PUBLIC FORUM LESS SERVICE, MORE MONEY.

I only wish that the ``Panel tunes in to cable woes'' headline (Nov. 19) were true. Councilman Jack Weiss and his colleagues seem to be toothless when it comes to cable issues. So far, all Adelphia customers get is a constantly changing tap dance of less for more - less services for more money.

This latest ``adjustment'' is another in a series of moves to force everyone to digital cable, a much more expensive service any way you slice it. (The same level as my current $56 service is $70 a month if digital.) Now, all premium channels except HBO have been stripped from regular cable. We are supposed to be thrilled that they have added KVMD in San Bernardino and - I kid you not - KHIZ in Barstow. I'm shopping for a dish.

- Jan Brown 

Van Nuys

Truth on strike fund

Re ``Union, Inc.'' (Your Opinions, Nov. 20):

The ``$10 million'' a week the union is supposedly paying the strikers is not correct. We (the union) have $10 million in our strike fund that all of our union members have been paying into, from our weekly paychecks, for all the years we've been working. This is our money being paid back to us.

What the public needs to remember is that if the 70,000 United Food and Commercial Workers don't go back to work, the community suffers also. I guess nobody thinks of the millions of dollars that we are not making and putting back into our own communities. There are a lot of strikers who would like nothing better than to go back to work.

- Karen Valle

Quartz Hill

Labor dispute

The markets are saying that clerks can make as much as $17.90 per hour working as a full-time food clerk. What they don't tell your readers is that less than 2 percent of the 70,000 (in Southern California) make that kind of money. All the grocery workers want is to keep what they have had for nearly 50 years.

If you think that the prices will go up - they are just as high in the nonunion stores. The market owners are making very, very large profits and continue to build ultra-modern stores. Let's work together and end this labor dispute.

- Jim Thomas 

West Hills

Be serious

If the grocery store strikers want to be taken seriously, I have a few suggestions: Please don't heckle me as I enter the store. If you want to talk, I'm ready. Don't congregate in small circles looking like you couldn't care less.

Leave your kids at home. Pick your placards up off the ground and don't sit on the patio furniture that the store is trying to sell. I'll take your situation seriously when you do.

- Bob Anabell

Chatsworth

Netkin responds

I would like to make a correction to James Nash's excellent (Nov. 16) article, ``Is L.A. soft on illegals?'' He referred to me as an anti-immigration activist. As a son of immigrant parents and married to a Mexican immigrant, I am hardly anti-immigration.

Nash should have more accurately referred to me as being an anti-illegal-immigration activist. As such, I do not advocate that the LAPD randomly sweep L.A. in a witch hunt for illegal aliens. What I do advocate is that the LAPD turn illegal-alien gang members over to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for deportation.

- Hal Netkin

Van Nuys

Idealistic teachers

Re ``Teachers need a break'' (Their Opinions, Nov. 19):

We teachers have been called quite often not the ``cream of the crop'' of college graduates, since who else would work for such a low salary? You are quite right there. However, has anyone ever considered that we are not part of the greedy mainstream of America? We are idealistic and have hopes to change this sorry world.

- Christine Peterson

Woodland Hills

Cut union dues

Re ``Teachers need a break'' (Their Opinions, Nov. 19):

Richard Cohen advocates teachers should not pay income tax. We would then have better teachers? That is the biggest laugh I have had all year. The teachers unions are perhaps the strongest in the country and control a bit of our economy. If they want more money, they should ask their union bosses to take less pay and teachers should only pay half of their union dues.

Cohen's idea is quite absurd. If the meat cutters got a break on income taxes, we would have better meat cutters. If the janitors were excused their taxes, more college grads would become janitors.

- Henry P. Terusa

Burbank

Flexible child welfare

In your recent story on Los Angeles County supervisors seeking a child- welfare waiver from the federal government, you quote DCFS Director David Sanders as saying the way the system is now funded is inflexible and forces the agency to provide ``ineffective'' services (``County seeking waiver,'' Nov. 12). We agree.

In fact, this is the very idea behind President Bush's child-welfare proposal currently being considered by the U.S. Congress. Under the president's proposal, states would be allowed to use foster-care funds to focus not only on supporting children in out-of-home care, but also on prevention and post-adoption services.

By doing so, states would be better able to prevent children from being abused and neglected in the first place, diminishing the need for more costly intervention after the fact, and ensure more successful adoptions for those children who cannot be returned to their biological home.

- Wade F. Horn 

Assistant secretary

Administration for Children and Families 

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services 

DWP rates

Re ``DWP's deceit'' (Editorial, Nov. 20):

The DWP must shut off its leaking faucet of funds rather than increase the costs to city residents. For too long, the DWP has been siphoning off the backs of its customers to pay millions to outside public relations and marketing consultants. They are currently considering the approval of $175,000 for the design and construction of a city float in the upcoming Pasadena Tournament of Roses Parade. Now they want to raise rates because they ``claim'' they can't afford the burden of added security costs.

Since taking office, I have been the lone councilman to vote against their excessive pay raises and to speak up against their common practice of employee poaching from other city departments - which ultimately costs the city's residents money that should be used to keep rates affordable.

- Greig Smith

L.A. councilman

Basic human response

Why the surprise that many Iraqis continue to attack American soldiers? If an invading army blew up my family and friends, I could see myself ejecting my career and my religious values and devoting my remaining days to killing as many of the invaders as possible. Not because of patriotism or the promise of 100 vestal virgins, but out of icy, calculated revenge.

My results would be equally ugly, tragic, evil and unfair. My victims would be soldiers who were probably only following orders from leaders that they believed and trusted, leaders who think planned killing of our brothers and sisters for national interests is a basic American right.

- Johnny Risk

Pasadena

For whose children?

The next time you hear politicians tell you they need more tax money and proclaim it's ``for the children,'' ask yourself: Whose children would that be? If they keep taking your hard-earned money to pay for votes, how are you going to secure your own children's future? Bringing home half of what you earn, are you able to send them to college?

- Laurien Dutremble

Northridge

Streets of L.A.

I am disturbed that we hire a police chief and then tie his hands. We have war here on the streets of L.A. County. Our bureaucrats and so-called leaders can squander our tax dollars and have the guts to ask us property owners to pass more bond issues.

Excuse me, first things first - hire more cops now; let the bloody politicians drive their own cars and fly at their expense. They are paid too much now. Leeches.

- Theda Freeman

Lancaster