Netlets for Monday, Dec. 8

No jobs, and no assistance I have worked at Hennepin County Economic Assistance (welfare) for 25 years. I've never seen a more hopeless situation for people applying for assistance.

Single adults can rarely receive cash assistance. Families have a five-year limit on their cash assistance and are required to get jobs.

With over 500,000 people laid off last month -- there are no jobs. Yet many people are turned away for a meager assistance grant and food support (food stamps) because they are required to work.

Today I helped a software programmer who made $100,000 per year. Now he's laid off and in applying for assistance for his family. People from all walks of life are now coming in to apply for assistance.

We need some emergency measures to change these work requirements for the interim while people are struggling so much. What will people do to get by without help?

JACKIE DEBAUCHE, HUDSON, WIS.

Congress fails the American people Once again, Congress has taken us for rubes, igniting a truly meaningless discussion about Detroit as a pretext for their failure to act in a responsible way when they funded Hank Paulson's giveaway to his buddies in the private sports suites. The Big Three sell 48 percent of cars sold in this country; and we're talking about letting them die? We don't need a czar to oversee the car companies. We need one to oversee the Congress!

Let's save our car companies Why doesn't the rest of the world just make cars for their own people, or find some other way to make money? I suppose we are easy marks, ready to abandon our homegrown car industry for so-called greener grass.

The letter to the editor published last week touting the new Big Three of Honda, VW and Toyota was too much to stomach. I am not having any of that as I see the connection between our foreign trade imbalance and so many good jobs leaving America. Furthermore, our companies mostly build great cars, and they keep getting better. I've only bought one new car in my life, but it was wonderful. My sporty little Sable never had a problem all the time I had it, and it looked as good as or better than anything on the road. I'm proud to have bought an American brand, and I wouldn't be caught dead in any foreign car dealership unless I was in a foreign land. (No offense to foreigners intended.) We need to wake up and support jobs here before everything gets outsourced. Will the rest of you only get on board when it's your job at stake? Or when your own kids can't find good jobs?

CHRIS LYNCH, MINNEAPOLIS

Minneapolis Academy makes the grade You'd think that an inner-city public school with 80 percent low-income students and a racially diverse population (no more than 30 percent of any single race) that makes the federally required Annual Yearly Progress (AYP) for all students would be a cause for celebration, wouldn't you? Apparently not, according to Myron Orfield, executive director of the University of Minnesota's Institute on Race and Poverty, or Star Tribune reporters ("Minnesota's charter schools fall short of expectations," Nov. 26).

Minneapolis Academy, a charter middle school (Grades 5-8) in south Minneapolis, separates its students by gender, because we have found it produces better results, academically and socially. Parents from low-income families (the ones Orfield allegedly champions) are choosing this school because it offers their children a strong middle school option without being bused 15 to 20 miles out of the city.

The Academy parents want safe classrooms, a rigorous curriculum and schools that are grounded in a sense of right and wrong, where children can learn about character and responsibility.

LEON COOPER, FOUNDER/DIRECTOR, MINNEAPOLIS ACADEMY

Thanks be to the player who keeps his faith private Dear football player, basketball player, baseball player and hockey player. Dear boxer, golfer, tennis player and wrestler. Dear athlete. Dear jock. Please, please, whenever you are interviewed at the end of an event in which you, as your wonderful self, were victorious, do not proclaim your love of God, your love of Jesus, your faith in God, your faith in Jesus, and/or your thanks to either God or Jesus.

I do not request this out of disrespect for your faith. I am happy that you find solace in your faith and believe in something so profoundly you want to tell the world. But this is not the time. It comes across as smarmy and self-indulgent. It comes across as comparative and egotistical. When you proclaim your faith in God -- or give thanks to God -- at the end of a game, you are saying, "See how wonderful I am (and don't you wish you were, too?)." And you are casting aspersions on your opponents, who obviously must be some sort of heathens for God to have chosen you and your side.

So, in the future, please just thank your parents, your coaches and your teammates . . . and may God bless.