Readers Write for Saturday, Feb. 6

Don't be fooled by the governor's proposal to use lottery dollars and a new lottery game for a new Vikings stadium. Forty percent of lottery proceeds are constitutionally dedicated to the Environmental Trust Fund for natural resource protection. The other 60 percent of lottery money goes into the state general fund. The governor is talking about the 60 percent that is already part of our annual state budget, which is $1.2 billion in the red. So when the governor said, "People will say it should go into schools or roads or whatever," what he really meant was that we would have to cut schools or roads or "whatever" -- say health care or veterans programs -- and instead give that money to the Vikings. The governor hasn't offered his budget solution to the $1.2 billion deficit yet, and he's already proposing spending more money. This is yet another funny money scheme that grabs headlines but isn't a responsible or honest budget proposal.

SEN. ELLEN ANDERSON, DFL-ST. PAUL

•••

Gov. Tim Pawlenty's idea for getting the Vikings a stadium shows exactly where his interests lie. Because 40 percent of the funds go to an environmental trust fund, Pawlenty says "the other $12 million can be used for other stuff."

If "stuff" is how he views the crisis at Hennepin County Medical Center, a growing number of medically challenged people losing their medical benefits and more and more homeless on the streets, from my 75-year vantage point, this man is a disgrace to the state of Minnesota and an embarrassment to his constituents.

BARRETT NEWHALL, MINNEAPOLIS

•••

BUZZ WEISSER, GRAND MARAIS, MINN.

St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman and St. Paul Saints owner Mike Veeck really spin a good tale. But the reality is far from what they tried to present us in their Feb. 4 commentary.

Midway Stadium was built for the citizens of St. Paul for local sporting use after the city tore down the old facility so it could build Energy Park. An agreement back in the '70s was made to our community to replace the old stadium for Midway-area youth and other local amateur athletic teams. It still serves this originally intended use very well. It was never built for the Saints. If it is now rundown, as is now claimed, it's because of its overuse by a professional, for-profit baseball team these past 16 years.

St. Paul just implemented a budget that closed seven rec centers, laid off many needed staffers and reduced public safety resources, at the same time raising our property taxes for the fourth year in a row. So tell me why this is a good deal or a bonding priority when we are daily suffering the effects of these cutbacks?

DEAN REINKE, MINNEAPOLIS

Minnesota, like virtually every other state, along with thousands of companies and organizations, have their hands out to receive whatever they can get from the federal government, which is swimming in red ink. Where do we think federal money comes from? Higher taxes. High-cost new federal programs that are ill-conceived, like the Obama health care plan and cap and trade, serve only to exacerbate our problems.

At every level of government, we should be looking at ways to get by on less than we have had to work with in the past -- not on ways to get more money from the federal government.

ROBERT L. MOISON, BURNSVILLE

Minnesota's previous top DWI defense attorney, Don Nichols, wrote a five-volume treatise on how to defend drivers charged with driving while intoxicated. He found that representing drunken drivers became "tiring." The "hopelessness" got to him. "Unappreciative clients" were irritating.

What hopelessness is he referring to? The hopelessness of the quarter of a million people in our country who every year suffer permanent injuries due to drunken drivers and now have to go on with their lives? Or perhaps the hopelessness felt by the families of the 35,000 people a year killed by drunken drivers.