SARA JANE OLSON IS FREE
Don't Republicans have enough on their plates?
This might seem like a novel idea, but maybe Gov. Tim Pawlenty and Republican state legislators should get back to worrying about the state budget deficit and rising unemployment rate instead of wasting our time and tax dollars on bogus legislation trying to keep Sara Jane Olson out of Minnesota for reasons that are, at best, posturing and, at worst, mean-spirited.
RACHEL F. KOWARSKI, ST. PAUL
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The vindictiveness displayed toward Sara Jane Olson by some Republicans (including Gov. Pawlenty) is unseemly and unworthy. Our legal system says that Olson has now paid her debt to society. It's time to move on.
The right has vocally insisted on its support of Christian values. So let's exercise the Christian virtues of forebearance, forgiveness and compassion and welcome Olson, who, despite the catastrophic errors of her youth, still has many gifts to contribute to our community.
THOMAS R. SMITH, RIVER FALLS, WIS.
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Hooray! Sara Jane is coming home. Let's hope the Los Angeles Police Department donates the cars to pick her up. I'm sure they have a couple that already have her fingerprints all over them.
BLAIR SORVARI, CHAMPLIN
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Regarding Gov. Pawlenty and GOP legislators' attempts to keep Sara Jane Olson from returning to Minnesota: John 8:7 covers the situation for me.
The husband of the woman killed in California has been interviewed on the subject of Olson's release. Dr. Trygve Opsahl, a retired surgeon, stated, "I hope she has learned something from this and can go out and be a good citizen and contribute to the community where she lives," he said. "And still have some life left to live ... It's done and over with ... and I'm kind of putting it out of my mind."
Whatever tenets the governor and some legislators are practicing -- is this some form of "compassionate conservatism?" -- I wish they'd look at Dr. Opsahl's model and think about practicing it as well.
EMILIE QUAST, MINNEAPOLIS
AIG BONUSES
Its 'best and brightest' sank the company
CEO Edward Liddy is giving bonuses to the wrong people. He cut bonuses for people who had no "direct" involvement with the derivatives (which really means lower paid employees) and gave it to those already making more than the middle-class worker.
Liddy defended the need to continue paying bonuses and said, "we cannot attract and retain the best and the brightest talent to lead and staff the AIG businesses."
If the best and brightest are those who help put AIG and the American public in this mess, then Libby needs to reconsider what constitutes the "best and brightest" and should be prosecuted by the federal government for stealing money from the poor to give to these "best and brightest."
JO ANN M. ANDERS, SHAKOPEE
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Let me see if I understand this correctly: United Auto Workers members must give up some duly negotiated contract benefits. Teachers should prepare to be paid based on how their students perform, even if many success factors are beyond their control. But AIG execs can get their bonuses because they were negotiated before they drove the company into the ground?
Can you at least publish their names, so perhaps they'll be embarrassed enough to give the money back?
MARY CRAMPTON, BLOOMINGTON
INDIAN GAMING
The grave threat to Indian culture
I would like to express my opinion in response to the suffering that many Mdewakanton Dakota Indians are now experiencing because of their greed for casino money ("Court rules group has no claim to casinos," March 13).
The introduction of tribal casinos is more threatening to American Indian culture and sovereignty than alcohol or smallpox ever were. It is causing conflicts between tribes and state governments. What has the white man ever given American Indians that he has not, in due time, taken away because of greed?
State government officials' promises of granting and protecting the Indian monopolies on casino gambling in their respective states will be broken, leaving the tribes broke, indebted, addicted and abandoned. This will be the worst of all our government's broken promises to our country's American Indians. And only then will American Indian communities that decided to assimilate into a money-loving aspect of the white man's culture understand what a terrible mistake they made.
THOMAS DAHLHEIMER, WAHKON, MINN.;
INDIGENOUS PEOPLES ACTIVIST
DFL tax plan
Let's reward, instead of punishing, success
It is so typical of Democrats to penalize success rather than encourage it in their proposed tax code changes. I was under the impression that home ownership was an economic benefit to the community that should be encouraged, not penalized. The same applies to charitable giving.
If the Legislature really wanted to be fair, it would either eliminate members' per diem privilege or at least make it a 100 percent taxable income benefit rather than being a tax-free income supplement. Legislative pay increases should be subject to statewide ballot initiative under the same rules as bond issues. Special sessions should be without compensation. And it should encourage success and discourage failure by taxing high school dropouts at a higher rate than high school graduates.
Let's support a tax code that pulls people up from the economic bottom by rewarding success rather than pushing successful people down.
GEORGE CHRISTOFERSON, ELK RIVER
the power of words
Obama uses 'crisis' to push his agenda
In the campaign, President Obama said that "words have meaning." Right now, he is using the word "crisis" to include not only the housing crisis and the banking crisis, but a health care crisis, employment crisis, educational crisis and a climate change crisis.
He is using the word to advance an all-inclusive and overwhelming agenda that the country can neither afford nor stomach.
As a homeowner, husband, father, worker, I have to decide all the time what is "crisis" and what can wait. Our government should think more like the governed.
RICK DISCHINGER, MINNEAPOLIS
