A18 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.FRIDAY, APRIL 1 , 2022LETTERS TO THE EDITOR[email protected]MICHAEL DE ADDERABCDEFREDERICK J. RYAN JR.
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HANKFULLY, A moment of rela-
tive calm has arrived in the pan-
demic. Daily new cases have
plunged from January peaks, and
the initial omicron wave, terrible as it was,
is passing. This is precisely the moment
when the government should be prepar-
ing for the future — a readiness made
possible because we now have the tech-
nology and the time. A funding package
for vaccines, antivirals, testing and more
would be smart and forward-looking.
Instead, Congress has been twisted
into delay and inaction by Republican
demands for audits and pay-fors. Normal-
ly we are among those who champion
accountability and responsibility for the
public purse. But in this instance, the
need is overwhelmingly clear, the window
of opportunity narrow and the stakes
high. It makes sense to invest today in
anticipation of another surge — an expen-
diture that will save lives and protect
hard-won gains in getting the country
back to normal.
President Biden was correct in his ap-
peal Wednesday: “Congress, we need to
secure additional supply now. Now. Wecan’t wait until we find ourselves in the
midst of another surge to act. It’ll be too
late.” Mr. Biden originally asked for
$22.5 billion; a proposal for $15.6 billion
was dropped from the omnibus spending
bill. Late Thursday the Senate was negoti-
ating a compromise over a slimmed-
down, $10 billion version, possibly omit-
ting money for global vaccination cam-
paigns. This is not ideal, but even worse
would be no action at all.
Will there be another surge? After five
waves, another does not seem out of the
question. The real unknown is whether
the roulette wheel of evolution will pro-
duce another variant of concern, like del-
ta and omicron. The worst that can hap-
pen is not too much preparation, but too
little.
Most concerning is the question of
funding more vaccines. The Food and
Drug Administration has issued an emer-
gency use authorization for a second coro-
navirus vaccine booster dose for people
50 and older, and many parents of very
young children are waiting for news
about vaccines for those under 5. That’s
not to mention the potential need for areformulated vaccine to confront a new
variant, if it arises. Mr. Biden warned that
“if Congress fails to act, we won’t have the
supply we need this fall to ensure that
shots are available, free, easily accessible
for all Americans.” The administration
has said it lacks money for advance orders
of vaccines and supplies of monoclonal
antibodies, and treatments for the immu-
nocompromised also are threatened if
there is not more funding. Moreover, the
Health Resources and Services Adminis-
tration covid-19 uninsured program
stopped accepting reimbursement claims
on March 22 and will stop accepting
claims for vaccine administration on
April 5. This will make the pandemic fight
more difficult for those who have the least
protection.
Up until now, federal purchasing of
vaccines, diagnostic tests and supplies
has guaranteed a supply and moved man-
ufacturers to keep their production lines
open. If the government stops pre-pur-
chasing, it could throw the nation back
into supply shortages, as already hap-
pened once with tests. Have we learned
nothing?Are we ready for another wave?Not if Congress keeps stalling on covid funding.D.
C. PUBLIC schools were in dis-
repair. Textbooks took forever
to move from warehouses to
classrooms. New teachers’ pay-
checks got lost in the system, and daily
student attendance went largely un-
tracked. There was no uniform c urriculum
and no art or music taught in elementary
classes. Student test scores lagged far be-
low the national average, and fewer than
10 percent of students performed at grade
level.
Those are some of the facts about D.C.
schools in 2007, when then-Mayor Adrian
M. Fenty (D) persuaded the D.C. Council to
transfer control of the public education
system from the elected school board to
him. Now mayoral control — and the re-
forms it enabled under three different
mayors — are a central issue in D.C.’s
upcoming elections for mayor and council.
