Letter to the Editor

I wrote a post about a letter. In the comments, I got some encouragement to write a letter to the editor. I also received several emails about it.

Instead of me doing it. Let’s use the free market and crowdsource it here in the comments. Go back and read this post. Then, add your bit in the comments.

Just to add some fuel to your fire, here is another letter from the same paper, ealier week.

Scary. Reckless. Cruel. Illegal. Dangerous. Destroying our American democracy. We must work together to stop it. Speak out. Speak up. "The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people." —Martin Luther King Jr

And this beauty:

Fewer than half of Americans who voted wanted Trump to be president. Most who voted for him were probably aware that he is a spiteful, self-interested billionaire with little regard for truth or decency. They nevertheless held on to their faith that as president he would honor his promises to stick up for “the little guy,” dedicate himself to the public good, and make their lives better.

But just a few weeks into Trump’s presidency, it’s clear that “looking out for the little guy” is not even on the agenda. On the contrary — the initiatives brought forth by Trump’s gang of millionaires and billionaires are up-ending the lives of people who are already struggling to get by. Here in the Arrowhead, for example, dozens of people have been thrown out of their jobs, and hundreds more have been told that they’re next.

These are hard-working friends and neighbors doing critical work in our area — maintaining roads, fighting fires, enforcing the law in our national forests and throughout the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. They facilitate visits to the BWCAW, those visits providing a major source of tourism revenue in the area. They do the important work of maintaining our border stations in Grand Portage and Grand Marais, surveilling our long coastline and border with Canada. They keep the mail running, managing our post offices in Lutsen, Tofte, and Schroeder. With the high cost of groceries and housing in the Arrowhead, families here are already walking a financial tightrope.

Being thrown out of work is a disaster; many may be forced to leave the area. And considering the many other contributions these friends and neighbors and their families make to the community — even just through purchases at local grocery, gas, and hardware stores — their loss is a blow to all of us. And even when one’s job is not directly threatened by Trump’s initiatives, people’s financial survival may be. Many people here work two or three part-time jobs, without benefits, to try to make ends meet.

To keep their heads above water, they may need a boost from time to time from federal food assistance programs such as SNAP or WIC. And without employer-provided health benefits, Medicaid, Medicare, and other federal healthcare program assistance become a matter of life or death for struggling North Shore families.

But Trump’s initiatives are curtailing and threatening all of this crucial assistance. To make matters worse, instead of getting relief from hardship, we have the threat of higher prices caused by Trump’s initiation of foolish trade wars with our closest allies and trading partners. This includes Canada, from which we import everything from groceries to lumber to plants and flowers. Meanwhile, Trump unapologetically and gallingly pronounces that he knows full well that the higher prices caused by his ill-advised trade wars “will cause pain” for ordinary Americans. The people who voted for Trump didn’t vote for any of this.

No one voted for this. People voted for a better America — not for government by the wealthy, and more disregard than ever for ordinary people. They voted for bringing back an America where the voice and well-being of the common person actually mattered. Post-election, however, we can see that none of that is in play. Those who voted for Trump should be embarrassed at having fallen for the assurances of a smug, dishonest, self-interested billionaire. But we all should be angry

Have at it.