Proposals for future of L.A. schools

Re “,” editorial, June 2

Your editorial about the cities of the Los Angeles Unified School District is laughable. Try spending some time looking up the test scores in Montebello Unified, Lynwood, Compton and other proximate small districts and compare them to L.A. Unified’s test scores in the neighboring schools. Is small really beautiful in all cases?

Ask the people of Commerce and Bell Gardens if they would like to continue in their deteriorated school buildings compared to the ones built in South Gate or Huntington Park.

Research the small amounts of revenue that the individual cities contribute to the district and look at the massive expenditures through four school bonds shifted to help these cities handle the demographic growth of the last 30 years. Does it really matter to you that the voter approval of district bonds in these cities has often been nearly 80% “yes” for L.A. Unified?

Check with any desegregation lawyer or political scientist to find if the courts would look favorably at the removal of these cities without judicial scrutiny for the effects of increased segregation by your proposal.

Although some critics may say that L.A. Unified has outlived the Soviet Union, it’s good to know that your editorial team has outlived Pravda.

David Tokofsky
Member, Board of Education
Los Angeles Unified School District

While you raise many challenging questions in your editorial, at least one is easily answered and corrected.

You ask: “Who would be responsible for the district’s disastrous teacher pension commitment?” First, teacher pensions are a state commitment and not the responsibility of the local school district, beyond their requirement to pay into the system. Second, and more seriously, it is outrageous that you would consider a financial commitment to a teacher for a lifetime of service “disastrous.” Despite misleading claims by public pension opponents, the state teacher retirement system is neither a disaster nor in crisis. If no changes were made in the current system, it would have sufficient assets to pay full benefits for another 60 years.

The decisions to be made about the future of the Los Angeles schools are complex. False information does not help that debate.

George Avak
President, California Retired Teachers Assn.
Sacramento

Detainee interrogation policy is bad for U.S.

The idea of excluding Geneva Convention torture protection from the Army Field Manual on detainee interrogation () is unconscionable. If anyone needed more reasons to fire Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, here they are: lack of moral fiber and stupidity on an international scale. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) seems to be the only person in Washington who understands what honor is. Jerzy G. Relich

Huntington Beach

So the new Army Field Manual is going to let detainees be subject to “humiliating and degrading treatment.” That means that it essentially OKs U.S. personnel taken prisoner by enemy forces to be treated the same way. It abandons the Christian principle of “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” This shows that the United States is definitely not a Christian country. Kenneth H. Bonnell

Eagle Rock

How proud we should be that under the Bush administration, American values are being so clearly defined: It is acceptable to inflict “humiliating and degrading treatment” on detainees in violation of the Geneva Convention (oh yeah, another value -- we don’t have to abide by treaties when we decide we no longer like them), and it is unacceptable for homosexuals to enjoy the same rights and privileges available to heterosexuals. John Wayne

South Pasadena

Terror arrests show Canada’s hard work

Re “,” June 6

As a Canadian, this article disappoints me. It paints a picture of Canadians thinking they will never see terrorism; a nation with its head stuck in the ground. Why, then, did Canada pass tough antiterrorism laws in 2001? Why did we develop counterterrorism units that were able to arrest these terrorists?

The fact is that Canadians have long known they were targets of terrorism. Osama bin Laden named Canada as one of six nations that are targets. I am proud that we were able to foil this plot. The only thing that saddens me is the anti-Muslim retaliation on a Toronto mosque.

The article mentions that Canada did not join the war in Iraq. This is old news. Canada is fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan. Canadians are neither naive nor cowards.

Gary Betts

London, Canada

Yeah, like we’re all really distraught over the weekend arrests of 17 alleged terrorists, eh? Wait a second -- aren’t our cops supposed to run these stings? You know, pay attention to what’s going on, dig around, connect the dots, infiltrate the bad guys, set them up and then haul them off to stand trial? That is part of the very essence of our peaceable self-image.

We hire these people, train them and then expect them to deal with threats before the terrorists knock down buildings. You guys should try that sometime. It just might improve your peaceable self-image.

