Readers Write (May 1): Camden Yards lockout, local government aid, telephone regulation, cable merger, presidential campaign, equality, Wayzata preservation

On Wednesday, the Baltimore Orioles played a baseball game at their home stadium, Camden Yards in downtown Baltimore, in front of a whopping audience of zero. That's right, no fans. (Because the doors to the stadium were padlocked.)

Never before in the history of Major League Baseball have fans not been allowed into a stadium on game day.

Maybe a better reply to the recent violence would have been for Peter Angelos, the owner of the Orioles, to just let 46,000 residents of Baltimore enjoy a day at the ballpark for free. This might have been a nice opportunity to help defuse some anger and at the same time show some support for the community.

I may be wrong, but the final score for the game in Baltimore was: Fear 1, Courage 0.

Local government aid (LGA) was created in 1971. Its purpose was for the state to collect money from all Minnesotans through a portion of the sales tax and redistribute it through a complicated formula to cities with a small tax base. The funds were to help communities with basic needs — police, fire, roads, snow removal and so on. Like most government programs, when LGA started it had good intentions, but as time goes on programs get larger and stray from their intended purposes.

I am a City Council member for the small city of Bethel. Cities like Bethel are what LGA was set up for. You don't get much smaller than us. We are in northern Anoka County, with an area of less than a square mile and a population of 466. We receive about $46,105 a year from LGA — roughly $98.94 per resident. For the past seven years, Bethel has kept its tax levy the same. Like other cities, we have to deal with increases in costs. We prioritize. There are many things we want, but we spend only on our true needs.

Recently, the Minnesota House passed a bill to cut LGA by $84 million for Duluth, Minneapolis and St. Paul. When LGA was created, it wasn't intended for big cities. Duluth receives $29 million — $337.07 per resident. Minneapolis receives $77.4 million — $193.47 per resident. St. Paul receives $60.4 million — $204.92 per resident.

There are two interesting points in Lee Schafer's column about Comcast's failed attempt to buy Time Warner ("Franken's view hurt Comcast's big deal," April 30).

The first is the $21.6 million the company spent lobbying Congress in one year. How do you find a legal funnel for this amount of money? Campaign contributions and promises of more contributions. This legal bribery comes from the profits made on the money we spend on Comcast's services.

The second is the fate of the now-defunct Blockbuster video-rental chain after its failed bid for Hollywood Video. Schafer compares the two deals with the warning that government intervention had something to do with Blockbuster's failure. He does mention Netflix, which is the real reason Blockbuster went broke. He also mentions YouTube and video streaming, but 10 years ago this posed no viable threat. He goes on to warn that government oversight of "Blockbuster, a potential monopolist feared by the government," and Comcast may suffer the same fate. The comparison has little merit. Netflix simply had a better business model. Late fees? No such thing with Netflix. Direct delivery of DVDs and no time limit? Blockbuster didn't respond to this threat and paid the price. More "lobbying" might have helped.

Thanks to U.S. Sen. Al Franken for his part in killing this monopoly. Job well done!

People of lower income or who live in rural areas are not the only ones who rely on their landline phones ("Don't deregulate landline service," April 29). Here in upper-class, first-ring-suburb Edina, we have poor to no cellphone coverage in our house without an in-house minicell booster. When the power goes out, as it did just a couple of weeks ago, the boosters don't work, either. We have no cellphone coverage and rely on the landline to call the power company. Deregulating landlines is a bad idea.

In "Suspects in terror case break the mold" (April 29), we learn that the Somali terror suspects are "good students" and "hard workers." This also apparently describes the kids from Woodbury ("After friend's death, teens get a reprieve," April 28) who provided a synthetic drug that killed their friend. From the assistant Washington County attorney who prosecuted the Woodbury cases: "Sometimes we deal with hardened defendants. These kids were not." From the juvenile division chief for the county attorney's office: "Do you want to see these kids in prison? Kids who have a potential and a future to contribute to society?"

The Somali kids can only hope to receive similar treatment. Good luck.

I wholeheartedly support preserving the history of the lovely village of Wayzata ("Wayzata residents push to save one of city's oldest homes," April 29 West Extra). The Wayzata resident quoted in the article feels, as I do, that her village has a history worth preserving. She qualifies that, however, by pretentiously declaring: "If Wayzata didn't have any history, if it had just risen out of the farmland like a Maple Grove, then that's a different story."

Ouch! I am a resident of Maple Grove, nestled among the rolling hills and dales of maple forest, wetlands and several beautiful lakes. My self-esteem has just taken a hit. Do I live on bleak prairie farmland with no history worth preserving? I think not.

Perhaps the Wayzata lady should check out the history of my town before dismissing it as something less than that of her town, which, by the way, rose out of a swampy bog next to a very large lake.