Several actions could lighten Katrina's financial burden

Hurricane Katrina was terrible. In addition to enormous personal human suffering, the ultimate financial cost to the country will be staggering. Among the various things I think President Bush should do are:

1) Rescind tax cuts enacted for the country's wealthiest citizens.

2) Establish a firm schedule for withdrawal from Iraq.

3) Use the bully-pulpit of the presidency to convince the oil and gas industries to stop taking exorbitant profits at this time.

4) Tell Congress to stop trying to make major cuts in Medicaid.

I hope that the silver lining in this catastrophe will be the return of America's compassion and support for those among us who are less fortunate. The needs of the survivors of Katrina will continue to exist years from now.

RICHARD S. JEVON
McCandless

---

Sad realities exposed

Both my wife and I were born and reared in New Orleans, and everyone we knew there went homeless or missing. Trying to find even close relatives continues to be a challenge. My cousin Douggy is but one example.

Up to the time of Hurricane Katrina, Douggy lived a relatively independent life although he is mentally challenged. Since his mother died five years ago, Anna and Lauren, his older sisters, made sure that his housing, medical and other needs were met. He lived in a very modest apartment owned by the church across the street with which our family has been affiliated for four generations.

By day five after the hurricane, we found out that Anna had been rescued from the roof of a nearby school and Lauren was in Baton Rouge, but no one had heard about Douggy. Then another cousin, Louis, a New Orleans police officer who knew where Douggy lived, went by boat to the house. He found Douggy shivering on the water-soaked bed surrounded by floating furniture in the stench-filled house where he had been since the hurricane came. Louis got him safely to Baton Rouge.

During this disaster, the naked issues of class, poverty, race and other social fault-lines turned New Orleans into something that looked like a scene from Somalia or Iraq.

As we try to find our way out of this horror, there is a far deeper issue which we, as a nation, must face. And it is exposed by the situation of my cousin Douggy who is but one of millions of socially vulnerable and poor people who can be found in disturbing percentages across the nation.

Many realities that bedeviled New Orleans also trouble Pittsburgh and harm vulnerable people: tight funding and cost-cutting, complicated by bureaucracy and squabbling between municipal, county, state and federal governments, negatively impacting social services, while issues of class, poverty and race are regularly swept under the rug.

As one who teaches urban ministry, I pray that locally we can find a way to overcome this. I pray that religious organizations, businesses, schools, government agencies and community groups can work together to help Katrina's victims in the Gulf region and stay together to find ways to address these realities before rather than just in response to catastrophe.

RONALD E. PETERS
Associate Professor
Director, Metro-Urban Institute
Pittsburgh Theological Seminary
East Liberty

---

Same-sex marriage

So U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum feels that permitting same-sex couples to obtain civil marriage licenses would "tear [heterosexual civil marriage] apart -- rip it at the foundation" (Patricia Sheridan's "Breakfast with Rick Santorum," Sept. 5 Seen). Where is the evidence to support that provocative assertion?

The homosexual part of the adult population comprises only 2 to 5 percent of the total, according to most scientific estimates. How could making a legal relationship option available to such a small proportion of the total population have any impact whatsoever on the other 95 to 98 percent majority?

Such a fear ignores how young people fall in love and make decisions about marriage. The strongest predictors for young people entering civil marriage are quality of the parents' marriage and economic pressures. If young people feel economically distressed, or that their economic prospects are at risk or limited, they often decide not to marry.

Sen. Santorum's economic policies have actually weakened working-class families and reduced the attractiveness of civil marriage. It is precisely in the working class that civil marriage has experienced its greatest decline in this country. A better strategy would be for Sen. Santorum and the Republicans to design policies that will bring out the best in people, rather than the worst.

Gay and lesbian families are becoming more and more like the mainstream model -- all the more reason for these families to be recognized and protected by government.

