Social Policy

Picture the stands of the Los Angeles Coliseum filled with babies and toddlers. Now picture all of the children crying. This is a picture--and only part of the whole picture--of child abuse in Los Angeles County. A county inter-agency study released this month found that 61 children had been killed by their parents or care-givers in 1991, and 120,358 were victims of physical or sexual abuse--roughly 86,000 of them under the age of 2.

The abortion gag rule will be rescinded. A Freedom of Choice Act can be signed. Parents of sick children will be entitled to family leave. The National Endowment for the Arts will be given back to the artists. Gays won't be hounded out of the military because of their sexual orientation. An AIDS czar will be appointed. Supreme Court Justice Harry A. Blackmun can retire. The Reagan-Bush years are over.

A major task of Soviet ideological policy was the promotion of Russian nationalism and cultural traditions in order to isolate Russians from degenerate Western lifestyles. For instance, foreign movies were viewed mostly as bearers of hostile ideology and morals. They made up a very tiny part of the films permitted by the authorities for public viewing. Even those select few were shorn of sex and violence.

In Orange County last month, the phrase "the crime of poverty" took on a sinister new meaning for the poorest of the county's citizens. On May 18, the City Council of Santa Ana enacted an ordinance that will make it unlawful for homeless persons to live within the confines of that city. Within the last two months, Santa Ana, Fullerton and Orange have all adopted ordinances that prohibit camping in all public areas.

The solution to Santa Monica's homeless problem is very simple: Completely eliminate all of the city's social services programs, which not only sustain transients but attract them in ever-greater hordes. These vagrant derelicts do not come to Santa Monica for the ocean view; they come for the "free ride." With a bumbling, Fellini-esque City Council largely populated by armchair dreamers who are comfortable to sit back and let the taxpayer subsidize their pathetic, PIMBY (Please . . . In My Back Yard)

As former Massachusetts Sen. Paul E. Tsongas prepares to take his campaign beyond New Hampshire, strategists in both parties are searching for the weak spots in his message--an unusual blend of pro-business views on economics and positions on social policy that Tsongas himself has described as "extremely liberal." The sharpened focus on Tsongas was dramatically illustrated in Sunday's Democratic debate, when he faced a flurry of criticism for his support of nuclear power.

Eleven of the 12 nations in the European Community are rarities these days, as many other countries--including the United States and Great Britain--seek a competitive edge by slashing wages, benefits and jobs of their workers. The 11 are showing both good economic sense and humanitarian qualities by insisting that their workers must be helped, not hurt, by agreements to eliminate trade barriers and mesh the economies of the EC countries.

When German border guards stopped their car on the way home from the Netherlands last winter, Kathi K. and her husband assumed they were looking for drugs. Instead, they pounced upon a sack containing sanitary napkins and a brochure from a Dutch clinic. "We suspect you have illegally aborted a child," one of the guards was later quoted as saying. Kathi K. was taken into custody and brought to a Catholic hospital, where she says she was forced to undergo a gynecological examination.

Insisting that "I am not a government basher," President Bush continued his assault Friday on critics of his social policies and declared that his Administration favors an appropriate role for federal assistance to help solve the nation's domestic woes. "I'm not against government per se," Bush told a commencement audience at Caltech in Pasadena.

Risk assessment is a tool used by scientists to evaluate technical data. Proper use of the tool requires scientific knowledge. Since its broad adoption by the Environmental Protection Agency in the mid-1980s, risk assessment in the hands of others unfortunately has become a toy to create uninformed social policy out of rhetoric rather than scientific reason. A recent example is the series of lawsuits in Los Angeles filed by community leaders to halt malathion spraying over urban areas.