ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, September 4, 1996 TAG: 9609040075
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-6 EDITION: METRO
TYPE: LETTERS
WELL, HE'S done it again! The brilliance of the man astounds me. Bill Clinton has announced that he is going to provide $2 billion so that children in the first through third grades will be able to read.
What have I been paying taxes for for the past 25-plus years? I was under the distinct impression that the reason children went to school in the first place was to learn to read, write and count.
I am fortunate, I guess. Our children went through the Salem school system, and both could read alone by the time they finished the third grade.
Have things really gotten as bad as Clinton's move implies?
I have a suggestion that will not cost taxpayers an additional $2 billion and might even save a few billion. Get the bureaucracy (including the White House) out of school systems. Give money to the teachers, and let them teach the basics: how to read, write and count. After the third grade is plenty of time to play with computers and learn ecology, world history, geography and cultural diversity. Give our children the basic tools to grow, and stop teaching them incidentals before they're equipped for them.
GLENNA RICHARDSON
SALEM
Dole's strength isn't the packaging
I AGREE with the Aug. 22 letters to the editor by Margaret A. Whiteis (``Photo gave Dole shabby treatment'') and Robert C. Bye (``Label should have been `Dirt on Dole''') regarding the treatment of Bob Dole.
This newspaper's opinions are never unbiased. And it isn't just this newspaper. Bias is seen in national television coverage as well. What does this say? Besides promoting the opposition, could it be that the media are worried about the outcome of this election?
At 73, an age Dole doesn't try to hide, he's healthy. His seriousness of purpose is portrayed in the media as mean-spiritedness. Dole speaks from the heart in simple terms. He has no acting ability, which seems to be important these days. He knows himself and doesn't have to wonder what he needs to be from day to day, according to the polls.
Dole loves his country enough to make difficult choices. He knows the importance of keeping America safe by maintaining a strong military. He wants all Americans to reach their potential, realize their own self-worth and capabilities.
Ours is a youth-oriented society. But remember that it's not the outside package that's important here, but whether there is anything of substance on the inside.
HELEN ABELSMA
ROANOKE
Clinton made light of a tragedy
I ADMIT that I have never liked President Clinton or his policies. However, despite my personal antipathy for the man, I had always assumed that he was fundamentally decent, even if his ethics were marginal and his policies misguided. Now I am not so sure.
At a brief press conference televised live recently, Clinton emerged from the White House to say a few words on behalf of the nine military and Secret Service personnel killed when their aircraft, transporting the president's equipment and luggage back from his vacation, crashed. After expressing his shock and sorrow over the tragedy, Clinton answered a couple of questions. Concluding his remarks, he began to giggle. And wearing a broad grin the whole time, he said he was "glad to be back and I'm still standing." He then boarded his helicopter to attend his celebrity-gala birthday party.
OK, maybe Clinton didn't know the servicemen and Secret Service agents who died in the crash, and maybe his expression of sorrow was only a formality. Still, these people died attending to his vacation trip.
If not due the days of public grief the president displayed when Commerce Secretary Ron Brown's plane crashed, didn't they deserve more than a jocular president congratulating himself on his own good fortune?
SCOTT ANGELL
HILLSVILLE
Ferrum College is also on line
FOR THE benefit of Ferrum College's alumni, students, parents and friends who live in the region served by The Roanoke Times, we want to correct the oversight in the Aug. 21 Extra section article, ``Computers on campus,'' which omitted Ferrum's World Wide Web site from the list of regional colleges and universities.
Ferrum College is proud to be part of the higher-education community that serves the greater Roanoke Valley. We invite everyone - including the staff of this newspaper - to visit our web site at www.ferrum.edu.
MATT CONN
Director of Public Relations
Ferrum College
FERRUM
Stop the attacks on Goodlatte
IT'S SAD to see people like Lloyd M. Holfield making such personally negative attacks on Congressman Bob Goodlatte (Aug. 26 letter to the editor, ``Don't be fooled by GOP rhetoric'').
Most folks in the Roanoke Valley agree with Goodlatte that our children should have the simple right to pray at high-school graduations without fear of the American Civil Liberties Union lawyers.
The Religious Equality Amendment that he supports isn't about forcing religion on anyone. It's simply about making sure that people of faith have the same freedom to express their beliefs as everyone else.
SAMUEL J. WALLIN
ROANOKE
Many tune out the commentators
I LOOKED forward to watching the political parties' conventions this year on television. But after watching the amount of time the major networks gave to their commentators and the small amount of time they devoted to the procedures of the conventions, I was glad to find that C-Span was televising the convention procedures.
Maybe we should ask the major networks, including CNN, if they want the public to watch their panels of so-called experts or the conventions' procedures.
MERRILL J. POLANSKY
BLACKSBURG
Henry Street's crisis is a plot
I REALLY didn't think anyone in the Roanoke Valley did not understand what was really going on with Henry Street. But when I read Robert E. Firebaugh's Aug. 22 letter to the editor (``Enough on Henry Street's `crisis'''), I saw red. How insensitive.
All you have to do is ride along Kimball Avenue Northeast and you will see what happens when the city takes a whole neighborhood and removes it like it never existed. Sounds like what the soldiers did to the American Indian, wouldn't you say?
Sometimes you have to stand up and fight or go down yelling when things aren't right. If black citizens don't stand up, who will? Now someone wants to take the Gainsboro Library. Enough is enough. We need neighborhoods, stores, businesses, clubs, etc., of our own. There was a time when Henry Street made money, and it stayed in the neighborhood.
I think this Henry Street crisis is planned - a cold, calculating plot to deprive my people of the pursuit of happiness and right to prosper. If you do wrong to us, so shall it be done to you. I was told this as a child, and I never knew it to fail yet.
Instead of bad-mouthing the problem, help pitch in and show that Roanoke is an All-America city instead of an All-America town of pity.
BRENDA C. RANDOLPH
ROANOKE
City wisely heeded neighbors' concern
THREE CHEERS for Roanoke city's decision to not widen Franklin Road in the Old Southwest neighborhood (Aug. 17 article, ``Plan to widen Old S.W. street hits road bump''). An equal measure of praise goes to the neighborhood association and its representative, Joel Richert, for vocally opposing the proposed project.
This is local government at its best: a neighborhood speaks out and City Hall listens. Bravo!
MITCHELL L. MENDELSON
ROANOKE
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