Economic And Political

A call for legislative term limits has once again entered the political fray in Maryland. Among the more vocal proponents are state Sen. Andrew Harris, a Republican candidate for the First District congressional seat, and any number of General Assembly candidates. Although talk of term limits seemed to peak in the 1990s, its revival is hardly surprising considering the difficult economic times and the rise of populist candidates seeking to tap into voter frustration. Term limits have a certain appeal — if one's chief desire is to throw the rascals out. The problem is that term limits tend not to accomplish what its supporters are seeking.

MEXICO CITY -- It was a typical Saturday afternoon on the corner of Chalco and Garay in Mexico City's poorest district -- until the ground opened up and swallowed Pati Ortiz.Ortiz was sitting at Hortencia Gener's patio quesadilla stand when they heard the earth crack. Gener felt Ortiz grab at her skirt. She heard her scream. And then, Ortiz was gone -- sucked into a 20-foot-deep hole that ruptured without warning in the concrete under her feet.It was a sinkhole, one of dozens that pop open each rainy season in a sprawling, overpopulated city built on the worst possible place -- a lake that Mexico's ancestral Aztecs chose as their imperial seat and that the conquering Spaniards drained to make way for modern Mexico City.

Maryland has a tradition of stepping up to meet transportation challenges. The evidence is visible in such structures as the Bay Bridge, the tunnels under Baltimore Harbor and a network of well-maintained highways. It doesn't come easy or cheap. Periodically, a point comes where elected officials have to tell us to dig deeper into our pockets to ease traffic jams, keep the wheels on the bus and keep the economy humming. We're getting there again. The $27 billion in needs over a 20-year period identified by a blue-ribbon commission in 2000 has ballooned to $40 billion, driven in large part by soaring construction costs.

I know we have become a nation of such short attention spans and long-term addiction to instant gratification that asking viewers to spend even an hour with a documentary that could change the way they see the world is probably a fool's errand. But this fool is asking -- no begging -- you to see "Hard Times: Lost on Long Island," an HBO documentary premiering at 9 Monday night and repeating throughout the month on HBO and HBO2. I have not seen anything on-air, online or in print that so deftly nails one of the most important and least reported stories of our economic and political lives in this presidential election year.

Our freedoms and free markets have created the world's broadest middle class, and it is so exceptional because the keys of economic and political liberties belong to the individual. Big government and leftist Ideologies have repeatedly failed, with the tragic loss of tens of millions of lives, because they greedily kept power for themselves and suppressed the freedoms for which people have fought over the ages. That is also why America is mankind's last, best hope. Mike Nieman, Annapolis

Bill Clinton looks like a liberal Dan Quayle.If Ross Perot is so hot at solving problems, he ought to run for mayor of Baltimore.China's rulers have opted for both economic choice and political conformity, one of which will last.

Checks will arrive on time, but nearly every other task the Social Security Administration performs - from answering phones to determining eligibility for claims - will be delayed if Congress fails to stop steep federal budget cuts from taking effect this week, officials warned Monday. The Woodlawn-based agency is bracing for a cut of roughly 8 percent to its $11.5 billion budget if Congress does not avert the government-wide reductions known as sequestration. Officials say the cuts would leave people who call the agency's hotline on hold for 10 minutes and delay some disability decisions by a month.

Two recent reports appearing on the same day last week in The New York Times and The Washington Post illustrate U.S. intentions in Iraq. What they reveal is that despite the heralded "end" of U.S. participation in the war there, U.S. policy continues to depend on our security apparatus to influence Iraq, at the expense of Iraqis' sovereignty and dignity. The Times report informed us that the U.S. State Departmentdecided to cut the U.S. embassy staff by 50 percent from its current 16,000 personnel.

Bob Ehrlich's recent column claiming that multiculturalism destroys democracy takes a very Eurocentric view of America ("Multiculturalism is the enemy of democracy," June 2). It selectively glosses over some of the ugly things our nation has done on its way to becoming who we are today. The idea that America was built on a foundation of economic and political freedom, regardless of class, economic status or education, is a pleasant fiction, but the reality was quite different. When our country was founded, only white, land-owning males were allowed to vote.

BANGKOK, Thailand -- The Soviet Union enlisted further Western support for efforts to reform its political and economic structures Sunday without obtaining specific financial aid from the world's richest industrial nations.The finance ministers and central bank governors of the Group of Seven industrial democracies agreed to send their deputies to Moscow to discuss concrete approaches to the economic and, ultimately, political problems facing the Soviet Union.The G-7 countries agreed that the meeting with senior Soviet economic and political leaders was a "unique opportunity for a direct exchange . . . on the Soviet economic situation and the status of their reform efforts."