LETTERS
LETTERS Highway to heaven I'm beginning to wonder about the accuracy of your publication. In the last issue ["Tilting at Windmills," February] you told about a sharp increase in...
...As a matter of practical politics, this is possible only when government serves the broad middle class...
...On the whole, I revere the Monthly...
...However, the slum dwellers constitute a minority of the Philippine masses, and while some of them have come recently from rural areas, they are not representative of the vast majority of Filipinos who remain dispersed over the many islands of the Philippine archipelago...
...BILL LOCKYER Sacramento, California State Senator Lockyer is chairman of the California legislature's committee on the judiciary...
...Awad is not a peacemonger, much less a devotee of Gandhi...
...I'd like to try once more to convince you and your readers that the Monthly's hobby horse about cutting middle class entitlements is misconceived...
...If it's true, I may move to North Carolina and run for the U.S...
...Add it up and this is much larger than a sports issue...
...Of course, your article got a few things wrong...
...The government remains free to regulate, legislators are free to propose regulation...
...According to the Consumers Union, the senator's campaign fund accepted a $1,000 contribution from the Tobacco Institute before the bill passed and $1,250 from Phillip Morris afterward...
...We should also consider charging a token tuition for public schooling...
...The cigarette lobby paid $345,000 to a lobbying firm during the first three quarters of 1987, second only to a $415,000 fee paid by the insurance industry trade association...
...But neither do the figures on states with higher speed limits...
...It actually raised the standard just for punitive damages, which are extraordinary in the first place...
...The coalition has to include the poor, the working class, and the nonwealthy middle class...
...Economic growth and progress are at stake...
...There are simply not enough liberal voters motivated primarily by social consciences to build a majority politics around pure redistribution...
...JIM ESKIN San Antonio, Texas Mr...
...Journalists explain that riots are the combustion of occupation as if Palestinians have no free will...
...You can't have it both ways...
...traffic fatalities have increased by more than 50 percent ." California's are up, but proportionately to the increase in traffic volume...
...BOB SHIREMAN San Francisco, California Mr...
...Lockyer and his colleagues "tried to do the right thing" but "got snookered" by the tobacco companies and other powerful interests...
...I made a simpler and less charitable case: that the senator and the legislature rubberstamped a rotten bill written by those interests...
...Means tests are for meanies It was a surprise and a delight to find The Life of the Party included among your 1987 Book Awards and to read your (qualified) praise in Matthew Cooper's review ["Stop Pandering to the Middle Class," March...
...Particularly wide of its mark is his attempt to identify what's wrong with public education...
...It said our bill raised the standard of proof an injured person must meet to obtain damages...
...American reporters ascribe political sophistication and purity to gangs of teenaged Palestinians...
...We took these steps to hold off an initiative fight that might really have mangled the civil justice system...
...Do you accept any statistic that comes across your desk...
...I never said he wrote a "comprehensive reform package" on the napkin, only the outline of a "nonaggression pact," which consumer groups neither signed nor approved of...
...Not much, maybe $100 a year at first, but enough to impress upon both students and parents that what they are getting is not of little value...
...In San Antonio, we are voting in 1988 on a half percent sales tax increase over the next five years to finance a 65,000-seat facility, estimated to cost $160 million...
...The article said the insurance companies won relief from threatened regulation...
...The NHTSA warned the report was inconclusive and did not account for variables such as increased car sales or DWI offenses...
...DANIEL L. LEVIN Whiting, Indiana The blessings of bamboo This is to commend, enthusiastically, the article by Jason DeParle ["The Slum Behind the Sheraton," December...
...Toynbee's statement shows an anodyne spirit...
...The untold story in Israel is how the media have slanted their stories against Israel...
...The relative contentment of these slum dwellers should be evaluated in the context of Philippine traditions, as exemplified in President Roxas's remark to me, in 1945: "The blessings of the Philippines: climate, coconuts, and bamboo, were also curses," since they vitiated economic motivation...
...A sovereign nation has the right to expel troublemakers who have overstayed their visas...
...nothing in the Big Apple can move her any more...
...Your magazine ran an article on my SB 241, the California liability reform bill...
...Well, I'm sure flattered...
...The issue is compulsory education, not teacher quality...
...He seems to have picked the answers and then gone back to write the questions...
...Anodyne says more about Toynbee than about causes, large or small...
...Qualifying for a program limited to poor people is a nightmare...
...WILLIAM EXTON, JR...
...they won't object if we relieve them of their babysitting chores...
