CORRESPONDENCE

...These charges have been the rallying cry of anti-union extremists since our Oversight Agreement was implemented...

...I witnessed this personally as a Russian policy analyst for a large research foundation...

...PHILLIP WEISSBURG SAN JUAN CAPISTRANO, CA...

...Marines without consequence...

...Bill McCollum concluded at the hearings that there was "no evidence that Justice Department prosecutors were improperly influenced by White House officials" in negotiating the agreement...

...The Laborers' unique Oversight Agreement is working and working well...

...the tax code must be simplified...

...GEORGE C. LEEF EAST LANSING, MI YELTSIN, HISTORICAL GIANT David Brooks correctly points out that Russia's present-day difficulties have their wellspring in deeply rooted political and cultural decay rather than economic mismanagement and dislocation ("Boris and the Economists," Sept...

...I seriously question how Methvin can honestly believe that the Laborers' Oversight Agreement with the Department of Justice was a "sweetheart deal...

...The law, by blocking the emergence of a market for the service of representing workers, allows unions to take those whom they represent for granted...

...Instead, we need a very strategic, diversified, rapid-response military built on the Marines and a revitalized CIA...

...THOMAS H. NEALE WASHINGTON, DC GODLESS GENERATION X Victorino Matus gives me a glimmer of hope that perhaps the rudderless Generation X may at last find its way ("Dear Daughter, Dear Dad," Sept...

...Yes, we need military strength, but not "more for everything," as you suggest...

...The root of all this is the fact that the relationship between worker and union is not contractual...

...and search for another union...

...I am blessed with my immigrant father's wisdom, faith, and insight, and cannot imagine growing up without it, although I see the tragic consequences every day of people who have...

...These two principles should be foreign extensions of a domestic policy that honors the Reagan legacy—decentralization, local initiative, and reliance on private entrepreneurship...

...LINDA L. FISHER DIRECTOR Of PUBLIC AFFAIRS LABORERS' INTERNATIONAL UNION OF NORTH AMERICA WASHINGTON, DC The problem of workers trapped in labor unions that are little more than appendages of organized crime is important, but it is only a subset of the larger problem of workers trapped in unions, period...

...The current opinion-poll morality being practiced by our moral leader in the White House is but one sordid example...

...Consequently, they were—and still are—wedded to the ways of the old order and thus constitutionally incapable of exercising the type of political leadership necessary to bring Russia out of her present-day morass and into the 21st century...

...The male newsreaders have always been particularly annoying, whiny, and tentative, clearly from the Alan Alda school of broadcasting...

...It is something to which we in the West had better get accustomed...

...GEORGE BEDNARIK JR...

...You know it, I know it, and the American people know it...

...The kind of corruption about which Eugene Methvin writes could not long continue if the law protected the rights of workers to say "No more...

...The economists who bestow advice on Russian policymakers are supremely confident only because the economics of reform are indisputable...

...Even Rep...

...Russia will survive as it always has—in fitful and spasmodic convulsions of progress and regression...

...However, there is one issue I would like to address...

...It's time for Methvin to let this innovative reform process continue to make this the cleanest, fairest, and most democratic union for its members...

...JOHN R GUARDIANO ARLINGTON, VA A FOREIGN-POLICY WINDOW You are right to point to the crying need for Republicans to formulate a "coherent alternative" in the area of foreign policy ("Foreign Policy and the Republican Future," Sept...

...Their allies in the liberal international foundations and non-governmental organizations are already emphasizing democracy and development in a number of developing countries under the label of "building civil society...

...And so it is not surprising that, in many respects, he has failed as a leader...

...What is remarkable though is how, in spite of his past, and in spite of his country's past, and with very little cooperation from his colleagues, he has managed to steer Russia in a democratic and free-market direction...

...As a result, Russian capitalism and Russian democracy are now inevitable...

...SHELBY TOWNSHIP, MI CLINTON MUST STAY I have a longer memory than most conservative talk-show hosts nowadays, so I'm shocked by your editorial, since I remember President Ronald Reagan's refusal to admit that he had done the unthinkable by selling 5,500 ToW and Hawk rockets to Iran ("Clinton Must Go," Aug...

...Compared with this, the Clinton affair is peanuts...

...Private-property rights must be protected...

...That a God-shaped void exists in each of us and is longing to be fulfilled is certainly self-evident...

...The Laborers' instituted an Ethics and Disciplinary Code more than three and a half years ago that holds all members to strict standards of conduct...

