Continued: Netlets for Saturday, Jan. 26

Your report on Al Franken's huge out-of-state fundraising ("All politics is local? Not in U.S. Senate race," Jan. 20) rings a bit ironic.

As a recent immigrant to Minnesota from Illinois, I arrived here already attracted to Franken's senatorial campaign, based on his national reputation as a progressive thinker. But much to my surprise, long before my Chicago accent has converted to Minnesotan, I've discovered that the strongest voice of progressive thinking in the Senate race belongs to native son Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer.

On health care, the war and the economy, Nelson-Pallmeyer is leagues ahead of Franken in speaking out for the changes we need. Too bad Hollywood money doesn't know this yet.

ANDY BERMAN, ST LOUIS PARK

The Q & A with Dr. Arthur Matas regarding paying for kidney donations (Opinion Exchange, Jan. 13) hit a nerve with me. I have tried several times to become a kidney donor. I think of two kidneys as being superfluous, and I know that if I were to donate a kidney then later in life I end up needing a transplant myself, I end up going to the front of the waiting list by virtue of having donated in the past. As it should be.

When a friend's husband needed a kidney donation, I went through the donor education program at Hennepin County Medical Center, along with the recipient's parents and brothers. A brother turned out to be a match and donated, so I never got beyond blood-type testing.

I've since offered my kidney to two other people (through their family members with whom I worked), but relatives stepped up to the plate and donated.

I then contacted the anonymous kidney donor program through the University of Minnesota H&C/Fairview. After I received a packet in the mail of information to read and forms to fill out, I realized that I was missing some key information and forms (according to the enclosed list of things I should have received). Subsequent phone calls to their offices resulted in my receiving more information in the mail, but nothing that I specifically needed. They seemed disorganized and repeatedly unable to fulfill a simple request for a specific form necessary for anonymous kidney donation. After three failed attempts to get the information and forms required, I gave up.

While Dr. Matas' efforts are laudable, what should come first is a major push for public education and campaigns for awareness, with pleas by former organ recipients. A close second should be a more organized system that doesn't drop the ball when it comes to people willing to become anonymous donors who simply want to do what's right, for free.

ANGELA NIMS, WEST ST. PAUL

A Jan. 16 letter writer warns against DFLers expanding government and wanting to raise the gas tax to "build a bunch of new things that look good on campaign literature" amidst a recession. The tax burden of 5 cents per gallon, he argues, is more than most people and businesses will be able to handle.

These "new things" include road construction and bridge repair. These things are actually very good for Minnesota's economy. Money is lost every minute workers or goods are stuck in traffic instead of working or being delivered. Money is lost every time a car or truck has to detour around the Interstate 35W bridge collapse.

Also, about 75 years ago, the most famous recession in United States history was subdued in large part by the largest expansion of government in United States history.

JIM ASPHOLM, MINNEAPOLIS

When John McCain and those of us who are advocates of free trade favor re-importation of drugs from Canada, we are not, as claimed by George F. Will (Opinion Exchange, Jan. 20), advocating the adoption of any aspect of the Canadian drug or medical system. We simply say that merchandise (drugs of proven efficacy and safety) offered on the competitive free market here should be available to consumers without government restrictions.

Unfortunately, the "bad" drug companies would like to have their cake and eat it too (as what profit-oriented business wouldn't) so they would like to sell to foreign countries for whatever they can get, and then, with government help, block free market sales to American citizens so that they can charge higher prices here. This means that this additional money from higher American prices is acquired by discriminating against the American medical patient in favor of foreign patients, many of whom are more wealthy than some of our own citizens.

We agree with George Will in favoring increased profits for our drug companies so that they can continue their wonderfully remarkable research and medical advances, but not when it involves unfair discrimination against the American medical patient by restricting free trade.

SHERMAN B. CHILD, M.D., MINNEAPOLIS

Thanks to your reporter's puff piece of Jan. 15, we have some psychological insight into the character of Dakota County Attorney James Backstrom. Backstrom, we're told, was tormented by bullies as a child.

Did he learn any lesson from that? I guess so. Now that Backstrom is Mister D.A.-Man, a "Super-Lawyer," he's showing those mean kids how a real bully operates!

Yes, amateur bullies can gang up on smaller, weaker kids, but it takes a career bully to use the awesome authority of law, buttressed by a recitation of discredited "reefer madness" propaganda, to justify throwing disabled, sick or dying patients into jail, or forcing them out onto street corners to buy their medicine from illicit drug dealers rather than from a safer source.

It was Backstrom who single-handedly blocked the medical cannabis reform bill in last year's legislative session. Backstrom's meretricious pretense of ignorance regarding the medicinal value of cannabis transforms his so-called "fight to do right" into a nasty crusade against crippled and suffering people who are victims of an unjust law.

OLIVER STEINBERG, ST. PAUL