Editorial: Another Try at Nuclear Talks With Iran

Negotiations this week between the major powers and Iran on its nuclear program achieved only an agreement to hold technical talks in March and then another meeting in April. The outcome was frustratingly incremental, but it keeps alive the slim possibility of a diplomatic solution.

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The talks ground to a halt last June, as the Iranian issue became mired in the American presidential campaign. But now that Mr. Obama has won a second term he seems more willing to join Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China in shaping a deal that is more likely to get Iran to curb its nuclear work.

In Almaty, Kazakhstan, the major powers dropped their demand that Iran shut down its underground uranium-enrichment plant at Fordo, and insisted instead that Iran suspend enrichment work there and agree to unspecified conditions that would make it hard to quickly resume production. They also said that Iran could continue to produce and keep a small amount of its most dangerous product — uranium enriched to 20 percent, which can be turned quickly into bomb-grade material — for use in a research reactor that produces medical isotopes.

If Tehran agreed to these steps, the major powers said they would suspend some sanctions against Iran, including trade in gold and petrochemicals, and would not impose new sanctions through the United Nations Security Council and the European Union. The main oil and financial sanctions that have caused Iran's oil revenues and currency value to plummet would not be loosened.

Hours after the talks ended, a bipartisan group of members of Congress announced plans for new legislation to tighten the existing American penalties. While sanctions are an important element of American strategy, piling more on at this moment could harm, rather than advance, the chances for a negotiated deal with Iran.

At a news conference, the chief Iranian negotiator, Saeed Jalili, proclaimed the talks a "turning point." It is hard to know whether Iran will ever abandon its nuclear ambitions, after years of defying international demands to halt enrichment. Iran's political system is in turmoil, with a presidential election scheduled in June; a clear picture of Tehran's intentions is unlikely to emerge until after that. Mistrust runs deep on all sides. Still, it makes sense for the United States and its partners to be creative in pursuit of a deal that will prevent Iran from producing a nuclear weapon.

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Editorial: Better Care for Juvenile Offenders

It took four years. But the Obama administration has finally filled an important post at the Justice Department's Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, which oversees juvenile justice policy and distributes federal grants to encourage reform at the state and local levels.

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The new department administrator, Robert Listenbee Jr., is a respected trial lawyer and public defender from Philadelphia who has been extensively engaged with juvenile justice policy issues at both the state and national level. If he uses the office to full advantage, Mr. Listenbee can build on recent policy advances and push more states to humanize their juvenile justice systems.

Research has increasingly shown that locking up young people has negative effects. It places them at higher risk of dropping out of school and of being unemployed, and it makes it more likely that they will become permanently entangled with the criminal justice system.

By contrast, dealing with young low-level offenders through community-based programs keeps them more closely connected to their families and to local institutions, while also cutting recidivism.

As more states have gotten this message — sometimes after being sued for mistreating children in custody — the number of young offenders held in confinement has begun to go down. The Annie E. Casey Foundation, which focuses on disadvantaged children, reported this week that the number of young people locked away has recently reached a 35-year low, dropping from over 107,000 in 1995 to under 71,000 in 2010, the most recent year for which federal statistics are available. Crime has also declined, vindicating these policy changes.

An analysis of federal data by the Justice Policy Institute, a research group, singled out five states — Arizona, Connecticut, Louisiana, Minnesota and Tennessee — that cut their confined youth populations 50 percent or more by changing policies that steered children into locked facilities and by investing in community alternatives to incarceration.

Despite these recent improvements, the United States still leads the developed world in the number of young people it locks up. Mr. Listenbee should encourage the states to lock up fewer young people. He should also make sure that those for whom community placements may be inappropriate are kept safe and are provided the rehabilitative services they need.

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Editorial: More Cameras for New York City Streets

The Bloomberg administration has been working to combat a deadly problem in New York City: drivers who speed or run through red lights.

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What the city needs is what many other cities have: street cameras to catch drivers breaking the traffic laws. The administration has been pushing for more cameras at stoplights for years, and the transportation commissioner, Janette Sadik-Khan, also wants a new batch of "speed" cameras that catch drivers ignoring the city's normal speed limit of 30 miles per hour.

But decisions about traffic cameras in the city must be approved by the State Legislature. That's ridiculous, of course, especially since the lawmaker who usually blocks more traffic cameras, Assemblyman David Gantt, is from Rochester. Mr. Gantt, the chairman of the Assembly's transportation committee, should not have control over the city's public safety measures. New York City has 12,000 intersections with traffic lights, but the state has allowed the city to put up only 150 cameras to take photos of the license plates of cars illegally running through lights. City officials report that when a camera goes up, violations go down.

Late last year, 21 members of New York's City Council and a number of city health advocates and good-government groups appealed to state lawmakers to allow more cameras to make the streets safer. With cuts in traffic policing over the last decade, these cameras could fill in enforcement gaps. And they would save lives and money.

