's cities has nothing to do with money or the lack of it.
America's cities suffer from crime. One of the prime engines of this crime problem is driven by the explosion, over the last few decades, of single-parent, female-headed households, where in many cases the skills to instill discipline and the proper standards of behavior, especially in the male children, don't exist.
Therefore, you have a large group of ill-educated and violence-prone young males who instead of being a positive force in the community contribute to the deterioration of the city. The spectacle of children killing children is a result of this problem.
Another problem is called "civics." In the words of a small business owner who has a shop in the targeted area, "You clean it up today, they [the residents] mess it up tomorrow."
People themselves have to recognize that they are responsible for the places that they live in -- not the federal government.
If people in a community continue to loiter, continue to trash their environment, continue to ignore the process by which you teach your children to respect their homes, what is Washington going to do about it?
The residents of urban America have to remember that they are adults, and, as such, one of their responsibilities is to keep their streets clean. That's supposed to be common sense; it shouldn't require a massive federal outlay.
Another problem is that many people in conventional politics, especially on the left, refuse to move on to the 21st century.
Many politicians from urban areas, or who have urban areas in their districts, have given me the impression that politicians don't really wish to educate their constituents. Perhaps that borders too close to honesty.
For example, we are told that this money will help provide job training in the inner city. With American wages for non-college graduates being slashed and with jobs floating overseas and the de-industrialization of America going full swing, what type of job training programs are we talking about?
Are we to believe that factories that have relocated in Mexico and Taiwan and are enjoying the cheaper labor costs in those places have heard about Baltimore's federal grant, and so now they are going to relocate back to Baltimore the first chance they get? I don't think so.
High-tech firms located in the Washington suburbs, which enjoy a large college-educated work force to choose from, will not flock to Baltimore because of this federal grant.
Baltimore, as a matter of fact, has the lowest education indicators in the state. The private sector is not going to make massive investments in such an area.
And in the same vein, why are we taking federal tax money to set up job-training programs for jobs that don't exist, when you can't get many people here to finish high school or be able to read and write if they do finish?
Will this grant money have anything to do with middle-class flight? The news that Baltimore has gotten a federal grant will not cause people in Anne Arundel County or Towson or Montgomery County to pack up and head back to Baltimore City.
Baltimore, like many American cities, chose to destroy itself by playing typical urban politics by embracing liberal welfare policies which created a pathology of dependency among many of its citizens.
It embraced a huge social service and judicial bureaucracy with the catering to its attendant interest groups, and it embraced the doctrine that people were automatically entitled to work in city government, regardless of their qualifications.
As a result of these games and the resulting havoc that it caused in these cities, the middle class just got fed up and left -- period.
It happened in New York, Detroit, Philadelphia, Baltimore, etc.
People have a right to enjoy a decent quality of life. If the city will not provide it, then people will go elsewhere, and there is absolutely nothing for anyone who has left the city to feel guilty about.
People have a certain reluctance in seeing their children shot down in the streets, I guess some folks are kind of old-fashioned like that.
Thanks to four decades of bad policies, the cities have become dirty, crime-ridden and overly bureaucratic, with decaying public school systems that are mostly warehouses for our youth and not institutions of learning. And thanks to policies that supported the destruction of the family, which helped to destroy the veneer of civilization that previously existed in the cities, as well as ever-higher taxes borne by the middle class being forced to pay for the political transition of cities from places of opportunities to place of entitlement.
Baltimore politicians as well as politicians of other American cities need to realize that this past election was as much a referendum on them and their way of doing business as it was on Bill Clinton.
The American people are tired of tax money being used for programs that in reality do not work and benefit only an elite select few while masquerading as a manifestation of "social consciences."
The political "insiders" should enjoy this Christmas "pork" while they can, but they would do well to consider a change in priorities; one of these days people in the cities will figure out that they need politicians who tell what they need to know, and not what they want to hear.
They should also realize that the electoral revolution of November was not just a case of the angry white male, as some on the left try to portray. The untold story happens to be that there is a growing number of black males who are angry at politicians for a lot of the same reasons that white males are angry at politicians.
This new year is leading us to a new century, in which the American city will have to reinvent itself, or history will discard it. This is the truth that city dwellers need to hear.
Robert C. Gumbs
Baltimore
African-Americans
I found the Dec. 8 commentary ("African-American?") by Sun reporter Elaine Tassy to be a very interesting example of a uniquely American dilemma.
That is, how do people of African descent find a suitable identity in a nation founded (and to a large degree still operating) on the premise of white supremacy?
Ms. Tassy's consternation about the African-American descriptive is shared by many others who either stand outside the culture or who wrestle with their cultural identities.
As Dr. Andrew Hacker notes in his book, "Two Nations," though race has been an American obsession since the first African slaves (the first true African-Americans) were sold in colonial America, it is a virtual impossibility to arrive at clear-cut definitions of race.
In our evolution from free Africans to American slaves to freedom during Reconstruction, we have reproduced with Native Americans, Caucasian Americans and others.
By the end of the Korean conflict, the variations on blood lines were so diverse that very few people of color could make legitimate claims of pure African blood.
To this extent, Ms. Tassy's point is well taken.
However, what she missed is the fact that the African-American descriptive is the first reference to most Americans of color that correctly acknowledges their African ancestry, while claiming their earned stake in America.
The reality of our African ancestry and American heritage is not dependent upon whether one travels to Africa, practices an African religion, knows an African language or prepares African cuisine.
Unlike any other minority group in America, only the African-American has a truly pluralistic heritage and existence in JTC this country.
Like Ms. Tassy, I cannot trace my genealogy beyond the southern regions of America, but at the same time, I cannot forget that in 1994, I am still just a few generations removed from my slave ancestors.
Like our Judaic brothers and sisters, black people must never forget their ancestral connection to the motherland.
To Ms. Tassy and other black people who share her view, I simply say that an eagle can deny its identity, but is still no less an eagle.
In my view, the litmus test for being an African-American is simple.
The people who have descended from American slaves -- slaves who originally came to this hemisphere from the continent of Africa -- are by their dual heritage African-Americans. People who do not share this dual heritage are not.
Larry Jennings
Baltimore