...state subsidies to oligarchic corporate behemoths must end...

...Yes, Russia is in "crisis...

...The law states that if a majority of workers in a "bargaining unit" votes for representation by a union, that union then becomes the exclusive bargaining agent for all of the workers—and remains so indefinitely...

...Michael Novak's book answers that question...

...Iran was the same terrorist state that only a few years before had blown up 241 U.S...

...Ron Fino, who Methvin claims appeared "at some great personal risk," had previously provided the supermarket tabloid the Globe with a picture of himself to run with a story about O.J...

...The answer is no, because no reform-minded Russian politician would have had the political wherewithal and ability that Yeltsin had to push through fundamental reforms...

...No consumer would voluntarily enter into a service contract like that...

...But unions desire to operate outside of the free-market realm of voluntary consent and competition...

...They are responsible for more than 450 investigations and have led to more than 150 individuals' leaving the union...

...When Reagan eventually went on TV, he did not apologize to the families of the dead Marines...

...Those are the real facts about the Laborers' internal reform...

...For this reason, as Brooks notes, history will remember the first democratically elected Russian president as a political giant, who, at a critical time in Russia's history, beat back the Communists, initiated long-overdue reforms, and bought his country much-needed time to recover from decades of socialist wreckage...

...Hardly an unknown face, Fino and his hooded entrance and subsequent testimony turned the hearing into a three-ring circus...

...If Republicans do not grab this opportunity to redefine foreign policy and run with it, then it is just a matter of time before the Democrats do so...

...Unfortunately, your editorial takes us only part way towards framing such a policy and realizing a "huge opportunity for Republicans...

...Any and all allegations of wrongdoing are fully investigated and prosecuted, if warranted, by our independent officers, who are former federal prosecutors and FBI officials invited by the union and approved by the government to oversee the process...

...For every member of the Laborers' International Union of North America who is being fleeced to fill the coffers of the mob, there are hundreds more who are being fleeced to fund union actions for or against ballot initiatives, or fleeced just to fund high living for the officials of "their" union...

...It is easy to criticize Yeltsin...

...I attended the same July 24, 1996, congressional hearing Methvin references, and I wonder if he was in the same room...

...In addition, we must foster both democracy and development...

...Instead, because of the National Labor Relations Act, an egregiously authoritarian relic of the New Deal, workers and unions have politically defined relationships...

...It ensures every member equal rights, full democratic participation in union matters, freedom of speech and assembly, safeguards against improper disciplinary action, the right to all pertinent information, and full and impartial enforcement of members' rights...

...Workers do not, singly or jointly, contract for services over a given period of time and at an agreed price with a union...

...FBI and Justice Department officials and members of Congress have praised the Laborers' reform programs as innovative, ground-breaking, and "a model for future reform efforts...

...the currency must be stabilized...

...and Western business expertise and investment must be courted, not shunned...

...Simpson and the mob...

...Yeltsin, by background and inclination, is one such apparatchik, of course...

...But the question is: Could anyone else, working within the context of Russian politics and history, have done better...

...But in today's twisted, materialistic society, who will show us how to fill it when even those entrusted to that task by their sacred vows lack the will and knowledge to do it...

...The Russian government officials whom I dealt with were, by and large, former Communist party apparatchiks who possessed no understanding of economics but who nonetheless had an earthy and instinctive appreciation of Mother Russia and all her attendant political dysfunctions...

...Indeed, the Russian economic problems we hear so much about in the Western press are mainly a reflection, or symptom, of this more fundamental political and cultural problem...

...Eugene Methvin repeats the same old lies, falsehoods, and unsubstantiated accusations and adds a few new ones about the Laborers' International Union of North America, our internal reform efforts, and our general president Arthur A. Coia ("A Corrupt Union and the Mob," Aug...

...But, in a very real sense, she has been so for more than 80 years...

...At the local level, democracy, development, and both private and public entrepre-neurship go hand in hand...

...Seen this way, from the vantage of the Russian people, today's crisis is nothing new...

...PETER BEARSE GLOUCESTER, MA RED RADIO Your reference to "Morning Sedition" brought forward memories of when my friends and I referred to NPR's equally egregious evening broadcast as "All Things Com-Symp-ered" (Scrapbook, "NPR, in from the Cold," Aug...

...I am particularly proud of Novak because I, like him, am a Slovak-American...

...I could correct every false statement in Methvin's article, but it would be a waste of time and space...