Robert W. Dresser
Parksville, Canada

Argument challenged on Iraqi voter turnout

Re “,” Opinion, June 3

Anthony H. Cordesman condemns the Defense Department’s report on Iraq as “incompetent” and “flawed.” He claims that there is “no conceivable way” 77% of the Iraqi population could vote if 40% of the population is younger than 14.

But, given the CIA’s estimate of Iraq’s total population of 26.8 million, and considering that 60%, or 16 million people, are adults, and if only 12.2 million voters turned out, then about 75% of the “eligible” electorate voted.

It seems Cordesman is doing some “cooking” of his own.

Joseph J. Martino

Tarzana

I am not a supporter of the invasion of Iraq; I think it has placed us in a very dangerous position. But after reading Cordesman’s article, I have serious questions about my concern. The first example he uses to demonstrate how the report misleads Congress is its misstatement of the Iraqi vote turnout for the December 2005 election. He then demonstrates through math and demographics that the turnout of eligible voters is spot on with what the report states.

If this expert uses these types of examples to indicate our failure in Iraq, perhaps there is indeed real progress. I give Cordesman an F for presenting a flawed expert opinion.

Clay Duke
Ventura

Why was suspect free?

Re “,” June 5

The Times reported that Los Angeles Police Officer Kristina Ripatti was shot by a suspect who is a career criminal and whose crimes include murder and armed robbery. The Times should investigate just how a murderer was ever let out of prison. Precisely who let this guy out and why? Why is it that we are incarcerating minor drug users while letting a killer free to roam the streets? What are we thinking?

David Hill
Murrieta, Calif.

Objections to ruling by high court explained

Re “ “ editorial, June 2

The Times misunderstands the objections of civil libertarians, such as the American Civil Liberties Union, to the Supreme Court’s decision in Garcetti vs. Ceballos. The ACLU’s objections do not rest on whether it likes the speech or not. Instead, our concern is eliminating 1st Amendment protection for someone like L.A. Deputy Dist. Atty. Richard Ceballos, who says he was retaliated against for writing a memorandum to his superiors stating he believed that a sheriff’s deputy had lied in an affidavit to obtain a search warrant.

This decision will chill candid communications that are essential to the proper functioning of government. As a result, public employees who observe waste, fraud, abuse or illegal activity on the job are in a difficult position. If they report what they observe to their superiors, and their superiors are not pleased, they can be fired for their speech.

Ironically, they may be protected if they write a letter to the editor to the newspaper on the same subject. But many loyal public employees do not want to race to the newspapers. They want to work within the system to try to fix problems they have observed.

In an era in which events like the federal government’s pathetic response to Hurricane Katrina are shaking people’s faith in government, any decision that makes government employees more reluctant to report mismanagement, fraud and illegality to their superiors is bad for the public.

Peter Eliasberg
Manheim Attorney for 1st Amendment Rights
ACLU of Southern California, Los Angeles

The U.S.-India nuclear deal is critical

Re “,” June 3

The Times reported that the U.S.-India nuclear energy agreement is in jeopardy in Congress. But the report sounded too optimistic about the future of the U.S.-India relationship if this crucial deal dies. It is imperative to keep that relationship cooperative, especially because both countries are threatened by terrorism and affected by the rising power of China. Cooperation will surely decrease if the nuclear deal becomes a congressional casualty.

Pockets of suspicion and even antagonism toward U.S. foreign policy already exist within India’s political class. Sensitivity to such opinion by India’s Cabinet will surely increase if India’s present prime minister is hurt politically. His quest for the nuclear deal, and his belief in cooperatively engaging the U.S. in realms where national interests converge, could become serious liabilities for him.

A proposal made by a prominent person in India’s main opposition party offers a clue to the future. Indian diplomats, he argued, should engage their U.S. counterparts in a scrappy, moralistic debate about American international behavior. That irritating practice is not a problem in India-U.S. relations now, but one wonders how India’s diplomatic style, and substance, would change if the nuclear deal ceases to exist.

Steven A. Hoffmann
Professor of Government, Skidmore College
Saratoga Springs, N.Y.
Hoffmann is the author of “India and the China Crisis” and numerous articles on Indian foreign policy.