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an independent newspaper EDITORIALS


T O Facing a $7 billion loss, the Postal Service has a strong case for union concessions.


HE RECESSION has hammered just about every big institution in the American economy, and none harder than the U.S. Postal Service. Already suffering from competition with alter-


native modes of communication — from Federal Express to instant messaging — the Postal Serv- ice lost huge amounts of business mail, much of it solicitations for credit cards and subprime mortgages that are, shall we say, no longer in vogue. Total mail volume plunged from 213 bil- lion pieces in 2006 to 177 billion pieces in 2009. Much if not most of this business will never re- turn. The Postal Service is on course to lose $7 billion in its current fiscal year and has de- clared its business model “unsustainable.” Having slashed costs in almost every way Congress will allow, the Postal Service now


Gutting the ATF


The NRA’s latest attempt to weaken gun regulation


NLY ABOUT 10 percent of the nation’s 100,000 licensed gun dealers are audited each year by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobac- co, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). The


ATF cannot fine wayward dealers; its only tool at the moment involves revoking a miscreant’s li- cense. And that happens only about 100 times an- nually. But even this level of scrutiny rankles the Na- tional Rifle Association, which is pushing for legis- lation that threatens to gut the ATF’s already lim- ited ability to keep illegal guns off the streets. The bill, formally known as the ATF Reform and Fire- arms Modernization Act, is making headway in both houses of Congress, with hearings likely to take place in the Senate this month. The bill should be dramatically rewritten or scrapped alto- gether.


Gun dealers make some legitimate arguments


for revamping the ATF. Dealers say that the laws governing their business are often so vague that the ATF could pounce on an innocent typograph- ical mistake to put their licenses in jeopardy. More precision in the language would help dealers know what is expected and give the ATF a solid legal ba- sis to act. The bill would also allow the agency — apparently for the first time — to exact a sliding scale of fines. But the bill goes much further than is necessary


in reforming the law — and in some instances does not go far enough. The legislation would allow the ATF to act only against dealers who “willfully” commit violations. At the same time, it would force the ATF to provide repeated warnings before moving against wayward dealers. The bar for ac- tion is set so high that it would make it all but im- possible for the ATF to press forward with any case. These provisions are so alarming that even the Obama administration — long AWOL on sen- sible and much needed gun regulations — has raised concerns.


seeks concessions from its employees in labor negotiations that began last Wednesday. Given that labor costs, at $56 billion per year, make up 78 percent of the company’s budget, we think that management has a strong argument. No one would contend that postal workers lead a cushy existence. But their compensation is, in some respects, more generous than that re- ceived by others in comparable situations. They are protected by a no-layoff clause. The com- pany pays 79 percent of each employee’s health insurance premiums, as opposed to the 72 per- cent that other federal agencies pay. (The aver- age private employer pays 70 percent.) Elimi- nating this discrepancy would save more than half a billion dollars per year. Given the declin- ing volume of mail, it also makes sense to use more part-time and seasonal workers.


Not surprisingly, postal unions disagree and are promising to push back in negotiations. Fed- eral law forbids the unions to strike but other- wise strengthens their hand. For example, the law gives unions a veto over any reduction in their fringe benefits. Disputes go to binding ar- bitration, in which a panel essentially decides what would be a fair settlement. It does not have to take into account the impact on the Postal Service’s financial condition. This makes no sense, and it has to change — lest taxpayers ulti- mately be saddled with another costly bailout. Several recent bills have proposed requiring


arbitrators to consider the service’s financial predicament in adjudicating contract disputes, a vital reform Congress must enact to help save the Postal Service from what looks more and more like an inevitable crisis.


