March 19, 2024

Letters 08-20-2012

Aug. 19, 2012

Email your letter to: info@northernexpress.com

Please keep your letter under 300 words (one page).

Only one letter per reader in a two month period will be accepted. may be edited for length or to correct factual errors. Letters must be signed to be considered for print and a phone number is required for verification. Faxed letters are not accepted.

Irony & Oklahoma

A lady from Oklahoma sent in a pronatural gas/fracking response letter in your August 13th issue. I wonder, do they have something called irony in Oklahoma?

I ask this because it makes perfect sense that someone from a dry, flat, hot, nearly treeless place like Oklahoma would want to vacation in a land of verdant forests, rolling hills and immense stretches of clean water like our Michigan. The irony comes in when she lectures us on how wonderful natural gas drilling/fracking is, and that those of us who are rightly terrified of it are "unenlightened."

Lady, the only way we can keep this area a vacation/everyday living paradise is to stop fracking cold. Some state legislators who are just as enamored as you are with the joys of natural gas would have drilling rigs literally every square mile across most of our state. Which would then make us look an awful lot like Oklahoma. Which is ironic.

And p.s., when y’all head back south, make a side trip to a quaint little Texas town named Dish. The former mayor was just up here, trying to warn us. Talk to the few people still living there, the healthy ones at least. Breathe deeply. You could get enlightened.

Mark Contrucci - Boyne City

Fracking terrorists?

The lives and livelihoods of Michigan residents depend on clean water. Purposefully poisoning our water by fracking seems like terrorist activity.

We would be safer from such activity if every block or home created its own energy with a combination of wind, solar, and Tesla like technology, in which there is no single source to take out.

Tesla Technologies are being utilized in Germany and other European countries. The U.S. held patents on Nikola Tesla’s inventions over 100 years ago, but failed or derailed the use of these machines in favor of "burning technologies" such as gas, coal and oil.

Across the border from Sault Ste Marie, Michigan, a huge array of Canadian windmills belittles our "land of innovation and opportunity." Along the roads and highways of our own state we can see natural gas being burned off as "waste" from the oil industry.

The world’s most valuable resource, water, cannot be wasted by fracking, which could poison our natural aquifers.

Who is reaping the financial benefits of this activity? Certainly not the tourist or agricultural industries in Michigan. There are too many grave concerns and way too many healthier options (which present a greater opportunity for job creation and financial/ economic growth) to allow fracking anywhere.

Susan Prescott - Lake Ann

Fracking exposed

Freedom of speech and freedom of the press have exposed a fearful fracking industry in Northern Michigan by means of its own public service propaganda-type advertisements. Thank you, Northern Express, for enabling this environmentally irresponsible organization (FriendsOfNaturalGasMI.com) to expose itself. I would even doubt that the road pictured on their ad is a Michigan road because it’s just not beat up enough.

Bruce Grossman - Lake Ann

Lighten up, TC

Wow, you pushed my buttons after reading your editorial, "Our Uptight & Outta Sight City" (Random Thoughts, 8/13).

You have expressed my frustration over the missing piece in Traverse City.

Traverse City does feel uptight, especially after visiting lively cities (Asheville, NC, Portland, Oregon, and yes... Columbus, Ohio, etc. ) that are comfortable with outdoor dining, food carts and sidewalk musicians.

I have always wondered why a beautiful town like Traverse City is not more relaxed with creative ideas that are good for public participation and the economy.

Don’t they get it? Your article points out over-regulation.

Interesting since TC does lean conservative politically.

Maybe, just maybe, this town will eventually realize what it is missing by not recognizing the creative possibilities.

Marlee Stanley - Bellaire

A poem for Mitt

I’m a Vet and I collect Social Security benefits which I paid for and I deserve. There are many of us.

Perhaps a little poem... to Mitt. Most folks will git hit if they vote for Mitt.

If you want outsourcing to fit, vote Mitt. If you want to get bit where you sit, vote Mitt.

And my favorite, a t-shirt that says, "Nit Wits for Mitt."

Truly against Mitt and his VP Zit

Gary Roy Baumdraher - via email

Taxes & spending

Your letter from Michael MacCready ("Anti-tax gripe," Aug. 6), suggested that all millage issues should be voted down to show the "big spenders" who controls their budget.

That kind of voting against a library or senior transportation millage only hurts your neighbors. The real "Big Spenders" are in Washington and Lansing, not at the township hall.

The biggest budget item in Washington is the Defense budget (larger that the next 23 countries COMBINED) and in Lansing it’s our prison budget (we jail more people that any of our neighbors).

When you have a candidate for president who says we should increase the defense budget by billions of dollars, maybe we should ask, why? Maybe we should ask why Michigan has such a large prison budget. Do we jail too many people? Anger over misuse of tax dollars should be directed at the real "Big Spenders."

Don Seman - Bellaire

Insensitive TV show

I don’t make it a habit of forwarding things, but this got to be a bit much.

A war competition? A game? "Stars Earn Stripes," a reality show.

As a former combat vet, I was both sickened and saddened by the advertisements that took place during the Olympics and the reality of this new reality show. I thought "how could they, how could this be allowed?" As we speak there are people dying and getting maimed in war. Someone’s child. Someone’s friend.

How insensitive to our troops. How insensitive to those that have returned from war with amputations, genital wounds, PTSD.

How insensitive to those that have given their lives.

And how insensitive for all the families of soldiers who have lost their lives through suicide, the figure numbering more than have been killed in combat. War is far from a game.

My heart aches everyday for those in a killing zone.

Tim Keenan Veterans for Peace - TC

Correction

Apologies to restaurant founder John Damoose, whose name was misspelled in a recent story on The Depot in Harbor Springs.

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