Letters
Letters State of the Unions Except for your obvious disapproval of teachers’ unions you usually come down on the right side of organized labor. Unfortunately, you blew it in the October...
...Nonetheless, when PATCO launched the Wike, its three niajor demands were not about iniproving sajity but about providing an even sweeter dealfor its members...
...Their safety concerns were not for themselves but for the flying public also...
...1997), state crime victim compensation programs are helping an enormous number of deserving victims-most of whom are women and children...
...And while men who become victims of knifings and gunshots tend to require greater expenditures for medical care than child victims of sexual abuse or women in abusive relationships, compensation programs are spending close to $50 million per year-a fifth of all payouts-for mental health counseling, chiefly benefiting children and female victims...
...Why Mitch McConnell Should Know Better,” Oct...
...It’s a lesson that most people in the political process wear hats that are neither all black nor all white, and that legislative leaders’ power, often too autocratic, can be used for good...
...Today their are 11 6. What’s more, the ratio offag oficers to enlisted men has nearly doubled, from about 1 pel- 10 in ’4f to about 1 per 30 today...
...DAN EDDY EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF CRIME VICTIM COMPENSATION BOARDS Alexandria, VA Missing the Point We respect the right of the Monthly to publish whatever it wants, but L.J...
...Railroads have little or no control over these incidents...
...For example, the US...
...The “estimate” based on an “admittedly unscientific sampling” that 8 percent of compensated victims have a “recent criminal record” is also misleading: A large number of those individuals did not have criminal records prior to their victimization, but only subsequently committed some offense...
...It was in that sense that I refeelred to “Eisenhower’s fellow four-stars,”th ough I admit that the phrase was technically inaccwate...
...Reganling the figures on three-star generals and admirals: In 1945 there were 86...
...DETTMANN EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT ASSOC...
...It was these demands, not the controller’s safety concems, that dominated PATCO’s discussions with the Federal Aviation Administration...
...As the Monthly has previozisly wported (see fo?, instance “Money Over What Really Mattered,” Sept...
...It is just this kind of reductionist thinking that the book is meant to debunk...
...It need not be correct, relevant, useful nor what needs to be done, just something that is familiar, hence natural and comforting...
...CHARLES H. BROWN II Costa Mesa, CA Robert Worth responds: True, Eisenhower was a five-star general...
...Davis’ review of our book, Big Money Crime, (“S-uperficial & L-azy,” Oct...
...And have him consider the “new wars of our time,” particularly our vulnerability to terrorism and the various weapons of mass destruction our disaffected population may elect to use to express its building frustrations...
...Even then that was a disgraceful pittance for such demanding work...
...Going to Vietnam with the force and attitudes designed to defend against an assault by the Warsaw Pact through the Fulda Gap was natural...
...Worth‘s critical thinking can be extended to the other traditional follies fastened on our nation by the Military Industrial Congressional Complex (the original phrase...
...Jake Garn and Ronald Reagan) were stupid...
...It also should have been noted that railroads are the safest way to move hazardous materials and that 99.9 percent of the nearly 1 million hazardous materials that rail tank cars shipped in the U.S...
...Many important and easily verifiable facts were omitted...
...This is despite the fact that males are twice as likely to become victims of violence as women...
...G.E...
...WALCH West Springfield, MA Charles Peters responds: Air trafic controllers were certainly perfoiming-and continzie to pe$omessential and demanding work...
...Comfort Zone Robert Worth‘s question, ‘Why is the military clinging to outdated and ineffective command structures...
...A footnote about wages: Many controllers were earning less than $13,000 per year...
...Continuing to buy useless “combat” aircraft is an American tradition...
...1997) is so full of inaccuracies, peculiar misunderstandings, and plain vitriol, that we feel pressed to respond...
...As for other rail-related incidents, it’s hard to imagine an objective discussion of rail safety ignoring the fact that the train accident rate has been reduced nearly 70 percent since 1980, 23 percent just since 1990...
...Department of Transportation confirms that 9 out of 10 rail-related fatalities are caused by motorists at highway-rail intersections or people illegally present on rail property...
...military command structures in the October issue contains a howler, naniely that, in 1948, “Eisenhower informed his fellow four-stars . . . I’ General Eisenhower got a fifth star on December 20, 1944, and it was confirmed as his peacetime rank on April 11,1946...
