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FGHIJ Indonesia’s progress


an independent newspaper EDITORIALS


W There’s a good reason for renewed military ties.


AS THERE a contradiction this week between Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s repri- mand of the human rights records of Burma and Vietnam and the si-


multaneous U.S. decision to resume ties with a once-notorious branch of Indonesia’s military? Some human rights advocates seem to think so; they are furious that the Obama administration would reach out to Indonesia’s special forces. We think they are missing a key point. Indonesia to- day is a democracy — one of the great political success stories of the past decade. Vietnam, for all its loosening, remains a one-party state with little tolerance for dissent, and Burma is one of the world’s most repressive nations. The administra- tion is right to make distinctions accordingly. After meeting with Indonesian President Susi- lo Bambang Yudhoyono in Jakarta Thursday, De- fense Secretary Robert M. Gates announced “a gradual, limited program of security coopera- tion” with Kopassus, a special forces unit within Indonesia’s military. The unit was accused more than a decade ago of kidnappings and other abus- es, especially in East Timor, which was an Indo- nesian province before winning its independ- ence. The army’s critics, notably Human Rights Watch and Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), maintain that Kopassus has not reformed or repented suf- ficiently to merit U.S. cooperation. The Indone- sian activist Suciwati makes their case on the op- posite page today. Accountability for past crimes is essential, and


Mr. Gates said the United States will continue to press for that. But the critics lose sight of the enormous changes in Indonesia since the fall of dictator President Suharto in 1998. Indonesia has held multiparty elections and witnessed peaceful transfers of power. The world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation, with 240 million peo- ple, it remains mostly hospitable to its Hindu, Christian and other minorities. It has fought Is- lamic extremism and intolerance. And its mili- tary is under civilian control. The prospects for


human rights in such a situation flourish as long as democracy progresses — and the United States has every reason to strengthen its alliance and help, as much as possible, democracy to become more entrenched. In Vietnam, by contrast, simply joining a politi-


cal party other than that of the ruling Commu- nists is enough to earn someone a long prison sentence. As in China, Vietnam’s rulers have loos- ened their control of the economy and of people’s personal lives, which has unleashed economic growth. But in the past year, rulers have in- tensified their crackdown on political dissidents. Ms. Clinton, visiting Hanoi, vowed to continue to seek improved relations. But she rightly added that “the United States will continue to urge Viet- nam to strengthen its commitment to human rights, and give its people even greater say over the direction of their own lives.” Meanwhile Burma’s ruling junta is preparing to hold elections that, as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said Thursday, are on track to be “bogus” and a “sham.” Ms. Clinton, in only slightly more diplomatic language Friday, said the vote is “unlikely” to be free and fair. The junta has written the rules in such a way as to dis- qualify what was Burma’s most popular and legit- imate political force, the National League for De- mocracy, and its imprisoned leader, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi. As long as they are sidelined, a State Department official told us Friday, “we are not going to accept these elections as free, fair, credible and legitimate. They will not be.”


Many factors play into U.S. decisions on how to


engage with nations in this dynamic region, in- cluding economic interest and the importance of offering a balance to China’s rising power. But the nations that remain on a democratic track, such as Indonesia and the Philippines, offer the poten- tial to be far more useful allies — and more re- sponsible respecters of human rights — than any dictatorship. Human rights advocates ought to recognize that.


Cornucopia It’s time to end the excessive subsidies for corn ethanol. W


HEN WASHINGTON starts handing out cash, it can be hard to stop. See, for example, the decades of subsidies the government has showered on the


corn ethanol industry. The fuel was supposed to free America from its dependence on foreign oil and produce fewer carbon emissions in the proc- ess. It’s doing some of the former and little of the latter. But corn ethanol certainly doesn’t need the level of taxpayer support it’s been getting. Lawmakers are considering whether to renew these expensive subsidies; they shouldn’t. The feds give companies that combine corn


ethanol with gasoline a 45-cent tax subsidy for every gallon of corn ethanol added to gasoline. That’s on top of a tariff on imported sugar cane ethanol from Brazil and federal mandates re- quiring that steadily increasing amounts of these biofuels be produced. The Congressional Budget Office this month estimated that, all told, the costs to taxpayers of replacing a gallon of gasoline with one of corn ethanol add up to $1.78. The tax incentives alone cost the Treasury $6 billion in 2009. How about the environmental benefits? The


CBO calculates that it costs a huge $750 to re- duce annual carbon dioxide emissions by one ton using corn ethanol. And that figure relies on assumptions extremely favorable to the indus- try.


