Letters
LETTERS Pipeline dreams Peter Grier's article on Cambodia ["Dealing with the Devil," April] is an odd piece of journalism. In a variety of ways, he asserts as a self-evident fact that the...
...We need to pay decent wages...
...to Tokyo...
...But how...
...Jack Brooks says "the initial testing and evaluation of the Brio Site was not as thorough and accurate as it should have been...
...Outside-the-Loop blames...
...NORMA J. GOLDMAN Houston, Texas Ms...
...If the resistance in fact triumphs, the Khmer Rouge would surely turn on their allies and devour them...
...The truth about the 54 birth defects and miscarriages now tallied from a survey of 120 pregnancies in the Brio neighborhood will finally come out only when the many trials ahead have run their course...
...No unusual health problems have been documented in the surrounding community, and no health problems of any kind have been connected to Brio...
...That is why I find his suggestion that I am somehow responsible for assisting Pol Pot so offensive...
...By aiding the two noncommunist resistance factions and the unstable Prince Sihanouk, the U.S...
...When Brio went broke and left a contaminated site behind, its former suppliers took on the cleanup under the Superfund law...
...Such a closing has nothing to do with politics or ideology but is simply a reflection of fiscal realities...
...aid may not be handing actual weapons to the Khmer Rouge, but U.S...
...If he has evidence that U.S...
...A "whistleblower" is an honest person who learns the difference between a government's rhetoric and its practice and then says so...
...Carpenters might be needed for four months...
...Our board of governors unanimously decided to end support for both magazines unless separate, earmarked contributions are forthcoming...
...Geological Survey tests he ordered, Rep...
...The only good thing about his piece is that he has accurately portrayed every government bureaucracy in the world from D.C...
...Commentary appears to be able to do this through additional support from its board members and friends...
...Their work also was reviewed by local, state, and federal regulatory agencies...
...The corruption of principle he quietly (and safely) enjoyed is now the fault of —you guessed it—the man who wants to end it...
...The result would be more people who can't afford to live in today's society, more people who need those very cheap apartments, more people looking for help, and lots of buildings that could be poorly constructed...
...With respect to my own initiatives, Mr...
...They stand by their findings...
...If such evidence existed, let me assure Mr...
...SANDRA O'BRIEN Grand Island, Nebraska Here is a letter sent by one of Ms...
...Because the developers were dropped from the case in the Slaughter v. Monsanto trial, some observers saw the verdict as merely a message to the neighborhood's developers that they should share the blame and not as an absolution of the chemical companies...
...The suppliers of these contaminants did agree to clean up as the law required...
...We might not have changed his opinions about the law, but we could have corrected his facts about the site...
...Grier that the Khmer Rouge are the worst killers since the Nazis...
...STEPHEN 1.SOLARZ Washington, D.C...
...But based on the recent U.S...
...Yet the law requires prevailing wages on all projects that are federally assisted and consist of more than 11 units...
...drywall haulers for less time...
...If he is going to make such accusations, he should at least document them...
...Buildings constructed by those who know what they are doing go up faster, are better, and the workers on those projects have fewer accidents...
...If someone wants to hire unskilled workers and pay them as little as possible, thereby "helping" them (and also saving himself quite a bit of money), he can do so on small projects...
...Copies of a few of them are enclosed...
...The obvious link in Mr...
...O'Brien's students...
...Rep...
...He might have mentioned that the jury rendered a unanimous verdict that no plaintiff had suffered any injury from the site and that Monsanto, the Task Force member involved, was not liable to any plaintiff...
...The salary per year, therefore, is not as high as it might first appear...
...Yet the CGDK is not a real government but simply a political artifice which exists primarily for the purpose of UN politics and international negotiations...
...say it's there...
...I think that, without Davis-Bacon and the state laws that set prevailing wages on state-supported building projects, the lowest wage would be the one most contractors would pay, and the contractor who wanted to treat his employees fairly would be forced out of the market...
...But if he thinks the Kremlin's leadership is venal, he obviously has never visited the White House or gotten close to a U.S...
...DAVID A. JONES Albuquerque, New Mexico Class act A few weeks ago, while teaching a unit on the effects advertising has, I mentioned to my fourth grade classes that it has been illegal for tobacco companies to advertise on television since 1970...
...The author replies: Discarded water was scavenged or "refined" at Brio, and semantics can't dress up the pollution left behind...
...Along comes someone who is actually trying to do something about "the system" and guess who Mr...
...LETTERS Pipeline dreams Peter Grier's article on Cambodia ["Dealing with the Devil," April] is an odd piece of journalism...
...Where in Washington, D.C...
...It has little to do with the political and military situation inside Cambodia and on the Thai-Cambodian border, where the two noncommunist factions operate as independent, albeit weak, entities...
...Past tense In your column ["Tilting At Windmills," April], you repeat several untruths about the American Jewish Committee's recent decisions with regard to two of our publications...
...Let's say we pay all construction workers $6 an hour and shift them around from job to job...
...aid has gone to the Khmer Rouge, it would be nice if he included it in the article...
...Grier's chain of argument— which he mysteriously chooses not to forge—is as follows: Because the two noncommunist factions are allied in a "Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea," any assistance which goes to the NCR necessarily ends up in the hands of the Khmer Rouge...
...And no credible evidence has been presented to support the thesis that any American assistance to the NCR—all of which is nonlethal—has illegally ended up in the hands of the Khmer Rouge...
...Grier correctly states that I proposed and secured the adoption of an assistance program for the noncommunist resistance factions (NCR) led by Prince Sihanouk and Son Sann...
