After reading your editorial "Ripe for Reform: A Pa. Tomato Grower Makes a Case for Immigration" (March 27), I wonder if you ever read your own paper? You proclaim that we need immigrants, legal or otherwise, to do jobs Americans won't do. Yet your paper is filled with stories of the homeless and the lack of funding for them or of cutbacks in welfare programs and the inhumane conditions in our overcrowded prisons.

Well, as long as any of these conditions exist, there really shouldn't be a labor shortage or any jobs Americans won't do! Whether it's picking crops, gardening or being a maid or janitor, hard work is something everyone is capable of and should be proud to do!

I am a union steamfitter in the construction industry, and we work in all weather and conditions. It's called earning a living and it is something all Americans should strive for!

JIM ZAHREN
Brighton Heights

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Regarding "Ripe for Reform" (March 27 editorial): Keith Eckel, a tomato grower in the northeast corner of the state, clearly makes the case for immigration. We will all suffer as he stops growing tomatoes and pumpkins, and cutting his sweet corn crop in half will result in the loss of nearly 175 jobs, he says. This is all because he is unable to locate sufficient migrant labor to harvest his crops and local labor won't do it.

A quote from Mr. Eckel: "There are a number of workers hesitant to travel, legal or illegal, because of the scrutiny they are now under." It is up to the government to develop a reliable guest worker program. Instead of a "green card," why not give immigrants who come to do this work a "chartreuse card" with place and date of birth and a Social Security number so they can contribute and potentially collect benefits in the future? Why not welcome them? We need them.

CORNELIA SMOLLIN
Whitehall

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About two weeks ago, I contacted Sen. Bob Casey's office to ask for his endorsement of Hillary Clinton, who I believed he supported. I was told by an aide in his office that Mr. Casey would endorse whoever won the Democratic nomination.

Much to my surprise, he very publicly endorsed Barack Obama last week ("Casey Backs Obama," March 29). Bob Casey turned his back on his state. I ask everyone -- the governor, our superdelegates, our mayor and councilmen, the media and especially the Democratic voters who helped to elect Bob Casey -- to reject him in kind. Bob Casey is not my kind of Democrat.

Additionally, I think Mr. Obama is all smoke and mirrors. Are people so desperate for change that they will vote in a guy who has little experience and nothing but a speech? Am I the only one who thinks Barack Obama looks a lot like Pedro in the "Napoleon Dynamite" movie, when he runs for high school class president and tells the student body, "Vote for me and all of your dreams will come true"?

We want sensible Democratic representatives. Don't be suckered by fools.

JEAN MARTIN
Trafford

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Sen. Barack Obama's courageous speech on race in America was the most moving and inspiring speech I have ever heard. It calls for true dialogue and for us to hold a mirror up to ourselves. If we are truthful, I dare say we may not like what we see. This takes courage and even greater courage to change, but change we must if we are to survive as the greatest nation on earth.

Sen. Obama believes in us enough to stick his neck out so that we can overcome our differences and work together for the common good.

Don't fear change, for as FDR said, "We have nothing to fear but fear itself." Clever people are divisive; intelligent people are all-inclusive. Sen. Obama's vision of how we can move beyond our divisions to tackle the many concrete problems facing our great nation is the only way to go. Then and only then will we have the shining city on a hill that Ronald Reagan called for.

NORMA MARGONARI
Greensburg

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I can't understand why this young generation of 20- and 30-year-olds are not protesting this current Iraq war of lies!

My so-called "hippie generation" of the '60s and '70s made sure we demonstrated and sometimes reverted to violence to make those old politicians in Washington listen to our anger at the killing and maiming of our generation's soldiers in Vietnam.

So, come on you young people of your generation: Let those old, stuffy men running our country know that you mean business concerning the end of this very unpopular, unnecessary war in Iraq!

CATHY WOODS
Brentwood

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In reply to the March 25 letters "Supply Limits" and "Lawmakers, Let's See Some Action on Fuel Prices": Don't you people understand anything about economics? It is all about supply and demand. The world appetite for oil has dramatically increased (China and India especially). The oil companies do not, I repeat, do not set oil prices.

Oil is a commodity bought and sold globally by investors, which dictates the prices you pay at the pump. To have the government interfere, other than state and federal government reducing gas taxes, is ludicrous to even suggest and, more important, is a move toward socialism at the expense of free enterprise.

MICHAEL M. BIERCE
Brighton Heights

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I want to urge the Port Authority to update its technology concerning direct sales of fares to passengers. My first experience using the light-rail system from South Hills Village was a surprising and shocking one. Attempting to purchase a one-way trip with a transfer, I discovered exact change was required, according to the attendant, who kindly directed me to the change machine.

