PUBLIC FORUM : TYSON TAKES THE RAP FOR BOXING'S INHUMANITY.

It is horrifying to me that fans of boxing, the Las Vegas Athletic Commission, sports journalists and many others find it acceptable for a boxer to receive a concussion, brain compression, coma, blindness, paralysis and even death in a ring, but it is inhuman and barbaric to have a boxer take a one-quarter-inch nick out of his opponent's ear.

No one talks about punishing boxers for committing all those crimes. Sugar Ray Leonard nearly lost his sight in the ring. Why wasn't his assailant sentenced to 10 years in prison?

How can we call all those injuries and deaths accidents when the whole purpose of a boxer is to annihilate his opponent? Boxers continually look for the weakened area, the damaged eye, the skull that is bleeding profusely. We haven't even begun to discuss the hockey player who swings his stick at another's head.

It seems to me we're on a witch hunt to bring Mike Tyson down, to rip someone apart who is in the public eye, to punish someone else for our own violent thoughts. And again, let's remember, we go to boxing matches to witness one boxer rewire another man's nervous system until it is no longer operational. A nick on the ear? Who is the animal?

- David Walter 

Tarzana

Has our society degenerated to the point where people are willing to pay millions of dollars ``up front,'' to watch two individuals beat each other's brains out, as if they had any to start with?

If this is the nature of our society today, I can readily understand why people want out. I'm going to stick around awhile to see how much sicker it can get.

- William Greenwell 

Northridge

Smoking in bars

Assemblyman Edward Vincent, D-Inglewood, is carrying a bill, AB 297, which will allow assisted suicide in California.

The problem is that the people he wishes to help to die are healthy. They just happen to work in bars, casinos, nightclubs, taverns.

Vincent's bill will allow smoking to continue in these kinds of establishments to the year 2001, and will prevent local cities and counties from passing laws to protect the employees in these, the most smoke-filled workplaces in the state.

According to a newly released study by the California Environmental Protection Agency, as many as 10,000 Californians may be dying each year from illnesses caused by secondhand smoke.

The state is now taking legal action against the tobacco companies to recover the costs of treating poor people for tobacco-related illnesses. Vincent doesn't seem to be able to see that his bill will cause more tobacco-related illnesses, which the tobacco industry will not pay for. Chances are the taxpayers will.

Under current law, bars, casinos, nightclubs, taverns and bingo games are all scheduled to become smoke-free on Jan. 1, 1998. A statewide ban on smoking in these establishments would not be economically harmful since it would affect all business equally.

But Vincent is not paying attention to this kind of information. His mind is set on helping people to die.

- Esther Schiller

Newbury Park

Smog and statistics

In one of your letters in the June 28 Public Forum, a reader stated that 60,000 people a year die prematurely from bad air quality. It alarms me that there are adults in this country, with the amount of money we throw at education, that would spout such nonsense.

At some point a scare has gone up about everything we eat, drink or touch. What I would like to ask these tax-grabbing environmentalists and future masters is: Does anyone in the world die of natural causes and have you dumbed down our society so much that people can no longer count?

If a 92-year-old man dies tomorrow and the eco-nuts find out he smoked two cigarettes when he was 15 or his great-grandfather smoked a cigar one time in his presence, they chalk him up as a tobacco casualty. In this respect, you can can make up any number you want when dealing with air quality or secondhand smoke because we all have to breath.

- Ron Badger

Glendale

Among the important sources of pollution that remain effectively uncontrolled, one stands out: mobile diesel. As overall mobile exhaust pollution has been reduced, the share accounted for by diesel has, correspondingly, increased. Mobile diesel now contributes roughly 20 percent to 25 percent of total measured pollution in the basin. Good and reasonably economical substitutes exist.

Reducing diesel exhaust pollutants would also have the greatest good effect on the street-level air that people actually breath, as opposed to the ambient air measured for pollution statistics.

- John Daly

Northridge

Improving L.A.

Some time ago I was asked to sign a petition to ``help improve Los Angeles.'' My response to the rather startled young lady was, ``no thanks, L.A. is already terminally ill.''

