The Washington Post - USA (2022-06-07)

A22 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.TUESDAY, JUNE 7 , 2022

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

[email protected]

DRAWING BOARD JOE HELLER

B Y JOE HELLER

ABCDE

FREDERICK J. RYAN JR. Publisher and Chief Executive Officer

NEWS SALLY BUZBEE....................................Executive Editor CAMERON BARR.....................Senior Managing Editor KAT DOWNS MULDER.......Chief Product Officer & ME STEVEN GINSBERG............................Managing Editor KRISSAH THOMPSON.........................Managing Editor

SHARIF DURHAMS.................Deputy Managing Editor MONICA NORTON..................Deputy Managing Editor LIZ SEYMOUR.........................Deputy Managing Editor MARK W. SMITH.....................Deputy Managing Editor SCOTT VANCE.........................Deputy Managing Editor BARBARA VOBEJDA...............Deputy Managing Editor

EDITORIAL AND OPINIONS RUTH MARCUS................Deputy Editorial Page Editor KAREN TUMULTY.............Deputy Editorial Page Editor JO-ANN ARMAO............Associate Editorial Page Editor

OFFICERS JAMES W. COLEY JR.........................................Production L. WAYNE CONNELL............................Human Resources KATE M. DAVEY.....................................Revenue Strategy ELIZABETH H. DIAZ...Audience Development & Insights GREGG J. FERNANDES.........Customer Care & Logistics SHANI GEORGE......................................Communications STEPHEN P. GIBSON.....................Finance & Operations KRISTINE CORATTI KELLY....Communications & Events JOHN B. KENNEDY...................General Counsel & Labor

MIKI TOLIVER KING..................................................Arc XP SHAILESH PRAKASH..Digital Product Dev./Engineering MICHAEL A. RIBERO....................................Subscriptions JOY ROBINS..........................................................Revenue

The Washington Post 1301 K St. NW, Washington, D.C. 20071 (202) 334-6000

ABCDE

AN INDEPENDENT NEWSPAPER

EDITORIALS

T

HE BACK-TO-BACK massacres at a Buffalo grocery store and a Texas elementary school have brought into sharp focus the dis- parity in federal gun law that forbids people younger than 18 from buying handguns but allows them to purchase semiautomatic rifles. That someone too young to buy alcohol or cigarettes is allowed to buy weapons designed for war makes no sense. If ever a loophole cried out to be closed, it is this dangerous distinction. Congress must make it a top priority in any package of reforms. Recent mass shootings — at least seven more occurred over the weekend — have increased pressure on Congress. The House is poised to pass a raft of gun-control measures, including raising the minimum age for rifle purchases, but the Democratic-led package will likely fail because of Republican opposition in the Senate. There is hope — tempered by past failures to enact gun control after other high-profile mass shootings — that negotiations between a small group of senators will result in a modest bill that

would include some toughening of federal gun laws along with school security and mental health measures. Key senators, The Post’s Mike DeBonis reported, said a gun deal could be within reach. Unfortunately, dealing with the dan- ger posed by assault weapons doesn’t appear to be in the mix, a mistake that needs to be rectified. President Biden is right that the best approach would be to ban what has become the weapon of choice of mass murderers, but, failing that, the minimum age for purchasing them needs to be raised. Six of the nine deadliest mass shootings in the United States since 2018, the New York Times reported, were committed by people 21 or younger, a shift from earlier decades when most mass-casualty shooters were men in their mid-20s, 30s or 40s. Only six states — Florida, Washington, Vermont, California, Illinois and Hawaii — have increased the minimum purchase age for long guns to 21. Florida acted after a 19-year-old gunman killed 17 and wounded 17 more people at Parkland’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

The governor who signed the measure into law was Republican Rick Scott, now a senator. One would have hoped he would be calling for Congress to follow suit, particularly since he was critical of Washington inaction when he signed the law and was running for Senate. “If you look at the federal government, nothing seems to have happened there. You go elect people, you expect them to represent you, get things done,” then- Gov. Scott said. Now, however, he says states should decide the matter. More encouraging was the support for raising the age to 21 expressed by Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.), who also said he is open to backing a ban on assault weapons. And in Texas, major Republican donors joined other conservatives in signing an open letter calling on Con- gress to increase gun restrictions, including raising the minimum age for gun purchases. While Senate Democrats no doubt will have to compromise if there is to be any hope of getting a new gun law enacted, they should not give ground on this common-sense reform.

