The wrong site selected for visitors center
The Sun is right. Baltimore's decision to locate a new visitor center adjacent to the Harborplace Light Street pavilion is wrong ("... not another ice cream stand," editorial, June 17). Baltimore needs such a facility, but a better location can be found.
When the people of Baltimore voted to support the development of the Inner Harbor, the city agreed to protect the space between Harborplace and the Maryland Science Center from further development. That commitment should be honored.
After a meeting several months ago with the mayor and others, I concluded that there was no consensus in favor of the Inner Harbor site. I believed the mayor would not move forward without that consensus. Now we learn that a groundbreaking is planned for next month.
This is another bad decision concerning public land.
The visitors center must be easily accessible, provide convenient parking and must not compound Inner Harbor traffic. The proposed site does not meet these tests.
I urge the mayor and the city's leadership to strengthen their commitment to tourism and all it encompasses -- the convention center, the visitors association, the attractions and the best location possible for a new visitors center.
Most of all, I urge all those responsible to be faithful to the past, keep their word and stick to their commitments.
William Donald Schaefer
Annapolis
The writer is comptroller of the state of Maryland.
More chain stores just what city needs
Should we lament the rise of chain retail outlets and restaurants in Charm City or jump for joy ("Chains dilute local flavor of Harborplace," July 1)? To all the complainers, I ask: Might it not be our penchant to shun national chains that is the very downfall of our city?
We live in a capitalist, consumer society -- in a city devoid of diverse consumer options. Yes, we have our share of quirky, Baltimore-style shops, but it is precisely in the national chain department that we are lacking.
We have hardly any Starbucks compared with other cities. We have only one Gap, and no Urban Outfitters, French Connection, Crate & Barrel, or Abercrombie & Fitch (to name a few). We are the only major city on the East Coast without a serious retail strip such as Georgetown, South Street in Philadelphia or any of a dozen mile-long shopping streets in New York.
Yet some in Baltimore complain that national chains are ruining our city? We are virtually bereft of them.
Besides, national chains link us with our fellow Americans, and they don't kill local businesses, they foster them.
Just take a walk down South Street in Philadelphia, where Starbucks is surrounded by locally owned coffee shops, where the Gap and French Connection are immersed among more than a dozen artier, small clothing stores, where Tower Records is an island in a sea of independent CD shops and record stores.
So I make a plea to all who cling to this notion that Baltimore is some great mecca of small-time retail to wake up and smell the coffee (served to me in a cup size called Venti) and realize it's time to get this city into the fray of big-name retail, so we can save our city and our economy and bring more business and residents downtown.
Lonnie Fisher
Baltimore
Super-size homes make juicy target
Just when the angst over SUVs was getting a bit stale, along comes something new to despise. It's the SOLD (Super-sized Obscenely Large Domicile) ("Howard Co. is Maryland's 'roomiest' area," July 7).
Many of us with no need of the "really big" think the SUV and the SOLD both:
Consume inordinate amounts of raw materials in their production and energy in their operation.
Gobble up scarce space on the highways and in our landscape.
Block our views of motorists and idyllic scenery.
Are purchased perhaps more to gain status than to meet any necessity.
Tempt some owners to feel "above" the rest of us -- taller, more massive, better.
Are often obscenely extravagant and are good examples of both the successes and excesses of our society.
There is one big difference. The potential number of SUVs seems unlimited, as their market share continues to increase, and there's sometimes a bit of room left on the roads. But land for SOLDs is fast disappearing, at a rate accelerated by the SOLD craze itself.
I think it will be much more fun, and a bit more safe, to rant against the smaller clique of SOLDs rather than the ubiquitous SUVs.
I feel better already.
Nelson L. Hyman
Randallstown
Both North, South profited from slavery
The Sun's June 9 Arts & Society section included a review by former editorial page editor Joseph R.L. Sterne of three books relating to our Reconstruction era. Never have I seen a reviewer precede his review with a diatribe that serves to disqualify him for the task he is undertaking ("The legacy of Reconstruction outweighs the Civil War's").
But Mr. Sterne opens with his contention that contemporary race relations are far more a result of the Reconstruction experience than of the Civil War itself. He proceeds to venerate the very people who bear the primary responsibility for the fact the war occurred. Does Mr. Sterne fail to recognize that, absent a war, there would be no Reconstruction?
And to praise the abolitionists and Radical Republicans is to endorse a sanctimonious, us-against-them mentality that drove the country to catastrophe. Not because they contemplated abolition, but because these self-righteous advocates sought to ensure that all costs of manumission would be borne exclusively by Southerners.
Mr. Sterne's antebellum heroes chose to ignore the mountains of textile wealth that surrounded them. But they knew full well it had resulted from access to cotton that was grown with slave labor.
Still worse, they also knew the North's access to that cotton was preferential, because the federal government's tariff on imported textiles, which enabled domestic textile makers to increase prices, left planters able to sell to rival cotton buyers abroad only at the expense of tariffs imposed by other countries to retaliate against our import duties.