...Kuttner is the author of The Life of the Party: Democratic Prospects in 1988 and Beyond, Viking Country boy from Oakland Thank you for the excellent article on the California tort liability compromise ["Frank Fat's Napkin," Paul Glastris, December...
...If eighth-graders were given an option of whether to go on to high school or not, a high school education might have meaning...
...NHTSA will soon release a more thorough report expected to show a considerably lower increase in fatalities...
...He is an American in Israel on a tourist visa...
...The two states' initial statistics (New Mexico and California) are anything but solid evidence to back up your statement that...
...Fatalities were up 461/2 percent...
...Of course not...
...When an American liberal sees the house, he concludes that everybody should have one...
...This approach provides a prudent way to have a stadium built, paid for, and debt-free in five years...
...I like its idealism, its fine reporting, its even-handed indignation about bureaucratic excess, public and private, military and corporate...
...It is ironic that in the same issue where you criticized me as a soft-on-the-middle-class populist, you praised Bob Greenstein's Center on Budget and Policy Priorities as a splendid public interest group...
...In "Tilting at Windmills" [January], you condemned Israel for throwing out Mubarak Awad, an American rabble-rouser...
...When a European socialist sees a rich man with a big house, his impulse is to take away the house...
...The rationalizations the senator offers in his letter for why he sponsored the bill are all dealt with in my article...
...If today a friend excitedly called her to meet for lunch and there announced a big break, a chance to perform on stage, Polly Toynbee might share the sacrifice, the dedication, the love, the aches, the hopes of the men and women in ballet and opera...
...That's chutzpah...
...I suspect that many eighth-graders who chose to leave would, after a year or two of the work available to them, apply for entry to high schools with gratifyingly mature attitudes...
...Guess the whole thing wasn't such a good idea after all...
...In reality, the compromise was negotiated over the course of a year...
...Domed stadiums mean more jobs, revenues, business starts, and a stronger tax base...
...Money and policy-making are so intertwined in California that sometimes we lose perspective of how bad things really are...
...Charlie Peters is a persuasive editor, and as such he has miseducated a whole generation of neoliberal writers who learned their craft and their politics from him...
...CHARLES R. COTE Burlington, North Carolina Charles Peters replies: The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration compiled fatality statistics from May to July of 1987 from 22 of the first 38 states to increase speed limits to 65 mph...
...What you really liked, though, was the idea that we'd written a comprehensive liability reform package on a napkin in a restaurant—Frank Fat's...
...Contrary to Cooper, the problem with means testing is not "hurt feelings...
...I thought you might be interested in a part of the story that came to light recently...
...As for fatality rates going down, only Montana (16 down to 7) and Oklahoma (23 to 13) had noticeable decreases...
...Your article strengthened our resolve...
...More beef Phillip Keisling complains that the Democratic presidential candidates can't identify the issues and then, with chutzpah, does it for them ["Here's the Beef," January...
...I wonder whether you have much education in statistics...
...Give teachers a chance to teach...
...According to documents filed with the California secretary of state, on the first working day after the compromise was rushed through both legislative houses, the Tobacco Institute gave "campaign contributions" totaling $23,750 to 16 legislators...
...Barnes is right about cities wanting them...
...Senate...
...This is what was accomplished by the Homestead acts, the GI Bill, FHA loans, and Medicare...
...It's sort of like those horror tales of 50 years ago about how reefer made you a wild killer: a fiction put out by the government...
...WILLIAM A. GOLD Northhampton, Massachusetts The trouble with tourists You have been snookered by the anti-Israel mania flared by the American media...
...ROBERT KUTTNER Brookline, Massachusetts Mr...
...Paul Glastris replies: The tone of the senator's letter is one of wounded sarcasm, as if it is cruel even to question the high civic purpose of his bill...
...You can't use partial figures like this to prove much...
...Greenstein understands better than anyone that means testing is a slippery slope, and the Center fights hard to preserve and expand the principle of universalism...
...Income can be realized from conventions, trade shows, religious rallies, thrill shows, and more...
...That's a real honor for a country boy from Oakland...
...Please, group, think this through again...
...But I suppose it's part of your reliance on the state to make people do what you think they should...
...Lotreck and the writers of Car and Driver should be aware of the following: Not only New Mexico but Arizona (19 deaths in 1986 up to 51 in 1987), California (64 to 94), Louisiana (8 to 31), and Wyoming (5 to 15) had fatality increases...
...New York, New York A night at the opera A writer who describes the ballet or opera as "anodyne," meaning, apparently, deadening, says much about her own development ["Nell's Place," Polly Toynbee, January...