Common sense on guns

Congress should raise the minimum age for purchasing rifles.

T

HE D.C. area’s transit system, struggling to regain even half its pre-pandemic subway ridership, is short on trains, short on train drivers and, for good reason, short on public confidence. Along with Metro’s customer base, its revenue flow has been decimated. When top Metro officials told a Maryland legislative panel the other day that the agency had turned a corner, some lawmakers were incredulous. “If we’ve turned a corner, we’ve run into a wall,” said state Del. Marc A. Korman, a Democrat whose suburban Montgomery County district includes several Red Line stations. Yet as Metro’s management travails and safety lapses continue to mount, the most worrying of its challenges, a budget implosion looming next year, goes all but undiscussed — including by the system’s top stakeholders. Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) hasn’t mentioned it. The dozen or so candidates running in Mary- land’s gubernatorial primaries haven’t highlighted it. And D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) has been mostly mum beyond asserting, on her reelection campaign website, that she has “invested in trans- portation.”

Ms. Bowser, first elected eight years ago, needs no tutorials on the central role Metro played in the District’s long- r unning pre-pandemic boom, or its critical importance to the city’s prospects for recovery — a process she says will take several years. She rightly expressed alarm last month when Metro acknowl- edged that half of its roughly 500 train conductors were not up-to-date on their training and dozens had to be pulled from their regular day jobs to get recerti- fied, exacerbating delays. The transit agency, the mayor said, has a management problem. That appears to be an understatement. After the training recertification melt- down was divulged, Metro’s general man- ager, Paul J. Wiedefeld, resigned a month before his scheduled retirement, as did a top deputy. Both had been at their jobs for six years, during which the agency seemed to make tangible progress on safety and maintenance after a string of accidents and failures. However, revelations since last fall have renewed long-standing concerns that Metro’s deeply entrenched culture problems persist. Those revelations in- cluded malfunctioning wheels on Met-

ro’s newest generation of rail cars — a safety problem known for years but never reported to senior managers or to Metro’s board — that resulted in a derailment last fall. That triggered ongoing delays owing to more than half the subway’s fleet of rail cars being pulled from service. More recently, Metro’s chief safety officers reported that an “alarming” number of subway maintenance workers have nar- rowly missed being electrocuted by third rails to which power had not been cut, as is required when such track work is underway. Those problems strongly suggest that rehabilitating Metro would be a daunt- ing enough problem were it on a sound budgetary footing. In fact, the agency is on financial life support in the form of a huge infusion of federal pandemic stimu- lus funds, which will start to run out next summer. “Long-term, we’re going to have to have a serious discussion about the financial model — is it sustainable?” said Paul C. Smedberg, Metro’s board chair- man. “How are we going to fund [the system] going forward?” That’s the right question. But the people who need to answer it are silent.

What is Metro not short on?

The transit agency is low on trains, drivers, revenue and public confidence.

W

HITE HOUSE officials have confirmed President Biden intends to visit the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in the coming weeks. Though Mr. Biden cautioned Fri- day that he still has “no direct plans” for such a trip, that was a classic non-denial denial, issued perhaps because there are still last-minute details to be resolved. The bottom line is that, barring some unforeseen change, the president will significantly soften the U.S. posture toward the regime whose de facto head, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (known as MBS), bears primary responsi- bility for the assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi — among other human rights violations — and which the president had previously promised, and at- tempted, to hold at a greater distance. Realpolitik has triumphed over moral considerations. Like so many of his pred- ecessors, Mr. Biden has made U.S. access to the kingdom’s vast oil supplies his priority. Shaken by higher gas prices in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the administration has been pleading with the Saudis to tap their petroleum reserves. These are probably the largest remaining such resource that could be brought to market in the short run — albeit with probably only modest effects on gas prices. A presidential visit to Saudi Arabia, and the legitimacy it confers upon the crown prince, is part of the price MBS is making Washington pay for that favor as well as for others, including steps toward recognizing Israel and a tenuous halt to Saudi Arabia’s war against Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen. This is a deeply disappointing reversal, but Mr. Biden could still salvage some of his original, principled position. He could do this in two ways: first, by raising U.S. human rights concerns, including the