SCOTT WEBER
Shaler

---

It's not about race

In response to Andrew King's threat to file a state and federal charge of racial discrimination ("Interim City School Superintendent Threatens Suit Over Hiring Process," Sept. 9), I would suggest that he proceed very carefully about saying that my aunt, Helen Faison, was racist in not giving him an interview for the position of superintendent of the Pittsburgh Public Schools.

Let me remind him of what my aunt has gone through in the school system. In 1968 she was named the Pittsburgh Public School District's first female high school principal, as well as the first African-American high school principal. In 1983, she became deputy superintendent and left the Pittsburgh school system to become a visiting professor at Chatham College. In 1999, the school district asked her to return to serve as interim superintendent, which she did until a new superintendent was chosen. Plus, let us not forget that Helen Faison was named as the top educator in Western Pennsylvania in 2004. At no time was my aunt ever considered to be superintendent of the Pittsburgh Public Schools.

When you don't get what you want, you move on and continue to do what you do to the best of your ability. Maybe, Dr. King, one day you will have a school named after you like my aunt does, while you are still alive.

MILLICENT A. SMITH
Downtown

---

Remember POWs

I still can't believe in this day and age that a lot of Americans, young and old, still don't know what POW/MIA stands for (Prisoner of War/Missing in Action), or what the POW/MIA flag represents.

POW/MIA Recognition Day is Sept. 16. It began in 1971 when Mrs. Michael Hoff, the wife of a missing soldier from the Vietnam War, recognized the need for a symbol of our POW/MIAs. The idea was brought to a company that designed flags, and the black-and-white silhouetted image of a prisoner encased in barbed wire with a looming guard tower was born.

In 1990, the 101st Congress passed U.S. Public Law 101-355, recognizing the POW/MIA flag "as the symbol of our nation's concern and commitment to resolving as fully as possible the fates of Americans still prisoner, missing and unaccounted for in Southeast Asia, thus ending the uncertainty for their families and the nation."

The flag has no boundaries. It represents prisoners of war and missing-in-action service personnel from all wars. It represents Sgt. Keith "Matt" Maupin, declared missing after an April 9, 2004, convoy attack near Baghdad. Sadly, many people don't even know we have a presumed POW from the present war.

We may not all agree about the war in Iraq and Afghanistant, but we should all take a moment Friday to say a prayer for Sgt. Maupin and for thousands of others who remain unaccounted for from past wars.

DAVID W. BAYNE JR.
President
Chapter No. 4 Pennsylvania
Rolling Thunder Inc.
New Kensington

---

Moving step by step won't secure peace in the Middle East

The Post-Gazette ends its editorial on Israel's evacuation of Gaza with: "Thus, Middle East peace is made, step by step" (editorial, Aug. 23). Unfortunately, the step-by-step approach to this long, complicated and intense conflict has made peace remote.

From the very beginning the Arab-Palestinian/Israel conflict has called for strategic statesmanship of the highest order. What we got, instead, from both sides and our own government was the step-by-step approach. The result has been a step-by-step march into hatred, terror and blood.

Secretary of State Henry Kissinger opted for the step-by-step approach in 1967. President Carter step-by-stepped into an Israel-Egyptian peace treaty (now little more than a secure cease-fire). President Reagan dealt step-by-step with the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. Neither they nor Arab and Israeli leaders grasped the strategic opportunities. So strategic opportunities are now remote or non-existent.

By some serious estimates, weapons of mass destruction are already in place on both sides. Such is the rapidly advancing technology that one or another weapon of mass destruction will be packable into a suitcase within a decade. Clearly, time is not on the side of peace, yet our leaders continue to move mincingly step by step into the future.

Therefore anyone who thinks the future Middle East will be better than its past places baseless hope over reason and evidence. That produces major political mistakes and they, in this case, can result in a blood bath.

There is an important distinction between a problem and a mess. A difficulty is a problem if it can be resolved. A conflict that cannot be resolved but can be contained is a mess. Using that distinction to craft a genuinely realistic American foreign policy for dealing with the protracted Arab-Palestinian/Israeli struggle is long overdue.

ROBERT HAZO
Point Breeze