Personal Responsibility

City residents are responsible for own trashI am dismayed that The Sun's editorial "City must clear way for cleaner streets" (Oct. 15) placed the burden of responsibility for clean streets entirely on the city.While I very much applaud the students who took their time, effort and money to assist a neighborhood clearly at risk, I think that the perception you leave, that city government is doing nothing to address grime, is disingenuous and ignores all that really is going on.More attention needs to be placed on the personal responsibility of every citizen of the city to be a good neighbor.

WASHINGTON -- On Jan. 20, 1997, as an ebullient Bill Clinton took the oath of office for the second term that he hoped would secure his place in history, he returned to a theme that had been at the core of his claim to be a new kind of Democrat, declaring: "Each and every one of us, in our own way, must assume personal responsibility, not only for ourselves and our families but for our neighbors and our nation."Exactly one year later, Clinton learned that Kenneth W. Starr, the Whitewater independent counsel, was investigating accusations that the president had started a sexual relationship with a White House intern in 1995 and then tried to cover it up.Had the man who won the presidency by speaking out for the people who "play by the rules" once more surrendered to a lifelong compulsion to bend and break them?

WASHINGTON -- The first state in the nation to end the practice of increasing a welfare check when a recipient has another baby conceded yesterday that the policy has failed to reduce birthrates.The Rutgers University study leading to that conclusion, commissioned by the state of New Jersey, could deal a blow to the 20 other states that since have adopted "family caps." And it poses a challenge to conservatives who argued that a federally required cap is necessary for welfare reform to succeed nationally.

BOSTON -- This one is for Priscilla Parten, the Derry, N.H., woman who had the temerity to ask Lamar Alexander who would care for the elderly if the budget is cut according to the GOP pattern.The answer from the presidential candidate, one of the men hawking their wares across New Hampshire was that ''We're going to have to accept more personal responsibility in our own families for reading to our children and caring for our parents, and that's going to be inconvenient and difficult.''Happy New Year, Priscilla and open up your calendar.

BOSTON -- Now that we have repealed welfare, I have a modest proposal. Let's go all the way and rescind childhood.Childhood has become far too burdensome for the American public to bear. It isn't good for the country. It isn't even good for children who are captured in an unwholesome and prolonged state of dependency.The whole idea of childhood, it should be remembered, is nothing but an anachronistic leftover from the original liberals. Before the so-called Enlightenment, before Rousseau, before the left-wing conspiracy of 18th-century do-gooders, the young were dressed, worked and looked upon as short adults.

MILLION MAN March? If Nation of Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan really wants to send a message, let him detour the whole entourage up the Baltimore-Washington Parkway to a neighborhood like Baltimore County's Sudbrook.A community of modest, well-kept homes in a northwest slice of the county, it's as middle America as you'll find. Dads shooting baskets on driveways with their kids after work. Moms chatting over the back fence. Teens mowing lawns. Folks washing their cars and tending hedgerows.

I DID NOT SUPPORT the Million Man March. I did not share the jubilation in anticipation of the convergence on Washington. And even if Minister Farrakhan had invited women, this black woman could not and would not have marched.I could understand, but not affirm, the efforts by those who said they would march, but do not support Minister Farrakhan and disagree with his politics. I could not set aside Minister Farrakhan's years of racism, gay-bashing, sexism, and anti-Semitism. I was deeply troubled to hear some of my longtime allies explaining that the march was "bigger than Farrakhan," and I was comforted by knowing that Mary Frances Berry (the chairwoman of the U.S. Com mission on Civil Rights)

It's an old saw that you can't legislate morality. Yet the new GOP majority in Congress seems determined to enact sweeping reforms aimed at restoring ''accountability'' and ''personal responsibility'' to those who receive welfare benefits.There is a good bit of self-righteousness and hypocrisy here masquerading as public policy. The fact is, Congress only wants to make some people more ''accountable'' and ''responsible.''Americans overwhelmingly say they are opposed to ''welfare.'' But when Social Security, unemployment insurance and other forms of assistance are taken into account fully half of all non-farm households in the U.S. receive benefits from one or more government programs.

In recent months, it seems as if newsmakers have made an art form of shrugging off responsibility: Baseball player Darryl Strawberry has blamed his alcoholism and drug addiction on the demands of being a celebrity. Erik and Lyle Menendez say they were abused by their parents and therefore not guilty of their murders. And when tennis star Jennifer Capriati was arrested recently for possessing marijuana, her father took the public rap by saying he pushed her too hard to compete when she was young.

IF YOU'VE been listening to the babble from the Bush administration, you would think that the notion of personal responsibility is something foreign or new to most of the African-American community. It has become a code phrase for "what's wrong with those people?" and is sprinkled liberally throughout analyses of why the uprising in Los Angeles happened.Photos and videotape shot during the violence have inspired several commentators to intone that what's needed now in the black community is "a sense of personal responsibility."

