Letters to the Editor

The problem with matricula cards

I read with interest the article, “Changes in the Cards” Page 1, Sept. 7) and noted that some facts wereomitted. While matricula cards are being accepted in many states in our country as a legal form of identification, in 22 of Mexico’s 32 states they are not accepted as proof of who you are. In addition, not a single bank in Mexico will accept it as a form of identification.

If Mexico will not accept their own matricula cards for identification, why are we doing so? They are easily obtained, often fraudulently. There have been several incidents where police have detained criminal suspects and found several matricula cards on the same individual. The only reason to have a matricula card is because you do not have a visa or passport — in other words, because you are here illegally. We need to stop accepting such cards and notify the immigration authorities when they are presented.

LINDA JACK

West Valley City, Utah

In defense of marriage

What Andrew Sullivan fails to note in his Weekly Dish (Op-Ed Sept. 5), regarding California’s civil unions bill is that on March 7, 2000, the state’s voters overwhelmingly approved Proposition 22, the Defense of Marriage Act. Sixty-one percent of Californians voted for Proposition 22 and 39 percent voted against.

California is an overwhelmingly Democrat-registered state, and yet by a huge margin, the Defense of Marriage Act was passed. A voter-approved measure is surely more representative of the citizens’ wants than a legislature-passed bill. And this is just one example of why the California state legislature has a lower approval rating than even Gov. Gray Davis.

ANNE LINEHAN

Sterling

Supporting artists

I enjoyed reading Dale McFeatters’ insightful article on the recording industry (“Suing customers for a song,” Commentary, Saturday) but I felt it necessary to make one key point that seems to have been missed by everybody but the general public. Most people I know don’t have a problem with copyright laws or giving the artists their due. The problem is that artists don’t get their due from sales of horribly overpriced CDs. What they get is the shaft.

Consider your average CD. Let’s say the CD’s retail price is $15. (I know, most of them are considerably more than that, but it’s a nice round number for the sake of argument.) Most artists get between 5 and 10 cents for every CD sold, with 10 cents being the exception rather than the rule. The CD itself costs about 5 cents per CD to make when you do it in bulk.

Packaging costs another $2 to $3 per CD. Let’s split the difference and call it $2.50. The retail store gets about 15 percent profit margin on CDs, which in this case comes out to $2.25. So, $10.10 is left over. Where does that go? To the record label. That’s right, the corporation providing the equipment gets two-thirds of the take from every CD produced, sometimes more. Once you take out agent fees and legal fees, a band selling a million CDs barely breaks even on the cost of producing it.

How is the consumer supporting the artist by buying the CDs? Far better to catch them on tour, buy a ticket to the show and a poster and a T-shirt and reward them in a way they’ll actually benefit from.

The solution to slumping CD sales is not to try to stop the march of technology or to amend the copyright laws. The solution is to charge more reasonable prices for CDs and to give artists a more reasonable share of the proceeds. A legal means of downloading digital music wouldn’t hurt either, since I doubt that the technology is going to go away, no matter how devoutly Cary Sherman, president of the Recording Industry Association of America, wishes it would. When the RIAA has spent years rooking both the artists and the public, it really shouldn’t be so surprised when the game is turned on it.

ANDI L. BIGELOW

Bowie

Metro’s woes

“Metro’s money needs” (Editorial, Saturday) makes some valid points about the need for the transit system’s board to put everything on the table when considering how to deal with its operating budget shortfall.

Unfortunately, the editorial then wanders into an “us against them” thicket when it calls for hearings to “explain that every taxpayer in the region pays for Metro, while passengers reap the benefits.”

No pun intended, but that train has already left the station. Taxpayers in the D.C. area decided years ago that they were fed up with senseless and economically damaging traffic jams. They decided over the years to build an alternative to sitting in the main arteries staring at the bumper sticker of the car in front of them.

They decided on a Metro system to benefit both those who choose to ride it and those who choose to drive and have that much less traffic to battle.

See what happens next time Metrorail and Metrobus go on strike. It will be fun. Right?

WES VERNON

Silver Spring

Binge drinking

When I read the article on binge drinking on college campuses (“Survey cites cheap beer in binge drinking,” Nation, Saturday) it brought to mind the mixed signals our society sends to young people. On one hand, in public high school, we provide them with sex education classes filled with information but devoid of discussions of judgment and responsibility. The implied message is that you can practice “safe sex” with the right “protection.”

On the other hand, once they are out of high school and have reached the age to vote, drive, serve in the military, marry and do any other adult activity, we prohibit them from a beer until they are older. Much older. We have our government do this because we believe that they cannot exercise good judgment and responsibility. We will trust a 19- or 20-year-old to guide an expensive, dangerous fighter jet to a safe landing on an aircraft carrier but not trust him or her with a six-pack. It is obvious from the article that this hypocrisy is not lost on our young people. Is it any wonder that they choose to rebel by engaging in the single adult activity that has been denied them?

Yes, I understand the arguments about drinking and driving and I have lost friends and relatives to drunk drivers. That is a problem to be addressed by traffic laws and the application of correct judicial judgment. Alcohol prohibition actually gives young people an opportunity to rebel and a reason to act irresponsibly. It did not work in the last century when we tried to run the country dry and it will not work now when we segment our adult population and deny them their freedom of action and the opportunity to learn to act responsibly.

If we cannot trust our young people with a beer, then we should not hand them the vote, the car keys, a rifle, a credit card or a condom. A consistent message of society’s expectations for responsible behavior by adults, beginning early in our young people’s lives, would go a long way to reduce both unintended pregnancies and binge drinking.

JAMES WEINGART

Arlington