At a recent Ward 7 forum, D.C. Mayor
Muriel E. Bowser (D) said the current
structure should stay. Two members of
the D.C. Council who are challenging her
in the June 21 Democratic primary, At-Large member Robert C. White Jr. and
Ward 8 member Trayon White Sr., dis-
agreed, as did fellow mayoral candidate
James Butler.
Why on Earth would anyone want a
return to a dysfunctional school board,
after mayoral control helped transform
D.C. schools into some of the country’s
fastest-improving schools? Robert White
told us he did not necessarily want a
return to the school board. Talk about
opposing mayoral control, he said, is like
talk about defunding police, in that the
words should not be taken literally. He
said he would appoint a study group to
examine all options. Yet, in his answer to a
questionnaire from the Washington
Teachers’ Union, Mr. White was unequivo-
cal in his support for a school board.
“Reestablishing a board,” he wrote, “would
allow for the city to have a larger focus on
education and closer ties to each commu-
nity we all serve.”
This is obfuscation on an issue that
requires clarity. Ending mayoral control
and re-empowering an elected schoolboard risks 15 years of improvement. The
teachers union, a vociferous opponent of
the city’s successful reforms in staffing,
curriculum and governance, would regain
its outsize influence. Since 2007, there
have been increases in student achieve-
ment across all student groups, and on the
national report card, D.C. has come closer
than ever to the national average, with
gains in reading and math in the fourth
and eighth grades.
The system still faces enormous chal-
lenges. Far too many students are still not
proficient in reading and math. Black and
Latino students lag behind their White
peers. Retaining good teachers and princi-
pals is a struggle. And the covid-19 pan-
demic, which separated children from so-
cial and academic environments in
schools, has set back progress. All the more
reason to keep a structure that has worked,
instead of returning to the old one that did
not. The question should not be whether
mayoral control should continue, but who
should be the mayor in control of the city’s
schools.A prerequisite to be D.C. mayorVoters should elect a leader willing to run the schools.nations that are part of the Organization
of the Petroleum Exporting Countries
(OPEC) to step up and pump more.
Mr. Biden has called for this, but his
appeals have been largely ignored. OPEC
announced only a modest output in-
crease Thursday. Cutting the gas tax,
another popular idea, would be a big
mistake. It would reduce funding for
road upgrades and do nothing to in-
crease supply, which is the real problem.
A gas tax rebate, which some states are
now exploring, would be costly and re-
quire congressional action.
Tapping the Strategic Petroleum Re-
serve is the best of the range of not-
great ideas to keep gas prices from
shooting even higher. It offers some
short-term relief. Oil prices traded low-er Thursday as the news broke. As
Goldman Sachs told clients, this large of
a release would “ease, but not resolve”
the market problems.
What the United States really needs is
a pickup in domestic oil production.
There are signs that is happening, but it
takes time to ramp up. U.S. companies
now see there will be a need to refill the
petroleum reserve later this year. The
White House is also calling on Congress
to impose fees on energy companies that
hold permits to drill on federal lands but
have not yet started producing. All of this
should be combined with a push to
reduce fossil fuel usage in the long term.
Mr. Biden doesn’t have a lot of good
options to keep oil prices in check. He
picked the best one he had.P
RESIDENT BIDEN’S decision to
order the largest-ever release of
oil from the nation’s Strategic
Petroleum Reserve is a massive
effort for a little bit of relief at the pump.
By injecting an average of 1 million
barrels a day of stored oil into the market
over the next six months, Mr. Biden will
deplete nearly a third of the nation’s oil
reserve. But the initiative is justified:
Every few cents matter when gasoline
prices are sitting at the highest levels
Americans have ever seen (not adjusting
for inflation) — and Russian President
Vladimir Putin is reaping extra revenue
that he can use for his war in Ukraine.
The average price for a gallon of regular
gas hit a record high of $4.33 in early
March and continues to hover around
$4.20, according to AAA. That’s up nearly
a dollar since the start of the year, with
the vast majority of the surge happening
since Russia launched its invasion.