Failure to recognize that both regions shared the benefit of and the blame for slavery is thus analogous to failure to recognize now that the responsibility for drug trafficking is shared by both foreign suppliers and domestic buyers.
Mr. Sterne's heroes failed in their duty to demand federal funding with which the cost of manumission could have been shared by both regions.
Dennis G. Saunders
Columbia
Guidelines reflect severity of the crime
A recent article in The Sun, "City gets short end of judicial guidelines" (June 26), contained statements by the Baltimore City state's attorney blaming the Maryland State Commission on Criminal Sentencing Policy's guidelines for reducing the average sentences for those convicted of assault in Baltimore.
As chair of the commission, I would like to respond, first, by making clear that Maryland's voluntary system leaves judges free to give sentences either longer or shorter than the guidelines. The guidelines are merely suggestions based, to a large degree, upon sentences judges throughout the state have given for similar crimes.
Second, I need to emphasize that the various state's attorney's offices can substantially influence sentences with their plea bargaining policies that set minimum sentences higher than the guidelines and, in the case of violent gun crimes, through levying charges that carry mandatory sentences.
Our data show that the judges in Baltimore and the state's attorney's office appear to be largely in agreement about the level of sentencing for first-degree assault.
Indeed, almost 80 percent of the sentences that the Baltimore judges imposed for the assault crimes after new guidelines were developed were plea bargains in which the defendant is assured in advance that the sentence would be no more than what the state's attorney recommends. It seems disingenuous for the prosecutor to bind the judge to a level of sentencing within the guidelines and then complain when the judge goes along.
Perhaps more important is that after the commission reviewed the history of sentencing for assault crimes over the state, it decided to modify the sentencing guidelines to reflect more accurately the sentences judges were imposing statewide and separate less serious assaults from those that deserve more harsh punishment.
The data show that the effect of that was to double the length of the sentences for assaults with a firearm from a median of 60 months to 120 months.
What's more, the length of such sentences in Baltimore has been exactly the same as for judges in the rest of the state.
Furthermore, for charges that the defendant used a handgun when committing felony, the General Assembly years ago provided for a minimum sentence of five years in prison, and up to 20 years, which must be served in addition to the sentence for the underlying crime.
Thus for those who commit serious crimes with guns, the Baltimore City state's attorney's office can ensure that the criminals spend a long time off the street through the charging process and by refusing to plea bargain the mandatory minimum sentence away.
The Maryland General Assembly created the State Commission on Criminal Sentencing Policy in 1999 to bring solid, reliable data, information and research to sentencing policy.
The commission did just that, and concluded the guidelines should be adjusted to make them more rational. And if experience proves we need to make further adjustments, we will be anxious to do so.
Judge Andrew L. Sooner
College Park
Teach about Islam to diminish hatred
I am a high school student in the Baltimore County public schools. I am writing because I have seen much hatred directed toward the Islamic religion these past few months, and I feel that this hatred is based on misconceptions and prejudices.
In the weeks after Sept. 11, all I heard in school were insults and jokes about Muslims. At first this was just a way to deal with the tragedy, by making light of it. But gradually people began to honestly think that Islam was a religion of violence. Terrorists and Muslims became synonymous in our minds.
Our hatred came from ignorance. Nowhere does the Koran advocate suicide bombing or terrorism. We just assumed it did. We didn't know.
If high school students do not understand Islam, do not know what the religion is really about, then how are things going to improve as time goes by? The next wave of American leaders will be ignorant about important world issues. And if we do not understand Islam, we will not know how to achieve peace in the Middle East.
Middle schools and high schools should begin to offer courses in the history of Islam, and other religions as well.
The more we know about other cultures, the better prepared for the future we will be.
Georgia Wilke
Monkton
The writer will be a 10th-grader at the Carver Center for Arts and Technology in the fall.
Alienating the world won't aid our interest
The United States, the leader of the free world and lone global superpower, issued yet another unilateral pronouncement when it stated it will veto any extension of the U.N. peacekeeping mission on Bosnia unless U.S. military personnel are immune from prosecution by the newly established international criminal court ("Allies express disappointment at U.S. stand on Bosnia," July 2).
This story sounds an awful lot like our refusal to join the nations of the world in Kyoto, Japan, in the global effort to curtail the release of greenhouse gases. It also reminds me of our all-but-outright boycott of the human-rights summit in South Africa last year.
And it's not unlike our characterization of sovereign states as part of an "axis of evil."
Our arrogance confuses me. On the one hand, we proselytize for cooperation among nations. On the other, we refuse to participate in the global cooperation in which the rest of the world is prepared to engage.
How can we continue to alienate the rest of the world without becoming alienated ourselves?
Meanwhile, the U.S. Air Force has mistakenly let loose "errant" ordnance that killed several dozen civilians in Afghanistan ("U.S. general acknowledges Afghan casualties," July 7). Is this the sort of act for which we want immunity? Are we afraid to take responsibility for our blunders?
