Readers Write: New motorcycle laws, the Dems vs. the DSA, Vance Boelter, the budget bill

Opinion editor’s note: Strib Voices publishes letters from readers online and in print each day. To contribute, click here.

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It’s been 30 years since roundabouts were introduced in Minnesota, and too many drivers still do not know how to use them properly. Just the other day, a driver stopped abruptly in front of me in the traffic circle to check if a vehicle was approaching from the right.

With the new law allowing motorcyclists to split lanes (“Make way for motorcyclists,” July 1), I suspect that driving will become much more dangerous. Uff da!

Romy Hall, Burnsville

The writer of Monday’s letter to the editor “Break off into a separate party already” is wrong to believe the Democrats lost the last election because the party was rooted in “‘progressive’ dogma.” Exit polling and the data indicate that Democrats lost due to inflation fatigue and suggesting that they were perceived as not taking concerns about immigration seriously. Inflation was happening worldwide, an indication that it wasn’t under political control by Democrats, and had nothing to do with “progressive” dogma. President Donald Trump deviously blocked President Joe Biden’s bipartisan immigration reform by keeping the legislation from coming to a vote, making the Democrats look bad. Again, “progressive” dogma had nothing to do with Democrats losing on that issue. They were just outflanked by Trump.

There were the might-have-beens, not “progressive” dogma that contributed to the loss, too. Had Biden chosen not to run and had an open primary ensued, a younger candidate with fresher ideas might have emerged and won. Had the Justice Department moved quickly and put Trump on trial for his roles in the Jan. 6 attempted coup and the documents case before the election, it is hard to believe Trump would have won.

Finally, I must respond to the letter’s call to bar Democratic endorsement from anyone endorsed by the DSA. Doing that would be totally against what we Democrats stand for. We don’t want to deny our party endorsement to someone deemed too progressive. We only require that candidates and voters in our primaries agree with our basic beliefs and principles. If we barred DSA-endorsed candidates, such as Zohran Mamdani of New York, we would fail to bring in candidates who win by listening to the people and bring bold new proposals that are the wave of the future for our party.

Paul Rozycki, Minneapolis

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In response to the letter regarding the Democratic Socialist who won the Democratic nomination for New York City mayor, I do not think there is anything wrong with that. I am of the opinion that most of both the Democratic and Republican parties are bought and sold by big-money donors and that we need to move to an election system that is funded by smaller grassroots donations. The writer of this letter stated that progressives should have no business meddling in mainstream Democratic policy; to me, the best way to bring third-party and independent candidates into our political arena is to transition away from our presidential republic and go with a parliamentary system similar to what is used by many of America’s key allies. I know that this would require one or more constitutional amendments, but I believe that this is a sacrifice that our elected representatives must make to ensure a sane future for this nation and the world.

Dan Wicht, Fridley

In an opinion piece in the Star Tribune on June 28 (“Now isn’t the time for a turf war with the feds,” Strib Voices), Rochelle Olson decried the decision of Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty to seek to go first in the prosecution of Vance Boelter for the assassination of former House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, and the attempted assassination of state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette.

The lion’s share of the investigation of the case was and will be done by the state’s law enforcement resources, and the first charges against Boelter were lodged by Moriarty for acts committed in Hennepin County. But Olson says that Moriarty should defer to the U.S. Attorney’s office and let it go first out of a misplaced sense of bonhomie. Olson’s animus toward Moriarty is also apparent, to this writer, anyway.

Olson overlooks the obvious elephant in the room: U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi. Bondi sprang onto the national scene when, as Florida’s attorney general, she refused to join several other state attorneys general in a case against Florida’s Trump University (which led to the disbanding of it), while receiving a $25,000 campaign contribution from Donald Trump.

Bondi has demonstrated a willingness to do Trump’s bidding, serving as Trump’s lawyer at the Justice Department, not the country’s. She’s fired multiple prosecutors for not demonstrating sufficient fealty to Trump, most recently axing three prosecutors who tried Jan. 6 insurrection cases. She’s willing to lean on line prosecutors to do Trump’s bidding.

One of the important public purposes of the prosecution of Boelter will be to lay bare the role of MAGA in Boelter’s radicalization. With a federal prosecution team under the thumb of the highly partisan Bondi, we cannot be sure that will happen. In fact, it probably won’t happen. There has already been a pulling away from surveillance and investigation of right-wing terror organizations by the Trump administration’s Justice Department.

Minnesotans ought to be worried about the efforts of the Justice Department to bigfoot Moriarty on this one. We want to know why the victims were targeted, not merely that they were.

Steve Timmer, Edina

The writer is a retired attorney.

So the risk of metabolized thimerosal in flu vaccines releasing mercury to our systems is justification to make vaccines less available? Wonderful. Thank you, RFK Jr., for your concern (“Thimerosal: What to know about the vaccine preservative from a bygone flu-shot debate,” StarTribune.com, June 26). Now, compare that to burning coal. According to the United Nations’ Global Mercury Partnership, “burning of coal is, after artisanal and small-scale gold mining, the largest single anthropogenic source of mercury air emissions,” not to mention “the significance of mercury releases to land and water from coal-fired power plants.” Yet the Trump consortium is aggressively talking up coal. Burn, baby, burn …

Harald Eriksen, Brooklyn Park

Put aside all the esoteric procedural and accounting arguments about wrangling on the budget bill and here’s what you get: Millions of Americans would go without health care because they’ve committed the sin of being poor. And those among us lucky enough not to be poor may one day be, if we live long enough, because the Trumpist Republican budget would add trillions of dollars to the deficit and thereby threaten Social Security and Medicare.

Steve Schild, Falcon Heights

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I would love, just once, to hear an authentic explanation, or any explanation at all, from those members of Congress who continue to support President Donald Trump’s hateful bill. Jeff Bezos just threw himself a reported $50 million wedding. Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, receives $8 million per day from contracts with this government. Tell me, please, why they and other billionaires need tax breaks, when the most vulnerable citizens would be denied Medicaid, SNAP and other life-sustaining programs? I cannot think of one good reason. Anyone, anyone?

Jeanne Torma, Minneapolis