'The best we can'
Vikki Kratz: Regarding your column about pit bulls and the Dane County Humane Society ("How Many Pit Bulls Are Too Many?" 7/4/08), I am completely disappointed. Do you realize that articles of this nature only perpetuate ignorance and hurt community support for the shelter?
What purpose does this article and your earlier cover story "Better Off Dead" (12/7/07) serve? If you feel we are doing such a poor job and that our euthanasia rates are too high, you should encourage the public to step up and help out.
We do the best we can. Your self-righteous, poorly researched articles are not helping our already uphill battle against Dane County's animal overpopulation problem.
Perhaps if you had gotten the full story, you would have found out that nowhere do pit bulls get more support than at our shelter.
If a pit bull is adoptable, meaning it passes its behavior evaluation and we feel confident that this dog can be successful in the community, it goes up for adoption, and stays up for adoption until it finds a home. This is true of any dog of any breed.
We even offer free pit bull training classes for adopters, and you will never see the employees more happy than when we send a pit home.
Sara Martin, animal care staff,
reception and adoption, Dane County Humane Society
After five years of being a dedicated Isthmus fan, I am sadly giving up your paper. While I did not always agree with everything written, I believed that Isthmus did strive for fairness in its articles. That has changed with Vikki Kratz's tirades about the Dane County Humane Society.
The fact that she only presented one side of the story in her December article was troubling. I had hoped that the article helped Ms. Kratz get what she needed off her chest, and that the paper would more or less go back to a more honest journalistic approach. I waited for DCHS's point of view in following issues. Instead, Ms. Kratz has continued her personal vendetta against a nonprofit that she knows almost nothing about.
Her tirade has cost the shelter much-needed donations, money that could go towards alleviating the problems she sees with the shelter.
Nonprofits might not be perfect, but they are staffed by caring people who work far too hard for far too little money. They deserve our help. Any failings should be addressed, but only with the facts and only with the opportunity for the nonprofit to defend itself.
Sara Barnes
Mad work
I interviewed with Mad Town Promotions several months ago. Your article barely scratched the surface of this company ("Truth or D.A.R.E:, 6/27/08).
I went through much the same interview process as the woman in your article for a different branch, but went one step further and accompanied a pair of employees on a sales trip. One was to be my new supervisor. I was quite surprised to discover he had worked there a grand total of two weeks before being promoted the day I shadowed him.
As the day wore on, the two seemed more and more desperate to meet their quotas. Many times they were rudely turned away or given cold glares when entering a building, the people working there all too familiar with who they were.
Cyrus Anderson
Blame the union
Your front-page story describes Wisconsin's subsidizing and unionizing of General Motors as a "promised land" turned into a graveyard ("From Promised Land to Graveyard," 7/4/08). Indeed, such collectivist policies do lead to graveyards.
In fact, despite the author's desire to blame "greedy" CEOs, it's General Motors' sacrificing of profit to the union's collective demands that has led to GM's demise. Truly selfish, profit-driven CEOs are currently leading some of the most successful auto manufacturers in history.
Jim Allard