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Letters to the Editor

Support Biden’s rescue plan

To the editor: President Joseph Biden’s American Rescue Plan (ARP) should command pro-life support. It directly saves lives by expanding vaccines and fights poverty with unemployment benefits, stimulus checks, rent assistance and the new child tax credit. Official Catholic teaching says helping the poor is pro-life. Commonweal, a pro-life Catholic publication founded in 1924, reports, “The ARP is perhaps the single greatest expression of solidarity in American politics since Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society. The law includes an enormous increase in the child tax credit; and is ...

Last best hope

To the editor: Any informed reflection on our nation’s past reveals that the “good old days” weren’t so good for all of those who call themselves Americans. Any such reflection clearly reveals an ever present campaign to consciously marginalize targeted groups of Americans in order to ensure the economic advantage of others. Empirical evidence to support the existence and magnitude of this chronic social malignancy abounds, yet many Americans prefer to believe that they are completely “self-made” men and women; long-suffering triumphant warriors on the battlefield of ...

Circles of community

To the editor: Recently you might have seen yard signs that say “Many Faiths, One Community.” The way we think of community is key. While belonging to a church is a choice, we are, of necessity, members of several communities, beginning with family and extending to the planet. Each of us is like a pebble dropped into still water, generating expanding circles of waves. Each outward ring involves more diversity. All faith traditions include the Golden Rule, an ethical policy which makes community possible. If our personal behavior is aligned with the ideal of doing no harm, all ...

More than meets the eye

To the editor: Despite Michiganders twice voting against the hunting of wolves, here we are again facing threat of a rushed wolf hunt through the adoption of Sen. Resolution 15. Why the need for this hunt you ask? Well, the resolution states it will limit potential wolf and human contact. Such occurrences are extremely rare, despite the fact we have an array of humans in our forests year-round. My goodness, we Yoopers live in the woods. This hardly seems like a valid reason to suddenly override the DNR’s existing management plan—though it does make for good copy. Sen. McBroom, one ...

Is it true?

To the editor: An Associated Press article in the DMG on April 5, 2021, stated the following: A Michigan sheriff is speaking up for an Upper Peninsula man who was charged in the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol. Karl Dresch “stepped over the line” by going into the Capitol but he’s not a “dangerous man or dangerous to the community, … nearly all homes here have weapons as we have a tremendous number of hunters and fisherman,” said Houghton Sheriff Brian McLean in a letter filed in federal court in Washington. “In spite of his history and flaws, he has managed to raise a ...

Support slowing climate change

To the editor: I’m a retired meteorologist with two degrees in atmospheric science. The great majority of the most qualified scientists in my field believe human-caused greenhouse gas emissions (and other short-sighted, careless actions like widespread deforestation) are responsible for a dangerous climate change that is causing an overall global warming and more extreme weather-related disasters around the earth. In fact, NASA reports 2020 ended up tied with 2016 as the warmest year in terms of global average temperature since records began in the 1880s and the earth’s average ...