We should be the first to submit ourselves to investigations by the international criminal court. It would give credence to our initiatives and make us all proud to be Americans, because we would show our integrity.
We demand personal values such as integrity, honesty and responsibility of our political leaders. We should demand nothing less of our nation as we strive to lead the world to a new and more hopeful order.
Kenneth P. Gehosky
Baltimore
Let trade center site remain a memorial
On Sept. 11, we lost our nephew, Matthew D. Horning, when America was attacked at the World Trade Center.
The 16-acre site ravaged in this attack has become the cemetery of all those who died there. Fragments of human remains cannot be removed and are embedded in the walls and ground of that site.
In addition, the remains that were cremated by the intense fires of the attack cannot be separated and identified. These remains are now in a dump on Staten Island. The current plan is to merely cover these human remains with dirt and leave them at the dump.
We believe the entire WTC site is hallowed ground in much the same way that Gettysburg and Pearl Harbor are hallowed sites -- and the same respect should be given this place where America was attacked and nearly 3,000 people died.
A respectful cemetery and memorial should occupy the entire space. No commercial buildings should share it.
Also, the ash remains should be returned from Fresh Kills to the World Trade Center site to join the fragments that are already there.
This cemetery and memorial belong to all Americans as they show their respect for the lives lost and for the values they hold sacred. We do not want the land to be used by the privileged few, who feel it is their economic right to build on this hallowed ground.
Charlyn Horning
Allan Horning
Bel Air
A future for trains in America
It is tiresome to read, in the hometown newspaper of the city that for all practical purposes invented the railroad in America, that train travel is dead. Yet the column "Amtrak has outlived its usefulness" (Opinion
Commentary, July 2) advances the usual shopworn arguments about how people really prefer cars and planes and the heavy federal subsidies necessary for long-distance rail travel.
Anyone who has been on a long-distance train recently knows the problems: lateness, poor service, dismal facilities. The question is why such conditions exist.
Many years ago, as The Sun's transportation reporter, I interviewed David Gunn, now president of Amtrak, then at the beginning his career in Boston running that city's commuter rail service. I asked him what he wanted to do. Get back to 1900, he said, when steam trains ran at 100 miles per hour between Boston and Providence, R.I.
Since then, Mr. Gunn has run transit systems in Philadelphia, New York, Washington and Toronto. He appears to know a thing or two about trains. If he can't pull Amtrak out of its current mess, no one can.
But it's not necessary to return to 1900 to experience decent rail service.
For enlightenment, one might visit the Art Institute of Chicago, where the exhibit "Modern Trains and Splendid Stations" continues for the rest of this month.
It's mostly about Europe and Japan, where high-speed trains cruise at 180 to 190 miles per hour on their own dedicated rights-of-way and stop at stations -- many built within the last 10 years by some of the world's leading architects -- that are nothing short of astonishing.
The governments of these countries decided long ago that decent rail passenger service was a public investment. We are on the verge of such a discovery in America if we keep our heads.
Amtrak's emaciated condition is less a product of mismanagement than of the implacable hostility of the oil and automobile lobbies and their friends in Congress. What could they be so afraid of?
James D. Dilts
Baltimore
I was steamed upon reading Steve Chapman's column "Amtrak has outlived its usefulness." The Chicago columnist praised air and auto travel as faster and more cost efficient, dismissing trains as a nostalgic indulgence.
Yet air travelers gripe about confined seating and stale cabin air, and sharing the highways with trucks barreling alongside is no drive in the country.
Rising rates of air rage and road rage suggest how stressful these modes of transportation can be.
I want my tax dollars spent improving rail travel, not building more roads (which never seems to ease congestion) or bailing out airlines. High-speed trains are the way of the future. Affordable fares would lure ridership. Subways, light rail, trains -- yes, even trolleys. Keep America on the rails.
Carol Ann Varley
Baltimore
The Sun is correct that we need to invest more in a real train system ("Sorry for the inconvenience," editorial, June 26). But Amtrak has to better help itself, too.
Recently, I wished to travel from Baltimore to Princeton Junction, N.J., on a weekday morning. The Amtrak Web site led me to believe that this was not possible, so I called Amtrak. The Amtrak representative also indicated that it was not possible for me to travel to Princeton Junction until late that day. Period.
Fortunately, Amtrak was wrong. Through some persistence and luck (with no help from Amtrak), I discovered something called New Jersey Transit, which offered fine train service between Trenton and Princeton Junction.
In spite of Amtrak's advice, and after some effort on my part to piece together an itinerary, I had a nice trip to Trenton on Amtrak, then a nice short jaunt from Trenton to Princeton Junction on a New Jersey Transit train.
Amtrak and the regional lines could help themselves and their passengers by working together, including providing an integrated Web site for reservations. But if people have the impression that the train cannot take them to their destination, they will not take the train.
James Polli
Ellicott City