Weighing Organic Costs
After reading your interview, "A Plateful of Myths" [January 22], I believe Barry Glassner is quite wrong about organic food costing more. It costs millions of taxpayer dollars to clean up the toxic chemicals that poison our drinking water. It costs millions to build extra schools and hire special teachers for our growing number of autistic and other health-handicapped children. It costs more in healthcare for everybody, including the obese. On a worldwide list of nations' health, the World Health Organization lists the United States as No. 37 out of 191 countries. I suggest reading It's a Long Road to a Tomato: Tales of an Organic Farmer Who Quit the Big City for the (Not So) Simple Life by Keith Stewart and Empty Harvest by Bernard Jensen and Mark Anderson, written many years ago but sadly ignored.
HELENE K. WRIGHT
Newburgh, N.Y.
Mean Street Blues
"The New Math on Crime" [January 15] fails to list Washington, D.C. The only mention was that murders in D.C. decreased by 27 in 2006 from 2005. Austin was listed as having only a total of 20 murders in 2006. The 20 cities listed had a total of 4,152 in 2006. This number is about 35 percent more than the 3,084 combat deaths in Iraq in four years. Why aren't the 16,000 to 17,000 murders a year in the United States mentioned?
JOSEPH P. CARRIGAN
Fairfax, Va.
The old math is simple. The funding for former President Clinton's plan to hire 100,000 street police officers has been cut by President Bush. New math, old math, or any way you count it, the 100,00 additional police officers would help cut crime in our country.
NANCY DELLE FEMINE
Cape Elizabeth, Maine
Doubting Danforth
Former Sen. John Danforth theorized that "Christian right" voters and others "decided that they didn't like Republicans, because we appear to be mean-spirited and angry and hard-edged" [The Values Divide," January 15]. I am an independent voter and frustrated with the Republican Party for abandoning its core values: smaller government, reduced spending, and strong moral character and integrity. If standing up for moral principles, expecting personal responsibility from all Americans, and respecting a culture of life is "mean-spirited and angry and hard-edged," then I'm guilty. By the way, I believe Danforth should review the number of parishes/dioceses that are considering a break with the Episcopal Church. He appears to be oblivious to reality.
COL. PHILIP E. GLENN, USAF (RET.)
Fulton, Mo.
Intrigued as I was by the interview with Senator Danforth, I was troubled by his notion that the Republican Party need only make an inclusive correction and be back in the good graces of the people. An elected state representative from Maine, I could not make that correction and opted out of the Republican Party in the middle of my first term. There were two issues. One was my vote on a nonbinding referendum in 2003, asking the president to exhaust all avenues of diplomacy before going into Iraq. I was the sole Republican to vote in favor of the referendum. The second issue was failure of fiscal integrity-tax cuts for the wealthy at the expense of the great middle class and record deficits. These are violations of core Republican principles. I ran again as a Democrat and won handily in the 2004 presidential election year. I also am a theologian and Baptist minister. The conflict of conscience I experienced over the merger of the Republican Party with the Christian right prompted me to write McChurched: 300 Million Served and Still Hungry, on the doctrinal and theological implications of this phenomenon.
STAN MOODY
Manchester, Maine
advertisement