In 2011, 143 pedestrians were killed and more than 10,000 injured in traffic accidents on city streets. It is imperative that New York be allowed to use effective ways to enforce its speed limits and traffic rules.

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Op-Ed Columnist: Changing Minds After Newtown

In the two months since the massacre in Newtown, Conn., there are a lot of people who still can't shake it — who don't want to shake it, really. They keep replaying in their minds what it must have been like in Sandy Hook Elementary School that awful December morning when Adam Lanza killed 20 children and six adults at the school before taking his own life. They think about their own children. They wonder how America can stop such senseless, random, murderous spectacles.

Rebecca and Jon Bond are two such people. They have three children, ranging in ages from 4 to 8. (Jon has two older children as well.) They live in a townhouse in Greenwich Village. Previous mass shootings had spurred the usual "when will this stop?" thoughts, but like most of us, they soon moved on. The Bonds knew so little about guns that "I thought a magazine was, you know, a magazine," says Rebecca, a contributing editor at Architectural Digest.

Newtown changed them. Jon, 55, is a well-known advertising executive (he co-founded the hip firm Kirshenbaum & Bond in 1987); Rebecca, 46, is a branding expert. As they found themselves obsessively thinking and talking about Newtown, they decided to use their considerable talents and contacts to try to do something about it. On Thursday, I went to Minneapolis to get a glimpse of the earliest, tentative fruits of their labors.

Here is Jon and Rebecca's big idea: They want to create an anti-violence organization — a "brand," they call it — that will appeal to gun owners and nongun owners alike. "When you talk to gun owners, if your purpose is to make them feel bad, they will push back," said Jon, "and you will lose them."

"But," chimed in Rebecca, "when you reframe the issue as 'how can we save lives?' the conversation shifts. Responsible gun owners and nongun owners both want to save lives. They have that in common. The end goal is to save lives."

As advertisers and marketers, they had both worked with the liquor industry, and they had seen how outside pressure — from Mothers Against Drunk Driving, for instance — could change the larger culture so that once-acceptable behaviors became unacceptable. They had also seen how the industry had ultimately participated in safe drinking campaigns.

Whatever happens in Washington is not likely to change the behavior of gun owners. New laws, for instance, are unlikely to force gun owners to keep their guns under lock and key, so that children can't have access to them. The only thing that can really change such behavior is a cultural shift. The Bonds want to help bring about such a shift.

As they explained all this to me, Jon and Rebecca were joined by their friends Bob Barrie and Stuart D'Rozario, co-founders of the Minneapolis advertising agency Barrie D'Rozario Murphy, whose conference room they were all using. Another friend in the business, Claudine Cheever of Saatchi & Saatchi, was participating by phone.

Bob and Stuart were among those Jon and Rebecca had contacted early on. Stuart had flown to New York, where, over a long breakfast, they had devised a name for the brand: Evolve. If you put an "R" before and after the word "evolve" — which, indeed, they did when they designed the logo, in the lightest of type — it spells "Revolver."

In the subsequent weeks, Stuart and Bob had been working on an ad campaign, one that they hoped would capture the right "voice," as they put it — a tone that would vividly illustrate the importance of changing gun behavior without being polarizing.

Stuart laid out on the conference table some of the mock-ups he had done of potential print ads. One headline read: "Is the issue illegal guns or legal guns? Yes." A second one: "A gun in the house is 22 times more likely to cause an accident than protect you." Stuart liked that one, but Jon feared that it might be too hectoring, and thus too alienating. They let the question hang, and moved to another ad.

"Friends don't let friends with children keep guns unlocked in the house," read a third headline. Rebecca instantly reacted. "This one welcomes people," she said. "We want this brand to be welcoming, and inclusive. This one does it." Jon and the others nodded in agreement. As I left for the airport, they were still in the conference room, talking, thinking, looking, planning.

Even after they settle on the right voice, of course, there will be so much to do: a television campaign, social media, a Web site. Evolve has to become a living, breathing entity. And, of course, money has to be raised — money that will allow the ads to air and the organization to grow.

"Maybe I'll turn out to be naïve, but I'm optimistic," said Rebecca.

Me, too.

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Op-Ed Columnist: The Sequester: Poison Pill Politics

The deadline has passed. The sequester is in effect. And Congress is not in session.

We now know that our political system is broken beyond anything even remotely resembling a functional government.

The ridiculous bill was designed as a poison pill, but Republicans popped it like a Pez. Now the body politic — weak with battle fatigue, jerked from crisis to crisis and struggling to recover from a recession — has to wait to see how severe the damage will be.

(The director of the Congressional Budget Office estimates that the sequester could cost 750,000 jobs in 2013 alone.)

