Letters to the editor for Thursday, Feb. 21

Your Feb. 20 story about the legislative auditor's sobering report on the condition of the state's highways includes this: "The debate isn't so much, does MnDOT need more money?" said Rep. Chris DeLaForest, R-Fridley. "The battle line here, rather, is drawn between where do you get the money? Are you going to go back to taxpayers and extract more, or are you going to seek to find more within government?" he said.

Philosophers have a name for this: category mistake. DeLaForest sets up a distinction that was erased on March 4, 1789, when the Constitution that begins "We the People" went into effect. Taxpayers are not victims subject to extraction; they are we, and we are the government.

The battle line is not where DeLaForest says it is. It's between those who really believe in representative democracy and those whose rhetoric makes government part of an axis of evil.

PATRICK HENRY, WAITE PARK, MINN.

Your Feb. 20 editorial on Fidel Castro's retirement noted that, "Castro's Cuba is a textbook example of a country governed through a cult of personality [like Venezuela and North Korea] . . . It is the sort of rule that, deprived of its leader, turns to a relative as next best choice."

Wait, doesn't that describe President Bush and Hillary Clinton? Considering the paucity of last names on the presidential ballot the last couple decades, sometimes the United States seems like a Caribbean island nation.

V. JOHN ELLA, MINNEAPOLIS

Likewise, I suggest Cox re-focus on his day job, best summed up by the once-famous creed: From each, according to his ability; to each, according to his need.

JEFF CARLSTROM, MANKATO

Calls for seat belts on school buses for K-12 students (pre-K buses require them) will be raised again in response to the tragedy in Cottonwood Tuesday. The issue has been repeatedly raised before, but the answers raise more questions:

How do we design seat belts that fit both kindergartners and high school seniors? If the driver is incapacitated, who will unbuckle all the kids in an emergency? Could the belts impede a quick evacuation?

How do we avoid belts being used as weapons away from the driver's view? Who will make sure every rider is buckled in and stays that way?

Most challenging, would seat belts reduce deaths? Transportation experts tend to say "no"; school bus fatalities would be fatalities regardless of seat-belt use.

As an EMT and a part-time school bus driver, I can only imagine the nightmare in Cottonwood. But chances are, school bus seat belts wouldn't have changed the outcome.

DAVID HOADLEY, LITTLE FALLS, MINN.

Candidates asked their highest-priority issues list the economy, health care or the Iraq war. Much less often they mention "immigration," shorthand for illegal immigration.

Democrats never mention it, except when questioned in a debate, and then they usually offer vague comments. Hence the public has come to see the coddling of illegals as Democratic policy. I wish someone would explain why permitting people, terrorists included, to enter the United States simply by crossing a stretch of unguarded border constitutes "liberal" policy. In my view it's better described as insane rather than humane.

RAY WARNER, EDINA

Regarding Gov. Tim Pawlenty's attempt to keep Northwest Airlines in Minnesota, in a free market why is the government getting involved in a merger? Is it because this same government subsidized this airline and is now asking it to play fair?

I believe Pawlenty's real worry is not just the jobs that will be lost, but the tax void; how will he justify his no new tax pledge if this airline decides to leave?

Unless the state wants to buy this airline, it needs to butt out -- unless Pawlenty feels state taxpayers should keep subsidizing it. If he continues on this course, why wouldn't we expect other large Minnesota companies to leverage subsidies?