Letters
LETTERS The draft is daft I must take exception to Charles Peters' "delight" over Peter Hamill's Mother Jones essay advocating universal national service ["Tilting at Windmills," July/ August]....
...sity suburbs does little to increase ridership...
...Keeping fares artificially low, allowing astronomical wage increases and gold-plated capital projects, and extending infrequent service into low denThis isn't the first time you've said that...
...My proposal is for transit systems to earn subsidies...
...In a free society, the state has the preeminent function of ensuring the populace's liberty...
...vanity...
...The one value that Hamill's plan might teach is that political powerholders may interfere at will with the lives and wishes of everyone else...
...There will be no easy "solutions," and certainly those put forward by Senator Sam Nunn and Mr...
...To decide what is good for others and to then compel them if they disagree to acquiesce to this mandatory benefit is a totalitarian approach to public policy...
...Far from being "highly persuasive," Hamill's proposal is unworkable and morally untenable...
...Neither Lee nor Boyce were poor or disadvantaged, and they decided to approach the Soviets...
...Elimination of the "publish or perish" doctrine would probably result in a welcome relief to university library budgets and possibilities for further increases in teaching load...
...They also add weight and extra cost to cars...
...For every spy who receives a considerable sum over a career in spying, many other spies receive little or nothing...
...The history of contemporary espionage shows that while spies may appear to spy for one major reason, there can be a bewildering variety of motives involved...
...By comparison, over the same period of time, salaries in service industries fell 2 percent, government salaries fell 1.4 percent, and manufacturing salaries increased 3 percent...
...No matter how broad-based their undergraduate years were, they can forget all that in med school...
...Any program of compulsory national service, regardless of how loftily motivated, is irretrievably inconsistent with this ideal...
...Out of fairness, the same should be offered to transit...
...Louis, Missouri...
...As a father of four children, I am concerned about escalating college costs...
...Treating the elimination of the five-mph bumper regulation as a consumer safety issue diverts attention from issues that are relevant to auto safety: stricter licensing requirements, tougher drunk-driving laws, and mandatory seat-belt-use laws...
...Values are learned, not coerced...
...Funds would be appropriated to each class and each system would receive funding based on linked passenger trips or passenger miles...
...See "Saving New York's Subways," Jonathan Alter, June.] The conservative response is either we don't need public transportation or let the private sector do it (which in reality is the same thing...
...Lie detectors, elaborate regulations, or a reduction in the number of persons with security clearances will not appreciably improve our security without also greater knowledge of the psychology of spies and a higher level of public security consciousness...
...Christopher Boyce and Andrew Lee, for example, were middle-class Californians arrested in the 1970s for selling U.S...
...money or greed...
...Second, it is in the national interest to conserve land and energy and to reduce pollution...
...RON KILCOYNE Berkeley, California DOUGLAS L. WHEELER Cutting college costs Durham, New Hampshire A leashed watchdog The article by Tony Blinken ["The Consumer News You Never See," July/August] refers to The Washington Post's ombudsman, Sam Zagoria, with more complete acceptance than should be given...
...We wouldn't get on a plane if the pilot had had to work 40 hours without sleep under constant stress...
...A more effective counter-espionage program can work if we take a creative approach to government research into the psychology of espionage...
...The liberal will gladly pour money into transportation but the results thus far leave something to be desired...
...ideology, including communism, a philosophy, creed, or religious belief...
...BRUCE CONRAD Philadelphia, Pennsylvannia Pro-choice in bumpers While I agree with Charles Peters ["Tilting at Windmills," May] that the Reagan administration has been derelict in its handling of public and consumer safety, he is wrong in using the elimination of the five-mileperhour bumper on cars as an example...
...Transit subsidies have, however, been greatly misspent...
...The Soviets may be paying more for American secrets, but then so are other foreign powers...
...I've waited too long for someone else to reply to this falsehood...
...These bumpers should be offered as options to drivers in car-dense urban areas where sub-five-mph collisions are common...
...I believe that while transit is a local function, the federal government has a role to play...
...McGowan will not be the answer...
...for years now college professors have been earning more for teaching less" ["Tilting at Windmills," May...
...Finally, Congress should consider stiffening penalties for espionage, strengthening the counter-espionage capabilities of the FBI, and reducing the numbers of communist bloc "diplomats" allowed to reside in our country...
...MARK F SILVER St...
...His worthy proposal to "eliminate, or at least reduce, the bureaucratic and personal pressures that produce too much classification, too many clearances, sloppy investigation, and too little reinvestigation," while useful to security needs on a cost-efficiency basis, will not prevent replays of the Walker case...