Now, the city wants suggestions as to how to prepare for the 21st century. The first thing that comes to mind is get a life.

Once Los Angeles was jokingly referred to as a group of suburbs looking for a city; now Los Angeles is a group of special interests looking out for themselves. The city is nothing more than many ethnic groups of every color and origin with seemingly no desire to work toward common goals or try to improve the whole city. Each wants its own territory, language, customs and heritage, with no attempt to integrate or adapt. In other words, they want to continue to live just as they did in their country of origin, but still enjoy all of the amenities and privileges that come with the city and the country.

Next we have the City Council, another entity consisting of selfish, special-interest individuals. The downtowners want to foist on the entire city a $240 million sports arena that, they say, is good for all of us. The Eastsiders will no longer support the subway system if they don't get theirs before the San Fernando Valley gets its subway. The Westsiders probably wish they had never heard of a street called ``Rockingham,'' and the Valleyites want to secede from the whole dysfunctional mess.

All the clever slogans in the world will not improve Los Angeles one tiny bit unless the mayor, the City Council and, most important of all, the people who live here really try to make the city what it once was and what it could be again.

The Subway to Hell is the absolute worst example of how badly the city has been mismanaged. That money and the money yet to be spent could have started a really positive transformation of Los Angeles. Instead, we have a subway system that is truly second to nothing.

Is it too late now? Is the patient terminally ill? Unless we all start thinking of Los Angeles as we and us, we will soon become the largest second-class city in the United States of America.

- Harlan Campbell

Tujunga

L.A. needs Metro Rail

Re ideas for the millennium:

The most important project that needs to be dealt with right now is the Metro Rail system. Los Angeles is currently at a disadvantage in comparison to such cities as Washington, D.C., New York, London and Paris when it comes to transportation.

Many visitors are disappointed in the public transport options available. Los Angeles is too wide and sprawling to be considered a ``walking city'' for those that want to see as much as possible.

- Cheri Lee

Los Angeles

Valley transit

Only one fault can be found with your otherwise excellent article of June 25 on the continuing saga of Valley rail transit. It took you until the last column to state that there is a viable alternative to the zillion-dollar-a-mile subway or the specter of even more slow buses clogging our already-crowded Valley streets.

With three surface rail lines - two in use by Metrolink, one out of service - crossing the Valley, it is hard to understand why Councilman Hal Bernson's idea for light or surface rail has not received more attention by the City Council, the media and the transit agencies. A part of one of these lines was even used by the old Red Car system.

Since these rights of way are already in place and paid for, why are they not considered as part of a solution to Valley rail transit? Is it because there is no political wherewithal to stand up to the NIMBYs? Or would this solution be just plain too simple and cost-effective for politicians and the transit bureaucrats to implement?

If the recent history of rail transit in Los Angeles is any indication of what is to come, Bernson's ideas will be passed over for plans costing far more, with start-of-service dates long after our lifetimes.

- Jack W. Corrick

El Segundo

Re county Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich's rebuttal to the Daily News editorial, June 26:

Antonovich's suggestion to run a light rail next to the Ventura Freeway is ridiculous. Any Valley resident with any semblance of geography clearly sees that transportation needs are best met when a rail - subway or light - serves the center of an urban community where lower- and middle-class workers need daily transportation, not an affluent community along the southern outskirts adjacent to a large, well-functioning freeway.

I've lived in the Valley 15 years and would forgo my car to take the train to work. Would Mr. Antonovich?

- David Goldstein

Chatsworth

Women ferry pilots

Congratulations on the wonderful article by Dennis McCarthy (June 27) on Betty Jane Williams and the women ferry pilots. When I worked for an airline in Phoenix, Ariz., we used to meet those who ferried planes to Luke and Davis Monthan airfields. Each had a ``priority pass'' and only the president of the United States could ``bump'' one.

I am happy that they now have veteran status - and that the role of women has changed so much in all areas of the service.

- Bea Olson

North Hollywood