In every major city I have visited (New York, Washington, Los Angeles), there are computerized fare machines that can take hard currency, credit cards or debit cards to issue a ticket, which one can reload with additional currency for fares. I'm lucky I had $10 in cash on me at that time; otherwise, I wouldn't have been able to make my 8:15 a.m. appointment. Normally I do not use the T, but in order to save time to my Downtown Pittsburgh destination, I decide to use it.

Come on, Pittsburgh; let's join our nation's list of technology-innovative cities!

PHIL MILLER
Canonsburg

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Regarding the comments by Susan Jacoby in Nicholas D. Kristof's column ("Dumbed Down," March 31), she omitted one important reason for the lack of intellectual discourse in America today: 30 years of a dysfunctional public education system.

WILLIAM R. CASEY
West Mifflin

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We receive more letters than we can fit into the limited space on the editorial page, so we'd like to share some additional letters with our Post-Gazette Web site readers.

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Those digital signs not only are disrespectful to architecture, but they also seem to be dangerously distractive and are usually ugly ("Signs of Time: Digital Ad Fight Spreads Across City," March 19). The trek along Route 28 in the Allegheny Valley is frequently bad for other reasons, but imagine how much more aggravating and dangerous it would be with billboards, let alone digital ones!

I've heard that we can credit the late Sen. H. John Heinz for keeping billboards off that road. Let's hope current policy-makers can show some foresight and taste, or at least do a safety study before allowing those hideous signs.

JEANNE CECIL
West View

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There are three types of communist/socialist regimes in the world as defined by Washington.

There are the usual fellow travelers, the progressive socialist regimes throughout the Third World that are lauded and supported by progressive Democrats. Liberal chic demands solidarity with African or South American dictators, no matter how repressive or brutal.

Then there is the Republican-endorsed Communist regime in Beijing. The Republicans seem to have exonerated and excused any and all atrocities committed by the People's Republic of China. It doesn't matter if the Communist regime of China orders its own students crushed by tanks in Tiananmen Square or the Chinese soldiers and secret police agents are incarcerating and imprisoning innocent protesters in Tibet.

Let's face it, China invaded, conquered and practically enslaved a free and sovereign nation, in exactly the same way as Stalin conquered and crushed the nations of Eurasia. But commercial interest, the free trade policy of our Republican plutocrats and the fact that our national debt is subsidized by China will intimidate the Republicans into acquiescence. All that rhetoric about freedom, democracy and rights goes right out the window. The Chinese Communists are encouraged to retain their totalitarian control just like the royal, nonelected princes who rule Saudi Arabia.

It is ironic that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi can support the Kurdish Marxist separatists, the PKK, and offend our ally, Turkey. But give her credit and kudos for her courage to confront the brutal repression of the Communist Chinese and their attempts to crush and control Tibet ("As China Cracks Down, Pelosi Backs Tibet Cause," March 22).

And then there is Cuba, our whipping boy. Every politician who wants to put on a pretense of standing up against Marxist or totalitarian regimes will stand tough against the Castro Brothers and keep our embargo.

MICHAEL GUY
Coraopolis

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Thank you for another editorial masterpiece: yesterday's editorial about the latest General Assembly stalling of a public place smoking prohibition bill ("Big Choke: Legislators Flop on Achieving a Smoking Ban," April 2). Your unrelenting and passionate advocacy for this measure provides hope and encouragement to activists like me and my wife, who for years have been writing letters to the editor to newspapers throughout the state, and intensely and repeatedly lobbying our elected officials to enact this simple, cost-free, "win-win" public health measure.

The extent to which we live in an unenlightened state is demonstrated in observing how difficult it is to get this measure placed into law. Please continue to join the majority of Pennsylvanians in this fight. The addition of your editorial heft is critical and should serve to embarrass those who are on the wrong side of the issue.

It will be a sweet day if and when right triumphs over special-interest might, and it will be one for which the Post-Gazette can take significant credit.

OREN M. SPIEGLER
Upper St. Clair

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The April 2 editorial "Big Choke" once again proposes legislation by opinion rather than evidence.

The conference committee, with the exception of anti-smokers Sen. Stewart Greenleaf and Rep. Michael Gerber, is working to find a solution to a perceived risk of secondary smoke. In reality no legislation is needed as the free market has already solved the perceived risk.

The editorial suggests Pennsylvania follow other states and countries that have succumbed to over-regulation promoted by special-interest groups that are headed by previously respected organizations. Citing the World Health Organization and the surgeon general makes the editorial sound convincing, but it is not. The World Health Organization's Multi-Case Study released in 1998 revealed little risk to exposure to secondary smoke. The surgeon general's statements and press releases were not supported by the report itself. The report was a multi-analysis of studies chosen to support his conclusion while leaving out studies contrary to his beliefs. The surgeon general's statements, based on his personal crusade, is a better example of a governmental agency astray than the committee criticized.

