Remember the needs of foster children

As decisions are made about where and how to slice and dice the state budget, let us not forget the 12,000 Maryland children in state custody.

These foster children literally depend on the public's largesse for their existence. Removed from their own homes because of serious abuse and neglect, they have every right to expect that the state will provide a level of care that meets minimum standards.

Maryland's legislators recognized that five years ago when they passed the Child Welfare Workforce Initiative.

Caseworkers were required to meet certain education standards, and caseloads were to be reduced to meet nationally recognized standards.

But caseload reduction was never fully funded, and the hiring freeze of the past 13 months is eroding any gains public agencies made in recruiting and retaining qualified staff ("Budget strains social work," Nov. 30).

As long as we continue to fail to meet standards, we are failing in our promise to protect and nurture Maryland's children. And without sufficient caseworkers to oversee the care of these children, the state is at risk of becoming a neglectful parent.

While protecting ourselves from foreign terrorists, let us not forget about the safety of our own state's children.

Surely homeland security must begin at home.

Judith Schagrin

Baltimore

The writer is vice president of the Maryland chapter of the National Association of Social Workers.

HABC is working to resolve vacancies

The writer of the letter "Housing agency keeps holdings in sorry shape" (Nov. 23) makes several claims, including an accusation that the Housing Authority of Baltimore City (HABC) is keeping 13,500 properties vacant, in disrepair and off the tax rolls.

For that to be true, HABC's entire inventory of public housing would have to be vacant, which, of course, is not the case.

Our vacancy problem - and we acknowledge that we have one - is concentrated in our 2,800-unit scattered-site program, in which approximately 1,700 units are vacant. Our asset-management plan calls for the demolition or disposition of 1,300 scattered-site units and the renovation and re-occupation of the balance.

And in the letter-writer's community of Butchers Hill, there are only 16 vacant HABC-owned units.

However, the writer and I do agree on one thing - increased home ownership benefits all neighborhoods, regardless of income level. Butchers Hill has done especially well in this area. Average property values there have risen from about $50,000 in 1994 to more than $93,000 this year.

And HABC has made a commitment to invest $1.5 million in Butchers Hill. We are renovating all of our vacant rental properties in the area and the facades of all occupied units, plus some of the interiors.

In addition, the Department of Housing and Community Development is stepping up housing inspections and the timely prosecution of code violations and increasing landlord and tenant accountability through our newly restructured Section 8 program.

We are working closely with the Butchers Hill Community Development Corp., the Butchers Hill Neighborhood Association and the Scattered-Site Residents Association to accomplish these shared goals.

And, after years of distrust and neglect, HABC is now more dedicated than ever to keeping our end of the bargain.

Paul T. Graziano

Baltimore

The writer is Baltimore's housing commissioner.

Welcome neighbors in public housing

Over and over again, I am taken aback by the overt discrimination against low-income people. The presence of 11 public housing residences and the families who live in them should not be seen as a threat to a good neighborhood ("Public housing plan stirs debate in Butchers Hill," Dec. 2).

The argument over public housing residents is based on the falsehood that they make bad neighbors. But a good neighborhood should welcome these families, who realize that the neighborhood is a gift, an opportunity.

One Butchers Hill resident was quoted as saying, "A lot of people like me worked our tails off and a housing authority tenant gets a house - that's fundamentally unfair." Well, poverty is unfair. Poverty is only a choice for those who join the clergy.

Most people in public housing don't have the financial resources to purchase a HUD home and invest money to fix it up. But everyone deserves a decent and safe place to live.

When they are denied that right, that's injustice. And it's not as if these residents are getting a free house. They're getting a roof over their head in a decent neighborhood.

Let's give the Housing Authority of Baltimore City a break and allow it to do what it's intended to do.

Aimee Darrow

Baltimore

O'Donnell Heights dies slowly, painfully

It is sad and disturbing when anyone is shot and killed, but the shooting of Detective Thomas G. Newman in front of Joe's Tavern in Dundalk is particularly disturbing ("City officer, 37, shot to death during ambush," Nov. 24). Detective Newman was executed in cold blood.

However, a lot of people are using Detective Newman's shooting as an example of how bad things have gotten in the O'Donnell Heights-Dundalk area. But if the circumstances of the shooting are as police have suggested, this killing could have happened anywhere. If Detective Newman's killers had run into him at Harborplace or Towson Town Center, that's where he would have died.