In the past, we have opposed releases
from the oil reserve. The stockpile is
meant to protect the nation against truly
dangerous and unforeseen circum-
stances that put the U.S. oil supply at risk.
It should be tapped only when absolutely
necessary, such as in the event of a major
hurricane or attack against the United
States.
But tapping the reserve makes sense
now. The United States is leading a global
pushback against Russia’s war in
Ukraine. There has been huge bipartisan
support in Congress and among the
public for halting all Russian energy
imports. Many would like to see Euro-
pean countries do the same. Curtailing
Russian oil and gas sales around the
world is a major hit to Mr. Putin’s budget
and war funding. But it also cuts off
about 10 percent of petroleum supplies
on the world market, which means there
is not enough supply of oil to meet
demand.
The ideal solution to this imbalance
would be for other major oil-exportingRelease, baby, releaseMr. Biden’s decision to tap U.S. oil reserves is the right call.STEFANI REYNOLDS/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
A gas pump in D.C. on Thursday.Regarding the March 27 editorial “An
absurd cost of incarceration”:
The sometimes unfair cost of inmate
telephone calls is not the only thing wrong
with them. A far greater wrong is that
every word an inmate says on the phone is
recorded. When an inmate won’t confess
to a crime, law enforcement officials listen
to the recordings of his phone calls, hop-
ing he might have let slip something that
could help their case. Then they play any
helpful recordings at the inmate’s trial. It’s
true they warn the inmate at the begin-
ning of each call that it is being recorded.
But recording his words as the price of
letting him speak to the outside world is
an extortion. It must be stopped.
Franklin B. Olmsted, La Plata, Md.The price of a telephone callThere are striking parallels between the
Russian invasion of Ukraine and the Win-
ter War of 1939 to 1940 between the Soviet
Union and Finland. In both wars, the
Russian leadership (Joseph Stalin in 1939)
expected quick conquests with little oppo-
sition. Instead, in both cases, Russian forc-
es met with ferocious and tactically bril-
liant resistance that resulted in heavy loss-
es, amounting to an estimated 300,0 00
Russian casualties in the Winter War.
The sheer mass of the Red Army even-
tually overcame the Finns, but its poor
performance probably encouraged Adolf
Hitler’s disastrous decision to attack the
Soviet Union in 1941. However, the Red
Army learned from its mistakes in Fin-
land, restructured and ultimately defeat-
ed the Wehrmacht.
I fear a similar scenario now once the
war in Ukraine reaches some conclusion.
NATO must not be deceived by the under-
performance of the Russian military in
Ukraine and relapse into its pre-Ukraine
complacency. Let the West beware.
Roy Mariuzza, Chevy ChaseThe second Winter War?In their March 27 Sunday Opinion
essay, “What if everyone voted? The case
for 100 percent democracy.,” E.J. Dionne
Jr. and Miles Rapoport called for manda-
tory universal voting. Though this is a
worthy goal, implementation as they
proposed is unrealistic.
If we want nearly universal voting, the
way to do it is to grant a refundable tax
credit (I suggest $200). Americans hate
being told what to do but often respond
to tax incentives. A tax credit for voting
could be verified by automatic reporting
by state election officials, with the added
benefit that anyone voting twice (e.g., in
more than one state) would be caught.
Bipartisan appeal! The cost of a tax credit
is not small but could be offset by other
changes in a broader tax bill. The effect
on the tax system would be progressive.
Victor Thuronyi, Takoma ParkHow to get people to voteBi-khim Hsiao’s March 25 op-ed,
“Ukraine has inspired Taiwan. We must
stand with them.,” used the Ukraine issue
to distort the fact that both sides of the
Taiwan Strait belong to China.
The Taiwan question and the Ukraine
crisis are different. Ukraine is a sovereign
state, and the Ukraine crisis is a conflict
between sovereign countries; Taiwan is
part of China’s territory, and the Taiwan
question is a Chinese internal affair.
