Readers Write

The struggling economy

Let's be honest about the Citigroup bailout

I think that it's time Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson came clean with taxpayers regarding the situation at Citigroup before we throw an additional $20 billion in bailout money their way.

He should disclose the fact that a Saudi prince is a major investor in Citigroup and will benefit from the bailout. Or that Citigroup has the naming rights at a cost of $400 million to the new New York Mets ballpark.

Roger Harmon, Edina

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The Masters of The Universe have landed a blow that makes Osama bin Laden look like a piker. President Bush should have invaded Wall Street.

The Senate recount

It exposes the problems with our voting system

Rejected absentee ballots will be big factor in the outcome of the current Senate recount. There is a record of such rejections, and so it will be easy for canvassers or judges to re-examine the basis for each of the rejections, and to then decide whether any of these rejected absentee ballots should be counted in the election total.

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said about the absentee ballots that were accepted and counted in the original total. The number of absentee ballots improperly accepted can never be known, but when we consider the ease with which people could register and vote in absentia, we can only conclude that the number of improperly accepted ballots vastly exceeded the number of improperly rejected ballots.

Close elections are the only real test of the integrity of our election process. In 2008, the test came in our Senate race. No matter what the outcome of the senate recount vote, Minnesotans may be left with a nagging distrust of the election results.

James L. Sifferle, Bloomington

The NTSB report

It was no vindication for Pawlenty, MnDOT

As Bob McFarlin pointed out in his Nov. 22 commentary, "Finding shows value of patience," the National Transportation and Safety Board concluded that the Interstate 35W bridge collapse resulted from "inadequate load capacity of critical gusset plates." It goes on to say that the inadequate load capacity was "due to a design error more than 40 years ago."

But next it reports that the "buildup of weight" and "concentrated loads" brought the bridge down. Obviously, the bridge was not designed to carry those additional burdens.

Elizabeth T. Cantrell, Burnsville

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In her Nov. 23 column, Katherine Kersten claims that "Mad rush to place 35W blame was shameful." She went on to suggest the vindication of Tim Pawlenty and Carol Molnau from the recent NTSB report.

Kersten's shameful piece ignores the 299-page report by the URS Corporation of Minneapolis that pointed out in "Fatigue Evaluation and Redundancy Analysis for Bridge No. 9340," released July 2006, which recommended replacing "steel plating of all 52 fracture critical truss members [and suggested] additional plates bolted to the existing webs."

Molnau and Pawlenty ignored this report and thus deserve no vindication.

Byron D. Danelius, Plymouth

Prop 8

Democracy works, even when your side loses

Do we not live in a democracy?

Although I do not have a strong opinion on gay marriage, what angers me is to see so many Americans willing to accept the democratic process only when their views are upheld or their candidate wins on Election Day, but unwilling to accept the outcome when the majority votes differently.

Ryan Bortolon, Minnetonka

Fixing health care
It's time to consider a single-payer system

National leaders don't have to look to far to find ways of improving health care and reducing costs. It surely isn't necessary to reinvent the wheel. The promise of our health care system is to provide all Americans with access to health care. But our system as it is today is not delivering on that promise.

The group featured in the Nov. 18 article "A checklist for healing health care" could never find the solution. No group of insurers could. They profit by what we have, and they want to keep it that way. They discuss Band-Aids; what is necessary is major surgery.
We presently have more than 70 million uninsured or underinsured. And that horrible condition does not prevail north of us or in any other industrial nation. We also have the highest per-capita costs for health care of anyone.

Our hospitals, clinics and doctors offices struggle with 50 different insurance claim forms and spent 25 percent of their budget on administrative costs. All of the above can be corrected by one simple solution.