the Mail.(Brief Article)

It's unfair to lump foundations that support campaign finance reform into the same category as corporate special interests (SCAN, March). The former are trying to fix the system, the latter to corrupt it. Public Campaign and its funding foundations propose full public financing of campaigns. But guess what? Our electoral system already is funded by the taxpayer through the hidden tax system that results from government giveaways to campaign contributors. Unfortunately, it's costing taxpayers hundreds of times more than if we simply paid for the elections up front!

Every year Congress doles out $150 billion in corporate welfare. That's $1,500 per taxpayer per year. For $10 per taxpayer per year we could completely fund congressional and presidential elections.

Our public electoral system should not be funded by private interests, but by the people to whom Congress owes its allegiance: the taxpayers. We must stop the cash flow from those who want laws written to those who write them. In any other country we'd call this bribery. Only in America do we call it freedom of speech.

Jack E. Lohman Business Leaders for Campaign Reform

One should not take seriously Mona Charen's diatribe against Democratic "race-baiting" (BIRD'S EYE, March). After all, Republicans relied heavily on such tactics throughout the party's ascendancy in the 1970s and '80s. Building on Nixon's "Southern Strategy," conservative candidates for office often sought to inflame white resentment against the welfare state.

From Reagan's "welfare queen" to Bush's Willie Horton to Jesse Helms' "white hands" ads to the revelations of Trent Lott's membership in the Council of Conservative Citizens, conservatism's claim of innocence with respect to these matters rings hollow. Charen and her comrades ought to denounce with equal force the political depradations of men whom they would prefer to celebrate, men whose role in the further alienation of black Americans over the past 35 years they would prefer to ignore.

Thomas Till Falls Church, Virginia