Science as an enterprise may be objective; scientists as individuals are not. Replacing the scientific method with scientific ideology will damage society more than delaying an unnecessary law. "Public health" seems to have abdicated its true purpose, healing the sick, in favor of social engineering.

A smoking ban has nothing to do with air quality. A ban removes a sometime visible presence but ignores unseen toxins in the air that will undoubtedly increase, as ventilation and filtering will be reduced to save costs.

ROBERT GEHRMANN
Pennsylvania State Coordinator
Citizens Freedom Alliance/Smokers Club International
Crafton

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Pennsylvania Transportation Secretary Allan Biehler said (in the March 13 article "Survey: More Than a Quarter of Region's Roads Rated 'Poor' ") about the poor quality of roads in the Pittsburgh metropolitan area that "there just hasn't been enough money to cover everything."

Excuse me, but to use one of the late Myron Cope's favorite expressions, what a load of gargonzola!

Apparently, there hasn't been enough money for the last 40-plus years because I remember bouncing from side to side in the back of my dad's station wagon as he slalomed around potholes on West Carson Street between the West End Circle and McKees Rocks when I was 12 years old back in 1968! And just last year, my daughter, a second lieutenant in the Air Force, nearly missed getting to her Air Force assignment because her brand-new 2007 Mazda was practically demolished by potholes just under the West End overpass. Curiously, the vacant lot she luckily limped to was already occupied by another woman whose car had also been vandalized by the same city-owned public safety hazards. My daughter barely made it to her assignment, two weeks and more than $2,300 in repair work later!

Point being, lack of funding is not the root cause of potholes and poor roads in Pittsburgh: lack of political will to do the right thing is -- to change the corrupt system that overpays managers and administrators and yet requires the use of the cheapest-quality materials, methods and labor, and instead invest more wisely in repair systems that will last, and to change the mind-set that has come to think of potholes in Pennsylvania as inevitable results of our own personal freeze-thaw cycle.

These changes are what is lacking in this state. Until they change, PennDOT will itself remain what it has been for the last half-century: the biggest pothole for tax dollars in the state.

MARK BALOBECK
McKees Rocks

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My opposition to Hillary Clinton's nomination lies not only in her shortcomings as an effective politician, her calculated triangulation on key issues or her do-whatever-it-takes grab for the Democratic nomination. My opposition lies primarily in her opposition. Nothing would galvanize the radical right or, for that matter, divide the left more than a Clinton nomination. It's the best thing that John McCain could hope for. And, as evidenced by Rush Limbaugh's urging of fellow Republicans to help give her a Texas primary nod, it appears that the end-game of the right is to do anything it can to keep Barack Obama from making it to the general election.

Barack Obama offers the best chance this nation has to break away from the politics of divisiveness and partisan back-biting. He has displayed, despite Mrs. Clinton's relentless barrage of negative campaigning and baseless fear-mongering, his ability to transcend old-school politics while maintaining his vision of a united society. This election is about much more than experience. It's about opportunity, inclusion and inspiration. I happen to like seeing people of all walks of life being inspired to get involved for a change. And for that, I am willing to give Barack Obama a chance.

RON MacDONALD
Pine

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When we talk about race we must address the oppression of millions of people for hundreds of years. When we talk about race, we must speak to the disparities, the inequities, the quality of life or the lack thereof because of the color of someone's skin. It is painful dialogue, this conversation about the relationship between black and white people in America, and yet, many are finding opportunities to begin building a foundation of understanding.

On March 20 at Ebenezer Baptist Church, I witnessed African-American and Caucasian people with heads together talking about ways to bridge the divide. The Cultural Policy Council Hill District Behavioral Initiative Conference was enlightening and educational, but in addition, it gave those in attendance a chance to broaden their horizons and be edified about "the internalized oppression of black people in Africa and the diaspora" to quote Dr. Jerome Taylor.

I was most impressed by the diverse crowd of "like-minded" people of all ethnicities searching for solutions and resolution to this age-old problem in our society. As an African-American woman, I was heartened by this conference and look forward to the next one with anticipation.

DEBORAH STARLING-POLLARD
Green Tree

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We welcome your letters. Please include your name, address and phone number, and send to Letters to the Editor, 34 Blvd. of the Allies, Pittsburgh 15222. E-mail letters to letters@post-gazette.com or fax to 412-263-2014. Letters should be 250 words or less, original and exclusive to the Post-Gazette. All letters are subject to editing for length, clarity and accuracy and will be verified before being published.