Khashoggi case, while in Saudi Arabia — not only privately, in a meeting with MBS, but publicly, in any forum, such as a news conference, that presents itself. Mr. Biden should fully exploit any opening to do this, as presidents visiting other authori- tarian states have at least tried to do in the past. Second, he should demand freedom for the many people in Saudi Arabia detained or otherwise restricted in their liberties for political reasons. Indeed, Mr. Biden should insist some or all of them be set free in conjunction with his visit. Three dual U.S.-Saudi citizens — Walid al-Fitaihi, Salah al-Haidar and Bader al-Ibrahim — have been arrested and detained on trumped-up charges at different times since MBS launched a crackdown on domestic opponents in November 2017. Though eventually re-

leased from jail, in part because of U.S. pressure, they remain under official suspicion and forbidden to leave the country, according to the Freedom Initia- tive, a U.S.-based nonprofit that monitors human rights in the Middle East. The president might also allow time during his visit to talk with another U.S.-supported dictator, Abdel Fatah al- Sissi of Egypt, who will be in Saudi Arabia at the same time for a regional gathering. If so, Mr. Biden should press for the release of Egyptian dissident Alaa Abdel Fattah, 40, a secular pro-democracy activist imprisoned for much of the past decade since Sissi took power in a coup. Modest though they would be, such gestures are the least Mr. Biden must do to retain U.S. consistency and credibility on human rights in the Arab world.

A disappointing reversal

On human rights, Mr. Biden must speak truth to Saudi Arabia’s powerful.

HAMAD I MOHAMMED/REUTERS Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, on May 31, 2019.

I’d like to recommend that Elizabeth Grey’s description of heroin withdrawal, in her May 31 Health & Science essay, “I’m an ex-addict. Will U.S. kick its ‘war on drugs’?,” be required reading in every high school in the country. Judith MacArthur , Silver Spring

A harrowing story

Regarding the May 29 news article “Despite a smooth primary, Ga. voting advocates worry about fall”: “Insurrection” has appropriately been applied to the planning and subsequent invasion of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, but what is now being revealed as a strategy to not just overturn election results but also to prevent votes being cast and counted might be more appropriately called a revolution. Democracies are fragile everywhere, and this is especially so in countries in which citizens not only allow autocratic leaders to seize control but also are complacent, if not totally comfortable, with the result. We are now so polarized that a large percentage of us see the “other” as an enemy who wants to “re- place” them or minimize their influence. Our next presidential election will be almost 250 years after the formation of the world’s longest-surviving democracy, but unless we can find courageous and responsible leaders to speak up, we might be on a slippery slope to the disappearance of our nation as an exam- ple of what we have stood for for so long. Barry H. Epstein , Silver Spring

Has the revolution s tarted?

I’m pleased that “anti-nuclear senti- ment is fading around the world,” as noted in the May 31 news article “Con- cerns on climate spark push for nuclear.” The quoted activist, intent on closing California’s Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant, and who worries that such facilities produce “the most toxic ma- terial ever,” should inform her activism with two recent articles: “Study: Cutting pollution from fossil fuels would save 50,000 lives a year” [news, May 17] and “Report: Pollution responsible for 1 in 6 deaths worldwide over past five years” [Politics & the Nation, May 19]. The loudly touted but unrealized risks posed by nuclear power contrast starkly with the shocking confirmed — and continuing — toll from fossil fuels. We desperately need more of this proven, 24/365, zero-emissions, safe and scalable energy source to augment solar, wind and other green sources. Only with nuclear in the mix can we hope to eliminate our deadly dependence on fossil fuels in time to avoid climate disaster. Marvin Solberg , Edgewater

Turn to nuclear energy

future resources will be allocated within the agency to achieve statutory requirements. This includes improving the throughput and timelines in the new chemicals program, using real-world data and current industrial practices when as- sessing workplace risk, and demonstrating that the agency is consistently applying the scientific standards embedded in the stat- ute when making safety determinations. Chris Jahn , Washington The writer is president and chief executive of the American Chemistry Council.

