Tucson Citizen from Tucson, Arizona • 6

O' IVl'b EDITI EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR PETER BRONSON 573-4G32 Libraries cater to McReaders By STEPHEN AKEY In the continuing debate about the in American education public libraries generally have been left out of the discussion Yet libraries often have succeeded where schools have failed Public figures from Harry Truman to James Baldwin have attributed much of their success to the stimulus of the local library of their childhoods The library can reach those not in school or not prospering in school As a supplement to formal education the library is an invaluable resource In former times public libraries were known as "the people's university" Mental health: New program deserves chance getting off to a rocky start Advocates admit mistakes have been made no reason to attack or undermine Pima new mental health system which offers new hope for mental patients who have been mired in a pit for years Under the current system patients who are stabilized in hospitals seldom get proper followup care As a result they often wind up in the hospital again Under the new system case managers will work closely with stabilized patients to make sure they get the care they need Much of the criticism has focused on Dr Jose Santiago medical director of the new system Critics say the state sidestepped a competitive search and that too much planning went on in secret We object to any government activity shrouded in secrecy but open meetings have been held all of our questions have been answered and we fail to see what the flap is all about After so many years of neglect thankful something finally is being done for the mentally ill That something appears to be a solid program based upon concepts that have been successful in other states Santiago is the only one who has been applying those concepts in Pima 1 County Why waste money on a national search when clearly the best man for the job? Other criticism is rooted in mental health bureaucracies that are resisting change because they fear the effects on their institutional livelihoods When agencies become more concerned with their own survival than the welfare of the people they serve time for drastic change Mistakes are inevitable in such giant undertakings But anything less than a total cooperative effort would be the biggest mistake of all time for the warring factions to put their weapons aside to try to make the new system work 3 Plan to wipe out executions a product of flawed thinking William Buckley Anthony Lewis of The New York Times picks up a sentence from The Economist and strokes it for a full column What The Economist wrote was that of the most striking differences between the United States and other industrial countries is enthusiasm for Well now just to begin with if America has that great an enthusiasm for execution America must be most fearfully frustrated We have had 124 executions since the Gregg vs Georgia decision in 1976 authorized a return to capital punishment an average of fewer than 10 executions per year During the 14 years since Gregg we have had about 265000 murders If you want the ratio that makes for about 2137 murders per execution And finally there are 2200 men and women on Death Row If our enthusiasm were so great to execute them one would think be 200 of them left alive tomorrow and none the next day: America has no shortage of electricity But our enthusiasm to execute has generated the longest juridical foreplay in history Inevitably as with Lewis opponents of capital punishment signal out for attention such as Dalton Prejean recently executed in Louisiana: the idea that public libraries were created with just this educational goal in mind back in the 1850s when the Boston Public Library opened its doors so that as the board of trustees put it largest possible number of persons should be induced to read and understand questions going down to the foundation ofthe social order Unfortunately an increasing number of public libraries in recent years have abandoned this com- mitment and have transformed themselves into tax-supported entertainment centers offering popular videos and every variety of self-help book at the expense of core collections in history literature and the sciences In former times public libraries were known as Now it seems their highest aspiration is to become in the words of Charles Robinson director of the Baltimore County Public Library System of information and materials Robinson and other advocates of the new libraries where books are displayed as in chain bookstores argue that they are merely giving the public what it wants and pays for with its taxes rather than dictating what an unrepresentative elite thinks the public ought to read I In fact however it is librarians of the former type who are guilty of imposing cultural assume tions on the public Their assumption is that public library users are massively unsophisticated Without a doubt auto repair will always have a higher circulation than poetry but despite accusal tions to the contrary librarians opposed to thig leveling trend do not wish to restrict access to pop- ular materials or impose their values on others Rather they "call for a balance a return to the mix of popular and scholarly or educational ma-J terials that public libraries have traditionally! maintained Public libraries it is alleged are not academic! institutions and must not get above themselves by emulating research libraries Certainly no user is likely to confuse her local branch with the Bein-! ecke Rare Book Library at Yale but public libraries are in some part research libraries for the simple reason that people do research in them If a library can afford hundreds of run-of-the mill Hollywood videos it can afford adequate collections of reference books periodicals and perhaps even bibliographic data bases For serious users with no academic affiliation there is no real alternative Will resources allow this kind of solid collection-building? As library budgets have been threatened in times of fiscal retrenchment many libraries have responded by tailoring their ser- vices and collections to the lowest end of the intel- lectual and cultural spectrum This strategy has increased circulation figures the almost obsessive standard of success for library directors and boards of trustees but in staking their claims on sheer numbers many libraries have sacrificed quality for quantity Stephen Akey is a librarian at the Brooklyn Public Library Distributed by the Los Angeles Times-Washington Post News Service ment? Twenty-four years ago more than 50 percent of the US population opposed capital punishment Now 80 percent approves of capital punishment How come? Have we as a nation drifted toward necrophilia? There is another explanation namely that societies tend to mobilize their resources as provoked If there are great scandals on Wall Street fresh laws and regulations as Michael Milken knows get passed If the United States manages nine times as many murders per capita as the United Kingdom we incline in the direction of the chair at the same time that Great Britain inclines away from the noose The Economist might consult one of its futurists and ask the question: If there were a 1000 percent increase in capital crime in Great Britain would Parliament bring back the hangman? Interesting question The latest drive to exterminate capital punishment by introducing phony objections issues