Readers Write for Sunday, Dec. 20

The Senate should start over on health care. I can't believe what has happened to the health care reform bill! No public option. No Medicare extension. No cheap drugs from other countries. No competition for rich insurance companies.

The Senate should vote no on this "compromise care" bill, and start over on real health care reform.

DANIEL LANGE, EDINA

Time magazine has named Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve, its Person of the Year!

You know, the man who runs the "Fed," the entity that handles (more like manipulates) our money system and which not only caused the current recession, but the depression and hyperinflation we will be suffering through in the near future.

Bernanke is the man who refused to tell Congress where all the bank bailout funds went, who got them and how much. He seemed to have forgotten -- that's our money and we have every right to know what they did with it!

JIM PAULSON, FARMINGTON

The Dec. 13 article about student parking at the Minnetonka High School ("Minnetonka limits request for more parking at high school") is a great example of why our government is experiencing so many fiscal problems.

Because the kids have decided that it's not cool to ride the bus and they would rather drive, the taxpayers are expected to add parking spaces near the school so the little darlings are kept safe.

I commend the Minnetonka City Council for opposing this unnecessary cost to taxpayers and the harm it would do to the environment by removing over 100 trees. I suggest to the Minnetonka school board, if student safety is its real concern, have their kids ride the bus!

DON HABERMAN, ORONO

"Crime fighters gone rogue"? More like crooks chasing crooks!

I bet none of the Metro Gang Strike Force will ever see any jail time. In fact, if it hadn't been for the Star Tribune, the public wouldn't have heard anything about this.

NORMA I. NAEGELE, MINNETONKA

House Speaker Margaret Anderson Kelliher may have violated state campaign finance laws, couldn't come up with a suitable budget and wanted to raise taxes as the easy way out of a self-inflicted fiscal mess.

Sounds like three strikes and she's out to me.

TOM O'CONNELL, PLYMOUTH

In describing Minnesota' budget standoff in her Dec. 13 column, Lori Sturdevant again blames "a governor trying to impress his party's right wing with his conservative bona fides." She could just as well have identified the source of the problem as "a DFL-controlled Legislature full of left-wing governor wannabes."

TERRY LARKIN, MINNETONKA

Metropolitan Council Chairman Peter Bell, in commenting on the film "Precious," wrote, "Social programs are a poor substitute for a loving parent." Well, duh! Can Mr. Bell find an example of anyone who has ever suggested otherwise?

Of course not; he's setting up a straw man because it's the only rhetorical tactic he can find.

JOHN EVANS, ST. PAUL

Charles Krauthammer uses the most inflammatory rhetoric to claim that environmentalism is some kind of socialist conspiracy (Star Tribune, Dec. 14). Whatever you think of his political fancies, his argument against climate change is based on a bald-faced lie. The fact is, our climate is changing. Glaciers are melting at rates not seen in recorded history; the trend in the mean surface temperature of the Earth is up alarmingly, and, as predicted, the violence and frequency of climactic disasters is also way up.

Outside of a few marginal right-wingers like Krauthammer, the majority of the civilized world accepts global warming as scientific fact. The questions is, what do we do about it? Here Krauthammer again shows his ignorance. He seems to think that reducing greenhouse gasses will stifle economic growth. That view is proven false daily by innovative companies around the world that are creating technologies to slow global warming. "Green" technology is one of the fastest-growing segments of the global economy. Why would anyone want to stifle such free enterprise and innovation with inflammatory rhetoric? That sounds vaguely like a leftist political agenda to me.

JAMES MATHEWSON, FARIBAULT, MINN.