I recommend Eleanor Roosevelt as the first woman whose face will appear on the $10 bill ("Woman to be added to $10 bill in 2020, Treasury says," June 18). She was a principal author of the U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and she worked for human rights for 50 years, from the teens of the last century until her death in the 1960s. She was the niece of a Republican president (TR) and the wife of a Democratic president (FDR), but is now remembered as being above politics.
A plain child, she was nicknamed "Granny" by her own rather unthinking mother. The face of Eleanor Roosevelt on our money will make the statement that women are honored for their accomplishments instead of attractiveness.
Kathryn Christenson, St. Peter, Minn.
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I am acrimonious regarding the decision to remove Alexander Hamilton from our currency. As first secretary of the Treasury and creator of our monetary system, who better than Hamilton should have a presence on our money? In addition to George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, Hamilton should have a permanent legacy on our cash. Lesser notables like Jackson, Grant and Franklin could be deleted. In fact, as long as the Treasury Department is willing to replace certain notables on our currency, perhaps it is time to add James Madison, principal author of our Constitution, to our money.
Howard W. Schwartz, Golden Valley
METRO TRANSIT
Here's one of those moments that inspires gratitude
I witnessed an act of heroism Wednesday while riding light rail. I didn't actually see it — I felt it. I felt the headlong sensation of intense and sudden braking. I heard the shouts of the conductor in the cab as she reacted to the situation. And, thankfully, I then also saw the wide-eyed expression of a jogger who had almost been hit by the train. He stood a few feet away, his chest heaving, staring in disbelief. He was still wearing his headphones.
I wish this incident were out of the ordinary. However, I've been inattentive myself at times, and I've seen close calls like a pedestrian assessing one-way car traffic, then stepping into an active bus lane going the opposite way. Thank you, Madam Green Line Conductor, whoever you are. Thank you for being attentive, acting swiftly and probably saving a jogger's life. All of our Metro Transit drivers deserve enormous credit. They surely face and avert these dangers every single day. These are the stories we don't hear about in the news but that make our drivers heroes in my eyes. It is indeed a privilege to ride on Metro Transit.
Nina Ebbighausen, Minneapolis
THE SUPREME COURT
This year's 'sensational' cases are really just part of the process
Two Supreme Court cases — on the Affordable Care Act and same-sex marriage — and "two sensational rulings" forthcoming, according to D.J. Tice ("Two key court cases, two occasions for restraint," June 14). Not likely — they'll both be written in dry legalese, and a search for drama will leave one unsatisfied. Two "judicial power plays" are in the works, Tice writes. Not really — just two cases progressing through the system, not unlike thousands of others.
What do the rhetorical flourishes add to reasoned discussion of complex issues? The court "is not to decide what policy should be," so let's revisit Brown vs. Board of Education. Nobody supposed then that the definition of "persons" guaranteed that equal protection of the laws would come to include corporations, but it came about.
John Ammerman, St. Louis Park
INTERNATIONAL TRADE
Deal proponents like Editorial Board lack evidence in support
In the June 17 lead editorial ("U.S. prestige at stake in free-trade battles"), the Star Tribune Editorial Board claims that the TPP and T-TIP trade agreements would enhance the U.S. economy. With a current U.S. trade deficit of $500 billion per year, five times what it was when NAFTA was enacted 20 years ago, there is zero evidence that the claim is true. The board cites a letter from 17 former secretaries of defense and retired military leaders as backing fast-track authority for these agreements. It's almost certain that their only interest is funding the military-industrial gravy train on which, one suspects, they are all now comfortably riding.
Worst of all, the board fails to mention the pending TiSA trade-in-services agreement, the most toxic of the trade trio. That one will ensure that no signatory nation can ever effectively regulate its country's financial services. After a worldwide financial catastrophe from which we have not yet recovered, and with weekly news reports that the 10 largest banks in the world are recidivist criminal enterprises, what could possibly go wrong?
William Beyer, St. Louis Park
MEDICAL TESTS
Why cardiovascular screening matters, even without symptoms
Dr. Hanna Bloomfield, in her June 18 commentary "Don't be lured into unnecessary tests," has expressed a commonly held misunderstanding that opposes the need for cardiovascular screening in asymptomatic adults. I'm sure she advocates for routine colonoscopy and mammograms to detect possible signs of early cancer, even though far more men and women will die or be disabled by cardiovascular disease than by these cancers.
The problem is the difference between cardiovascular disease and cancer. Cancer usually begins in a single site, and its detection and removal may eliminate the problem. Most cardiovascular disease results from a widespread process in the arteries called atherosclerosis. The detection processes that Dr. Bloomfield impugns identify single sites of a generalized process for which localized treatment, especially if the lesions are asymptomatic, will not alter prognosis.
The importance of screening is not to aim treatment at a localized site but to inform therapy aimed at the generalized process. Lifestyle changes may be modestly effective, but the most important strategy is the administration of drugs that profoundly slow or even reverse the atherosclerotic process. Appropriate screening, which we perform with a series of noninvasive tests at the Rasmussen Center at the University of Minnesota, identifies the early disease in need of drug treatment that can slow its progression and lead to a long, asymptomatic life.
Dr. Bloomfield needs to know that even "as a woman who never smoked and who has no symptoms," for her atherosclerosis may be progressing and a future heart attack or stroke may be lurking. Individualized screening and targeted drug treatment is the right strategy.
Dr. Jay N. Cohn, Minneapolis
The writer is a professor of medicine and director of the Rasmussen Center for Cardiovascular Disease Prevention at the University of Minnesota.
FOOTBALL STADIUMS
Here's how to distinguish the two fiduciary nomenclatures
How to differentiate one "Bank" stadium from the other? It's obvious to anyone who attended the University of Minnesota in the last 50 years: "East Bank" and "West Bank."
David Craig Smith, Minneapolis
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If the Vikings could persuade U.S. Bank to spend $220 million just to have its name on the new stadium, couldn't they have found someone to chip in the measly $1 million for bird-friendly glass?
