No Section

Readers Write (Oct. 6): Child care, Vikings, Palestinians, innovation

October 6, 2011 at 1:53AM

(Susan Hogan — Star Tribune/The Minnesota Star Tribune)

CHILD CARE

To this provider, union is counterintuitive

Thank you for publishing the article by state Sens. David Hann and Mike Parry that asks the necessary questions regarding the prospective unionization of Minnesota day care providers ("Too many questions on day care union," Oct. 3).

I operate a child care business in my home in Bloomington. I am regulated by our Legislature, which has the task of creating laws to protect the safety and well-being of children cared for by providers like me.

In exchange for a license issued by the state, I agree to obey the laws that govern my services. I, as well as many of my peers, also strive to follow moral codes of conduct that influence a person's character and values.

I am a self-employed sole proprietor who by definition assumes 100 percent of the risks and 100 percent of the liability of all decisions made and actions taken in my day care. My day care parents are not my employers.

They are my clients who pay me a fee in exchange for contractually agreed upon services. While I must follow the laws that govern my business, I am the one who sets the parameters of my operation, and parents choose to accept or decline my services.

No government agency, no families in my day care, no union, and no employer share in the responsibilities I assume as a self-employed business owner. The good and the bad rest solely on my shoulders.

I'm not an expert on the history of unions, but I'm fairly sure they haven't traditionally been formed to represent business owners.

The subject seems counterintuitive to me, but I'll be fair and give Gov. Mark Dayton and union organizers a chance to answer two additional questions not posed by Hann and Parry:

1) What percentage of my risk exposure and my liabilities will you be taking over?

2) To what address should I mail the bill for your portion of my self-employment taxes?

SUZANNE STENBECK MCCABE, BLOOMINGTON

• • •

Two Republican senators ask, "What is the problem we're trying to solve?" in their column on day care unions. It's inexcusable that they don't realize they have helped create the problem they can't see.

As state officials, they set the rates that child care providers receive so that low-income families can work. For years, child care organizations have fought a losing battle to raise these rates to a livable wage.

Currently, a licensed family child care provider in Ramsey County receives $134.82 a week to care for toddlers or preschoolers. A provider caring for four children and working on average 60 hours a week earns $8.98 per hour.

A similar provider in Beltrami County would earn $7.77 per hour. These rates will be even lower after the recent cutbacks in state government voted on by these senators.

When thousands of providers sign up to be represented by a union to improve their lives and the lives of low-income families, these senators can't understand, or don't want to.

TOM COPELAND, ST. PAUL

* * *

VIKINGS STADIUM

Don't rush to fill up that Arden Hills land

The old army facility in Arden Hills is one of the last large intact tracts of land remaining within the Interstate 494/694 system. In that regard it is unique. \The notion of using part of that parcel for a stadium, townhomes, apartments, condominiums and a meeting center for the enrichment of a developer is idiotic.

In the first place, a stadium doesn't need 400 acres. In the second place, the Twin Cities area, not to mention the whole state, doesn't need more housing, and most definitely doesn't need another underused meeting center.

Why did you build all of that road infrastructure, not to mention transit modalities heading downtown?

Someone asked me, rather churlishly: Well, what would you use the Arden Hills land for? I say if you can't think of good uses for that land, then leave it alone. We will need that land in the future.

MICHAEL N. FELIX, GRAND RAPIDS, MINN.

* * *

PALESTINIAN REFUGEES

However they left, the law gives them rights

There are different narratives of the cause of the Palestinian refugee problem. Israeli historians such as Benny Morris ("Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881-2001") document the ethnic cleansing carried out by the Israeli military and Jewish settlers between 1947, when the United Nations created Arab and Jewish states, and the cessation of hostilities in 1949.

An Oct. 3 letter writer chooses to follow a different narrative promoted by Israeli propaganda in which Palestinians fled at the urging of the Arab countries attacking Israel in order to clear a path for their invasion.

In either case, some 700,000 Palestinians were displaced in the midst of a military conflict. By international law, those refugees have the right to return to their lands and homes. That right has been denied to Palestinian refugees for more than 60 years.

WILLIAM C. HUNT, SOMERSET, WIS.

* * *

INNOVATION

It's defeatist to say the U.S. can't compete

If I understand it correctly, U.S. Rep. Cliff Stearns, a Florida Republican who leads the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, told National Public Radio that "we can't compete with China to make solar panels and wind turbines."

What utter and abysmal defeatism! And, what a slap in the face to American technologists! He gives no credit to the brilliant minds in American industry who may come up with breakthrough technologies that can compete with the Chinese.

It has been said that our future is in technology as we struggle with foreign competition in the black-iron and nuts-and-bolts industries. Fine! Solar is high technology and, as such, is high risk. One failure doesn't mean we aren't capable. Learn from the Solyndra incident and move on. And dare I say, move on with more confidence in the capabilities of American engineers and scientists.

HARALD ERIKSEN, BROOKLYN PARK