Readers Write for Tuesday, Sept. 22

As a recently retired white, married male who has had easy access to education, health care and jobs throughout my life, I can't even begin to imagine what it must have been like for Jackie Robinson to be the first African-American to break the color barrier 62 years ago set up in America's Favorite Pastime: the verbal abuse of racial slurs and hate speech as well as rough physical play, etc.

Break it Robinson did, and he did it by keeping his "eye on the ball" and playing the game well.

PUH-leze, Mr. President, let Joe the Plumber, Joe the Wilson, gasbags Beck/Limbaugh and others babble on from the sidelines, but keep your eye on the ball and, for the sake of the country, stay focused on the task in front of you: reforming health care and reenergizing the economy in a just and responsible way.

ALAN GRANT, MINNEAPOLIS

Your Sept. 20 front-page article entitled, "State lags in use of GPS to stop violence," misses the point. What should be addressed is the lack of meaningful sentencing for repetitive criminal behavior.

The domestic crimes revealed in your story are symptomatic of a severely flawed, "revolving door" legal system. Unfortunately, a program to require satellite tracking devices would do little to rectify that situation.

RICHARD BRINDLEY, PLYMOUTH

Martha Stewart had to wear a GPS device, and people who have restraining orders against them don't?

PATTI LEE BOCK, NEW ULM, MINN.

•••

Regarding your Sept. 20 article "State lags in use of GPS to stop violence": There has been much publicity regarding Officer Richard Crittenden's death by a domestic abuser, and that the abuser had restraining orders to keep him away from his wife, which have not worked, but nothing was mentioned about treatment for domestic abusers.

I am a retired psychologist from the St. Cloud VA Medical Center, and worked for 16 years providing group treatment for domestic abusers, and it helps. I published research to document that fact.

NORM PETRIK, MINNEAPOLIS

•••

Please reconsider your practice of using the term "domestic dispute" relating to domestic assaults, murder and suicide.

I remind you that your Sept. 20 article was describing acts of murder, not "disputes," and that your terminology does not come close to presenting an accurate depiction of what is/was taking place.

This terminology is biased, discounting and disrespectful; in addition, it is simply not accurate. I have noticed this journalistic distortion over my 25-plus years working in the domestic violence field.

It is laughable that your "Rancor won't help heal nation's ills" editorial (Sept. 21) is placed next to a picture of Garrison Keillor. You fret about the partisan divide that is growing in this country and wonder if it is imperiling democracy. Of course it is, and Keillor is a major reason for that divide.

In his commentaries he constantly referred to former President George W. Bush as "the current occupant," or "small," or a simpleton in comparison to other world leaders. Rarely did Keillor's commentaries not put down President Bush or Republican leaders in some manner. Keillor's words weren't helpful in bringing us together.

Please clean up the rancor on your editorial pages and we will then see more enlightened debate in the electorate.

PERRY NOUIS, LITTLE FALLS, MINN.

So Gov. Tim Pawlenty garnered a standing ovation from Republican activists for sending the following "message" to President Obama: "Stop spending the country into bankruptcy" ("Pawlenty gets warm welcome in Washington, " Sept. 19). That's very courageous of the governor, but his message would have carried far more weight if he had issued it a few years ago when President Bush was doing the exact same thing by adding over $1 trillion to our national debt.

JACK ULDRICH, MINNEAPOLIS;

CHAIR, INDEPENDENCE PARTY

How will the president's health care plan bring down the cost of Lipitor? The cost of an MRI or cancer treatment? How will the president's plan make an annual exam affordable for the average family?

The largest expense for any health insurance company is benefit payments. Today, small employers are having to drop health coverage for their employees because premiums are rising each year.

While part of the increase can be affected by competition of insurance companies, they all have to deal with the same underlying benefit claims. If we cannot control these costs, it will not matter who is insured, the country will go broke.

I have an excellent idea: The personnel at the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities system who received "bonus incentives" (Star Tribune, Sept. 17), if they had any honor, would return them to assist in the pain of budget reductions.

Generally speaking, those who received these bonuses are some of the highest-paid people in the system and probably can live quite comfortably without this additional unnecessary compensation. It is interesting to note that the bonus paid to Chancellor James McCormick is an amount greater than many AFSCME members earn in an entire year.