...Instead, we explain how structural conditions turn ordinary business men into “thieves” and what aspects of our political system greased the wheels...
...Thus, when the essay asserts that the United States has more three-star generals and admirals now than at the end of World War 11, well, you’ll forgive me for saying, show me the figures...
...Americans should demand nothing less from their government...
...has a simple answer: Soldiers do what they know how to do...
...Davis thus “misses everything of importance” about the book...
...1983) the average controller was making $40,000 a year...
...That works out to $6.25 an hour for a 40-hour week...
...C.E...
...Neither do we merely establish that S&Lk were “a den of thieves...
...Aizenman’s criticisin of the Federal Railroad Administration’s willingness to work with the rail industry is misguided...
...Coining the term “collective embezzlement,” we analyze this new form of white-collar crime-robbing one’s own bank, so to speak-as the signature crime of the new finance capitalism...
...The safety issues addressed by PATCO included relief from the excessively long hours spent on the job, the training and hiring of new controllers, and the repair or replacement of outmoded computer and radar equipment...
...OF AMERICAN RAILROADS Washington, DC Look to the Stars Robert Worth’s essay regarding US...
...last year arrived incident free...
...thinking about their actual utility in any war is not...
...Federal reports show that in each of the past six years, 25 percent to 30 percent of the recipients of victim compensation nationwide have been children...
...KITTY CALAVITA HENRY PONTELL ROBERT TILLMAN...
...He used his power to get skeptical House niembers to swallow such drastic ideas as public financing and runoff elections...
...And the controllers had one of the best retirement plans in the nation: half-pay at age f 0 afer 20 years of service, or at any age afer 21 years of sei-vice...
...Finally, Ms...
...CARL F. BERNARD Alexandria, VA Protecting the Innocent Contrary to claims made in “Guilty Victims” (Oct...
...In state after state, more than half of the recipients of Compensation are female, and many are victims of domestic violence...
...However, the fact is that at the time of the strike they were being more than ndepately conipensnted...
...This is not yet another expos6 of the S&L scandal, but an analysis of what went wrong and why...
...with overtime and d+ firentin1 pay, some made as nmch as $60,000...
...Davis’ review is disheartening, not only because of its hostility, but more importantly because of its anti-intellectual tenor...
...AL CROSS, POLITICAL WRITER THE COURIER-JOURNAL Louisville, KY Off Track Nurith C. Aizenman’s article about transportation safety did a good job sensationalizing unrelated anecdotes but did little to provide readers with an accurate picture of railroad safety (“The Case for More Regulation,” Oct...
...Unfortunately, you blew it in the October “Tilting at Windmills...
...Biit53h Stars are only given oiit in wartime, and noue have been granted since World War II...
...He clearly has disdain for academics and others whose goal is not just discovering bodies, but analyzing the reasons for the massacre...
...Rather than solely playing the role of a traffic cop handing out fines, FRA has demonstrated its willingness to work with rail employees, rail management, and many others to build upon the industry’s continually improving record of safety...
...Both the UPS strike and the P A X 0 (air traffic controllers) strike were more concerned with safety than wages...
...Should compensation programs really be expected to base their decisions on predictions of future criminal behavior...
...Letters State of the Unions Except for your obvious disapproval of teachers’ unions you usually come down on the right side of organized labor...
...Since then, the words "four stars” have become synonymous with the highest possible militmy rank...
...Understanding what the French had learned about “Revolutionary War” was not...
...1997...
...The irnion called for a $1 0,000 across-the-board pay raise for all controllers, a 32-hoirr work week, and retirement afer 20 years at 71 per-cent of an employee’s top pay...
...Shades of Grey While the legislative scandal known as BOPTROT said much about the culture of coziness and money in our legislature, it had nothing to do with the campaign finance reforms enacted in 1992...
...Davis fumes that we “missed everything of importance,” by which he apparently means two things: first, that there are skeletons in the closet (e.g...
...Michael Milken) that we ignored, and second, that many policymakers (eg...
...1997) In fact, the chief target of BOPTROT, House Speaker Don Blandford, was instrumental in getting the campaign-reform bill through the House at the very time he was being ensnared in the FBI sting...
Vol. 29 • December 1997 • No. 12
