This Italian reader was frustrated by Wednesday's guilty pleasures interviews with people about their guilty pleasures in food. It was a good concept and it grabbed me at the outset.

I was pleasantly surprised to read that Mayor Dave Cieslewicz isn't a vegetarian. I suspect many Madisonians will have the opposite view, and the mayor may even lose a few votes, but I always applaud a politician for candor.

However, the piece quickly became an elitist echo chamber, a classic Madison pathology. While I'm certain W. Earle Smith of the Madison Ballet and Lisa Thurrell, the artistic director of Kanopy Dance, are fine folks, 80 to 90 percent of Madisonians probably don't know who they are. And the percentage is certainly higher in the county. You could replace these kind dance folk with Joel DeSpain or even local weather anchors.

The elites, no doubt, are scoffing and saying "I know W. Earle Smith and Lisa." I'm reminded of the socialite on the upper east side of New York City who expressed incredulity in 1968 when Richard Nixon was elected president. She exclaimed. "How could Nixon have won? No one I know voted for him!"

-- Nick Spinelli, Cottage Grove

Investment bankers and brokerages are decrying the need for regulation, even in the face of their glaring failure to recognize risk. This bears a resemblance to an experience I had some years ago.

A young part-timer came to work smelling of alcohol. When confronted, he admitted drinking, but insisted he could "hold it." He was escorted home, complaining that he wasn't drunk and didn't need counseling because he could quit drinking any time he wanted to.

Bankers worldwide have begged for less regulation. Government has yielded to them, supposedly to "stimulate growth" and avoid stifling innovation. What a farce!

In this decade they have presented us with the dot com crash, the Enron, WorldCom and Tyco scandals, and now the threat of international recession. These bankers can't "hold it" any better than that kid could.

Bail-outs are only temporary solutions. We need permanent regulations with a sting to them now, before the bankers can do more damage.

-- Charles W. Lemke, Fort Atkinson

School levy limits are tried and true

The critics, composed mostly of the Wisconsin Education Association Council, teachers unions, school boards and special interest groups, claim that the problem with school funding is levy limits. The solution, they say, is to repeal the levy limit law.

In one school district, voters approved $20.9 million for operating expenses but turned down spending $35 million to build a new school and demolish two others.

Voters are obviously making considered judgments on the referendums before them. This is proof that the law should stay on the books.

We need to begin to think differently about school funding. Maintaining buildings is in the public interest and should be exempted from limits under the law if the district has an approved maintenance plan on file with the Department of Public Instruction.

State mandates should be exempt from limits. But programs and services that are unique to a district, or that the district has initiated, property acquisition, athletic facilities and refinancing debt should continue to be subject to limits, referendums and audits.

If we had more laws like this one at the national level, how much of the billions in earmarked pork would survive? The people who vote should have the say in how deep the government is going to dip into their wallets.

-- Bill Ridgely, DeForest

Spoilsport Clintons should just go away

Even though Sen. Hillary Clinton knows it's mathematically impossible for her to gain the delegate lead, she will not quit. Why? So she can weaken Sen. Barack Obama going into the general election against Republican Sen. John McCain and position herself for another run for president in 2012.

The Clintons don't care about Democrats winning a 60-seat Senate majority and a two-thirds House majority this year. They don't care about gaining independents, new young voters or disaffected Republicans. They don't care about the health of the Democratic Party.

All they care about is winning -- if not now, eventually.

If President Bill Clinton had resigned when he admitted being involved with an intern, Al Gore would have had a good chance at being re-elected president, and the country and world could have been spared George W. Bush.

It is time for the Clintons to take themselves and all their baggage and park it at the Clinton Library, where all their sordid secrets can remain hidden from view.

-- Ken Kosier, Verona

Party extremists - hold the vitriol

Regarding the upcoming presidential election, there are certainties which can be counted on come November.

The die-hard Al Gore/John Kerry supporters who have been chaffing at the bit for nearly eight years will continue to support either Democratic candidate, regardless of how bloodied that individual might end up after the primaries.

Another certainty is that the majority of the conservative wing of the Republican Party will not support either Democratic candidate. Rather than sit it out, they will accept Sen. John McCain as their standard-bearer so they won't worry about the next four to eight years.

It's also certain that, while the candidates may promise to run clean campaigns, the partisan groups listed above will write letters to the editor, call talk radio, send e-mails and fill their blogs with distortions and lies that disparage the candidate they oppose.

Independents standing on the sidelines will judge the two major candidates on their own merits, which they will assess in an intelligent fashion as they have for decades.

It should be a strategic goal of both parities to control the vehemence and hatred towards their opposition or suffer the backlash that will result from the independents.

This will probably mean, for the Democrats, putting a muzzle on the likes of James Carville and Howard Dean, and, for the Republicans, doing the same for a number of conservative talk show hosts.

-- John Anderson, Merrimac

Limit gas price hikes to once per month

Most of us are unhappy with the progressive increases in the cost of gasoline and heating fuel. The oil companies base their charges on the oil futures market, but oil futures are commodities which can be bought one day and sold the next. These are prices for delivery a month or more later, not already received.

The price we pay at the pump is not a reflection of the cost of oil already in tankers on their way to the refinery, nor of production in the refinery. Neither is a reflection of the cost of oil produced by domestic oil companies from their own oil fields, not the cost of the gas already in the storage tanks of oil dealers.

Is it any wonder the U.S. oil companies reported high profits last year? At this point there is no true shortage of gas.

Congress must step in and do something. The least they could do is tell the oil companies they can only increase their prices once a month. Perhaps this would level the field a bit, though oil companies could create artificial shortages.

-- Roland Liebenow, Lake Mills

Alcohol bus wraps show hypocrisy

When the wheels on Metro Transit's bus, wrapped with ads for the Miller Brewing Company, go round-and-round past my son's elementary school, I question whether the revenue gained is really worth it to the city of Madison.

When newspapers decry repeat drunken driving offenders, and when children and families try to cope with acts of abuse and neglect caused by intoxicated persons, I question it again.

In March, Madison's beer and brats loving public was urged by Guinness to lobby their representatives to designate St. Patrick's Day a national holiday. And Wisconsin announced more jail time and court fines for repeat offenders convicted of operating under the influence a seventh, eighth or ninth time.

As a parent, I question the value of buses driving through communities advertising alcohol products. I am concerned for the emotional effects this large, shiny, in-your-face ad may have on children who have been abused or neglected by an intoxicated person.

Being reminded of these traumatic events by a bus wrap when there is little or no opportunity for immediate emotional support breaks the backbone of any argument declaring this a healthy source of revenue for Madison.

-- Lydia Maurer, Madison