is not unexpectedly from Sen Ted Kennedy His new civil-rights-justice bill says this: Unless the number of people sentenced to death exactly represents their ethnic percentage of the population: no executions That means if the bill is passed: no executions Forget the blacks who kill at about eight times the rate of whites and mostly kill other blacks Consider Japanese-Americans They kill practically nobody ask us why That is another inquiry They just plain That means that if to use round figures there are 1 million Japanese' 20 million blacks and (not including other minorities) 200 million whites then unless on execution date you have one Japanese convicted to death 20 blacks and 200 whites you execute anybody Proponents of capital punishment are going to end up having to bribe Japanese to please kill more people to say nothing of whites Liberalism lives on alas Liberal reasoning does too if you can call it that William Buckley Jr is founder of the National Review author and TV moderator Ilis column is distributed by Universal Press Syndicate only especially evil criminals are selected for exe- Arizona ranks last among the states in cution is a joke The ones who lose are poorjmen-mental health funding Revamping the system is unlikely to attain miracles as long as that situation continues But a system that gets results is more likely to draw money than one that sucks it into a black hole Rotten advice As if the changes taking place in Pima mental health system frightening enough to many patients some therapists have been fanning the flames by inciting patients to complain At a meeting last month several therapists who have been critical of the new system urged their patients to out against And local mental health officials said they have been getting calls from distraught patients downright shameful and unethical that professionals would make patients victims of said Walter Stoneman board chairman of the Alliance for the Mentally 111 of Southern Arizona (See Guest Opinion on opposite page) Brenda Gibson executive director of AMISA said difficult for patients to start over with a new doctor but the advantages of the new system outweigh that Quick office visits with no followup will become a thing of the past Dennis Murphy a lawyer and AMISA member said the new system will maintain current patient-therapist relationships whenever possible pretty sad when you think about the people being he said People suffering from mental illness already have enough problems They need more generated by angry therapists trying to further their own cause Parental leave WASHING leave bill make enactment As approved by the House on May 10 the bill would affect only 5 percent of all employers its prospective costs are moderate the measure would humanely reflect the expanded role of women in the marketplace All this is true Why then should President Bush stick by his decision to veto the bill? Let me trot out a few hackneyed metaphors by way of response: the primrose path the slippery slope the straw that broke the back Age has not dimmed the wisdom of these admonitions The parental leave bill is not a disastrous bill It is just a bad bill This is what it would do It would require every employer with as few as 50 employees to provide up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave annually to bill pri James Kilpatrick JL arily benefits yuppies dren and biological parents may be the objeicts of care during a leave period Parents-in-law and stepparents are excluded And so on By mandating this inflexible program of unpaid leave Congress reduces the scope of fringe benefits that might otherwise be provided through negotiation Many workers given a choice might prefer additional vacation time some might want expanded hospitalization benefits some might rather have the expense whatever it amounts to in the form of a raise Proponents contend that in principle parental leave would be nothing new After all Congress has been mandating fixed programs for more than 50 years the 40-hour week the minimum wage Social Security a ban on child labor the whole panoply of laws to punish racial or sexual discrimination The argument wash These laws protect or benefit whole classes all workers all children all women all ethnic minorities Parental leave is a benefit only to the few who qualify through newborn children or sick spouses or parents Precedent is the milk of law whether in court or in Congress Once a particular specific benefit has been mandated such as 12 weeks of parental leave it becomes much easier for other such programs to be written into law The business community understandably views the pending bill as the brink of a slippery slope Employers already face higher Social Security taxes new environmental regulations tougher law's on civil rights substantial outlays for the disabled and so on Parental leave is a light burden but so was the one additional straw that broke the back James Kilpatrick is a national political columnist and expert on lanruage Ilis columns are syndicated by Universal Tress Syndicate workers caring for a newborn child or a sick relative During the period of leave employers would have to maintain an absent health benefits At the end of the leave participating employees would be returned to their jobs with no loss of seniority benefits It became evident during House debate that no one has a very good idea of what parental leave would cost Proponents came up with a ridiculous figure: $530 per year per covered employee Opponents had a thin-air estimate equally as absurd: $238 billion a year You sometimes wonder who contrives these bogus estimates and you wonder what such piffle does to the credibility of lobbyists for both business and labor But manifestly the bill would cost something Health and hospitalization benefits never come cheap Some unknowable loss of productivity would occur Replacement personnel would have to be shuffled around or trained for temporary Tucson Citizen Established 1879 A Gannett Newspaper duty The extended absence of middle-level executives would be felt In all probability employers could bear the burden of mandated parental leave without much trouble or expense Though the bill potentially would benefit 45 percent of all persons on wages or salaries relatively few workers would be in a position to take advantage of it Not everyone can take off for three months without pay Viewed realistically the bill is a bill to benefit well to-do yuppies The cost to employers is the least of the objections to the bill A much greater objection is to the nature of the benefit It is one-size-fits-all This was the same objection that killed catastrophic health insurance a year ago That ill-advised program provided fixed uniform inflexible benefits for all beneficiaries regardless of individual needs The old folks rose up and the law went down Parental leave works in the same misguided way The bill is packed with little qualifiers An employee to be eligible must have worked 1000 hours for an employer over a 12-month period Only one parent at a time may claim parental or medical leave Only physicians (not health-care providers) may certify an illness Spouses chil- Donald Hatfield Editor and Publisher Dale Walton Managing Editor Peter Bronson Edtonal Page Editor Editorial Board: Donald Peter Bronson Outmby JU Biondn Rotating member: Gabriel! Fimbres Alternate: Barbara Thompson Contributors: Rchard SaVatierra Ernesto Porntto Fred Rhoads i 4.