Not only are these subsidies expensive, but


they are redundant. Since Congress has mandat- ed that the industry furnish a steadily increasing number of gallons of ethanol every year, the stimulative effects of the tax incentives on corn ethanol production will continue to diminish. Numbers from the Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute at the University of Missouri, on which the CBO relies, show that over the next 10 years, corn ethanol production will still in- crease — just not quite as quickly — if Congress allows the subsidies to lapse this year and leaves the mandate in place.


At this point, the question should not be


whether to allow corn ethanol’s tax incentives and trade protections to expire. The debate should be about why corn ethanol deserves any federal protection at all. There are certainly more effective ways to reduce oil consumption and greenhouse emissions.


A slam dunk for hope


In D.C., local generosity rescues the dream of a basketball league.


T


HE BASKETBALL league in Northeast Washington began as a dream. The brainchild of a homeless man named James Russell, it would offer tourna-


ment-style play to keep teenagers off the streets. It would be run by the homeless. It would prove that everyone had something to contribute. And so it has — but not in the way anyone


expected. James Russell collected more than $1,000 from youths hoping to take part in the league, claiming that he would use the money to buy uni- forms and pay referees — maybe even book a trip to Atlanta for the winning team. Then, last month, he vanished, taking all the money and leaving the aspiring players and coaches in shock. Mr. Russell said he had become homeless after someone stole his own money. Now his scheme seemed likely to pass on the same harsh lesson. “The only thing I learned is that you can’t trust nobody,” said Caleb Swann, one of the players. But the story was not over yet. Wade Simmons,


a coach for the league who had once been home- less himself, stepped up to keep the league going.


Alocal store donated water and Gatorade. After a story about the league ran in The Post and aired on local television, donations began to pour in. Area residents, business owners and the Central Union Mission homeless shelter all offered their support. Now the league has received more than $7,000 in donations, and Coach Simmons hopes to expand it to indoor sports in later seasons. For young people who already had to struggle


—to find work, to pull together funds from part- time jobs and scanty personal savings, to put their confidence in a dream like a basketball league — the lessons of the league could have been a cruel one. Trust no one. Those who prom- ise to help you won’t follow through. People are looking out for only themselves. But instead the experience has proved the opposite — indeed, the very thing Mr. Russell claimed it would. Everyone has something to contribute. People do care.


For details on how to help the league, contact the Central Union Mission at dtreadwell @missiondc.org.


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SATURDAY, JULY 24, 2010 LETTERS TO THE EDITOR dletters@washpost.com


Kicking around solutions to soccer’s tied games Carlos Lozada’s column


“What’s the big idea?” [Outlook, July 11] came in the aftermath of the highly successful and widely viewed World Cup tournament from South Africa. Like many journalists, Mr. Lozada posed so- lutions to the tedious “penalty kick shootout” that decides tied games. His solution, counting fouls committed and cards issued during the game, will never hap- pen. Too artificial. Another, more workable solu- tion that is part of the flow of the game would be to have two 15- minute overtime periods and then keep playing until a team scores or is awarded a corner kick. This is the way national cup games were decided when I was coming up out of Philly soccer, since corner kicks show offense and are a natural part of the game. While we are at it, I would suggest experimenting with three points for a goal from outside the penalty box, two points for a goal from within the box and one point for a penalty kick. In this manner, a team losing 2-0 late in the game, an almost impossible hurdle under present rules of the game, would still have an opportunity to tie or win the game with one shot. Why not? It worked in basketball with the three-point shot, bringing opponents out to guard


FRANCK FIFE/AFP/GETTY IMAGES


Uruguayan players celebrate a goal during their World Cup quarterfinal match with Ghana.


the three-point shot and loosening up the inside lanes. Result: more scoring. Soccer, which is becoming more popular every year — from Major League Soccer down to the 5,000- member DC Stoddert Soccer, a youth league — needs experimentation to keep new fans and to continue the game’s growing popularity with the American sporting public.


