North metro readers write

Under blanket of white, D.C. stills talks green How cool was it that Congress was shut down due to several feet of snow this past week?

While they spun their wheels waiting for the roads to be cleared, their leader continued to push for "green" initiatives to cure the false doctrine of man-made global warming.

How ironic to finally discover that the Creator is in charge of our climate, not us.

Maybe a few more dollars spent on basic necessities such as snowplows, and less on crippling our economy with proposed new carbon taxes that will affect us all, and you could get back to the business of the people.

It's not so hot in Washington anymore!

BRETT TORFIN, CRYSTAL

CEO pay has gotten way out of control Columnist Patrick McIlheran served up a big portion of distortion in the Star Tribune on Feb. 11. His contention is that the poor economy is the result of misguided government intervention, not greediness in the free market. He thinks that CEOs are making so much more now only because companies had to adjust their method of compensation after the government tried to rein in executive pay in 1993.

At the end of the 1980s, CEO compensation was 71 times larger than the pay received by the average worker. In the early '90s the multiplier made a sharp jump to about 125. So the government did try to cap executive pay and apparently had some success.

By the mid '90s, the multiplier was down to 100. But it's hard to beat greed.

Today the multiplier is about 260. That means the average CEO earns almost as much in one workday as the average worker does all year.

Now a new television series shows how certain CEOs have had a difficult time when they try to do average workers' jobs. Interesting.

Let's appreciate the government's current efforts to bring down that multiplier and remember those efforts at the polls in November.

He should bite the bullet, so to speak, and ask the University of Minnesota Board of Regents about sharing the stripped-down (amenity-wise) TCF Bank Stadium with the Gophers football team.

I think the state Legislature already has enough on its plate without a publicly funded stadium to add to it.

Given our current economic state, Wilf should lower his expectations for a stadium with all the bells and whistles and instead have the Vikings play their home games at TCF Bank Stadium for the foreseeable future.