Mixing Business With Government
The Opinion page article "The Business of the President Is Not Business," May 7, decries both a third-party candidacy, and a businessman's audacity to run for the presidency. Does the author think that any businessman, even the most inept, could run this country into debt of more than $4 trillion? And as for a third party, since the two who are now in power are at loggerheads, a third party is badly needed.
The governments of both Japan and Germany are geared to intertwining government and business as the most important goal of their countries. This is the century of economics and we must either understand this and join in, or be left out. Ralph E. Ward, Aguanga, Calif. US debt as a campaign issue
In the article "The Defining Issues," April 13, the question is raised whether the presidential campaign is ready for the issues.
The ever-growing national debt is bound to become a prominent issue, particularly after Sen. Warren Rudman (R) of New Hampshire has come to the fore with the report that he was unsuccessful in his efforts to convince his fellow senators that the deficit must be reduced.
It is disappointing that, so far, none of the candidates has made the reduction of the deficit a key campaign issue. Jerry Brown supports a balanced-budget constitutional amendment. But that is no longer a practical solution.
It is only H. Ross Perot who looks at the situation realistically. Ernest W. Volkmann, Ligonier, Pa. Privatization and unemployment
Both of the articles "Egypt Prepares to Privatize," May 4, and "Bush 'Privatization' Approach Gathers Steam at Local Level," May 4, implicitly recognize two factors: that the global market place is a de facto worldwide economic condition, and that chronic unemployment is increasingly becoming a social cost of this new world order.
The Egypt article also presents explicit recognition of the unemployment implications endemic to reorganization for the delivery of goods or services through privatization.
With 5 billion people currently on this planet, employment as a means of accessing the goods and services of this global market place has become universally scarce. In this time of footloose, transnational business enterprise, industry either moves to where labor is cheapest or substitutes capital for labor.
The end result is economic disenfranchisement of an ever-increasing proportion of the population through a diminution of opportunities for human labor.
Our political leaders, when confronting a new economic organizing principle need to ask the question: What will be the affects on American labor and society as a whole? Wilfred E. Richard, Fairfield, Maine Changing the jury system
Regarding the editorial about the jury in the Rodney King case, "Trial by Jury," May 8: The editorial's conclusion, and only call for change, is in the one area where absolutely no change is required. The system has adequate safeguards built in for these cases; the people administering the system, however, are not impartial. No legal system can completely prevent prejudiced decisions if the people involved are themselves prejudiced.
The question is not whether trial by jury should be abandoned; the question is whether we as a nation are willing to confront the hard facts of racial bigotry that still pervade our society and work to change those facts. The editorial does nothing to further this change. Ben Shulman, North Hollywood, Cali1f.