Industries don’t usually endorse bigger budgets for their federal regulators. But the industry I represent, which makes cleaners, disinfectants and pesticides, is fighting to increase funding for the Envi- ronmental Protection Agency, and for good reason. The June 1 article “Shrinking budget, growing workload build an EPA crisis” documented well the many problems the agency faces because of financial short- falls. But it missed one: The EPA has an astounding backlog of 11,000 pesticide- related regulatory decisions because of staffing shortages. The resulting delays in approval of pesticide advancements hurt both the businesses that make the products and the consumers who benefit from them. Companies need certainty to get their products to market. Congress should ap- prove the larger EPA budget that Presi- dent Biden has requested so it can again become the preeminent environmental regulator it is supposed to be. Steve Caldeira , Washington The writer is president and chief executive of the Household & Commercial Products Association.

Regarding the June 1 news article “Shrinking budget, growing workload build an EPA crisis”: The American Chemistry Council agrees that the Environmental Protection Agency Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention needs more money and more staff to implement the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) effectively and efficiently according to congressional intent. We support the EPA having the resources it needs to help achieve the goals set out in the bipartisan 2016 amendments to the TSCA. However, our support for additional funding for the TSCA program comes with the expectation that the EPA will meet its statutory requirements, which it is cur- rently failing to do in multiple areas. The EPA must be transparent about how resources are being spent today, and how

The EPA needs resources

The June 2 front-page article “U.S. defends rocket transfer” provided exam- ples of all that is wrong with U.S. assistance to Ukraine. Disclosure of the number of rocket systems benefits no one but the enemy. The quantity (four) supplied and the timing of the support are consis- tent with an obviously unspoken policy of providing Ukraine with just enough assistance to delay losing. And it is conditioned on Ukraine using the assistance to fight only on, and consequently further destroy, Ukrainian territory. Rus- sian territory is off-limits. The idea that bleeding the Russian armed forces will cause them to termi- nate the fight is bankrupt. It didn’t work when the Germans tried in World War II, and it won’t work with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the helm. It is time for the United States and its allies to call Russia’s bluff and provide Ukraine with air, missile and artillery capabilities that match or exceed Russia’s. Paul Krumhaus , Annandale

We must step up for Ukraine

Though I understand the utility of photo-enforced traffic regulations for the most part, I’ve been gobsmacked myself by the overzealous sensitivity of these cameras, coupled with outrageous fines, as cited by the June 3 Metro article “One stop sign, one camera, $1.3 million in tickets for D.C.” My personal torture recently started after I — behind a car and in front of another — entered the intersection of Missouri Road and North Capitol Street NW during morning rush hour on a green arrow, turning northwest. Surprisingly, soon afterward I received a $150 ticket for turning left on a red light. The photo shows my car exiting the intersection, beyond a red arrow, green main light and another car on my tail. The ticket stated that the light was red for 0.2 seconds while I was exiting the intersection. For those who like math, that is one-fifth of a second. Absurd (so I thought), so I contested it — and lost. I also discovered that by contesting a D.C. ticket online you lose your right to contest in court and in person. Well, that’s sneaky. No one can convince me that the timing of the left arrow at that particular intersection protects people. Now I look at the green arrow as a sign to speed through it! Monica S. Baker , Chevy Chase

D.C.'s sneaky traffic cameras

The Washington Post - USA (2022-06-07)

Get our desktop app

Company

Features

Documentation

Resources