...Most medical schools, although they do not say it, use med students and interns as cheap labor and put them through such horrifying schedules that, when they finally emerge from their cocoons around age 30, they do feel as if life has passed them by and they are owed something by just about everyone...
...frustration with one's situation or life...
...In the area of education, our national security can benefit from educating government employees and our citizenry about the dangers of espionage...
...Hamill's zeal notwithstanding, there can be, by definition, no "democratic" conscription...
...This, politely put, is self-serving baloney that only perpetuates the image doctors have of themselves as somehow special people...
...and coercion, including being forced to spy by blackmail, physical force, fear or indebtedness to a person or group...
...Transit systems would eventually learn that in order to receive more they would have to spend money on items that will produce riders, instead of wasting it on goldplates and inflated salaries...
...The argument every administrator will throw at you is that this training is necessary and that it makes for good physicians who can work under stress...
...I am not arguing that consumers should not have the option of buying cars equipped with five-mph bumpers...
...More disturbing still, why does Hamill's view that it would be good for youth to toil in inner cities for two years justify servitude...
...The five-mph bumper is only useful to drivers who do a large majority of driving in urban environments...
...There are at least seven general motives in spying, though it is difficult without knowing the circumstances of each individual case to rank them in importance: patriotism, or a sense of duty to one's country...
...For one, the federal government subsidizes urban expressways and roads...
...A "true" ombudsman should be independent, neutral, have the power to see all records, and should make recommendations without intervening in the actual decision-making process...
...An in-house ombudsman has a conflict of interest...
...They confer no safety protection in collisions over five mph—in fact they add to repair costs in such collisions...
...However, Paul Barrett in "The PreMed Machine" (May) puts too much emphasis on the killer premed...
...These figures are taken from an article published in the spring 1985 issue of Footnotes, a publication of the American Association of University Professors...
...adventure-seeking...
...JOHN D. MARSH Cedar Rapids, Iowa It's a Doe's life For the past ten years I have watched my wife go through the hazing ritual known as "medical training," so I am always glad to see articles pointing out the glaring faults of the system and looking for ways to correct them...
...Transit is an important tool in accomplishing these goals...
...I would include material on counter-espionage even in civics textbooks...
...I think there is a more rational way of meeting college costs...
...spy satellite secrets to the Soviets...
...CHARLES L. SMITH Berkeley, California Merit pay for buses As a transportation planner I have been particularly interested in making public transportation more efficient but have been dissatisfied with progress thus far...
...Yes, they do exist, but the stereotype is more a mythological figure than a widespread phenomenon...
...Since 1981 the Reagan administration has been trying to get the federal government out of transit financing, claiming it's a local function and that transit subsidies have produced few results...
...There is simply not enough evidence to support the well-intentioned opinions that money is the master motive of spies today...
...Money was one of the drug-dealer Lee's motives, but he was also a close friend of Boyce, who was alienated by American politics and was one of the millions of Americans employed in companies with government contracts and access to secrets...
...In constant dollars, college faculty are paid 19 percent less now than they were in 1970...
...The major problem I've seen, and this should probably be the subject of another article, is what happens when premeds reach medical school...
...Why should we go to a hospital when the intern may have just done that...
...A person may spy for any one or a combination of these motives, but even after a spy may confess it can be difficult to determine precise motives...
...JIM WINSTON Carmichael, California Why they spy Despite its useful gathering of statistics on our overburdened security clearance system, William McGowan's article, "Why We Can't Catch More Spies" (July/August), greatly oversimplifies one key aspect of security investigations—spy motivation...
...One of the hidden costs of higher education is the increasing responsibility assumed by the universities to allow released time for research without any compensation...
...Mandatory national service would be unlikely to force the young to "assume responsibilities," as Hamill puts it...
...Transit systems would be grouped in four or five classifications, based on population of service area...
...if I were overpaid perhaps I would be less so...
...Identical statistics are available from many sources and will be confirmed by the personal experience of any professor who isn't too ashamed of his or her salary to talk about it...
...Indeed, Hamill's piece evidences very little hesitancy in determining what is in people's interest, who is liable for compulsory self-enrichment, and the form that this state-imposed benevolence will take...
...Systems would earn subsidies the same way they earn fares—the more people they carry, the more money they receive...
...Nor will they get at the root of our security problem, which is more moral, psychological, and political than bureaucratic and mechanical...
Vol. 17 • October 1985 • No. 9