LENOLIVER, Washington


The writer is a member of the National Soccer Hall of Fame.


An unfair portrayal of Hungary’s politics


The July 19 editorial “Hungary’s rightward lunge” was as inaccurate as it was unfair. It also revealed a superficial understanding of Hungary and Fidesz, the party that just won a landslide victory in the par- liamentary elections this spring. A few examples: In 2002, Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, did not cater to “Hungary’s extreme right,” as the editorial stated, but successfully opposed it and helped oust its representatives from parliament by defeating them during the elections. Although Washington did not welcome Hungary’s decision to purchase fourth-generation Swedish- British Gripen fighter planes rather than used


A first-rate medical program In the past two weeks, The Post has run two sto-


ries that involve the Washington Hospital Center’s Medical House Call Program: “House calls,” Health & Sci- ence, July 13, and “They’d been apart for ages,” Metro, July 18. The moth- er-daughter pic- ture with the Metro story was as uplift- ing as the House Call program itself. Dr. Eric De Jonge has assembled an extraordinary team of professionals who are providing exceptional medi- cal care for pa-


Edythe Simmons, left, and her mother, Eddye Williams.


tients in their own homes, at tremendous savings over comparable care in a hospital, nursing home or even a doctor’s office. My mother was in their care for several years when she was in her mid-90s, and we observed their service delivery firsthand: always caring, kind, honest and re- sourceful.


I was encouraged to learn that the health-care


reform legislation has incorporated at least some aspects of what this team is doing. Its work ought to be a national model for rational health-care de- livery to the elderly and infirm in a way that reduc- es total costs to the public. Thanks for giving these workers the spotlight they have earned.


BRUCE CARLTON, Washington Virginia takes what it’s owed Robert E. Weigend Jr. may be correct when he


asserted in his July 21 letter, “In Virginia, a ‘sur- plus’ built on burdening small businesses,” that Virginia used an accounting gimmick in reporting a $220 million budget surplus for the previous fis- cal year, but he is wrong in stating that an acceler- ated sales tax unfairly burdened small businesses. When sales taxes are collected throughout the month, these funds belong to the state, not the in- dividual business. By accelerating the payment date, Virginia is merely removing the interest-free loan these businesses enjoyed by having access to the tax money.


DENIS CRANE, Great Falls Health gains in Massachusetts


In “Bad omens for health ‘reform’ ” [op-ed, July 19], Robert J. Samuelson used Urban Institute esti- mates to say that health reform in Massachusetts has achieved little. Mr. Samuelson correctly stated that Massachusetts didn’t try to control costs in its 2006 legislation and that there’s no consensus yet there on how to control health-care spending. But his interpretation that the state’s health-reform gains have been “small” mischaracterized the evi- dence and deserved more discussion. Under Massachusetts’s 2006 health-reform ini-


tiative, insurance coverage and access to health care both rose significantly. At the same time, un- met health-care needs fell, and fewer adults had trouble affording care. These advances were espe- cially pronounced among lower-income adults. All of this occurred during the most severe economic downturn since the Great Depression. Rising health-care costs are a continuing chal-


lenge, reflecting the difficult politics of cutting health-care spending and reducing provider rev- enues in Massachusetts and the nation. Nonethe- less, the Massachusetts experience illustrates the substantial gains in insurance coverage, access and affordability of care that can be achieved with national reform. SHARON LONG ANDKAREN STOCKLEY, Washington


The writers are, respectively, an affiliated scholar and a research assistant at the Urban Institute.


