OUR READERS RESPOND

     
     
     Congress spends the loot
     
     To the editor:
      I would like to remind James Poupard ("A bipartisan effort," letter, April 29) about government spending and taxes: The Constitution says that the president proposes and the Congress holds the purse.
      With Mr. Poupard's years of experience, he should know in whose hands was the Congress as far back as we can remember. He should not blame the Republican presidents for our taxes. How often we did hear, "Mr. Republican president, your budget proposal is dead on arrival"?
      It also makes a basic difference if the tax money is spent on productive projects, like President Eisenhower's interstate highway system (which paid for itself many times in increased productivity and general improvement of the economy), or on a plethora of bureaucratic boondoggles where the money is not just wasted but often generates a net negative effect on the economy. It is poured down the drain on grandiose social projects that do not work and do a lot of damage. This is being documented daily.
      I do not want to point my finger at the party which has a history of "spend and spend and tax and tax," lest Mr. Poupard accuse me of political bias. I will let the readers decide.
      Another glaring error is in the notion that the Soviet Union would have collapsed of its own weight. Maybe it would eventually have collapsed because of its inherent ideological flaws, but I can testify (I came from behind the Iron Curtain when it was at the pinnacle of its strength in 1964) that it would have taken several decades longer.
      I know that President Reagan's spending on defense exhausted the Soviet Union's scarce resources and accelerated the process of its collapse considerably. It was money productively spent.
      Can you imagine what it would have cost us, the kind of trouble the Soviets could have created for us around the world (maybe even a war) if they had maintained their strength for several more decades?
     J. HOSPODKA
     Boulder City
     
     
     
     Totalitarian Peru
     
     To the editor:
      The bloody finale to Peru's hostage crisis contains many important lessons. Unfortunately, none of the lessons is a good one.
      With diplomatic circles praising Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori's decision and initial press coverage centering on the rescued hostages and not the dead (mutilated and often dismembered) hostage-takers, the end of the months-long crisis has overshadowed a years-long problem: Fujimori's Peru is one of the most totalitarian "democracies" in the hemisphere.
      According to the Peru Country Report on Human Rights Practices for 1996, released Jan. 30 by the U.S. Department of State: Peruvian security forces continue to commit extrajudicial killings, disappearances, torture and beatings; an estimated 700 to 1,000 individuals are unjustly imprisoned on terrorism charges; and the country is plagued by arbitrary detention, lack of due process, and violence against women and children.
      These ongoing crises, combined with economic problems that leave almost half the population in poverty and about one-quarter in extreme poverty, undoubtedly contribute to the frustration and suffering that lead to groups like the Tupac Amaru.
      The hostage crisis may be over, but the conditions that led to it are anything but.
     JASON TAKENOUCHI
     Las Vegas
     
     
     
     Expensive nonsense
     
     To the editor:
      The liberal Democrats have started a propaganda campaign to show that the public school buildings are falling apart, and that there is a need for additional taxes for our public school system. Before you accept this gross distortion, consider the facts concerning federal spending for public education:
      Before the liberal Democrats created the federal Department of Education in 1977, 70 percent of public education employees were teachers. Today, only 52 percent of public education employees are teachers. Forty-eight percent of the employees are administrative overhead.
      In addition, currently only 32 percent of school spending goes to the classroom. The other 68 percent is spent on administrative overhead. (Any well-managed business has administrative costs of less than 15 percent.)
      Private schools provide a better education, at a lower cost. For example, in Las Vegas, Bishop Gorman High School has a tuition cost of $4,000 per student per year, and 80 percent of the graduates go to college. In Washington, D.C., the public high school cost per student is $9,200, and 40 percent never graduate.
      Sixty-five percent of public school teachers send their children to private schools. Why is that?
      If there is a problem realizing the obvious, it is due to the excessive overhead of the federal Department of Education and the programs it implements, such as outcome-based education (everyone gets the same grade), approximate math (if you're close, that's good enough), and creative spelling (spell the word any way you want).
      Also currently being taught are the notions that feeling good is more important than intelligence, trees have feelings, animals are more important than people, etc. There is a long list of equally silly programs, all of which not only waste money but, more importantly, fail to educate our children.
      Congress should eliminate the federal Department of Education, return control of the public school system to the states and local communities, and support the school voucher proposal.
     RICHARD J. LISZKA
     Las Vegas
     
     
     
     Disappointed
     
     To the editor:
      Over the past seven years, I have come to appreciate the Review-Journal's hard-hitting reporting on local matters. So imagine my surprise when, scanning the front page of the April 24 edition, I came upon a fluff piece regarding bronzed buttilation at the Riviera Hotel.
      Is April a sweeps month among newspapers? Surely those precious column inches could have been devoted to something more newsworthy, such as the House of Representatives' vote the previous day on HR400, a bill that has been denounced as the "Steal American Technologies Act" by its opponents.
      Or has the Review-Journal also succumbed to the "dumbing-down syndrome," which has often been decried by your own editorial page staff?
     TIM O'KEEFE
     Pahrump