Letters to the editor for Sunday, March 15

Your March 8 front-page article "For self-employed, lost dreams and vacant offices" finally forced me to comment on the wrongheaded approach that Gov. Tim Pawlenty and the Republican leadership advocate for solving our economic crisis.

The article points out that people are being laid off and businesses are failing primarily because customer demand for products is falling. People aren't buying because they are saving, have no money because they've lost their job or are just plain scared of what's going to happen next. So why would a small businessman or large concern who got a tax cut hire employees, i.e., create jobs, when there is no demand for their products? Having run a small business in the past, I can tell you that I would just keep the money and not hire unneeded help.

The governor says he wants to cut business taxes by 50 percent. I'm sure Minntac will hire back its 590 furloughed employees to produce taconite pellets that aren't needed. Great thinking, Guv.

MERLE LARSON, DASSEL, MINN.

I was shocked last week when President Obama stated that his administration would "make scientific decisions based on facts, not ideology." Ideology is the driving force behind any scientific endeavor. Stem cell research is driven by the ideology that we should cure every disease and extend human life well beyond what we know now.

If you base scientific decisions on facts, then why are the scientists who use facts to support the view that global warming is not a danger summarily dismissed as being wrong? Because ideology is driving the science of global warming. The ideology of environmentalists and politicians.

For those who support the use of embryonic cells in research, suppose in five years science determines that cells from a 28-week fetus will be the cure-all for everything known to mankind. Are we going to let silly ideology get in the way of science?

DON MUSSELL, EDEN PRAIRIE

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For those who might benefit from cures yielded from embryonic stem cell research, it's been a long eight years. Thank you to President Obama and everyone who worked hard to let the science trump politics. I'll take the opinion of eminent researchers and some of science's finest minds who say that the possibilities for cures from embryonic stem cells are too great not to explore, over the naysayers who would prevent this research.

When I talk to my daughter who has been living with the challenges of Type 1 diabetes, I will tell her that the president has given us new hope that cures for diabetes and other diseases will be accelerated and that science has prevailed over politics.

CAMILLE NASH, EDINA

Who is in charge of the monkey house over in St. Paul?

GEORGE HUTCHINSON, MINNEAPOLIS

I read with interest the March 1 article concerning public defenders' offices throughout Minnesota and their difficulties with workload and funding. Physicians currently pay a provider fee to help pay for indigent health care in Minnesota. Should lawyers in Minnesota be required to pay a similar fee to at least in part help support the public defender system? Don't lawyers, especially trial lawyers, have a vested interest in the continued functioning of this system?

BRADLEY BROWN, GOLDEN VALLEY

While I too feel great sadness for the tragedy taking place in Darfur, what would Lydia Caros (Opinion Exchange, March 13) like the U.S. government to do? As much as we the public would like to believe it's as simple as giving aid or applying international pressure, myriad international forces prevent direct action into Darfur.

If there is to be peace in Darfur, then it will be China, not the United States, that is the primary force. And even then, it may not work. May God have mercy on those in that region.