The interstate system was meant to be toll-free

It's not the idea of an I-80 toll road that troubles me. The apex of my worry is the entirety of President Dwight Eisenhower's free National Highway system being made into a toll road, one piece at a time.

The interstates, as originally conceived, were to be "toll free," paid for by our gasoline tax dollars. In short, we own these roads. For our bloated state Legislature and governor to attempt to make part of it a toll road will be the beginning of the end of Eisenhower's vision.

Understand, I voted for Ed Rendell twice, and I'm nearly as progressive as he is. But just because the roads are ripe for the picking doesn't mean you take advantage of your citizenry. You're already doing so with the turnpike and the last 43 percent toll increase and another 25 percent to come. If you want to sell the turnpike to another country, why not first try doing so to our own federal government and making it part of the Interstate system? Oh wait, we already own it.

At the Interstate's inception, the Pennsylvania Turnpike could have been part of said system, but as usual, our Legislature didn't want to give up the profitability and opted to bypass being part of the nearly 47,000 miles of national interstate highway.

Privatization promises a quick fix -- and a way to outsource difficult decisions, like raising tolls, to entities that don't have to worry about getting re-elected. But they're buying our infrastructure. Be careful what you wish for.

TOM ZENI
Washington

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Try this

The idea to convert the 310-mile stretch of Interstate 80 into a toll road is so ill-conceived, it could only come from Harrisburg.

I have a few crazy ideas of my own.

1) Locally, let's immediately privatize transit service in Allegheny County. Then bury the Port Authority in its own underwater tunnel.

2) Erect a toll booth on every road, alley and trail leading in and out of Harrisburg.

3) Put Philadelphia up for sale on eBay, Liberty Bell and cheesesteaks included. Maybe we'd find a buyer -- Delaware, New Jersey, Mark Cuban, a bored Saudi prince -- to take that fiscal cesspool off our hands.

DAN SKANTAR
Oakdale

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ER use not costly

We appreciate the comments of Betsy M. Snook, executive administrator of the Pennsylvania State Nurses Association, on improving access to health care within the commonwealth ("Doctors vs. Nurses, Cont'd," July 18 Perspectives). We acknowledge the role of advanced-practice nurses. She completely misses the mark, however, on purported overuse of Pennsylvania's emergency departments.

In a 2004 study, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention classified only 12.5 percent of emergency department visits as "non-urgent." Many of these patients, such as children with earaches and hypertensive patients out of medication, to which Ms. Snook refers, are cared for efficiently and inexpensively in non-urgent sections of emergency departments. Emergency care accounts for less than 5 percent of the nation's $1.5 trillion annual health care expenditures. Diverting these types of visits to urgent care centers or retail clinics will not improve health care costs.

So why are our emergency departments so crowded? The lack of appropriately staffed hospital inpatient beds results in admitted patients being held in emergency departments for hours to days. In the last 10 years, the number of emergency departments open in Pennsylvania has decreased by 17 percent, despite increasing demand for acute care. There is a shortage of on-call specialists, nurses and support staff, and Pennsylvania's population is aging. The result is that many emergency departments are operating in a near-crisis mode on a daily basis.

The evidence shows that emergency departments provide cost-effective care and are crowded by admitted and ill patients -- not by non-urgent patients. Efforts to decrease their use have little to no impact on overall health care costs.

MICHAEL A. TURTURRO, M.D.
Mt. Lebanon

The writer is vice president, Pennsylvania Chapter, American College of Emergency Physicians.

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Deserves the time

I want to thank Senior U.S. District Court Judge Alan N. Bloch for adhering to federal sentencing guidelines following Felix Caste's conviction for possessing child pornography ("Ex-officer of South Hills Shopping Center Gets Jail for Child Porn," July 26). Despite the pleas of family, friends and his attorney, Mr. Caste will serve 46 months in prison, be required to register as a sex offender and will be on supervised release the rest of his life.

I would have preferred an even harsher sentence. Though he may not have personally molested a child, he is a predator nonetheless. His penchant for child pornography fuels an industry that kidnaps, rapes, films and murders children the world over so that monsters like him can sit home and watch the perversion on their computers. He was no casual consumer; he had 300 to 600 images of children being used for adult viewing. My hope is that there is a dark and slimy corner of hell reserved for people like him.

BARBARA WOOLCOTT
Regent Square

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Cue theme music

As I was reading Charles Krauthammer's "Dems Should Think Twice Before Pulling the Plug on Progress in Iraq" (July 21), all I heard in the back of my mind was the theme to "The Twlight Zone."

Let me get this straight. The new strategy of the Bush administration is this: We arm the Sunnis to help us. The Sunnis that we took out of power because they were evil. The Sunnis who will gladly take weapons to defeat the Shiites in the daytime, and then turn those weapons against the Americans at nighttime. Of course those Sunnis will fight against al-Qaida.

So the new strategy is to turn Iraq over to the Sunnis. The Sunnis that had the country before over 3,000 young men and women died, before many thousands of young men and women were maimed, before hundreds of thousands of Iraqi people were killed and displaced, before billions of dollars were spent, before country after country abandoned the United States, before our country was divided as never in its history -- and this is the new strategy?

It is the "Twilight Zone."

JOAN KOSINSKI
Baden

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Draft Spot

The scenes of enraged protesters heckling an alleged dog-abuser, football quarterback Michael Vick, and the absence of such visible activism against the nation's feckless and dangerous Iraq policy, make me think:

The only way Americans will stand up and vent their rage against Mr. Bush for his unnecessary war is if the president sends their dogs to Iraq.

JOHN KICHI
Sewickley Hills

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No sanctuary

I was surprised by the Post-Gazette's July 25 editorial "No Sanctuary: Protesters Out of Line in Church Picketing."

Apparently, dishonest politicians have no obligation to be accountable to their community when they make decisions that cause harm. It is my understanding that the protest was quite peaceful, unlike Mr. Onorato's decision to capture and kill Canada geese at North Park.

At some point, the politicians who allegedly represent us must be taken to task for the decisions they make, which so often lead to unnecessary suffering or pain, whether to American soldiers in Iraq or Canada geese in North Park. No one is immune to peaceful criticism -- even if it is in front of the church they attend.

VALERIE MORRIS
Butler

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What they're doing on summer vacation: learning the value of public art

As a person in a relationship with an artist, I know how important it is to plant the seed of design early. The July 19 article "Their Palette Brings Faces of City Alive" focused on the mural project along the Martin Luther King Jr. East Busway. This effort -- one of 24 murals being created this summer in eight neighborhoods -- is truly allowing young people to get a taste for the joy and praise one gets from seeing their art in a public space.

It also gives them a heads-up about pay. Each of the 100 kids will receive a sum of money for their summer work. It allows them the opportunity to make a case for art, as this project smashes the common starving-artist perception. A lot of young people want to be famous. They have dreams of being a pro athlete or a rock star -- but how many want to be a famous artist?

This project -- launched by artist Kyle Holbrook and supported by local foundations and institutions -- plants that dream. I think it is wonderful for them to foster the sprouting of art.

BONNIE SCHINDLER
Squirrel Hill