Letters from the Issue of February 26, 2004

Donna MacDonald, president

e-Equality

North Miami

What a cheap shot -- but not surprising: On the cover of the February 5 issue, I read this headline about Tristram Korten's e-Equality column: "A popular computer clubhouse, free to Miami's poor, is short-circuited by the Bush administration." The article, however, didn't explain how the Bush administration was responsible for the closing.

Korten certainly insinuated the Bush administration was to blame, but then he proceeded to blame local politicians and local organizations for the closing. In fact it doesn't appear that federal money was involved in any way with this program. He made a reference to a global war costing so much money that a $600,000 local program was cut. Is he kidding?

He quoted someone in his article who talked about tax dollars being spent on a program that creates jobs, which e-Equality doesn't do. Makes sense to me. If we had an unlimited amount of money to spend, e-Equality would be a nice program to have; there is a benefit to computer literacy. I guess as long as it's not your tax dollars being sucked out of your pocket to pay for free programs, then all free programs are good.

Did Korten actually say in his column that people won't be able to play solitaire anymore?

Todd Parry

Miami Beach

Editor's note: In 2002 e-Equality received $163,000 in federal antipoverty funds administered by the Miami-Dade Empowerment Zone Trust. As Korten reported, Bryan Finnie, trust president and CEO, explained that the federal funding had been pulled back: "The president is not a big supporter of empowerment zones."

In last week's issue the wrong photograph accompanied theater critic Ronald Mangravite's review of The Drawer Boy. That photograph depicted a scene from the play Ten Unknowns, which is reviewed in this issue. New Times regrets the error.