Readers Write: The Austin community, 'Our barter with Big Tech,' Vikings stadium funding, sexual harassment, courts and ideology

Excellent article by Chip Scoggins in regard to the Austin, Minn., community and basketball team ("Austin's true colors," Sports, Feb. 23). Austin has done an excellent job bringing new people to its community and moving ahead in America 2020. Everyone should take time to compare the situation in Austin to the sad advance of right-wing groups all over the world, including America over the past 10 years.

Which worldview is better? Racist hate has brought new mass murders to places such as Texas, California, Ohio, Germany, New Zealand, and many more. What new atrocities will we see this year from right-wing groups here and around the world?

All Americans should strive to build better communities such as Austin, which appears to have accepted what the world has become and has made a very positive experience for people who want to participate in the community. In comparison, if the right wing succeeds, the world will be a very dangerous and sad place filled with hate and violence. I thought those views began to die off after World War II and the American civil-rights battles in the 1960s, but unfortunately they are being dragged back into our world.

Thanks for the inspiring article and good luck to all the good people in Austin.

During these dark days in our nation's political climate, this story was remarkable and telling. What a difference individuals can make!

As a Austin native, I was thrilled to read about how the town has thrived in its response to diversity. An obvious follow-up piece, and a subject not broached in the entire article, is how girls' athletics have fared recently in Austin.

In response to "Our barter with Big Tech: Tax that!" (Opinion Exchange, Feb. 21): The author did not mention that a Facebook user can download personal data. If that data is available and so valuable, why isn't everyone selling it themselves? Because the individual data is not worth anything. It is the data network that is valuable.

The reality is that Wilf is a master in the art of using other people's money, and the funding of the stadium is no exception. It started with a false promise from Gov. Mark Dayton that not a "single dollar" of tax money would be used and continued with the Legislature crafting the agreement in secrecy, causing the Star Tribune's Jon Tevlin to write a column headlined "Stadium deal was as transparent as the Berlin Wall."

Here's the funding for Wilf's obligation: seat license fee, $100 million; NFL, $200 million; naming rights, $220 million. Loans were paid off by a 25% to 50% increase in ticket prices. This was all money from the public. Then we have the millions spent by the Metropolitan Council and the Minnesota Department of Transportation for stadium improvements.

In addition to the state's contribution, the city of Minneapolis is on the hook, according to the Star Tribune, for "an estimated $631 million."

In the meantime, the value of the team has grown from the original $600 million that Wilf paid to $2.7 billion today. It is no wonder that the Vikings stadium deal was listed by MarketWatch in 2015 as one of the five worst in history.

Carlson was governor of Minnesota from 1991 to 1999. Ostrow was president of Minneapolis City Council from 2002 to 2005.

I told two women in our department. They responded "Oh, that's just (his name). He tries it with every woman. He's a boundary-tester. Women have to set the boundaries. Since you pushed him away, he will leave you alone. If you file a complaint, you will lose your job. Complainers are labeled troublemakers and troublemakers do not get tenure."

Thank you for the Feb. 23 article "A 'painful' grade on harassment: Minn. State system often only issues reprimands or short suspensions." It brought back painful memories of ongoing harassment and bullying issues at MSU.

My mentors were right. He left me alone after the one incident. He continued harassing students and other colleagues, however, for 30 years.

I did not file a complaint. My dean and some colleagues would have supported and tried to protect me. But more colleagues would have gone along with the "we don't want troublemakers in our department" idea.

Over the years, I observed a number of women in other departments file complaints against harassers or bullies. The complaining women lost their jobs. They were either denied tenure or were hounded and mistreated until they resigned. Long stories all …

The writer is an emerita professor at Minnesota State University, Mankato.

With respect to the premise of D.J. Tice's column "pushing for a congressional solution — leaving the people free to democratically pass laws to live by and less often relying on the courts to know best" — I am dubious. ("Not so bad, this era for the courts," Opinion Exchange, Feb. 23.)

The February 1938 issue of the Harvard Law Review commented on 1,600 injunctions issued in 1935 — 36 by the courts preventing officials from executing federal law — that "in no time in the country's history was there a more voluminous outpouring of judicial rulings in restraint of the acts of Congress than the body of decisions in the lower courts, in varying degree, invalidating every measure deemed appropriate by Congress for grappling with the Great Depression."

So considering the disposition of the Roberts court as recently admonished by Justice Sonia Sotomayor concerning the number of stays granted to cases brought by the Trump administration and the fast-tracking of lower court judges by the Senate majority leader, I don't share Mr. Tice's enthusiasm.