How about some good news? The headline read, "Birmingham community
leaders become `kleptocrats.'"
A group of about 100 community leaders recently returned from Baltimore
on a trip sponsored by our Birmingham Regional Chamber of Commerce to
steal ideas from Baltimore. Baltimore has seen some difficult times. In
1995, the city was named the most addicted major city in America. Then in
1999, Baltimore won the dubious distinction of being named the most
violent city.
Amazingly, last year, Baltimore had the largest reduction in crime and
the second largest reduction in emergency room visits from drugs of any
major city in the United States.
How did Baltimore do it? How did it cut the cost of government and
improve customer service? How was it able to have a major expansion of its
civic center? How is it developing a major bio-park and a theater of
performing arts similar to our Lyric Theater?
Our Birmingham leaders brought these ideas home with them. You will
soon see the dividends.
David Sher
Downtown
News lacks logic on lawyers' role:
The Birmingham News' editorial page on Oct. 27 demonstrates a schism in
your thinking that merits attention. With regard to class-action lawsuits,
you bash and degrade plaintiffs' attorneys, and speak of them as if the
whole lot were cut from the same pariah-infested cloth.
Yet just inches above on the same page, you laud the necessary court
action which resulted in the state's inmates finally getting improved
mental health services, pointing out that "they (state officials) did the
right thing only by force of legal action."
Do you believe that, absent legal action, Bridgestone-Firestone,
motivated only by concerns for the safety of drivers, would take remedial
steps to correct a defective product? Are you willing to rely on the state
of Alabama Department of Corrections to rectify all the ills of our prison
system? To whom will you turn if (also referenced in an Oct. 27 editorial)
private landfill operators pollute the environment, release toxic
substances and injure persons around the site?
Plaintiff attorneys serve an important role. They provide a check. They
give someone who is otherwise without a voice an opportunity to be heard
and to redress wrongs. The News would be well-served to examine the
antithetical positions taken on the same editorial page.
Jackie Wesson
Warrior
News takes orders from Paul Hubbert:
Your paper's editorial staff never ceases to amaze me. Your editorial
on "Lies ... and statistics" reaffirmed your blind support of state
Superintendent Ed Richardson, teacher union boss Paul Hubbert and the
pitiful education system you keep making excuses for.
While I'll admit the 35 percent highly qualified teacher statistic is
inaccurate, whose fault is that? Richardson knew this data had to be
reported by August. Why did he choose to report only 14,250 teachers?
Since 91 percent of those were highly qualified, maybe he was trying to
skew the actual numbers?
State education officials estimate that only 57 percent of our teachers
are highly qualified. Don't you find it strange that 91 percent of those
reviewed were qualified, while an estimated 86 percent of the remaining
23,537 teachers are probably not? You don't smell anything rotten in their
reporting?
I guess it's a lot easier to just write what Hubbert tells you to than
to actually report any news.
Jerel Scoggins
Deatsville
Liberal cave-in vital to terrorists:
Some believe that we're beginning to (or will eventually) find that we
are dealing with an enemy that is organized, financed and commanded on a
global scale to a degree that we would never have fathomed.
Their highly sophisticated, expertly communicated, coordinated and
extremely successful acts of terrorism obviously are resulting from a
highly skilled plan of action against "infidels" that has been in the
making for years. The plan appears to include the purchase of enormous,
strategically placed weapons caches and sources of continued
replenishment.
A continued pipeline of terrorist combatants is provided globally,
trained from birth in Muslim-funded madrassas worldwide to live and die in
the pursuit and annihilation of infidels.
An underlying but absolutely critical aspect of the terrorist effort,
without which it cannot succeed, is for the U.S. and U.K. liberal factions
to kneel to the terrorists' efforts as they had witnessed in Korea,
Vietnam and Somalia. Possibly, their continued success will be largely
based on the confidence that our liberal factions will prevail.
Thankfully, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is beginning to ask the
right questions.
Armond "Si" Simmons
Pell City
Voters will recall Worley's SUV:
Once again, one of our elected state officials has shown utter disdain
for the Alabama taxpayer. The secretary of state, Nancy Worley, after
laying off state employees due to budget cuts, had the audacity for the
state to purchase herself an SUV to the tune of $30,000, almost three
times the cost of regular state vehicles and including $7,800 in upgrades.
Worley's rationale is, even if she had not purchased this luxury item,
it would not save any jobs. Well, isn't that just ducky? Did Worley stop
to consider how many school textbooks just the $7,800 upgrade might
purchase? Or perhaps how many additional school computers this might buy?
Worley can enjoy her extravagance at our expense. But she should also
remember that one day there will be another election. I assure her the
taxpayers will remember her arrogance.
David Holden
North Shelby County
Disarming public won't stop crime:
I am sure that Richard North Patterson was trying to pull the wool over
some people's eyes with his op-ed piece on gun control. I don't suppose he
knows that more children drown in the bathtub than are killed by guns.
I also would like to know where he got his information on all the gun
deaths in the past 100 years. He states that he believes that every
law-abiding citizen has the right to keep and bear arms. But the Brady
campaign to prevent gun violence has one goal. That goal is to disarm
every citizen of the United States.
Patterson would do well to look at the crime rate in England since its
citizens were disarmed. People like Patterson are the reason I am a member
of the National Rifle Association. The well-regulated militia in the
Second Amendment refers to the people. People have the right to protect
themselves.
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