...As the senator surely knows, the consumer groups launched the latest round of insurance reform initiatives...
...The creation of a category of unsafe consumable products which enjoy a certain immunity, already a standard in a majority of states, was done in order to relieve the pressure of interminable lawsuits involving products known to be dangerous by anyone who's been on the planet longer than a week...
...It not only requires you to empty your bank account and share details of your love life...
...Fatalities per passenger mile on interstates is the statistic you should look for...
...Liberalism, American style, is the idea that conservative perquisites should be diffused, not abolished...
...It requires you to stay poor in order to keep getting the benefit...
...However, Mr...
...Anyone with experience in a public school in the past ten years can testify that the issue is not teacher quality...
...All of this is not "bribing the middle class ." It is building community and social solidarity via inclusion in a common society...
...I'm left with a few press clippings, an American Express bill from Frank Fat's, 36 cartons of Kool 100's, and this stupid napkin...
...Sure surprised me...
...Frankly, I'd thought we'd worked a minor miracle, getting everyone to agree to a package that would cut the civil calendar, provide some relief from unreasonable claims, and a basis for further cooperation, maybe even insurance reform...
...The excluded, standing in the dim shadows behind the red velvet ropes, may have a presentiment of a void...
...All merit pay would do would be to further politicize a bureaucracy that is overburdened with self-serving administrators...
...Does that prove that seat belts cause deaths...
...A whole generation has grown up thinking the middle lane is the travel lane and 55 mph is the proper speed...
...Yet I read in Car and Driver that only New Mexico has shown an increase—admittedly a sharp one— that the others have gone down, and that the states that retain the 55 mph limit have shown a small increase in deaths...
...The proposed facility is projected to start paying its own way by the third year even without a National Football League franchise as a tenant...
...Somebody should tell that to all the various business and legal groups that have proposed seven separate insurance initiatives for the next ballot...
...We are to believe that she has been everywhere, seen everything...
...Result...
...This country is voting with its right foot-55 mph is a joke...
...Also, the Tobacco Institute's lobbying expenses for 1987 are more than triple what they were in each of the previous four years...
...Why condemn the Israelis but not the Palestinians...
...Traffic deaths have decreased...
...Every element of the bill had been heard in various committees, and consumer groups participated actively in modifying various provisions...
...The danger is that good people like you pick up and believe the slanted information coming out of Israel...
...In the last issue ["Tilting at Windmills," February] you told about a sharp increase in traffic fatalities in states that have raised their speed limits to 65...
...While the poor are mostly "pure-blooded" Malay, the rich are largely the product of extremely mixed blood...
...Eskin is executive director of San Antonians for a Major Sports Complex...
...The article would also be enriched by an analysis of the extraordinary separation between the "upper classes" and the masses, exacerbated by genetic differences...
...The distance is also enhanced by linguistic separation: While the poor speak Tagalog or other "native" languages, the rich used to speak Spanish and now are quite used to English...
...Toynbee, the observer, apparently shares with them more than she knows...
...My argument was not that Sen...
...Shireman is a policy analyst for Consumers Union...
...DENZIL WALTERS Seattle, Washington Remember the Alamodome John Barnes's "Home Sweet Dome" [February] overlooks the multi-purpose nature of domed stadiums...
...In Massachusetts, the seat belt law was repealed, to the accompaniment of warnings and lamentations...
...business and legal" groups then followed suit...
...We in California were glad that the Monthly got it all out in the open—how the legislature tried to do the right thing and got snookered by the doctors, the lawyers, the insurance companies, and the Tobacco Institute because the Consumers Union wasn't in the restaurant that night to save the day...
...RICHARD LOTRECK Natick, Massachusetts I was disappointed to see you succumb to a rather inaccurate statement regarding the 65 mph speed limit...
...Granted, the best college students don't choose teacher education, but those who do must pass initial screening in the form of internships and interviews, a continual staff development program, and annual evaluations...
...Football—and sports for that matter—is one component...
...You figured it was all a big scam to get the tobacco companies off the hook when they get sued by chain smokers...
...While Toynbee does not specifically say that ballet and opera put her to sleep, she suggests that their survival is a matter of little interest...
...If you really think "55 saves lives," why don't you propose a speed limit of 25 mph...
...But unfortunately you continue to indulge this belief that middle class entitlements are evil, while at the same time professing to cherish a politics of inclusion...
Vol. 20 • April 1988 • No. 3
