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Letters

Appalled by article

I am appalled that a guest opinion writer in the Northern Express would insinuate Kirsten Keilitz was not qualified for a probate judge job simply because she does not have children. The probate court does not only deal with children, but elder law, estates, etc.

Many of us who have children have not yet had to deal with aging parents as Kirsten has. (And let’s be honest, many judges with families are not involved with their own children.) She is both professionally and personally qualified for the job. She is smart, sensitive, rational, and trustworthy. She is the best candidate for judge.

Colleen Shannon • via email

Oil biz targeting Obama

Why are Republicans opposed to Obama’s plan to allow taxes on very high incomes to return to where they were during the Clinton years? Have they forgotten that when Clinton raised the top tax rate, what followed was arguably the best economy in American history...

Features Rick Coates Recently, I was asked what I thought about service in Northern Michigan and I responded, “it depends on the day.” One day I experience exceptional service, the next day I have a less than satisfactory experience. I wrote an article five years ago giving Northern Michigan a C-minus grade for its service industry.

Letters

Man without a plan

Mitt and Ann Romney have five sons who have never served in the military but Mitt wants to expand the military budget. Mitt was of age during Vietnam but he didn’t serve either.

Since the Bush era, we have been in two wars, for what? Iraq isn’t fixed and the Afghanistan people have been fighting since well before Jesus was born and it’s never going to end until they end it themselves. Most times, the reason for going to war is to enable the manufacturers of munitions (and now services) to make money.

The Republicans have made it their mission to replace Obama. Not only is he a Democrat but he’s black. When you overhear someone in a crowd of very well-dressed, deck boat shoe-wearing, bling-dripping Americans say that he and his wife are just “uppity n____s,” it does not bode well for our country.

I really do want to see more tax returns from the Romneys. I’m also wondering whether the reason he’s not providing these returns is that he would owe more to his church for his tithe.

I don’t believe he’s a bad man, but he believes that he and his party can continue to climb to the top of the ladder on the backs of people who are trying desperately how to figure out how to feed their children or purchase their medications. Jobs for any American who wants to work would certainly be a welcome change, but I haven’t heard a plan from Mitt...

Features Patrick Sullivan How many groups of friends get together, tell jokes, laugh really hard, and think, “Our lives should be a sitcom?” One bunch of friends who met years ago at Northwestern Michigan College decided to do something about it.

They’ve formed a sketch comedy troupe called Falling Down Stairs Productions and they produce short, funny videos that can be found on YouTube and Funny Or Die.

Letters

No hysteria in NRA

Trust a liberal to label his opposition as “hysterical” (re: “NRA hysteria unfounded,” Letters 8/27). All that libs can do is name-call.

Anyhow, the NRA was and is anything but hysterical in its warning about Obama and the Left being bitterly opposed to an armed citizenry. The fact that they spent their first-term political capital almost exclusively on getting Obamacare through does not mean that they have given up on the basic leftist goal of suppressing the people’s right (guns don’t have rights) to be armed. Also, Wayne LaPierre’s salary is closer to $600,000, after 35 years with the NRA.

Lastly, if you are going to call the NRA a branch of the Republican Party, which it most decidedly is not, why not point out, far more truthfully, that the Trial Lawyers Association, now laughably renamed the American Justice Association, is one of the biggest direct financial supporters of the Democratic Party...

Features Rick Coates Sleder’s Family Tavern has been a Traverse City tradition for the past 130 years. Everything from “Kissing The Moose,” to their burgers, to great service and their music on the porch series have made them a popular destination for locals and visitors alike.

Features Patrick Sullivan There is a quaint, old-fashioned sign outside of the arched stone gate at the entrance to the Harbor Point Association that reads “AUTOMOBILES NOT ALLOWED.”

This is no ordinary gated community. And it is not the typical setting for an armed standoff with police.

Letters

Calling all women...

Women have struggled for the right to vote in 1920, for equal pay for equal work, equity in upper management jobs, the resources to care for their families, fairness in health insurance coverage, and the right to make our health care choices.

Today, with the problems confronting our nation: jobs, debt, education, wars, shrinking middle class, etc., the Republican Party has focused its priority on restricting, devaluing and disrespecting our health care choices and rights as women.

The GOP platform bans abortion in the case of incest or rape. VP candidate Paul Ryan sponsored the “personhood” amendment which would ban in-vitro fertilization and some birth control.

Romney/Ryan both support plans to prohibit all Planned Parenthood funding, such as cancer screenings or birth control...

Features Kristi Kates

While paying homage to the man considered to be Michigan’s greatest writer, it’s worth noting that the organization behind the Little Traverse History Museum has been around longer than Ernest Hemingway himself.

Features Patrick Sullivan Dear Readers: For this story, investigative reporter Patrick Sullivan looked at 12 police reports for cases of disorderly conduct obtained from the Traverse City Police Department, the Grand Traverse Sheriff’s Office, and the Leelanau County Sheriff’s Office through the Freedom of Information Act.

Since the cases were selected at random and would not normally become the subject of news feature stories, we are not identifying the suspects or witnesses by name.

Letters

Time to split atoms

Across the country, slick sales pitches are being made for wind power. The irony is that those salesmen are working for the natural gas industry. When the wind dies down, something else has to power up; that something is usually a gas turbine burning natural gas, which is the only sort of power plant being built these days.

All those Ontario wind farms are backed up by a gas-burning plant you don’t see; gas burners mean gas buyers and gas buyers mean fracking. Salesmen know which side their bread is buttered on.

If we want to stop burning things to make electricity, our best option is also the most-vilified and least-understood: nuclear energy...

Features Patrick Sullivan Rogers City native Melissa Fleis beat out hundreds of applicants to be among 16 designers who are competing in season 10 of Project Runway in New York City. So far, she’s done her home town proud.

Features Danielle Horvath Okay, it may not be a “boom,” but several new businesses have opened that have added an economic shot in the arm to mostly rural Benzie County. From a natural foods market to a sports outfitter to an alpaca farm store and many others, they have filled up empty spaces and brought new ideas to the area.

Features Robert Downes The letter from a drug rehab prison in Minnesota is a long one: 17 pages of handwritten script filled with tortured explanations, stress, and the stale hours of passing time in a federal prison with five years yet to go.

Letters

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...