Taiwan will always be an inalienable
part of China’s territory. It is not a sovereign
state. The 1943 Cairo Declaration states
that Taiwan shall be restored to China. The
1945 Potsdam Proclamation reaf-
firms that the terms of the Cairo Declara-
tion shall be carried out.Since the People’s
Republic of China was founded and be-
came the sole legal government represent-
ing the whole of China, Taiwan has indis-
putably been part of China. U.N. Resolution
2758 further confirmed Taiwan’s status.
In a March 18 video call with Chinese
President Xi Jinping, President Biden reit-
erated that the United States adheres to the
one-China policy and does not support
Taiwan independence.
People on both sides of the Taiwan Strait
are Chinese bonded by blood ties. Millions
of Taiwanese live and work on the main-
land. As Taiwan’s largest export market
and source of its biggest trade surplus, the
mainland brings tangible benefits and
well-being to Taiwan’s compatriots. How
can there be any threat?
The Taiwan question is not about de-
mocracy vs. authoritarianism but about
secession vs. anti-secession. Drawing a line
in the Taiwan Strait is to provoke confron-
tation. This is the only and real threat to the
people of Taiwan. The future of Taiwan lies
in peaceful development of cross-strait
relations.
Zhu Haiquan, Washington
The writer is chief of the political section of
the Chinese Embassy.Taiwan is not like UkraineRegarding the March 26 Metro article
“Montpelier board votes amid tension”:
Montpelier Foundation Chairman
Gene Hickok and his cohorts on the Mont-
pelier Foundation Board of Directors
broke faith with the descendant commu-
nity at James Madison’s home. Montpelier
was leading the way in this critical area of
scholarship — the part of presidential
history that continues to be almost entire-
ly hidden from posterity.
We need collaboration with the com-
munity of descendants of those enslaved
by our presidents to uncover this part of
our history, and we need trust. That can’t
happen with these kinds of unilateral
regressions from what appeared to be
earnest commitments made not so long
ago. All of the professionals quoted in the
article see the path clearly, and that path
must be resumed with the Montpelier
Descendants Committee. These profes-
sionals all seem committed to an honest
and thorough rendering of the history at
Montpelier. Despite his superficial rheto-
ric, Mr. Hickok is clearly the outlier. It
seems as if it is his time to become part of
history.
David Fisher, Bethesda
The writer is a presidential historian
a nd author of a series of
p residential biographies.A snapshot is rarely an accurate view of
the circumstances being observed. The
situation at Montpelier concerning the
Montpelier Descendants Committee
(MDC) and the Montpelier Foundation
Board of Directors is an example of such a
“snapshot.”
I am the great-great-granddaughter of
Paul Jennings, who was born enslaved at
Montpelier and died a free man in D.C. His
1865 “A Colored Man’s Reminiscences of
James Madison” is considered a singular
document in the history of enslavement
in the early American republic. In Novem-
ber, I was elected as the second member of
the Jennings family to sit on the Montpe-
lier Foundation Board. Jennings’s mother
and extended family lie buried there in
the cemetery for the enslaved.
The Montpelier Foundation Board of
Directors did not reverse course on what
was described as a historic path toward
ensuring that 50 percent of its board
would be descendants of Montpelier’s
enslaved. The board declared it no longer
recognized the MDC as the “sole represen-
tative” of the Montpelier enslaved descen-
dant community. I voted for this because
members of my family were not repre-
sented by the MDC.
The MDC has an ideological agenda
that runs counter to our intended involve-
ment with Montpelier. The Jennings fam-
ily supports the Montpelier Foundation
and its mission as a historic entity dedi-
cated to preservation and research. We
support its efforts to tell the whole of
Montpelier’s history, good and bad, free
and enslaved, including the stories of our
ancestors who toiled and are buried there.
Mary Alexander, E smont, Va.An unfortunate breakdown