American F-16s, it did not make Mr. Orbán persona non grata and a pariah, as the editorial suggested. In March 2002, President George W. Bush telephoned Mr. Orbán and invited him to visit the United States following the elections, which looked like an almost certain victory for Mr. Orbán’s Fidesz Party. As a staunch friend of the United States and an appreciative reader of The Post, I hope that the edi- torial policy relating to Hungary will be more bal- anced and factual in the future. GÉZA JESZENSZKY, Budapest


The writer was Hungary’s ambassador to the United States from 1998 to 2002.


The plight of Baileys Crossroads Daniel W. Keiper got it wrong when he said Bai-


leys Crossroads doesn’t need revitalization [let- ters, July 18]. Baileys is a mess. Litter, overgrown sidewalks and medians, and inadequate parking make it a destination of resigned convenience rather than preference. Sadly, Baileys seems to be the rule for much of this area rather than the exception. I recently re- turned to Northern Virginia after living nine years overseas in developing countries. The neglect of many of our public spaces rivals conditions I saw during that experience. It’s not just embarrassing; it’s disheartening. Whatever happened to civic pride? If “homogenized” revitalization brings back a sense of caring, then I’m all for it. DAVIDROBINSON, Alexandria


LINDA DAVIDSON/THE WASHINGTON POST


A critic’s unwitting assumptions I enjoyed Kevin Boyle’s review of James Pat-


terson’s new book [“Politics cheapens poverty,” Outlook, July 18]. One must point out, however, that Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s “enraged” re- sponse to President Bill Clinton’s 1996 abolition of Aid to Families With Dependent Children, after all, was somewhat disingenuous. Along with the liberal poverty-research industry, Moynihan spurred and sustained a discussion of poverty that came to focus quite narrowly on female-headed, single-parent families and welfare “dependence” — hysteria over which informed the 1996 legisla- tion. Mr. Boyle also characterized higher rates of black babies born to single mothers as a problem that “has grown far, far worse.” This ignores the much greater increase of such births among white women from 1970 to 2001 compared with other ra- cial groups. And it assumes uncritically that devia- tions from the two-parent norm are necessarily bad, rather than, as a generation of scholars has shown, simply different, workable and sometimes even the choice of the mother. To that end, Mr. Boyle unwittingly exhibits the same ideological as- sumptions as those he criticizes in his otherwise informative piece. MERLIN CHOWKWANYUN, Philadelphia


It’ll take more than carbon pricing


Steven Pearlstein’s column on climate policy and energy innovation [“Can regulation beget in- novation?,” Economy and Business, July 16] was half-right. Tighter environmental regulations have driven innovation while cleaning up smog-causing emissions from cars and power plants. But Mr. Pearlstein was wrong to suggest that merely pric- ing carbon will produce the low-carbon technolo- gies we need. Initial carbon prices will be very modest, while most forms of advanced carbon-free energy will be expensive. Carbon prices, consequently, will drive some additional demand for wind power and effi- ciency improvements — and a lot of switching from coal to natural gas. Deeper emissions reductions, however, will re- quire development of technologies that won’t meet foreseeable carbon prices; these include sequestra- tion of coal’s carbon dioxide emissions, improved storage of renewable energy, offshore wind power and, possibly, atmospheric carbon capture. With or without carbon pricing, more direct


government actions will be needed to spur devel- opment of low-carbon technologies, such as ag- gressive procurement of advanced energy technol- ogies to catalyze markets, sponsorship of first-of- kind commercial demonstration projects for new technology, and setting carbon performance stan- dards for power plants. Getting to a zero-carbon economic system by 2050 will be a much heavier lift than previously thought. It’s time to start. ARMOND COHEN ANDDANIEL SAREWITZ, Washington


Armond Cohen is executive director of the Clean Air Task Force, a national environmental group, and Dan Sarewitz is co-director of the Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes at Arizona State University.


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