Support minority firms, but don't overpay
Re "Schools Sued Over Aid to Minority Firms" (April 5): I have no problem with the Pittsburgh Board of Public Education awarding contracts to minority-owned firms that are the low bidder or match the low-bid price. I do have a problem when the board decides to spend an extra $200,000 of my tax money by hiring a minority-owned firm whose bid was above the low bidder's.

(In this case, an employee of Westmoreland Electric is suing the school district for accepting a $1.2 million bid from a minority-owned firm rather than his company's $1 million bid for the contract.)

If board members wish to pay extra for a minority firm or any other favored firm, let them use their own money. If the solicitor is feeling generous, let him donate his time and money to the board to cover the extra cost.

As a matter of fact, why don't we have a minority solicitor representing the Pittsburgh Public Schools? I'm sure there are many minority attorneys who could do the job for the same amount or even more than Ira Weiss. As long as it's a game, why not let everyone play?

TONY DeFILIPPO
Brookline

Dangerous 18th Street
There have been two car wrecks recently at the big bend of South 18th Street, at the border of the South Side flats and slopes. I live near the bend. I have seen a half-dozen car wrecks in front of my house and heard and witnessed the aftermath of a dozen more. I have seen cars crashing into other cars, guardrails, buildings and property (including my own and my neighbors' on either side).

People drive too fast and there is a complex banking turn of more than 60 degrees at the bend. Even slow-moving Port Authority buses ride the middle of the road as they negotiate the turn. There are heavily used bus stops and pedestrians involved, too.

I am concerned because I have two school-aged children who are required to navigate an intersection that can accurately be described as dangerous. The neighborhood includes many elderly and special-needs residents as well.

At present, along the inbound side of the street, there sits an empty lot, sided by a house (in unlivable condition) and a for-sale commercial offering on the other side. Let's take the time and expense to widen the road and ease the severity of the turn. There never will be a better opportunity to fix this long-running and dangerous problem.

WES MORAR
South Side Slopes

Profits over health
The March 28 letter "Health Bureaucracy" cites scandalous conditions at Walter Reed hospital as a reason for not considering a universal government-run health-care system. The writer apparently is unaware that Walter Reed did not fail because of government bureaucracy. It failed because of privatization.

The hospitals services were largely contracted out to private companies whose main purpose is making profit, not giving good health care. Thus, with an avalanche of incoming patients during wartime, resources were kept scarce in order to protect those profits.

The trend to turn government services into private profit derives from the belief that government does not work. Of course government does not work if you don't believe in it and turn it over to political hacks who know nothing about government and think only in terms of giving corporate cronies opportunities to profit from taxpayer money.

Our present so-called health-care system is run by private insurance companies who look at the bottom line without allowing doctors and patients to make key decisions and who reward their CEOs with hefty compensation packages for protecting that bottom line so well. They deliver to the public less-than-mediocre services at very high prices.

From this point of view, conditions at Walter Reed show exactly why we do need universal government-run health care managed by skilled knowledgeable people who want to serve and who believe in good government.

JANICE ROBIN
Mt. Lebanon

Bearing arms
Regarding the April 1 letters by Richard Craft ("Not the NRA's Doing") and Alan Schultz ("Really Pro-Gun?"): For Mr. Craft, the Second Amendment was created so "that the citizens would have the means to overthrow a repressive government." I think that citizens have that right already: It's called "the vote." (Witness the 2006 elections.)

Unfortunately that same "vote" can elect a repressive government. (Witness the 2000 and 2004 elections.) Limitations here do not allow me to go into more detail about that. The only thing scary to a politician is being voted out of office.

The Second Amendment was put in the Bill of Rights to allow a military organization to exist. Read the first part: "a well regulated militia, being necessary for the defense of a free state, the right to bear arms ..." Why do NRA members choose to ignore the first part? You have to read past the "well regulated militia" wording to get to "the right to bear arms."

If Mr. Craft thinks he has a right to "bear arms," why does he not join the Army and go to Iraq? He can shoot all the guns he wants and he is needed there.

Mr. Schultz seems to be unable to define "sport" and "arms." The American Heritage Dictionary defines them very well. May I suggest he look it up?

NICK MALATO
Monroeville

Ordain us
Researcher Phyllis Zagano, in her March 25 Forum essay ("What About Women?"), says that there were women "deacons" in the Catholic Church in the past, so why not now? The Rev. James A. Wehner, director of the Office for the Diaconate, Diocese of Pittsburgh, responded in an April 1 letter ("About Deaconesses") that early "deaconesses" were not considered ordained.

In 1995, the Canon Law Society of America reached the conclusion that in some times and in some places, the ordination of female deacons was seen as sacramental, and it offered suggestions for contemporary reintroduction of the order. In 2002 the Vatican's International Theological Commission on the diaconate acknowledged that at one time deaconesses were members of the clergy, but refrained from judgment on the sacramentality of their ordination.

This question will eventually be sorted out, but it is not really the question. The real question is, would the presence of women in ordained ministries enhance the mission of the church to teach the Gospel of Jesus Christ today? The answer is a firm yes. That is why I participated in the Pittsburgh ordinations last year. These ordinations were Catholic in every way except that the ordinands and bishops were women.

The idea that Jesus himself intended the exclusion of women from ordained ministry for all times is not the Jesus I have come to know in the Gospels. All of the baptized have the right to have their calling to a vocation tested. The Vatican must abandon its practice of excluding women and blaming God for it.

JOAN CLARK HOUK
McCandless
The writer was among the women ordained by Roman Catholic Womenpriests last July.

Compact fluorescent bulbs are chic, but they have downsides
I am quite disappointed that the April 4 Magazine article about compact fluorescent light bulbs ("Flicker of Change") failed to point out that they contain mercury. It is a very hazardous metal that is liquid at room temperature. That makes the breaking of a compact fluorescent a potential "hazmat" situation. Their disposal presents a environmental problem as well.

Also, it is my understanding virtually no compact fluorescents are made in the United States. By switching to all compact fluorescents, Americans will drive more jobs and our money to overseas manufacturers. China and India are growing so fast that they will very quickly exceed the energy usage and carbon emission of the United States.

Again, this is an indication that people do not stop to consider the potential unintended consequences of their actions. Compact fluorescents in all reality are nothing more than "feel-good" measures that will do little, if anything, for reducing carbon emissions.

RAY REED
Pickerington, Ohio