Letters to the Editor
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

‘New York in Bondage’
In its editorial position against the 2005 Transportation Bond Act, The New York Sun mistakes a churlish piety for responsibility. Before seeking new borrowing, “Learn to spend the money you have wisely,” it urges the Metropolitan Transportation Authority [“New York in Bondage,” September 21, 2005].
Any rider of new subway cars and buses knows that the MTA has spent its capital funds to great positive effect. Fair minded users of mass transit are experiencing the result of strategic, targeted capital spending – and not just on new, air-conditioned rolling stock and modernized stations.
Two decades ago, trains broke down on an average of more than once a week. Now, less than once every two months, an improvement of 1,196%.
Ridership is up by 34% and delays are down by 74%. The Transportation Bond Act is supported by watchdog groups like the Straphangers Campaign as well as the governor, the mayor, and the state comptroller who all recognize that the Bond Act is needed to keep our transportation system and economy strong.
KATHERINE N. LAPP
Executive Director
Metropolitan Transportation Authority
Manhattan
‘Freedom Center’
The New York Sun’s editorial “Freedom Center” states: “With so many university faculties full of members of the blame-America first crowd … our own view is that museums will play an increasingly important educational role in the years ahead” [September 29, 2005].
What does this have to do with the issue of locating the International Freedom Center “museum” at ground zero?
The reason not to locate it there is that this is New York City in 2005, and it is packed with blame-America first idiots – in colleges and universities from the Jewish Theological Seminary to Columbia University to New York University and to every college in the City University of New York system.
A huge percentage of New York City public school teachers blame America first; 95% of the people living on the Upper West Side blame America first. Go to any gentrified section of Brooklyn or Harlem and you will find plenty of blame-America people.
How long do you think it would be before the International Freedom Center would be sponsoring lectures on how the Palestinian people are gallantly fighting for their freedom against the fascist-Zionist Israeli occupiers?
As has been argued ad nauseum, this is a free country and anybody is allowed to debate these views – but not at ground zero
If you are so enamored of the museum at Ellis Island and it is too crowded to squeeze in the International Freedom Center, may I suggest they land on Plymouth Rock?
DAVID M. O’NEILL
Manhattan
Mr. O’Neill is an adjunct professor of economics at Baruch College of the City University of New York.
‘Bush, God, and Hurricanes’
Conservative pundits will probably caution long-disillusioned environmentalists to refrain from their eagerness to concoct a link between the recent spate of hurricanes and global warming [“Bush, God, and Hurricanes,” Editorial, September 23, 2005].
But I’m sure this will not deter them from at least giving it their best shot. Yet contrary to what they are now postulating, this is really not a left-wing vs. right-wing issue, but more of junk science vs. honest-scientific-inquiry issue, which, by the way, would benefit greatly from the empirical evidence that has been provided in the last few decades.
It is much easier to connect dots that actually do not exist between natural disasters such as Hurricane Katrina and the myth of global warming.
However, historical facts do not yield even the remotest possibility of a link between the fairy tale of global warming and the alleged increase in hurricanes in the last few decades.
If that were the case, how can one explain that fact that from 1901 until 1950 – when the United States economy was a fraction of its current size and fossil fuel consumption was next to nil – there were 34 hurricanes that would have been rated at Category 3, 4, or 5 in size on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale?
That is an estimated 20% more hurricanes than during the period between 1951 to 2000, when U.S. manufacturing exploded and automobile use increased at an unprecedented rate.
I am afraid that the facts do not bear out the conclusion at which ideologically driven environmentalists seem so eager to arrive.
MIGUEL A. GUANIPA
Whitinsville, Mass.
Please address letters intended for publication to the Editor of The New York Sun. Letters may be sent by e-mail to editor@nysun.com, facsimile to 212-608-7348, or post to 105 Chambers Street, New York City 10007. Please include a return address and daytime telephone number. Letters may be edited.