This is all because Republicans have refused to even consider new revenue as part of a deal. That includes revenue from closing tax loopholes, a move they supposedly support.

As Speaker John Boehner said after his Congressional leaders met with President Obama on Friday:

"Let's make it clear that the president got his tax hikes on Jan. 1. This discussion about revenue, in my view, is over."

Boehner's intransigence during the talks drew "cheers," according to a report in The New York Times, from his chronically intransigent colleagues. But their position is a twist of the truth that is coming dangerously close to becoming accepted wisdom by sheer volume of repetition. It must be battled back every time it is uttered.

Let's make this clear: it is wrong to characterize the American Taxpayer Relief Act as a "tax hike." In reality, much of what it did was allow 18 percent of the Bush tax cuts — mostly those affecting the wealthiest Americans — to expire while permanently locking in a whopping 82 percent of them.

But of course, that misrepresentation fit with the tired trope of Democrats as tax-and-spend liberals. It also completely ignores that it was Bush-era spending that dug the ditch we're in.

Republicans have defined their position, regardless of how reckless: austerity or bust. However, as economists have warned, austerity generally precedes — and, in fact, can cause — bust. Just look at Europe.

But Republicans are so dizzy over the deficits and delighted to lick the boots of billionaires that they cannot — or will not — see it. They are still trying to sell cut-to-grow snake oil: cut spending and cut taxes, and the economy will grow because rich people will be happy, and when rich people are happy they hire poor people, and then everyone's happy.

This is the vacuous talk of politicians trying to placate people with vacation homes, not a sensible solution for people trying to purchase, or simply retain, their first homes.

Now the president is trying to make the best of a bad situation and bring expectations in line with what is likely to happen.

When Gallup this week asked Americans to use one word to describe the sequester, negative words outnumbered good words four to one. The top three negative words or phrases were "bad," "disaster" and "God help us."

At a news conference after Friday's meeting with Congressional leaders, the president tried to tamp down some of the most dire predictions about the sequester's impact. He said:

"What's important to understand is that not everyone will feel the pain of these cuts right away. The pain, though, will be real."

The president knows well that if the sequester's effects are so diffused that the public — whose attention span is as narrow as a cat's hair — doesn't connect them to their source, people might think the administration cried wolf.

That's why he said, and will most likely continue to say for months, "So every time that we get a piece of economic news over the next month, next two months, next six months, as long as the sequester's in place we'll know that that economic news could have been better if Congress had not failed to act."

He must yoke this pain to the people who invited it. It's not as though most Americans don't already think poorly of Republicans anyway.

A Pew Research Center report released this week found that most Americans think the Republican Party, unlike the Democratic Party, is out of touch with the American people and too extreme. And most Americans did not see Republicans as open to change or looking out for the country's future as much as Democrats.

The president said Friday that "there is a caucus of common sense up on Capitol Hill" that includes Congressional Republicans who "privately at least" were willing to close loopholes to prevent the sequester.

Those privately reasonable Republicans might want to be more public before their party goes over another cliff and takes the country with them.

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Letters: Is the Voting Rights Law in Jeopardy?

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To the Editor:

Re "Voting Rights Law Draws Skepticism From Justices" (front page, Feb. 28):

Conservative justices and challengers from Alabama, supported by other opponents of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, suggest that 47 years of federal supervision of certain states' voting practices is long enough, that such oversight deprives the monitored state of its right to freely conduct its own elections.

Putting aside that Congressional hearings as recently as 2006 have found a continuing need for the supervision and for prior approval of changes required by Section 5 of the act, we should not forget that most of the states affected by the act spent nearly 100 years ignoring or subverting the clear meaning of the 14th and 15th Amendments, thereby depriving millions of African-Americans of their voting rights.

JOHN E. COLBERT
Chicago, Feb. 28, 2013

The writer is a lawyer.

To the Editor:

Statements from two Supreme Court justices during the oral argument regarding Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act demonstrate why we still need this law.

First, Justice Antonin Scalia said the statute amounted to a "perpetuation of racial entitlement." Ending racial discrimination was not and still is not the same as an entitlement.

Justice Scalia also should not belittle our democratically elected officials, who only seven years ago held hearings, took testimony and then decided nearly unanimously that racial discrimination in voting still existed in specific parts of the country where Section 5 applies. We elected them, not the court, to make such findings.

Similarly, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. takes the court far beyond its legitimate bounds when he asked if "the citizens in the South are more racist than citizens in the North." Section 5 does not identify states and counties and label them "racist," a term as charged and misused as "entitlement." Rather, the act asks if the vestiges of racial discrimination in voting have ended. Where Congress determined it has not, it extended Section 5.

STEPHEN F. GOLD
Philadelphia, Feb. 28, 2013

The writer is a civil rights and public interest lawyer.

