Letters to the editor

It's not choice we need to address. It's accessibility.

Health insurance in this country is profit-driven; therefore every insurance company has strong incentives to accept only healthy people. If you ended my job-based insurance, I would never find an insurance company willing to take me -- not for 10 times the $5,000 that McCain wants to offer.

McCain's solution would be murder on me, pure and simple.

Brad Currier

Northridge



McCain's tax credit proposal is the right prescription for our ailing healthcare system.

The rising number of employers who are shifting more of the cost to their employees or have terminated coverage tells us that the era of employer-based insurance is coming to an end.

Perhaps it may be more effective if everyone is required to purchase catastrophic health insurance from this credit, leaving the balance for purchasing additional coverage or for medical expenses.

A single-payer system appears attractive on the surface, but given the failing of such systems in other countries, it would likely lead us on a disastrous journey. Give the tax credit idea a chance.

John T. Chiu

Newport Beach

Management and labor

Re "Strike still felt by TV workers," April 28

Having recently moved here from Michigan, a state decimated economically and in a recession for the last several years, I read how the writer's strike has hurt the movie industry and, most important, the people who make a living in it.

The unions in Michigan are also hurting an entire industry and region as jobs move south to states that don't require union membership to work.

One day, the rest of America will wake up and realize that unions have outlived their usefulness (federal and state labor and wage laws now protect workers, unlike 80 years ago).

In a global economy, union wages and rules just don't cut it. When more and more movie industry jobs move to other states, maybe California will wake up and see the writing on the wall.

K. Kenneth Cooper

Marina del Rey



I am astonished that your article extensively documented the difficult aftermath of the writers' strike on below-the-line workers, yet made no mention of the fact that the deal the Assn. of Motion Picture and Television Producers eventually made was basically the deal that the Writers Guild of America initially asked for before the strike began.

The deal that was supposedly financially untenable for the studios magically became tenable when the profits from the Oscar broadcast were threatened.

How much of this pain would have been averted had the AMPTP made the deal four months earlier?

I am not a member of the WGA, but my strongest memory of the strike comes from the day that I visited the picket line and saw writers opening their own strained checkbooks for below-the-line workers.

Did any members of the AMPTP do anything like this?

Joel Dahl

West Hollywood

Keeping a close watch on Russia

Re "A chilly peace," Opinion, April 30

From the late 1960s to the 1980s, the vast majority of academic foreign policy "experts" (generally leftist) believed that the U.S. caused the Cold War by dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and was, at best, morally equivalent to the Soviet Union. No magazine parroted this "blame America first" viewpoint more than the Nation.

But then the truth came out, and the minority of academicians who were highly critical of the Soviet Union were proved correct.

So it was with a sickening sense of deja vu that I read Stephen F. Cohen's piece, which studiously downplays all of the autocratic excesses by the odious Russian President Vladimir Putin (without doubt a throwback to the worst of the post-Stalinist Russian rulers in his human rights abuses and assistance to our mortal enemies, like Iran). Instead, Cohen blames (what else?) U.S. foreign policy.

No surprise that a version of his article will appear in an upcoming issue of the Nation.

Peter Rich

Los Angeles



I was very pleased to read Cohen's Op-Ed article. As one who six years ago had a Fulbright to teach American history at Moscow State University, I have had a special interest in Russia.

I have been appalled not only by Putin's increasingly authoritarian rule but also by the many provocative words and actions of the Bush administration in its dealings with this vast country -- to my mind, needlessly provocative.

I am firmly convinced that such behavior has merely strengthened Putin's capacity to govern with a heavy hand.

Glenna Matthews

Laguna Beach

Open the door to Cuba

Re "Raul Castro walks tightrope of reforms," April 29

Many things are officially prohibited in Cuba, but the resourceful islanders usually find a way. Many Cubans (and I would suggest the number is considerably higher than the 2% mentioned) have Internet access in their homes. Although the government is opening a TV channel with foreign programming, if you walked through a Havana apartment building on any recent Saturday night, you would hear residents singing along with the commercials on "Sabado Gigante," just as they do in most Latin American countries.

And, as any Canadian or European tourist could attest, thousands of Cubans have had cellphones for years.

That Americans are surprised to learn this is testimony to the fact that our government is denying the right of its citizens to freely visit a safe and friendly country.

Only by ending the travel ban and the punitive embargo against the Cuban people can we have any moral ground from which to comment on their political system.

Jim Ryerson

Los Angeles

Democrats have a way to go

Re "Let's just vote the bums in already," Opinion, April 27

With respect to Douglas Kmiec's very good and democratic suggestion that whoever has the lead in the popular vote at the end of the primaries should be the Democratic candidate, I think it is important to note that we can't know who has that lead until new primaries are conducted in Florida and Michigan under fair and democratic conditions. Regrettably, there is no indication that the Democratic leadership is interested in having new primaries.

Tragically, particularly for those of us who consider ourselves Democrats, the party does not appear to be as democratic in practice as its name would imply.

Frank R. Tangherlini

San Diego



Obviously Kmiec, who cowers from any real debate on his ridiculous, untenable, self-serving position in support of Barack Obama, is afraid that a protracted election season complete with conventions will expose him and his candidate for what they truly are.

Ben Brinkman

Palos Verdes Estates

Stop the violence by legalizing drugs

Re "13 die as gun battles jolt Tijuana" and "New target in drug supply chain," April 27

The Times featured two articles that show drug prohibition is a failed policy and should be rectified immediately. Prohibition creates enormously profitable business opportunities for drug dealers -- who are willing to bribe and kill to protect their profits. Eradication efforts in one locale inevitably lead to suppliers moving their operations. Probably half of the U.S population has tried marijuana, and most of us have survived. Why not face reality? Let's legalize and tax illicit drugs as we do alcohol and tobacco.

Why don't we think about harm reduction instead of following a policy that leads to death and destruction -- not to mention lost tax revenue? At a time when California is facing a budget crisis, why not allow cultivation and distribution of marijuana? Let's make use of the tax revenue instead of enriching criminals.

Steve Persky

Santa Monica

Correct context

Re "Give me the lesson without the spin," Opinion, April 27

Matthew LaClair's Op-Ed article was highly refreshing. Not to be patronizing, but this is the sort of young man we need more of. The spin in his textbook is far more suited to the rantings of Rush Limbaugh than to an academic setting.

When I was in high school, many years ago, I got into a similar debate over a text that presented the domino theory as an unchallenged truth and as justification for the Vietnam War. I begged to differ, and history has proved me right.

Maintaining a critical view of what you're reading is every citizen's duty, and LaClair seems to have that duty internalized.

Pete Hisey

Chicago