But that's not to say the O'Donnell Heights-Dundalk area isn't fraught with problems. I once frequented Joe's Tavern, because I worked next-door for 13 years when the supermarket was called "Eddie's."

Eddie's was the family-run neighborhood supermarket for more than 40 years. Why did it close in 1995? Because after being holdup-free for years, the store had become a regular target for neighborhood thugs.

The owner got tired of stick-up men putting a pistol in the faces of his cashiers and taking his money. And it had become unsafe to work and shop in that area.

Roll-down security doors and bullet-proof glass are now the norm. The library on Dundalk Avenue closed, but it's still used as a polling place. When I went there to vote, I had to park up at the other end of Bushey Street, and I still had to maneuver around broken glass and trash.

What happened to Detective Newman is very sad and tragic. But the neighborhood has been dying a long, slow, painful death for more than a decade.

Rich Barnett

Baltimore

Merchants are key to market's future

The Sun's recent article about Lexington Market showed some of the qualities of the market today, but failed to acknowledge some of the assets that have kept Baltimore's "best-kept secret" alive for so many years ("Shopping for a fresh image," Nov. 22).

I am a former merchant in Lexington Market.

In 1964, the market authority enticed me into opening a grocery store there. The store utilized more than 7,500 square feet of vacant space. I was not permitted to sell fresh meats, fresh poultry, fresh seafood or produce. Yet, with full vigor, my family and I remained with the market for more than 32 years.

And The Sun's article didn't capture the real Lexington Market. It never mentioned how the retailers and their families gave their full attention to the customers. How they showed beautiful displays of their wares. The customers were treated like family.

It will take more than just refurbishing the market to bring the customers back or to attract new customers to this Baltimore institution.

I hope city planners and market management will give more consideration to the market's merchants, and perhaps consult them for input.

Jerry Herling

Baltimore

The writer is the former owner of Herling's Grocery Basket.

Pushing 'bad guys' into an alliance

For many months I have been wondering why, in the face of a real threat from al-Qaida and other terrorist organizations, our president and his advisers have been obsessed with a potential threat from Saddam Hussein. Thus I turned eagerly to Gregory Kane's column "Rice is an old hand at fighting terrorism" (Nov. 20) to learn directly from the president's national security adviser about the link between the two.

Imagine my disappointment when I found that the best answer Condoleezza Rice could come up with is that "to be blunt - bad guys travel in packs."

If I were her high school history teacher, this would earn her an "F."

Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin, the two worst dictators of the 20th century, signed a non-aggression treaty in 1939. Yet Hitler later turned on his erstwhile ally and invaded Russia, causing the loss of millions of lives. "Bad guys travel in packs" when it suits their purposes, not a minute longer.

And, historically, Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein have been bitter enemies. Mr. Hussein is a secular dictator who has fought Islamic fundamentalism for 30 years, and even gone to war against Iran partly for this reason.

But, on the principle that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend," our president may succeed in making allies of these two evil-doers. Now, thanks to Mr. Bush's warmongering, they may indeed now be "traveling in a pack," and plotting our destruction.

Given the apparent irrationality of our campaign against Iraq, one must ask what is behind it. The only answers I can think of are: election-year politics, control of Iraqi oil, or that our successful campaign against the Taliban was so much fun that our president is looking for another small, weak country to make war on.

But I pray that I am wrong and that there is some valid reason for setting our country on course toward war.

Maurice Furlong

Cockeysville

It's up to Israel to make peace

The letter "Israel still seeks a peace partner" (Nov. 23) was misleading in many respects.

First, the onus for making peace really is on Israel. Israel controls Palestinian property by force. Palestinians can't take it back. They depend on Israel seeing that giving all their land back is in the best interest of both parties.

Second, people who fight for freedom against invading or occupying forces are, by definition, "freedom fighters." Palestinian militants are freedom fighters battling an Israel that invaded and occupied Palestine.

The fact that the media in America turns language upside-down and calls them terrorists is a tribute to the effectiveness of pro-Israeli lobbies as well as to our natural sympathy when innocent people get hurt.

Third, the writer says Israel has been trying for years to find peace with its neighbors. But how do the 420,000 Israelis seizing and living on Palestinian property contribute to peace?

Fourth, Israel in 1999 may have offered Palestinians more than it ever had before, but it was not enough. For Israel did not propose to return all of the Palestinians' land and give them a truly viable state.