To the Editor:

What began in 1965 with Lyndon B. Johnson's famous words "I speak tonight for the dignity of man and the destiny of democracy" would appear to be on the verge of ending with Justice Antonin Scalia's soon to be infamous words calling the same Voting Rights Act a "perpetuation of racial entitlement." Never before has our country so glaringly appeared on a backward track.

JESSE ALBERT
Los Angeles, Feb. 28, 2013

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Letter: Abortion in New York

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Re "Reproductive Rights in New York" (editorial, Feb. 20):

Why must The New York Times insist that the rights of women are contingent on increased access to abortion? We can help both mother and child.

Sadly, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo's proposed Reproductive Health Act won't even help women. It leaves women with crisis pregnancies alone when they most need extra support, instead preventing common-sense protections like informed-consent laws, even short waiting periods, and parental notification rules for minors— protections that polls consistently suggest have widespread public support.

The legislation allows non-doctors to perform abortions and even allows sex-selective abortion and pregnancy reduction from triplets or twins to a single child. And who will the Reproductive Health Act hurt the most? Poor and minority communities, where abortion rates are already as high as 60 percent.

Governor Cuomo, please listen to New Yorkers. A new poll from the Chiaroscuro Foundation found pro-choice voters agreeing that their state does not need more abortion.

Governor Cuomo's bill is not what New Yorkers want — and it's not what New York needs.

CAITLIN SEERY
Philadelphia, Feb. 20, 2013

The writer is a member of Catholic Voices U.S.A.

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Letters: High-Powered Women and the Changing Workplace

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Maureen Dowd's Feb. 24 column, "Pompom Girl for Feminism," had the ring of truth regarding women's access to executive roles.

While Sheryl Sandberg's advice may pertain to a privileged subset of women with Ivy League educations, "leaning in" is no solution for the gender bias, inflexible work schedules and pay inequities that many working women still face.

When I first used the term "glass ceiling" in a speech in 1978, I wanted to point out the invisible yet powerful institutional barriers to advancement for women rather than blame them for their lack of progress. Sadly, in many industries these barriers remain in place today.

Ms. Sandberg has been fortunate in not having to deal with gender discrimination in her career. While her accomplishments are admirable, she still represents the female exception and not the norm in the American workplace.

MARILYN LODEN
Naples, Fla., Feb. 26, 2013

The writer is an author and a management consultant on gender relations.

To the Editor:

You cannot work from home if you want to be part of Marissa Mayer's new Yahoo ("Get Off of Your Cloud," by Maureen Dowd, column, Feb. 27). But Ms. Mayer has built (and paid for) a nursery right next to her office to help her own work-life balance.

Ms. Mayer is a trailblazer all right: boldly carving a path that any other chief executive mega-millionaire can follow.

TOM GARDNER
Bedford, N.Y., Feb. 27, 2013

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Letter: Kenya’s Election

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Re "Neighbors Kill Neighbors in Kenya as Election Tensions Stir Age-Old Grievances" (front page, Feb. 22):

While tensions between local ethnic groups occasionally surface during election season, international observers are optimistic about a peaceful election in Kenya.

The Carter Center, the human rights organization founded by former President Jimmy Carter, said it has found Kenya's election season to be "generally peaceful" and has praised the competency of Kenya's Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission, particularly for its work with the judiciary to "strengthen Kenyan access to justice and rule of law."

Meanwhile, the International Foundation for Electoral Systems praised Kenya for undertaking "a significant electoral reform process" and for introducing new technology "to improve the quality of their voter register," which "has been well received by the population."

There is no doubt that Kenya has much to prove after our last election in 2007. But as we enter the final days of the campaign for the March 4 election, it is also important to note how far Kenya has come, reflected by the optimism of independent organizations committed to supporting free and fair elections.

ELKANAH ODEMBO
Ambassador of Kenya
Washington, Feb. 26, 2013

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Letter: Native Americans and Rape

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Re "Rape on the Reservation," by Louise Erdrich (Op-Ed, Feb. 27):

A lack of adequate legal protection is not the only way our government fails Native women who have been sexually assaulted. Despite devastatingly high rates of sexual assault, more than half the facilities run by Indian Health Services reportedly fail to offer emergency contraception.

Many more require a prescription, contrary to Food and Drug Administration rules that emergency contraception be available to women over 17 over the counter.

If used within 120 hours after an assault, emergency contraception can safely prevent pregnancy, but for some Native women, the next pharmacy is hundreds of miles away, and transportation costs are insurmountable.

We joined the American Civil Liberties Union in filing a Freedom of Information Act request to find out what our government is doing to right this wrong. Rape is not just a crime; it is also a public health epidemic. Indian Health Services cannot continue to flout its own internal policies, legal obligations and F.D.A. guidelines by depriving Native women of the health care they deserve.

CHARON ASETOYER
Chief Executive
Native American Community Board
Lake Andes, S.D., Feb. 28, 2013

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