LETTERS: FOOD, WATER, AIR SHOULD BE PROTECTED

To the editor:

"Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." These are the inalienable rights decreed in the Declaration of Independence. Sen. Kinder (Southeast Missourian, Aug. 16) might like other words to be present in their place, but other words are not present. We are guaranteed neither property nor profits. Indeed, one characteristic shared by these three guarantees is that, like democracy itself, they are priceless; to none can we attach a meaningful monetary value. But they are fundamental to our way of life, to our value system. The Declaration of Independence does not promise "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness so long as they are cost effective and do not infringe on property rights."

Sen. Kinder suggests that legislation and activities protecting our life, liberty and happiness be evaluated in terms of cost-benefit analysis and risk assessment. Sen. Kinder would reject laws that infringe on property owner's rights or result in unfunded mandates. Let us explore some consequences of these attitudes.

When a young girl falls down a well in Texas, does the nation stop to ask "but how much is she worth and how much will it cost to pull her out?" Certain inalienable rights, like life, are more important than economics. But Sen. Kinder, apparently, would have us perform a cost-benefit analysis, have us stop and count the pennies, and maybe decide against the rescue attempt.

Do I have the right to shoot a gun at you? If you are standing in a crowd of 100, or 1,000 or a million, do I gain that right? Is there some size crowd in which you can stand that would make firing the gun acceptable? Our laws define the act as immoral and illegal not because of the risk to the person in the crowd, but because of the nature of the act that places us at risk. To the person shot, the 1 in a million risk becomes meaningless; that person is 100 percent injured or killed. But apparently Sen. Kinder would have us perform a risk assessment on the gun owner, and maybe decide that firing the gun into a large crowd places each individual at such a low risk that it is an acceptable behavior.

Do I, on my property, have the right to store, burn and release all manner of toxic wastes regardless of the impact on my neighbors. Can I poison the streams that flow through their property, the water they drink, the air they breath, the ground that we all live on? With ownership we gain rights, but also responsibilities, and one responsibility is not to risk the health of our neighbors. But Sen. Kinder's emphasis on property rights argues that a property owner has the right to do what he or she wishes regardless of the cost to neighbors and the community.

Should we be able to trust that our drinking water is meeting adequate standards of cleanliness, and that the waste that neighboring communities produce is being adequately treated before it is released upstream of our drinking water source? And should we not expect to pay, through our taxes, for both purifying our drinking water, and treating our waste sufficiently to meet state and federal standards? Assuming we agree that the answer is yes, the question is what mechanism do we employ to assure this?

One solution is to have state or federal standards, establish a public management bureaucracy, and then levy taxes to pay for the system. This would require a central agency, and a tendency to produce a one-size-fits-all system where local authorities would have limited ability to modify approaches to meet local conditions - and state or federal taxes would increase. A second approach is to have state or federal standards, but provide local authorities with flexibility to levy their own taxes as they see fit, and develop their own approaches to meeting the standards (this is the so-called unfunded mandates approach). A third is to have no state or federal standards, and hope that local authorities establish their own standard and means of reaching them. Unfunded mandates, such as current clean water standards, are often a reasonable way of assuring safe standards while providing local control.

Which approach would Sen. Kinder prefer? Given Sen. Kinder's rejection of unfunded mandates, his historic opposition to state or federal bureaucracies, it would seem that his position leads to local control. Each local community would have to hire its own water quality research staff, develop its own standards and means of achievement. We would never be assured that our own drinking water, much less the water flowing from neighboring communities upstream, has been adequately treated. And we would have no recourse should the water be unsafe.

Beware of the silver tongues of right-wing zealots who threaten your inalienable rights. We have a right to expect that the food we buy and the factory where we work are safe, that the air we breath is clean, that the water we drink is unpolluted, and that the planet we live on is protected. Reasonable rights to profits and property exist, but they do not exist without responsibilities. And if our more basic rights to health, safety and a well-managed environment are jeopardized, we have the right to regulate.

Do mainstream, common-sense values fall on the side of the girl in Texas, the potential shooting victim in the crowd, the health of neighbors, and the community's right to clean water? Are the extremists those who value "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," or those who place property and profits above all else? Sen. Kinder would undermine not only our environment, but also protection for consumers, workers, neighbors and communities.

ALAN R.P. JOURNET

Cape Girardeau