Letters to the editor

Making disaster management work

Thomas Reinhardt’s Forum letter (“DHS disaster management solutions,” Sunday) is nearly complete in its suggestion for adaptation of the Department of Defense’s force deployment plan for the civilian side of the federal government. The missing element is any sort of similar recommendation for the adoption and adaptation of command, control, communications and intelligence structures and practices to ensure that such a force deployment plan would work.

The notion of “push button” logistics is the stuff of science fiction. Logistics systems, no matter how extensive the level of automation employed, will not function or be able to self-correct without two key factors being in place. First is the proper and correct alignment of authority and responsibilities among the multitude of emergency-management agents/actors in an event such as Hurricane Katrina. Second is the ability to conduct situation management through the collection and analysis of data. As much as anything, there was the appearance of lapses in command, control and communications during Katrina, which were as responsible as anything else for the logistics breakdown.

Combining the adaptation of a force deployment plan with a well-structured command and control system would well serve the Department of Homeland Security in resolving some of its pressing problems.

CHRISTOPHER KALMAN

Burke

Return to the Latin Mass

In the article “Latin returning to Mass” (Culture, et cetera, Tuesday), the Rev. Franklyn McAfee is quoted as saying that “the younger people want to do it more than the older people.” Some might find this hard to believe.

In the late 1980s, my family was living in suburban Dublin, Ireland, when Pope John Paul II first urged bishops to provide the pre-Vatican II Tridentine Mass to those Catholics who preferred it. Although I had been an altar boy in the 1950s and still remembered my responses, I had no particular interest in going all the way to center city to attend the one weekly authorized Latin Mass.

Friends who were interested asked us to come as a sign of support. To do them a favor, we went. Between the journey time and the length of the Mass, it took up much of our Sunday. After a few weeks of this, I was ready to go back to our local parish, but I decided to put it to a vote. All three of our children voted for the Latin Mass.

My reflection on that was: They may not have understood the words, but they knew from the solemnity and the example of those attending that something sacred was happening. If more bishops were to allow the Tridentine Mass as two popes have given them permission to do, they might find it partially cures the massive young-adult dropout syndrome.

THOMAS MCFADDEN

McLean

Governing behavior

The statement made by a senior at Westbury High School in Houston, that “you just can’t stop how kids feel,” is accurate, but you certainly can stop how they behave (“Aftershocks of Katrina,” Nation, yesterday).

The prevalence of violence in schools is largely a result of searching the external environment for its root causes and minimizing the individual’s responsibility for his or her choices. This legitimizes violence as a viable means of expressing dissatisfaction with one’s physical circumstances; i.e., a terrorist mentality.

Violence is not caused by physical circumstances, but by the individual’s response to those circumstances. It’s easy to be nice when things are going our way. True character surfaces when we’re faced with difficulties. Many have suffered through intolerable circumstances but maintained their internal integrity and civility and demonstrated them by their behavior. Work toward improving unacceptable circumstances, of course, but do not excuse, minimize or ignore unacceptable responses to them.

The only way to create a generation of responsible adult citizens is to teach students that they alone are responsible for their choice of behavior and that their success is restrained only by the choices they make. For a generation of youngsters empowered in such a way, their reach would be limitless.

BARBARA TINDOL

Bronwood, Ga.

A House triumvirate

A judicious re-analysis of the numbers presented in Saturday’s editorial “House candidates’ ratings” reveals very similar overall conservative ratings.

Given the razor-thin margin separating the would-be House majority leaders, I suggest amending the House rules to permit the election of a triumvirate of John Boehner, Roy Blunt and John Shadegg. This arrangement,albeitata higher level of government, served the Romans well for a time.

Carpe diem.

JAMES V. DOLSON

Springfield

Bridging the digital divide

Though I have long admired the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and its new president, Charles Steele Jr., I must take issue with Mr. Steele’s empathy for the telephone monopolies AT&T and Verizon (“Closing the digital divide,” Letters, Jan. 16).

In his letter, Mr. Steele invokes a recent study showing a widening of the digital divide and argues, without any evidence, that deregulation of the telephone monopolies will somehow help bridge the divide and advance the cause of competition. In fact, the opposite is true.

Indeed, the very purpose of the Bell telephone companies’ legislative push is the repeal of what civil-rights leaders have termed “time-honored anti-discrimination laws.” Such repeal would allow only the Bell telephone companies to bypass the majority of local communities across the country — especially black and Hispanic communities — in their rollout of new fiber networks.

Indeed, one needs look no further than here in the Washington area for evidence of this. In making public plans to deploy its new FiOS high-speed Internet network, Verizon made clear that it will bypass Washington, while wiring only the predominantly wealthy suburbs of Anne Arundel, Montgomery and Prince George’s counties. This is the same pattern we see in New Jersey, Texas, Pennsylvania, Colorado, Michigan, Massachusetts and Indiana. How one can argue that this helps the cause of the digital divide or competition is, frankly, beyond me.

The truth is that Congress deregulated the telephone monopolies in 1996 and invited them to compete with the cable industry. However, unlike scores of smaller companies that compete for cable viewers, the telephone companies sat on their hands. Now the telephone industry wants special rules that will leave mostly lower-income communities, predominantly black and Hispanic, without meaningful competition for video and advanced digital services.

The telephone companies, built largely on government subsidies, should stop whining about the anti-discrimination laws and play by the same socially and economically responsible rules that all other carriers observe. Such an egalitarian methodology would best advance the cause of free competition, without a taint of exploitation or bias, while bridging the digital divide.

REV. MARK MCCLEARY

Chairman

National Black Church Initiative’s Minister Alliance

Washington