Former NFL quarterback Steve McNair left this world under tawdry circumstances, which might help some people come to grips with another senseless, violent death, but you know it's not as simple as somebody just being in the wrong place at the wrong time doing the wrong thing. Whatever his sins were, he has surely paid a greater price for them than most, which makes this less of a lesson in morality than another cautionary tale about the perils of wealth and fame. Why do so many big-time athletes and big-time celebrities get themselves into situations that end tragically?

When the Republican Congress and Democratic President Bill Clinton agreed to "end welfare as we know it" in 1996, it stood to reason that states would need time to recover from decades of policies that undermined work incentives and encouraged family breakups - or never forming two-parent families in the first place. After more than a decade with the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 in place, however, we now can see success has been widespread and deep, and we can assess how some states effectively capitalized on the freedom offered by this landmark national welfare reform, and how some failed embarrassingly.

Bill Cosby was the big draw at yesterday's Park Heights block party, despite the controversy the actor-pitchman has stirred up since switching from soft-selling Jell-O to hard-selling a message of black self-responsibility. He's been scolding African-Americans, particularly the men, for years: Take care of your kids - heck, marry the mother of your kids - don't drop out of school, stop committing crimes, get a job, fix your own community instead of blaming outside forces. But if Cosby thinks this message is news to anyone at the Park Heights Barber Shop, a short walk up the street to this neighborhood institution would set him straight.

CINCINNATI - Sen. Barack Obama vowed yesterday to fight for civil rights if elected president, but he also told a gathering of the NAACP that he stands by his statements that personal responsibility is a key to solving problems in black communities. "NAACP, I'm here to report: I'm not going to stop talking about it," Obama told a crowd of 3,000 members of the Baltimore-based National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, gathered here for its annual convention. "Yes, we have to demand more responsibility from Washington.

In October, Baltimore will roll out a $2 million advertising campaign aimed at debunking the excuses that people have for littering. "Don't make excuses. Make a difference" will be emblazoned on bumper stickers and billboards as well as promoted in radio and television advertising. "There really are no good excuses for littering or not helping reduce litter," said Ed Callahan, creative director for Planit, the Baltimore-based agency that developed the campaign for the city. The announcement today of the Cleaner Baltimore campaign by Mayor Sheila Dixon comes about five weeks before the city's Sept.

Ozomatli Ozomatli has been at the crossroads of music and activism for more than a decade, and its newest album, Don't Mess With the Dragon, is all about personal responsibility. "People growing up, people taking care of their own lives. The healthier people get, the better the music gets," said bassist Wil-Dog Abers on the band's Web site. Tracks on Dragon address the Bush administration's response to Hurricane Katrina devastation and more. Doors open at 8 p.m. Wednesday at Sonar, 407 E. Saratoga St. Tickets are $17. Call 410-327-8333 or go to ticketmaster.

It seems that every time we open a phone book or drive past a highway billboard or turn on the television, we are bombarded with personal-injury lawyer advertisements encouraging people to sue for anything that might go wrong. Slip and fall on some wet leaves? Sue. Ate too many Big Macs? Sue. Don't think your son got enough playing time on the football team? Sue. Instead of accepting responsibility for their actions, people too often look to those faces in the Yellow Pages to help them find others to blame and file a lawsuit in hopes of striking it rich.

I wrote a column last month, in the wake of the acquittal of Naval Academy Midshipman Lamar Owens on rape charges, saying that any young woman who knowingly drinks herself to the point of blacking out bears some responsibility for what happens next, be it an auto accident or sexual assault. I wrote that the verdict was a warning to all college-aged women that society is unlikely to consider them a victim if they deliberately drank themselves stupid. "It is not that a man is free to have sex with a woman who is too drunk to object.

WASHINGTON -- Thank you, but I don't need a lecture on personal responsibility. Many of you apparently felt otherwise after reading my recent column on the use of the justice system as a cudgel against black children. The column dealt with the mistreatment of more than 100 juveniles, most of them black, who were left in a flooded New Orleans detention center for up to five days without food and water after Hurricane Katrina. It was also about the death of Martin Lee Anderson, an unresisting 14-year-old black kid who was hit, choked and restrained by up to nine guards in a Panama City, Fla., "boot camp."

THE ISSUE: -- What are the top concerns facing Howard County as 2006 begins? Growth management top concern for 2006 Growth management is the top concern facing Howard County in 2006. Attention to this concern will require strong leadership to add a dose of personal responsibility to balance the county's preference for personal freedoms. Rampant, unfettered growth of new developments threatens to exhaust county resources. Better stewardship of the land is available through simple enforcement of existing initiatives, such as the Adequate Public Facilities Ordinance (APFO)