Readers write for Saturday, July 17

On behalf of ADC Telecommunications and its more than 1,000 employees in Eden Prairie and Shakopee, I am writing to express my disappointment in the Star Tribune's July 15 story "ADC sale leaves high-tech vacuum in Minnesota, with few able to fill it."

The speculation in this story about the future of ADC's talented people, innovative technology and general business operations is unfounded. Additionally, it is inappropriate that we were not given the opportunity to comment on the story, especially when the paper knows we are committed to open and honest communications with the media.

We believe that our employees, customers, vendors, shareowners, community partners and your readers deserve better during a time when both ADC and our planned acquirer, Tyco Electronics, have made no decisions about our future operations here in Minnesota and around the world. To publish what essentially is a postmortem on ADC just two days after the announced acquisition is at best premature and at worst irresponsible.

Certainly, we recognize that an acquisition of ADC will bring changes to our company and its presence in this community. However, the fact remains that Tyco Electronics sees in ADC a company with a rich 75-year heritage that it plans to build upon.

Furthermore, the planned combination of the two global companies' innovations and talent is a tribute in part to what a great technology hub this community remains.

As we move toward an anticipated close on the acquisition later this year, we have a sincere hope that the Star Tribune will take more care in how it reports on ADC's presence in the Twin Cities community.

The final chapter of the ADC story has yet to be told.

Those who are celebrating the so-called Wall Street overhaul bill may live to regret it ("New rules for Wall Street," July 16). Yes, something had to be done to clean up the mess some unscrupulous investors, bankers and politicians made. But allowing two kingpins like Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., and Rep Barney Frank, D-Mass., -- who were directly involved in this financial debacle to begin with -- to fix the problem is akin to letting the foxes watch over the chicken coop.

All that was accomplished was a bigger noose around the neck of the American economy. This bill further empowered the private Federal Reserve bankers and the president (any president) to shake down and take down any corporation they arbitrarily choose to. The reason? Companies could grow too large and could fail. Senators bought this line 69-31. Well, that is, if they actually read the bill.

The fact is, government intervention, no matter how noble the cause, is never the answer. Americans would be far more prosperous and have far more opportunity to earn a good living and retirement if two things were done: If free markets were allowed to work unabated by unconstitutional government actions, and if we repeal the Federal Reserve Act outright, or at least repeal the legal tender laws to allow competing currencies in the marketplace. I guarantee that the Federal Reserve Note would lose out to more solid currencies such as gold and silver.

And as far as any fraud: We already have laws and prisons for them, if only we saw to their prosecutions, as was done with Tom Petters ("Petters in the big house," July 16).

JIM PAULSON, FARMINGTON

I find it truly amazing that two persons with different points of view can look at the same thing and perceive two entirely different things.

Michael Lind, in his July 14 commentary "Not everything calls for the sledgehammer," says that "Washington has fallen in love the 'comprehensive reform'" and cites health care and financial regulatory reform among other things.

I see the health care reform as meager. Comprehensive reform would be a single-payer system and perhaps even some arguably draconian measure such as requiring all health care providers to be nonprofit. It would also mean, as the word implies, that everyone would be covered. President Obama himself has described the health-care bill as being just a first, small step toward real change.

Financial reform is also minimal. It makes such small changes that Wall Street is jubilant that we will continue business as usual.

Comprehensive reform, in my mind, means restoring the Glass-Steagall Act, resurrecting usury laws, and perhaps even making such practices as writing mortgage loans that are known to be shaky and building financial instruments that are expected to fail as criminal offenses subject to jail time.

DAVID PERLMAN, NEW HOPE

The July 16 headline "Minnesota jobless rate dips to 6.8 percent for June" was upside down from the real news that the state actually lost jobs in June.

Since the state does not count the so-called discouraged workers, the unemployment rate is at best only a partial indicator of the employment situation. Failure to count the underemployed and people who have abandoned the job search is like reporting only the home team's score in a ball game.

There is no way to understand the employment picture and no way to make policy decisions without a more realistic understanding of the structural damage that has been done to our economy by years of criminal fraud, unrestrained war spending, corrupt regulation and wishful thinking by our political leadership.