The Palestinians turned that deal down not because of Yasser Arafat's intransigence, but because it was a bad deal.

Bob Krasnansky

Ellicott City

Freeing the poor from state's shackles

Based on the letter "GOP wins power, must show it cares" (Nov. 23), one would believe the Republican Party's values, policies and main purpose are based on denying or undermining human rights, safe food and water and any opportunity for poor citizens to improve their quality of life.

Is the writer unaware of the party's support for laws and programs that responsibly support all of the above benefits for U.S. citizens?

And the fact that the GOP's values and policies won over the Democrats' platform on Nov. 5 shows that the "silent majority" is finally seeing the Democrats' conservative-bashing rhetoric for what it is - propaganda based not on reality but on Democratic political ploys.

It is becoming more and more clear to the good people of the United States that the Democrats have been and are attempting to continue to push the poor into needless and debilitating dependency on the government. And it is the Republicans who are striving to find ways to free the poor of such dependency and the "soft bigotry" caused by ineffective and costly social programs and bureaucracies.

Once free of the limitations caused by government control over their lives, the poor can begin taking advantage of mainstream opportunities.

Deborah Allender

Essex

Liberals must affirm beliefs they cherish

When did "liberal" become a four-letter word?

The elder President Bush rolled it off his tongue as though he were letting forth with some inappropriate expletive. Ever since then, conservatives have used this to divide our nation.

But every time I hear a conservative pundit spew out the word "liberal" as if he or she were swearing, my blood boils.

There is nothing to be ashamed of about being a liberal. Liberals should stand up for their principles and offer new ways in which their philosophy would improve America.

Instead, they run to hide behind the more acceptable title of "moderate." In doing so, they have sold out to the conservatives, and have become scared politicos - which undermines confidence in their programs and leaders.

Liberals have lost their way. They have lost their purpose.

Unless they develop a spine to support their beliefs and a leader with the courage of their convictions, we will continue to see conservatives with power, and liberals apologizing in fear and shame.

Richard L. Wasserman

Baltimore

Urge to boo can be just overwhelming

The Sun is "reassured" that the Democratic members of "the Club" (the U.S. Senate) paid their respects to the outgoing Sen. Strom Thurmond ("Leaving the Club," editorial, Nov. 24). How different from the "loutish" Democratic rabble who had the bad form to boo Republican Sen. Trent Lott at Sen. Paul Wellstone's emotionally wrought memorial service.

It's a shame that the whole country can't be more like the chummy Senate: "a great place to grow old," where "colorful" characters such as Mr. Thurmond roam the halls in between votes and floor maneuvers designed to block or roll back civil rights legislation and meaningful health care reform for seniors not lucky enough to belong to the Club.

But outside of the Senate and a few other communities, America is not such a great place to grow old; few of us can count on the kind of federally funded health care that Mr. Thurmond enjoys.

For some of us in the loutish multitude, "respect" for the legacy of privilege and racial discrimination that Mr. Thurmond and Sens. Jesse Helms, Phil Gramm and Trent Lott represent is hard to come by.

Forgive us, Sun editors, but in a country with such leaders, the urge to boo is occasionally impossible to resist.

Jason Loviglio

Baltimore

The writer teaches American studies at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

Dredging won't add to oyster population

For 40 years, diseases introduced into the Chesapeake Bay by non-native oysters have infected and decimated native oysters.

Thus the commercial oyster harvest has declined despite heroic efforts, at considerable cost, by the Department of Natural Resources (DNR), the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, watermen and other cooperating groups to create productive oyster bars by dredging fossil oyster shells from the upper bay, spreading them in appropriate areas and seeding them with oysters grown in hatcheries ("Harvest of bay oysters could be smallest ever," Nov. 11).

But, ignoring the fact that disease is the primary problem, the DNR is considering new sites from which to dredge fossil shell to continue this failed strategy.

The Coastal Conservation Association - Maryland supports efforts at oyster restoration in the bay such as creating oyster sanctuaries using environmentally safe materials such as concrete rubble instead of fossil oyster shell. This was recently done at the Gale's Lump oyster reef using materials from Memorial Stadium. Such sanctuaries can provide native oysters the opportunity to grow undisturbed and possibly in time to develop resistance to the diseases.

But we are strongly opposed to continued strip mining of fossil oyster shell and altering the habitat in the upper bay.

Kenneth B. Lewis

Baltimore

The writer is chairman of the Coastal Conservation Association - Maryland.