No Section

Letters to the editor for Wednesday, Nov. 26

November 26, 2008 at 1:30AM

THE STRUGGLING ECONOMY

Let's be honest about the Citigroup bailout

I think that it's time Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson came clean with taxpayers regarding the situation at Citigroup before we throw an additional $20 billion in bailout money its way.

He should disclose the fact that a Saudi prince is a major investor in Citigroup and will benefit from the bailout. Or that Citigroup has the naming rights at a cost of $400 million to the new New York Mets ballpark.

ROGER HARMON, EDINA

•••

The Masters of The Universe have landed a blow that makes Osama bin Laden look like a piker. President Bush should have invaded Wall Street.

TERENCE KENNEDY, ALEXANDRIA, MINN.

the senate recount

It exposes the problems with our voting system

Rejected absentee ballots will be a big factor in the outcome of the current Senate recount. There is a record of such rejections, and so it will be easy for canvassers or judges to reexamine the basis for each of the rejections, and to then decide whether any of these rejected absentee ballots should be counted in the election total.

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said about the absentee ballots that were accepted and counted in the original total. The number of absentee ballots improperly accepted can never be known, but when we consider the ease with which people could register and vote in absentia, we can only conclude that the number of improperly accepted ballots vastly exceeded the number of improperly rejected ballots.

Close elections are the only real test of the integrity of our election process. In 2008, the test came in our Senate race. No matter what the outcome of the Senate recount vote, Minnesotans may be left with a nagging distrust of the election results.

Isn't it time to restore integrity to our all-important election process in Minnesota so that the people of our state can again trust elections?

JAMES L. SIFFERLE, BLOOMINGTON

THE NTSB REPORT

It was no vindication for Pawlenty, MnDOT

As Bob McFarlin pointed out in his Nov. 22 commentary, "Finding shows value of patience," the National Transportation Safety Board concluded that the Interstate 35W bridge collapse resulted from "inadequate load capacity of critical gusset plates." It goes on to say that the inadequate load capacity was "due to a design error more than 40 years ago."

But next it reports that the "buildup of weight" and "concentrated loads" brought the bridge down. Obviously, the bridge was not designed to carry those additional burdens.

So, you cannot conclude that there was a "design error" 40 years ago. The bridge was designed to carry a specified amount of weight. When more was added without increasing the capacity of the gusset plates, the bridge fell. That is not a design error. That is a maintenance error in not making appropriate calculations and making necessary adjustments before adding additional weight.

ELIZABETH T. CANTRELL, BURNSVILLE

•••

In her Nov. 23 column, Katherine Kersten claims that "Mad rush to place 35W blame was shameful." She went on to suggest the vindication of Tim Pawlenty and Carol Molnau from the recent NTSB report.

Kersten's shameful piece ignores the 299-page report by the URS Corporation of Minneapolis that pointed out in "Fatigue Evaluation and Redundancy Analysis for Bridge No. 9340," released July 2006, which recommended replacing "steel plating of all 52 fracture critical truss members [and suggested] additional plates bolted to the existing webs."

Molnau and Pawlenty ignored this report and thus deserve no vindication.

Is a cursory examination of the evidence too much to ask of Kersten? Apparently so.

BYRON D. DANELIUS, PLYMOUTH

PROP 8

Democracy works, even when your side loses

Do we not live in a democracy?

Although I do not have a strong opinion on gay marriage, what angers me is to see so many Americans willing to accept the democratic process only when their views are upheld or their candidate wins on Election Day, but unwilling to accept the outcome when the majority votes differently.

On Nov. 4, 55 million Americans did not vote for Barack Obama, yet under our democratic system they will have to accept that the majority elected him as the next president. On the same day, a majority of Californians voted to support Proposition 8, and whether it is fair or not, on that day, the will of the people spoke. To accept the voting majority's decision only when it serves your views is close-minded to the fact that other fellow Americans may carry an equally strong but opposite viewpoint to that of your own. In a democracy change comes about not by harassing those who support the opposition, but by convincing the majority to consider your viewpoint the next time they vote.

RYAN BORTOLON, MINNETONKA

FIXING HEALTH CARE

It's time to consider a single-payer system

National leaders don't have to look too far to find ways of improving health care and reducing costs. It surely isn't necessary to reinvent the wheel. The promise of our health care system is to provide all Americans with access to health care. But our system as it is today is not delivering on that promise.

The group featured in the Nov. 18 article "A checklist for healing health care" could never find the solution. No group of insurers could. They profit by what we have, and they want to keep it that way. They discuss Band-Aids; what is necessary is major surgery.

We presently have more than 70 million uninsured or underinsured. And that horrible condition does not prevail north of us or in any other industrial nation. We also have the highest per-capita costs for health care of anyone.

Our hospitals, clinics and doctors' offices struggle with 50 different insurance claim forms and spend 25 percent of their budget on administrative costs. All of the above can be corrected by one simple solution.

A single-payer system similar to our Medicare system, which operates on administrative costs of less than 8 percent compared to insurance administrative costs in the 30 percent range primarily due to executive pay and bonuses.

NAT WISSER, PRIOR LAKE