A word about IMF salaries

Re "French finance minister named IMF's new leader" (Business, June 29): Will Christine Lagarde, the new director of the International Monetary Fund, do anything about the IMF economists who are able to retire with six-figure salaries in their early 50s?

This strikes me as unfair given how the IMF has explicitly called for governments to raise the age of eligibility for much smaller pensions to 65 or even 67.

– Gary Fitzgerald, Carmichael

'Three-strikes' law costly

Re "Don't blame state's 'three-strikes' law for prison overcrowding" (Viewpoints, June 25): Margaret A. Beng's op-ed omits some important facts. The reduction of crime predated the 1994 passage of "three strikes," and tracks the aging of our population. It costs $50,000 a year to house an inmate. A "three-strikes" sentence costs taxpayers at least $1.5 million over 25 years.

In the '80s we had fewer than 35,000 people in prison and spent only 20 percent as much on prisons as public colleges. Today we spend as much on the 140,000 inmates as on the 650,000 students in University of California and California State University systems.

Maybe we need to decide which group will most benefit our state.

– Frank Horowitz, criminal justice instructor, California State University, Sacramento

CPS is too aggressive

Re "CPS chief takes leave of absence" (Our Region, June 29): It should not surprise anyone that Child Protective Services is a mess. It has become another federally funded program that should have its funds cut.

Instead of making every effort to keep kids with family members, whenever possible, CPS chooses the opposite.

It has swayed far from its original intent. If CPS were to handle only true cases of abuse and opt for parenting classes, we wouldn't need 769 workers. There are a multitude of cases nationally of families fighting CPS, so maybe it needs to change on a national level.

– Liz Forsman, Sacramento

Health costs are a symptom

Re "Senate should OK regulation of health rates" (Editorial, June 28): The Bee apparently wants to make health insurance more affordable so more people can get coverage. That's commendable.

Health insurance costs, however, are the symptom of runaway costs of actual health care.

To get a better perspective, compare what hospitals, radiologists, some doctors and other medical service providers bill insurance to what insurance companies actually pay based on agreements between the carriers and the providers.

If we want to have a society with affordable health care, the focus should be on the out- rageous charges by many health care providers.

Maybe we could develop a system that assures providers recoup their costs plus a fair rate of return instead of perpetuating the out-of-control system we now suffer under.

– Daniel J. Smith, Sacramento

Fishy science in whale story

Re "Gray whale navigates Northwest Passage" (Page A8, June 26): The problem is this entire article is based on assumptions and emotions without reference to any real science.

Scientists do not assume. Scientists observe. Unless someone saw the gray whale in transit through the Northwest Passage, scientists and we cannot know how it got into the Atlantic Ocean. Other possibilities exist: it traveled around South America; it transited via the Panama Canal; gray whales are not actually extinct in the Atlantic Ocean.

Scientists should say they theorize that the whale swam through the Northwest Passage, rather than assume the only way the whale could have got there was through the Northwest Passage.

– David Newkirk, Sacramento

Put Stanford Mansion to use

The Stanford Mansion, one of Sacramento's treasures, is on the pending state park closure list.

Might this wonderful dwelling be chosen as a residence for the governor?

– George Young, Fair Oaks

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