TOM TOLES


TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 7, 2010


LETTERS TO THE EDITOR dletters@washpost.com


Our ailing malpractice system Regarding Manoj Jain’s Aug. 31 Health article,


“ ‘Dear Dr.: I plan to sue you for malpractice’ ”: The American Medical Association always has held that patients who have been injured through negligence should be compensated fairly. Unfortu- nately, the liability system has failed patients, but it is extremely lucrative for trial lawyers, who receive the lion’s share of jury awards. The litigation lottery invites abuse, inefficiency and persecution of the blameless. According to a Harvard study, 40 percent of lawsuits are filed without any evidence of a med- ical error or patient injury. It’s clear from Dr. Jain’s insightful article that phy- sician mistrust of the flawed medical liability system has a profound impact on the practice of medicine. Defensive medicine, higher health-care costs and re- duced access to health care will continue until prov- en legal reforms restore physician trust in the med- ical liability system. The AMA continues to support comprehensive medical liability reform that is already working in states such as California and Texas. It remains un- known if other innovative proposals for reform will prove effective. The AMA supports further testing provided under the health-system reform law to ver- ify that health courts, safe harbors or other propos- als will inject common sense into the legal system. CECILB. WILSON, Chicago


The writer is president of the American Medical Association.





There are three social goals of malpractice litiga- tion: (1) to deter unsafe practices, (2) to compensate people injured through negligence and (3) to exact corrective justice. Unfortunately, the medical mal- practice system fails to achieve any of these goals. There is no doubt that fear of a lawsuit results in


defensive medicine on the part of physicians, and this escalates health-care costs. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that tort reform could re- duce medical costs by $54 billion over the next 10 years. However, state courts in Georgia and Illinois recently overturned tort reform legislation, calling it unconstitutional. This suggests that significant tort reform is an unlikely remedy to the malpractice crisis. Other alternatives, such as medical tribunals, health courts and early-settlement models, need to be considered. Our malpractice system is costly and inefficient, and it does not promote good medical care. It is bro- ken and is badly in need of repair. KEVIN R. LOUGHLIN, Boston


The writer is a physician. Good and evil in the Bible I do not doubt the sincerity of the religious views


offered by Stanley Cohen in his letter about the Glenn Beck rally [“The meaning of Glenn Beck’s ral- ly,” Sept. 2], but I do think his biblical interpretation is a strained one. According to Mr. Cohen, the “the- ology of the Exodus” endorses the view that the an- cient Israelites, victims of Egyptian bondage, were entitled to reparations for victimhood. The idea that the Book of Exodus teaches the sim- ple dichotomy of evil Egyptians and good Israelites is not plausible. In the Book of Numbers, we learn (14, 29-30) that the generation of Israelites who mi- raculously crossed the Red Sea turned out to be so morally rotten that God permitted just two, Joshua and Caleb, to enter the Promised Land. The Bible rejects a simple division of the world into the evil oppressor and innocent victim, perhaps because — to borrow from Alexander Solzhenitsyn — the wavering line between good and evil runs through every human heart. PATRICKMCCARTHY, Annandale


The bill in some instances would give gun deal- ers who had broken the law a free pass. For exam- ple, a dealer whose license had been revoked would be given 60 days to liquidate his inventory. Mayors Against Illegal Guns, a 500-strong coali- tion led by New York’s Michael R. Bloomberg and Boston’s Thomas M. Menino, rightly notes in op- posing the bill that this provision would allow


dealers the unacceptable opportunity “to transfer guns into their private inventory and sell them off without background checks.” As for the fines: Dealers could be fined a maxi- mum of $15,000 a year even when they commit multiple “serious” violations. This is such a rela- tively paltry amount that it would be unlikely to have much impact.


Mr. Obama vs. the greens The president is right to want more than a patchwork of carbon-cutting laws.


even more vigorous boil after the administra- tion sided with the Tennessee Valley Authority, a federal entity, in a lawsuit over power plant carbon emissions. This left enviros wondering aloud about what had happened to a president who made reversing the rising of the oceans a campaign promise. Mr. Obama deserves some criticism for his handling of climate legislation. But his adminis- tration’s decision on this case, Connecticut v. American Electric Power, is more than defen- sible. In 2004, a group of states and New York City sued several large electric utilities, charging that the greenhouse emissions their power plants produce were a “public nuisance” be-


E


NVIRONMENTALISTS were unhappy with President Obama after climate leg- islation foundered in the Senate. A week and a half ago, their blood came to an


cause they contributed to global warming, which harmed those jurisdictions. A district court refused to hear the case, saying that it in- volved questions best left to the political branches of government. The U.S. Court of Ap- peals for the 2nd Circuit disagreed, arguing that the political branches hadn’t developed a policy on carbon emissions; so the states could appeal to common law, which allows for nuisance claims. The Obama administration filed a brief on Aug. 26 with the Supreme Court, which might hear the case. The administration point- ed out that since the Second Circuit’s ruling, the Environmental Protection Agency has nearly completed preparations to regulate greenhouse emissions from utilities under the Clean Air Act. As long as it addresses the nuisance the states identified — and the administration makes a good argument that it does — that policy dis- places common law, the legal basis of the suit.


