PUBLIC FORUM.

Trash promises

Re ``V for victory'' (May 18):

Jim Hahn and Antonio Villaraigosa both stated their opposition to building a trash transfer station in Sun Valley, but neither stated the full consequences of that decision should Los Angeles officials approve plans to ship trash from their city to the communities of Palmdale and Lancaster. Try this: 880,000 vehicle miles every week will be driven by 1,760 trucks every day.

If Los Angeles politicians were concerned about outrage in the Antelope Valley over their plans to turn our communities into their dump yards when they were using 22-ton transfer trucks, just wait and see what they all think about all those trucks going up the 14 Freeway.

- Andi Scarbrough

Los Angeles

LAPD budget

Re ``LAPD blows OT budget'' (May 15):

The article attributes this $8 million short-fall in the Los Angeles Police Department to ``healthy salary increases, the federal consent decree and the three-day workweek.'' Four paragraphs later the second runner-up is mentioned, behind court overtime: $12 million for providing security at Los Angeles International Airport. Wait a minute. The airport has its own police department, which obviously needs LAPD back-up staffing for extra security. Why not have the city's airports department - Los Angeles World Airports - pay back the LAPD and then the LAPD's overtime budget would be $4 million in the black?

The Daily News should be looking at the shell game of city finances that sets a budget for its departments and then, rather than return a $12 million reimbursement to the LAPD, funnels that money into the general fund for extra budgetary ``pork.''

- Jim Dawson

Granada Hills

Get rid of trucks

Re ``1-5 HOV-lane work to start today'' (May 17):

More waste of our tax dollars. This morning I left my house at 6:15 a.m. and, while sitting in the already backed up traffic on the southbound 5 Freeway, I kept a count of the number of cars with more than one occupant. Out of the hundreds of southbound vehicles on the Interstate 5, between Calgrove and the 210 Freeway, I only saw three that had two or more occupants.

There is only one way to keep this area of the freeway moving: no semi- trucks during rush hours. Last winter when the 5 Freeway was closed at the Grapevine, it was pouring rain, but freeway traffic was moving through the Newhall Pass because there were no trucks. Skip the folly of more HOV or high-occupancy vehicle lanes that no one uses, and limit the truck traffic - or at least make trucks stay in the far right lane during rush hour.

- Sherry Bishop

Valencia

Base closures

Clark Air Force Base and Subic Bay Naval Station in the Philippines were closed down when Mount Pinatubo blew up and covered them in ash, saving our military-operations annual budget billions of dollars.

In announcing potential base closures, did any other foreign-soil bases come up for closure? If not, why not? Is the closure of Guantanamo going to impact the local U.S. economy? Not at all. And that goes for U.S. bases in Italy, Germany, Spain and Turkey.

- Sol Taylor

Sherman Oaks

Extradition

Re ``Fugitives flout law'' (Their Opinions, May 18):

While I agree that Mexico should extradite any person for cases not involving the death penalty, whether that person is a U.S. citizen or a foreign citizen, Bob Baker offered a very distorted view in death-penalty cases. Nations where the death penalty has been outlawed - including Canada, Australia and European countries - or nations that do not carry out death penalties normally refuse to extradite anybody to the United States if the person will face the death penalty.

The USA remains one of the shrinking number of countries - along with those great ``havens of human rights'' such as China, Iran, North Korea and Saudi Arabia - that still have death-penalty laws and carry them out. Perhaps the problem would be resolved if the USA joined all the other democratic nations, except for India and Japan, that have abolished the death penalty.

- Paul Hutchinson

Calabasas

Language at home

Re ``Federal act leaving whole states behind'' (Their Opinions, May 18):

Christopher Jepsen claims that if students do not speak English when not in school, their progress in acquiring English is ``seriously hampered.'' This claim needs to be qualified. Because peer interaction among language-minority children is overwhelmingly in English after a short time, the issue is whether parents should switch to English.

When parents switch to English, unless they speak English very well, the usual result is impairment of parent-child communication, which can hurt cognitive and emotional development. This helps explain David Dolson's research results: School performance was better among children whose parents spoke the first language with them.

- Stephen Krashen

Professor Emeritus

University of Southern California 

Not enough

The damage done by the inaccurate Newsweek story concerning abuse of the Quran at Guantanamo is immense, both to the United States and to the people of the Muslim world. Newsweek has retracted and apologized. Sorry, that is not nearly enough. Lives have been lost, fragile governments possibly destabilized, and Americans endangered.

Long-term consequences will bring additional problems for our country and the Muslim world. Newsweek needs to pay reparations to the families of those who have died in the rioting. They need to compensate the governments involved for the costs of crowd control. They need to learn a lesson. The world needs to see this magazine humbled and possibly driven into bankruptcy as a result of the ``error.''

- Peter J. Brown

Sylmar

Newsweek cave-in

Re the Newsweek retraction: You must be completely ignorant to believe that the Quran incident did not happen. It's just like the Abu Ghraib incident, until pictures started showing up.

Newsweek's cave-in under serious pressure from the White House: Is this what you call freedom of the press?

- Angela Morgan

Van Nuys

I feel the same way

In the Daily News I read Muslims in the Middle East riot and kill over an alleged desecration of the Quran. A Los Angeles woman sues over another alleged Quran desecration. All claiming they are justified because the Quran is their holy book. It represents Muslims. It is a symbol of their religion and very dear to them. They want it stopped; they want to avenge their symbol's honor.

I understand and sympathize with them. I have the exact same feelings and urges. I feel that way every time I see the American flag, ``Old Glory,'' desecrated by anyone.

- James J. Menotti

Sunland

Makeup ingredients

In ``A little perspective on makeup hysteria'' (May 4) Carrie Lukas wonders why there's so much fuss about something as apparently benign as cosmetics and personal-care products. Contrary to what many consumers may believe, the Food and Drug Administration does not review or regulate cosmetic products or ingredients before they are sold to the public. The FDA has no legal authority to require safety assessments of cosmetics.

As a result, one of every 120 personal-care products on the market contains known or probable carcinogens, and an astonishing one-third of them contain ingredients classified as possible human carcinogens, according to a report by the Environmental Working Group. Our perspective? Preventing disease wherever and whenever possible is not only common sense, it is smart public policy.

- Barbara Brenner

Breast Cancer Action

- Jeanne Rizzo R.N.