Readers Write (Oct. 14): Child abuse task force, campaign finance, Halloween perspective, school funding, lead ammunition, LED lighting

As the child abuse task force created by Gov. Mark Dayton convenes to examine and improve the child welfare system, we hope, first, that there will be three background presentations:

1) The crisis confronting counties in their fundamental responsibilities in responding to the basic needs of their residents. The rationale for opening a case in family assessment is the only way of ensuring a response to low-income families for social services such as stability in housing, maternal depression and adolescent runaways.

2) A clear set of statements on the privacy rights of families, when officials knock on the door alleging a maltreatment of a child.

3) A review of training social workers in the recognition of warning signals when "neglect" slips into "imminent harm."

Now let us see whether the task force has the knowledge and insight to explore the heart of the matter: how the child welfare system has become the response to the shredding of the safety net, so that the only assistance for vulnerable children born into families suffering from racial inequality and poverty is "family assessment."

The writer is a professor in the School of Social Work and is special projects coordinator for the Center for Advanced Studies in Child Welfare at the University of Minnesota.

"Was Citizens United fuss just hype?" asks the headline for the Oct. 11 column by David Brooks. If one just considers the outcomes of elections, perhaps, but it's the other consequences of this deluge of money spent on the longest, most expensive campaigns among all advanced nations that need addressing.

The Center for Responsive Politics says there are 11,140 lobbyists in Washington. Why do you suppose they are there if not to collect on these debts and make more bribes to elected officials? To make this a government more representative of all the people and not so much of those who have the deepest pockets to buy influence, we need campaign reform badly.

I'll end by asking why we hear so little in the Star Tribune about the Koch Brothers and their gargantuan efforts to buy elections.

Halloween has always been a puzzlement to me. The mystery was brought to mind recently as I walked past a home decorated with skulls on pikes. These fake skulls brought to mind the real deaths around the world celebrated by vicious people in the same way. A Halloween display in a thrift store featured bloodied dresses and dirt strewn on the floor. I'm sure you can think of more shocking examples.

Why do we celebrate death and disorder? As for my house, we aim to celebrate life and try to improve every shining hour. Perhaps that is the takeaway: A message of Halloween may be to scare us by stressing the fleeting nature of time and open our minds and hearts to eternity.

Each week, people in the West St. Paul-Mendota Heights-Eagan School District spread inaccurate and misleading information regarding the upcoming levy. Absent from an Oct. 11 letter that says the district is failing while spending $15,500 per year per student is the fact that this is the entire budget per student and includes everything from transportation to special education to building maintenance.

The cost of moving the stadium to the high school is approximately $5 a year on a $200,000 home. How can you argue that the benefits of a high school stadium are not worth $5 a year? The stadium is a long-term investment that would be used by many in the community, not just the high school. The artificial turf would open up opportunities for the field to be used from early spring to late fall. Every kid who graduates from Henry Sibley would stand in that stadium for the event.

Certainly there are opportunities for improvement. But to declare that the district is unworthy of our support of $32 a year (if all three ballot questions are approved) is ridiculous.

An Oct. 11 letter writer sees a vast, antihunting conspiracy by the copper-ammunition crowd to take away one tiny hunting tradition at a time and ultimately end game hunting in Minnesota.

First: That there has been no case of human lead poisoning from ingesting lead shot and spatter doesn't mean that the very-well-documented science of harm from lead ammunition to water fowl and other bird species is false. The writer may think that the bald eagle population is robust; I don't.

Second: If the writer really wants to be authentic in his choice of traditional hunting "ammo," he'd best go out and find a nice tree limb to make a bow from. (Sorry, no fiberglass-compound bows.) His traditional arrow shafts and real feather fletching, along with a gut drawstring, will be of his choosing. I hope he's adept at making flint arrowheads.

Yes, the developing world will demand more electricity, but it has yet to build the power plants to provide it. What it fuels those plants with will be locally decided. The same is true for replacing old power plants or building new ones to support a shift to electric-based transportation in the developed world.

The Oct. 10 article was authored by the co-founders of the Breakthrough Institute. The organization's goal of shifting the world to cleaner sources of energy would be better served by working to make alternative energy solutions more attractive for those new power plants than by belittling a significant milestone in achieving energy efficiency.