In the "real world," as compared to government, apparently, an airplane is nothing but a tool. A business will make a decision to purchase (or not) a tool that will reduce downtime and speed up responsiveness to client or customer needs. The governor of a state is the CEO of that state. I believe an argument can be made and supported for the need of private aircraft ("Dayton wants $10M to replace state's two aging airplanes," Feb. 11).

Then the question comes down to how best to make this tool available. In the real world, we would be looking at whether it makes more sense to buy or lease. If leasing, we would ask questions like: What maintenance is included? How are pilots paid? We would also look at whether buying a share in a corporate jet or fleet of jets made sense. We would have been depreciating the existing fleet, and alongside of that creating a sinking fund to put money aside to purchase a new asset at the end of the current asset's useful life. Instead, in government, it becomes an emotional issue and a plea for funds — to be expensed all at once and to create headlines.

Is anyone else but me tired of hearing about things like this? While it seems that Gov. Mark Dayton is bent on fixing, modernizing and upgrading all manner of roads, bridges, planes and cabinet salaries, this should all be baked into a budget that is either approved or not, and then we move forward.

Dennis Williams, St. Paul
STATE GOVERNMENT PAY

Employee retention suggests it's sufficient

A Feb. 10 letter writer argues that Gov. Mark Dayton's proposed government employee wage hikes are justified in order to address a "legacy of government salaries increasingly out of step with comparable jobs in the private sector." The only problem is that the data suggest that government wages (including the present value of future pension benefits) are too high. How else to explain the huge discrepancies in "quit rates" between government employees and private-sector workers?

Specifically, according to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data compiled in the agency's monthly JOLTS (Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey) report, the quit rate for government employees is at six-tenths of 1 percent (six quits per month out of every 1,000 employees). That stands in stark contrast to a quit rate of 2.2 percent (22 quits per month per thousand) for the private sector. These figures reflect the latest available data (December 2014), but are hardly outliers.

Over the history of this survey, private-sector quit rates average in excess of three times the government quit rates. This is hardly the sort of real-world behavior one would expect from "underpaid" employees.

B. Robert Smith, Minneapolis

• • •

Republicans are going ballistic on the pay increases for commissioners in the Dayton administration, and, at first glance, their argument seems reasonable. Such increases, they claim, are too much. They want them scaled back. They suggest that the commissioner of education, for example, who was making $119,000 per year, should not get an increase, even though she makes significantly less than the superintendent of Minneapolis Public Schools.

So I did the math. If someone was making $119,000 in 2000, the last year that commissioners got any pay increase, then received only a 2 percent pay increase, compounded annually, for the next 13 years, they would be making about $155,000 in 2014. That, coincidently, is about what the top administrator is making now with the raise.

And one commissioner, according to the Star Tribune, manages a budget of $17.7 billion. What would a person in the private sector make if they managed that amount of money? You can be sure that it would be more than $155,000, or even $1.5 million.

So, commissioners are getting a 2-cent raise on each dollar they make for each year of service. That doesn't seem so out of line, does it?

John Wells, Eagan
NETANYAHU

Kudos for resistance by Ellison, McCollum

I want to publicly express my real appreciation for the actions being taken by U.S. Reps. Keith Ellison and Betty McCollum in boycotting the political theater staged by House Speaker John Boehner and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu's use of the U.S. Congress to bolster his re-election in Israel and Boehner's willingness to provide him the opportunity is Washington politics as usual. Nothing more, nothing less. Well done to Ellison and McCollum in declining to attend. Very well done. Too bad the rest of the Minnesota delegation hasn't the same spine.

Dan Mostue, St. Paul

• • •

Imagine a world leader acting unilaterally, defying a great many of his country's citizens and snubbing other world leaders and world opinion. Now imagine the backlash aimed at that world leader: anger, hostility and rejection.

You probably thought I was referring to President Obama until that last sentence. Our president has the cover of many in the media and the ability to silence naysayers. While Obama can claim the title of acting-alone-in-chief, Israel's prime minister is simply being accused of such acts.

His crime? Speaking in front of Congress without the blessing of this administration because of the urgency he feels toward the nuclear ambitions of Iran and a possible signed, sealed and delivered deal with Iran that this president is pushing — one that has the potential to keep Iran working toward a bomb and tying the hands of the United States (or anyone else) from ever stopping it. The dialogue and diplomacy with Iran has gone on for decades without success. My final question is this: What if Netanyahu is right and Obama is wrong about Iran?

Mary McIntosh Linnihan, Minneapolis
OBAMA AND RELIGION

Clearly a case of shoot-the-messenger

When I saw the Feb. 10 editorial cartoon with President Obama on a "high horse" and a label of "political correctness," I was reminded of a church service I attended shortly after 9/11. From the pulpit, the minister gave the same message as Obama did at last week's prayer breakfast — that the Crusades and the Inquisition were times when a perverted notion of religion was used to justify violent acts. Yet the minister was never accused of being on a high horse or political correctness. He was simply stating historical reality. Only when Obama states this reality do some people throw tantrums.

Bill Cutler, Oak Park Heights