...I don't advocate a return to the days when roving work gangs stole construction jobs from reputable contractors...
...or even Columbus, Ohio) can one love and support a family on $6 an hour, even if that is a constant, 40-hour-a-week, yearafteryear salary...
...Among the most serious errors and omissions were these: *Brio was a refinery that bought materials from many companies, not a dump...
...Martel's article...
...The point is, while there are far too many exploitive and dead-end McJobs out there, construction workers aren't in that category and aren't likely to fall into it because, as the article states, demand for skilled carpenters, masons, and electricians already keeps wages above the Davis-Bacon level in some markets and should keep wages high elsewhere as the labor shortage worsens...
...senator...
...He then alleges that this program "ended by opening a pipeline of U.S...
...The sooner we face the fact that we have to help those who are fighting the Khmer Rouge, the sooner peace and real political stability will return to a shattered nation...
...Yet he never gets around to documenting the concrete ways in which Washington is purportedly aiding Pol Pot's return to power...
...The activities of the Brio Task Force were reviewed in detail by the jury in the lawsuit referenced in Mr...
...The companies' banners, names, and logos are then allowed to be displayed behind the athletes, on their clothing, and on the playing fields, As the students and I discussed this, the students stated that they believe this is a form of advertising and they wanted to let the networks know they believe it is wrong...
...Brio wheeze It's a shame Ned Martel did not contact the Brio Site Task Force before using Brio to illustrate his article about the Superfund law [`Blooperfund," April...
...The students told me that couldn't be true because they see tobacco products advertised all the time on television...
...Then we have taxpayers...
...Yeltsinful At last, Boris Yeltsin supplies all the evidence needed to show himself up as the spineless hypocrite and toadying opportunist that he is ["Kremlin Creature Comforts," May...
...Then we have consumers who can purchase the products produced by those manufacturers...
...No date was falsified...
...A "stooly" is a minor flunky happy to go along with the system until guts are required and then turns on his benefactors and says "the Devil made me do it...
...Boris accepted all the perks without so much as batting an eye, except to complain, ex post facto, about their quality...
...Now the bad news...
...One forgets that the hourly wages of those who construct buildings are not consistent yearly wages...
...The author replies: The Khmer Rouge are by far the strongest military force of the tripartite Cambodian resistance...
...He ignores the fact—if he knew it in the first place—that there is a statutory prohibition, with which I am associated, barring any American assistance "for the purpose or with the effect of promoting, sustaining, or augmenting, directly or indirectly, the capacity of the Khmer Rouge or any of its members to conduct military or paramilitary operations...
...SHOLOM D. COMAY New York, New York Mr Comay is the president of the American Jewish Committee Regs and Bacon Patrick Barry's article on the need to repeal the DavisBacon Act ["Congress's Deconstruction Theory," January], focused on small projects...
...Each fourth grader at Howard School wrote a letter or made a poster to be sent to one of the major networks...
...Present Tense has not been able to achieve the necessary support, which will force us to discontinue it, and that will be done with a great deal of anguish and regret...
...Comes the dawn of perestroika and Boris rises early to curse the sun for light...
...I personally prefer those who construct buildings to be "skilled," to know how to be a good carpenter or electrician...
...I happen to agree with Mr...
...We will all benefit when Davis-Bacon is gone...
...JANYCE KATZ Columbus, Ohio The author replies: Having worked for $6 an hour and found the wage insufficient to support a family, I must agree with Ms...
...Katz that we shouldn't encourage low pay scales in any industry...
...I am sending them to thank you for publishing articles that are relevant and keep us informed about what is going on in our world, and to let you know that you have made a tremendous impact on a group of students...
...Katz dances around the real issues: organized labor is losing power and members by encouraging restrictive work rules and bureaucratic protection, while the federal government is meddling in a strong, relatively high-paying industry and thus undercutting the competitive situation we need to rebuild the nation's infrastructure and affordable housing stock...
...Since perestroika is obviously a new concept to him, he might want to keep in mind a new distinction...
...aid for the Khmer Rouge...
...A few days later I read an article in the January 1990 Reader's Digest, which appeared originally in your magazine ["Warning: Sports Stars May Be Hazardous to Your Health," Jason DeParle, September 1989], that describes the television networks' policy of allowing tobacco companies to sponsor sporting events...
...aid isn't going to make the noncommunists as powerful as the Khmer Rouge...
...In a variety of ways, he asserts as a self-evident fact that the United States government is helping the Khmer Rouge...
...This puzzled me, so I told the students to write down dates, times, and networks showing this advertising so we could report it...
...Solarz is the chairman of the House subcommittee on Asian and Pacific Affairs...
...Goldman is on the community relations staff of the Brio Site Task Force...
...That the engineering firms still "stand by their findings" illustrates even more vividly Superfund's dangerous glitch: Polluter-funded tests don't often find what polluters don't want them to find, even when the Office of Technology Assessment and the U.S.G.S...
...is aiding the Khmer Rouge in their drive for Phnom Penh...
...Grier that most of my colleagues and I would insist on the termination of the program...
...But I do encourage unions, the construction industry, and Congress to acknowledge the flaws of the Davis-Bacon Act and work to repeal it...
...While Brezhnev was ripping off the country, Boris "the Obsequious" was everyone's favorite flunky...
...We are committed to that cleanup...
...Even Henry Ford knew that people who don't make money can't purchase any products, so he paid his people and they bought his cars...
...Several nationally known engineering firms determined the nature and extent of contamination at the site...
Vol. 22 • July 1990 • No. 6
