Letters

Fracking dangerous alternative

Fresh water contaminated and forever removed from the hydrologic cycle; poisoned air, rivers and streams; gas well leaks and explosions; debilitating health problems including asthma, neurological disease and cancer; dead wildlife and livestock; earthquakes; toxic gas plumes causing families to evacuate their homes; poisoned and exploding water wells; loss of property value and ruined roads from 24-hour truck traffic …

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...

Letters

A change of heart As a result of learning that their children were gay, both former Republican Vice President Dick Cheney, and now Republican U.S. Senator Rob Portman, have changed their position on gay marriage. They both now support it....

A financial crisis hoax The financial crisis is a hoax perpetrated on Americans by Wall Street billionaires, many who receive huge subsidies but pay zero in taxes. Pete Peterson, the Blackstone mogul of Wall Street, spent over $500 million in lobbying and advertising trying to overturn Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid and to give billions in tax breaks to corporations and the wealthy. Why?...

The 'job creators' of old I always have wondered whether plantation owners in the south during slavery considered themselves to be "job creators." Let's see. The people to catch slaves, transport them, sell them, use and abuse them. And of course, the people who get very rich because of them...

Table service, good & bad During a recent trip to Englewood, Florida and Watertown, NY, I was thinking about Rick Coates and his recent comments on the local waitstaffs...

Health care's bitter pill Interested in the health care debate? Read the March Time magazine expose, “Bitter Pill.” It's an eye-opener. Liberal or conservative, all of us are subjected to the vagaries of the American health care system...

Letters

Obamacare’s benefits Three years into Obamacare, politicians are still fighting over it and the public is still divided about it. Yet millions of Americans have benefitted from it...

Whither Interlochen? While reading your Best of Northern Michigan edition, I wondered when the Village of Interlochen moved to Benzie County? I have lived in Interlochen for 37 years and it’s always been in Grand Traverse County...

Pretentious MyStyle When did pretentious become stylish in Traverse City? I am a local born and raised gal who has been a fan of Northern Express until the recent MyStyle article featured a “banana bread princess” New Yorker (who recently moved here) fashioning a $2,742 outfit...

Clueless representative Some of our citizens find Rep. Ray Franz and his staff unresponsive to requests for information about dates for town meetings and about global warming.

Regarding global warming, Franz has unburdened himself during his campaign. He very clearly stated in a debate with Alan O’Shea in Glen Arbor that the whole batch of work on warming was and is “a hoax.” It’s a hoax, he claimed, in the opinion of “30,000 scientists” who were polled in 1998 by a poorly based group of petitioners...

Rigged arbitration Corporate kangaroo courts have quietly usurped our constitutional right to trial by judge and jury... welcome to arbitration where corporations win 99% of cases...

Peak government Remember when America was running out of oil in the early ’70s, along with concerns over acid rain and ozone layer depletion? Remember when “climate change” was politicized into global warming and now back again to climate change, thanks to Al Gore?...

Correction Due to an editing error, Andrew Dost was mistakenly named as the bass player for the band fun. in last week’s Express...

Features Patrick Sullivan The older one is taking vocational training and doing well. He is making all of his therapy sessions and when he meets with his probation officer, he brings proof that he’s completed his required drug and alcohol testing and has been to the AA meetings he’s supposed to attend.