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Open Forum: Powerful money gets what it wants
Wake up America! We are the only industrial country on earth where you can work and save and then go broke by falling ill or having an accident. It can't happen in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan or anywhere in Europe. In these civilized countries it is considered a moral failure to be pushed into bankruptcy by getting sick. Except in America, modern health care is a right, not a privilege like it is here.
We know because we lived in three foreign countries where health care products was one of the businesses I managed. Health care outcomes such as life expectancy and infant mortality are superior in these nations despite the fact that the U.S. spends twice as much per person.
The insurance company lobbyists and shills will do anything they can to prevent President Obama from keeping his campaign promise to reform health care in America. A public health care option is just that, an option. If you like what you have, you can keep it. Public and private HC plans have operated side-by-side for decades in many countries. Are we so backward that we can't do what works so well elsewhere?
Powerful money nearly always gets what it wants in Washington. Don't let it happen this time. Tell that to Senators Klobuchar and Franken and Congressman Oberstar. It's a question of morality and what's right.
David and Cordy Strand
Aitkin
The election is coming!
We need some candidates to run. In a school district with taxes as we have due to the present board and administration. We should have a half dozen candidates.
If we could borrow Bob Olson and Mary Koep from the city council, that would be a start. But then the city residents wouldn't have any good representation. We need to replace the present board. Look where the school is i.e., finances and location (glass shack in Camp Swampy-Forestview). We need a person to speak up - present facts and not open to cover-ups.
Marvin Begin, George Carleton and ex-member Ruth Gmeinder, if she could be convinced to come back.
I'll buy dinner for the first three to four new live ones to sign up.
Richard Magnan
Fort Ripley
More government interference
The president and Congress have enacted the Cash for Clunkers that has in four days taken 250,000 vehicles off of the road. Before it is done there may well be 1,000,000 of these older cars and trucks replaced by brand new vehicles. The trade-in unit, probably valued at less than $4,500 are sent to the scrap yard with the engines destroyed to prevent their use as replacement parts. There are many families that will never buy a new car, either by choice or their financial ability. By choice I buy used cars in the $4,000 range. By doing so I have no monthly payments, minimal depreciation, lower insurance costs, lower license fees, etc. I could never save enough gas by buying a new car to offset the cost of it.
Many are struggling to buy or finance a car in the price range of the car that is now being sent to the scrap yard. Their choices of vehicles have now been decreased by the 250,000 number and that number will rise. Repair of the vehicles they now drive will be more costly because of the destruction of usable parts vehicles.
There are used car dealers that specialize in lower priced cars and their supply will be limited. With less inventory available the price for an older car may rise above the amount of money the customer has available to purchase the vehicle. My daughter has asked me to look for a car for her in the $4,000 range. The choices suddenly will be much less.
This is one more example of government interfering with the private market. Some will benefit, many will be hurt by it, and all of us will pay for it.
Tim Almquist
Rural Brainerd
Read the Second Amendment
A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed. That would be directly from the Second Amendment in our Constitution's Bill of Rights.
For those who don't know enough about American history to comprehend that a well regulated militia refers to the people, stop reading this and take Civics 101 at any accredited institution. Oh, wait, they don't teach Civics 101 any longer, which not only perpetuates but, in fact, institutionalizes ignorance of our Constitution.
The Second Amendment's assurance of the right, nay, the responsibility to own and carry firearms, with the attendant proscription against government infringement of that right, is our most essential reassurance of self-defense, national defense and defense of our Constitution from enemies, domestic and abroad.
Justice Joseph Story, appointed to the Supreme Court by James Madison (our Constitution's principal author), wrote in his Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1833), "The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered, as the palladium of the liberties of the republic; since it offers a strong moral check against usurpation and arbitrary power of the rulers; and will generally, even if these are successful in the first instance, enable the people to resist and triumph over them."
Daryl Bahma
Brainerd
Reconsider Serpent Lake votes
This letter is in response to the Serpent Lake LID issue in the July 29, 2009 paper.
I'm very concerned that commissioners Thiede and Houge are losing sight of what the majority of the people want and why they want it.
I live on Upper South Long Lake and our lake association is also petitioning for a LID. Mr. Thiede, I understand some of your reasoning when it comes to tax increases. No one wants to pay added taxes more than me, but what you should be in favor of is the health and beauty of our lakes. Mr. Houge, our association board of directors and the majority of our members are also looking at the big picture and all we see in our future is a lot more weeds, a lot more! If we don't get a handle on this problem now, it could cost us 10 times more in the future to get rid of them and who will have the money for that? The LIDs are not intended to be a life long burden on the tax payers, but rather the Band-Aid fix you speak of between now and when funding from other agencies finally arrives. Can you predict when that will be? Please, both of you, reconsider the way you view this issue. The curly-leaf pond weed is growing and spreading as we speak!
Daniel J. Martonik
Rural Brainerd
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