The W.Va. mine disaster; thoughts on L.A.’s next archbishop; shutting down city government

Profits over people

Re “Blast at W.Va. mine kills 25,” April 6

Controversies over the role of government are in the news daily. But there is a strong consensus that government has the responsibility to police our society to limit abuses.

The Times reported that last month alone federal mine safety and health officials cited Upper Big Branch coal mine operator Massey Energy three times for ventilation problems, once for drill dust and once for inadequate air quality. In the last year federal inspectors have fined the company more than $382,000 for violations.

Now, at least 25 lives have been lost in an explosion in a Massey-owned mine in West Virginia. Why was this mine not shut down? Why is money more important than human life?

This same criticism can be applied to the Securities and Exchange Commission, which fell asleep when policing Wall Street -- the cause of so much current human suffering.

David N. Hartman
Santa Ana

Archdiocese’s next leader

Re “Vatican picks Latino to succeed Mahony in L.A.,” April 7

The Catholic Church will remain blemished until accountability is achieved for its sexual abuse transgressions.

Cardinal Roger Mahony has somehow escaped answering questions about what he knows. Most of his constituents have succumbed to his feeble responses. It seems the highest posts in the church escape the law by wearing the cloth and the title.

Archbishop Jose Gomez portends a timely and accessible choice to lead the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. Let us pray he will come in with genuine honesty and compassion to create a far more credible church with obvious integrity, leading the faithful as intended.

Ronald L. Wallace
Sherman Oaks

Re “Progressive, conservative; the face of Opus Dei,” April 7

As someone raised in Catholic schools who spent years preparing for the priesthood, I’ve been waiting with naive hope that the successor to Mahony might be someone who could actually move the L.A. church forward.

I should have known better. The last thing Los Angeles -- or the world, for that matter -- needs right now is another sexually rigid and out-of-touch Catholic leader.

Although I applaud Gomez’s progressive stance toward the poor, that is what we should minimally expect from a bishop, for that is what the gospel demands.

The gospel does not, however, demand close-mindedness, fear, discrimination, denial and disdain. Those are the values that have brought the church to the mess it’s in now. Must we wait yet another generation for courageous and visionary leaders?

John Bollard
Los Angeles

Uh oh, now I’m worried. While in San Antonio, Archbishop Gomez “denounced” a Catholic university because it invited the pro-choice Hillary Rodham Clinton to speak and denounced another university when it invited a Benedictine nun because she advocated the ordination of women. A local Catholic high school was forced to end its relationship with a group that happened to also support Planned Parenthood.

Sounds like the same old tired rhetoric -- with the goal to keep women in their place at all cost.

Oh well. It’s their exclusive club, and they can have it.

Jane Bove
Fountain Valley

Who’s the demagogue?

Re “Mayor calls for agency shutdowns,” April 7

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s threat to close down non-essential city agencies two days a week certainly looks like a retaliatory move against the City Council for its reluctance to approve the Department of Water and Power’s requested rate increase.

I find the mayor’s statements comparing the City Council’s action to “the kind of scare tactics you saw around the healthcare debate,” and “the kind of demagoguery you see in Congress” to be particularly disingenuous.

Isn’t it the mayor who is doing the fear-mongering -- affecting the livelihoods of city employees, while impeding constituents’ access to parks and libraries and other general fund services?

This is demagoguery for sure. But from whom?

Anthony Balderrama
Eagle Rock

New sweatshops

Re “Freelancing it as a way of life,” April 3

When my grandmother was a child, she did piecework for the garment industry in order to earn pennies a day to survive. Today, it’s desperate white-collar workers who are being exploited by freelance jobs -- a new version of piecework.

Employers are also thrilled about increased “productivity” among remaining full-time employees. In my grandmother’s time this was known as sweatshop labor.

Jane Gould
Los Angeles

Supervisors’ spending

Re “Expenses for pet projects upheld,” April 7

As the deadline approaches for L.A. County property owners to pay county property taxes on their homes, The Times reminds us that county supervisors are spending discretionary funds on such things as Mark Ridley-Thomas’ self-aggrandizing $25,000 ad in “Who’s Who in Black Los Angeles” (this is the same politician who was stopped short from spending more than $700,000 on refurbishing his office), Zev Yaroslavsky’s ridiculous $200,000-plus to support his new website and his Twitter and Facebook accounts and Don Knabe ‘s $90,000 armed driver.

When will these politicians learn that these discretionary funds are taxpayers’ and voters’ money and bear a public vote and discussion?

Thanks for bringing these abuses to our attention. Now let’s respond at the polls.

Alan V. Weinberg
Woodland Hills

Voodoo at Metrolink

Re “Safety first at Metrolink,” Editorial, April 5

The problem with personality testing for Metrolink employees isn’t that it’s a “ruse to get rid of some veteran employees.” Rather, it’s that the tests are pure voodoo.

I challenge Metrolink, Amtrak or The Times to produce a single peer-reviewed, double-blind controlled study showing that the results of these tests have any relationship whatsoever to on-the-job performance.

Metrolink could save a great deal of money, and be much fairer to their personnel, if they simply used an old-fashioned dunking chair. If the employee being tested sinks, then we’ll magnanimously assume that they could have driven a train safely. But if they float, they must be fired in the interest of the great 2010 “Safety First . . . Even If It Has Nothing To Do With Safety” witch hunt.

Geoff Kuenning
Claremont

How to improve education

Re “Replicating Escalante,” Editorial, April 3

Your piece on Jaime Escalante needed a greater emphasis on the new restrictions teachers face.

When I started teaching 20 years ago, administrators rewarded innovation. Now too many of them seem to be concerned only with test scores. When I am going insane from preparing students for multiple choice tests, I will say “to hell with it” and get innovative -- only to be chastised for deviating from the district-mandated curriculum, or to be hauled over the coals because one student did not approve, though the other thirty-four were enraptured.

If you want more Jaime Escalantes in the teaching profession, stop shackling us to this endless testing and watered-down curriculum. Reward innovation, don’t punish it -- and let go of poor administrators who reward obeisance and fill-in-the-bubble mediocrity because it doesn’t rock their boat.

Paul Forster
Santa Barbara