Setting aside the legal technicalities, these


sorts of cases are not the best way to reduce America’s carbon emissions. Pursuing separate torts against different emitters will result in a patchwork of judicial mandates in lieu of com- prehensive regulation, the nature, scale and ex- pense of which will no doubt depend on which judge hears each case. EPA regulation, too, has deficiencies, including the possibility that dif- ferent presidents will apply it inconsistently. But it’s more predictable, and it’s universal. Still, environmentalists rightly worry that the White House won’t ever allow the EPA’s pre- pared rules to come into force, given high politi- cal opposition to EPA carbon regulation. Con- gress may also try to strip the EPA of its ability to regulate. If the administration declines to reg- ulate, after all — or if Congress forces the EPA to desist — the plaintiffs will have better grounds and better reason to sue than they do now.


The wrong concerns on prison rape


For the second time in three months, The Post has editorialized against the Justice Department’s un- conscionable foot-dragging on issuing standards in- tended to reduce prison rape — and for the second time The Post missed the mark [“A tolerance of rape,” editorial, Aug. 30]. The United States neither lacks nor needs “standards” to prevent rape, in pris- ons or elsewhere. The Eighth Amendment of the Constitution and a host of laws and regulations out- law the victimization, sexual and otherwise, of pris- oners. The problem is that these laws and reg- ulations are not enforced. The federal judiciary has largely nullified the means prisoners might use to protect themselves. Given the judge-invented “deliberate indifference” standard and the “qualified immunity” defense as well as the stumbling blocks to valid and important prisoners’ claims created by the Orwellian-named Prison Litigation Reform Act, even horrible abuse in prison is routinely un-actionable except against the perpetrator, who is typically judgment-proof as a practical matter. The promulgation or non-promulgation of “pris-


on rape standards” is a sadly inconsequential side- show to the main event: providing victims of abuse with legal recourse sufficiently effective to compel changes in the cultures of the prisons and jails where they live. Provision of such recourse requires, however, responsible (and unlikely) actions by Con- gress and the Supreme Court, in aid of an invisible constituency with virtually no clout and hardly any advocates. If The Post wishes to help stop prison rape, the lat- ter should be the subject of its editorials. Breast- beating about “standards” is beside the point. VICTORM. GLASBERG, Alexandria


The writer is a lawyer who handles prison-abuse cases.


LOCAL OPINIONS 3Join the debate at washingtonpost.com/localopinions


Passing up pooches equally in the District


As a dog lover and a former dog exhibitor and breeder, I was drawn to the Sept. 2 Metro article “In study, cabs bypass fares with guide dogs,” about the difficulty that blind people with guide dogs some- times have getting a taxi to stop for them. The article reported


that the Equal Rights Center conducted 30 tests and that in half of them taxi drivers


dogs. I believe the tests were flawed because they


The taxi tests were flawed because they left out a group that should have been included: sighted people with dogs.


passed someone with a guide dog to pick up someone without a guide dog. The article also pointed out that under local and federal law, businesses must make reasonable accommo- dations for blind people and their service


left out a group that should have been in- cluded. The missing group is sighted people with dogs of similar size to the service dogs. (Paris Hilton with her Chihuahua need not apply.) I am confident that the sighted people with dogs would also have


been passed on by the cabbies. The Post headline might then have read, “Blind and sighted people treated equally — dogs discriminated against.” GERALD E. SHELDON, Rockville


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What the hair-impaired do


Regarding Claire Tieder’s Sept. 3 letter “It’s more than a hairdo ... ”: Ms. Tieder says “stunning” women of a certain


age are to be applauded for wearing their hair befit- ting who they are. Perhaps Ms. Tieder is one of the stunning women to whom she refers. Those of us who are not stunning welcome whatever non- natural resources are available to improve how we look. That includes hair dye and haircuts. Whether our stylists are “brilliant” or not is moot. DONNAMANZ, Vienna


d


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