Letters to the editor for Wednesday, Dec. 10, 2008

Thanks to Mitch Pearlstein of the right-wing Center of the American Experiment for showing us just what level of cooperation we can expect from that other religious right: the fanatics of "no-new-taxes" dogma ("A bit of context for the state budget crisis," Dec. 9).

So you think you're suffering because you were laid off by a corporation whose stock has tanked after the orgy of unregulated speculation on Wall Street? Suck it up, buddy. Pearlstein reminds us that "life in Minnesota has managed to go on, humanely and progressively, each and every time budgets have been cut over the years." If you're not feeling the warmth, well, too bad; you really are all alone.

Don't expect help from a government committed to the common good. Pawlenty's commitments, Pearlstein suggests, should be to balancing the budget, period, and if that means selling off some high-profile responsibilities -- say, an international airport -- so be it.

Whatever you do, don't even dream of raising taxes on the carpetbagging rich, or as Pearlstein puts it, those "who financially succeed in Minnesota but then leave for sunnier tax climes." It's their "perfect right" to take the money they've made off our common labor and run, Pearlstein insists, and "it would be self-defeating if we adopted tax policies to encourage more such fortunate folks to depart even earlier by ganging up on them in populist frenzies."

Fixed-income seniors and sick people will just have to face hard times on their own; Pearlstein's kind of government will be committed to guaranteeing golden parachutes for the wealthy and not much else. The CEOs and financial wizards who have lined their pockets while flying their corporations and your pension funds into the ground can't be expected to pitch in; after all, making obscene amounts of money is what America is all about. As for the rest of us, well, we're apparently supposed to be grateful just to have the rich among us, for a short while, before they depart for "sunnier climes."

The great irony is that Pearlstein and his ilk will accuse any who criticize such blatant and self-serving cynicism of waging "class warfare" -- as if class warfare against the poor weren't worth mention.

NEIL ELLIOTT, MINNEAPOLIS

MICHAEL KEHOE, MINNEAPOLIS

Katherine Kersten's ignorance of class, race and gender privilege is on full display in her Dec. 8 column, "Young author's 'Nickel and Dimed' rebuttal revisits life in the low-wage lane."

A young, white man is much more likely to be able to find work than a middle-aged African-American man, a demographic category that makes up a large portion of the homeless population in Minnesota. A 2003 study from professors at MIT even found that employers are less likely to interview someone with a name on their résumé that sounds "black." Adam Shepard would also have a head start on earnings over Ehrenreich. A 2003 study found that at Wal-Mart, where Ehrenreich worked, full-time hourly female employees made on average $1,150 less per year than males in similar positions. I imagine that extra $1,150 comes in handy when you're trying to climb out of poverty.

EMILY WARREN, MINNEAPOLIS

The Dec. 8 headline -- "Gun sales brisk as buyers fear bans" -- captures part of the essence of conservatism. Over the last eight years we've seen a country run by and for the fearful. Conservatives fear everything from the ACLU to zoologists. They even color-coded their fear -- we're yellow today, except at the airport, where we're even more scared at orange.

GREG OASHEIM, MINNETONKA

A Dec. 7 letter writer says that the real reason for global hunger is too many people. Then he says that there are "humane, common-sense measures that address this monumental problem." I want to know who gets to decide which people are "too many" and what kind of "humane" measures can be taken to eliminate them. It's frightening that people actually think this way.