ELECTION '08
Clean up the airwaves; limit campaign ads
It's the election season, and we are once again bombarded with the negative campaign ads that most people get sick of hearing and wish would go away. Why not have a law to reduce the number of them?
Limit ads to those that are paid for by the candidate's campaign. That would eliminate ads of the senatorial committees, the national parties and the Swift boat-type organizations that are behind most of the mud-slinging.
It would force the campaigns to think twice on how they would spend what money they have. They might be more inclined to focus on the issues rather than character assassination.
BRIAN MARSH, SPRING LAKE PARK
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In this age of instant image creation over TV and the Internet, is it too much to ask candidates for the highest office in the world's greatest democracy to deliver any messages of substance?
Barack Obama's ad telling us that John McCain doesn't know how to send e-mail adds virtually nothing to our understanding of the candidates, but ads for John McCain and Norm Coleman are perhaps the most egregious. Coleman's ad flashing hand-selected photos of a wild-looking Al Franken, juxtaposed with menacing music and a dark end-of-the-world-type shadow passing over Washington is intended to scare people rather than inform.
Maybe political advertising would be more honest if only the candidate's voice was allowed in the ads, or if it was forbidden to use unauthorized images of opponents. It might force candidates to tell us what they would do, rather than just create fear of the other side.
J.H. FONKERT, ST. PAUL
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The change the American voter requires is the change no political partisan or candidate will talk about: Term limits for all congressmen and senators. Twenty years should be enough. Perhaps then we would have politicians who would be working on what's good for America instead of what is good for their party and their reelection.
ALAN E. RICHTER, MINNEAPOLIS
ANIMAL CRUELTY
Hike in commodities
should change habits
The escalating costs of corn and soybeans and the current credit crunch are forcing widespread cutbacks in the number of animals raised for food. For the animals and caring consumers, such cuts are long overdue.
The 10 billion animals killed for food in the United States each year are caged and crowded, deprived and drugged, manhandled and mutilated. At the slaughterhouse, they may be scalded, bled, skinned and dismembered while still conscious. Although 93 percent of consumers condemn such abuses, no law prevents them.
On Oct. 2, 400 communities in all 50 states and two dozen other countries will observe World Farm Animals Day with public education events (see www.WFAD.org.) The purpose is to expose and memorialize the cruel treatment of animals raised for food and to promote an animal-free diet.
It's a great opportunity for each of us to embrace a cruelty-free, healthful, cost-saving plant-based diet.
STAN TILLMAN, MINNEAPOLIS
RNC PROTESTS
Minority of protesters were 'anarchists'
The Sept. 25 article on the St. Paul City Council's meeting to review the police action during the Republican National Convention quoted Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher as saying, "We're not going to be a part of any gathering that implies that we should be sympathetic to anarchists that were bent on destroying St. Paul."
It is hard to believe that there were 800 anarchists on the streets of St. Paul during the days of the RNC. I myself attended a day of events in downtown St. Paul during the convention, and I don't consider myself an anarchist.
However, according to Fletcher, if I had "stepped out of line" and had been arrested, I would have been considered an anarchist. And I guess that the multiple journalists arrested must have been part of some seething criminal underworld.
The point of focus in this discourse should not be on hyperbole and demonizing the cops during those four balmy days in September. It should be on the question of whom our police were tasked to protect during those days: Those voicing their dissatisfaction with the government or the "have mores" who gave the police some federal dollars for shiny new toys to keep anyone from possibly disrupting the party?
DAN HENNEY, MINNEAPOLIS
THE NEW BRIDGE
Apply that 'can-do' spirit to other goals
When I was commuting to work last week over the beautiful new Interstate 35W bridge -- listening to ominous news on the radio about high energy costs and possible American financial collapse -- I was stirred by the "can do" spirit that finished that magnificent bridge in less than one year.
America can do it, if it is challenged enough! I remember an America that was optimistic, one that took on great challenges and whose citizens were not reluctant to take on tax burdens for the greater good.
With energy challenges, etc., let's once again summon that "can do" spirit to make this place great once again -- whether it be wind or solar power, let's not settle any more for the status quo.
WILLIAM H. BARNES, ROSEVILLE
OUTDOOR AMENDMENT
A vote to protect our environment
An important amendment will appear on the November ballot. Minnesotans will have the chance to protect our Minnesota by voting yes on the Clean Water, Land and Legacy Amendment. It will provide funding to ensure safe drinking water sources, protect wildlife habitat, preserve our dwindling natural areas and protect our great outdoors.
We need clean water for drinking, fishing and swimming -- for our own benefit and the benefit of our children and future generations. This amendment gives us a chance to act now by providing dedicated funding for the next 25 years to preserve and enhance the Minnesota we love before it is gone forever.
Vote yes on Nov. 4. Failure to cast a vote will count as a no vote.
DR. ROBERT O. UPPGAARD,
PEQUOT LAKES, MINN.
