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Property tax relief is a must for 2008 session
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Any property owner in Minnesota will tell you their property taxes have
gone up over the past few years. A recent study in Minnesota says
property taxes across the state have risen 70 percent since 2002.
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Read more...
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CJC would help keep Caledonia downtown viable
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To the Editor:
As a Caledonian of 70 years and a widow of a former downtown business
owner, I am proud to say the downtown has never looked better.
I believe the addition of a CJC would not detract but rather enhance the downtown. It would also keep Caledonia viable.
Despite the domination of this newspaper’s opinion pages by one voice,
there is a significant population of the city and county that does not
oppose the CJC location adjacent to the court house.
In east central Wisconsin a prison in the city of Waupun works. My
daughter and her husband and family lived there 20 years. Their
children attended schools in that city. My granddaughter worked at the
city library four summers while in high school. The prison is across
the street from the library. Public safety was of relatively little
concern. The prison brought business to the city of Waupun.
It could be good for the downtown businesses to have CJC employees and
visitors coming to the area to help keep their shops open.
Florence Bissen
Caledonia, Minn.
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Citizens demanding to be heard on issues
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To the editor:
The 2008 Minnesota Legislative session runs February 12- May 19 and if
the recent caucus is any indication, there is a growing concern about
issues and a growing number of citizens demanding to be heard on these
issues.
The following are five issues that the Minnesota Senior Federation is
lobbying for on behalf of Minnesota elders. Property taxes based on
income, health care at affordable costs, bonding monies dedicated to
improving the Minneapolis Veterans Home tied directly to outcome, a
transportation plan that provides transit for seniors, and a funeral
home regulation that allows exact comparisons in the sale of caskets,
urns, and vaults.
It is wonderful that democratic power is returning to the hands of
people. Take advantage of leaders listening to us by contacting your
legislators on the above issues. To find contact information for
your house representatives or senators call the US Capital switchboard
at 800-828-0498.
Sincerely,
Marianne Zerbe-VISTA Volunteer
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Accountable to someone
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To the editor:
Minnesota Statute 145.422 prohibits “use of a living human conceptus
for any type of scientific, laboratory research or other
experimentation except to protect the life or health of the
conceptus.” According to this law, human cloning would seem
illegal, yet the facilities at our University of Minnesota have
continued human cloning research. Expensive embryonic stem cell
research also continues although it has produced no useable therapies
(it differs from adult stem cell research which has produced therapies
and does not cause the destruction of human life). Although
legislative attempts have been made to curb the research of the U of M,
the university has continued spending our tax money on fruitless
research by using different terminology.
If you are an alumni of the University of Minnesota, please return all
of their solicitations for donations with the message, “I will no
longer contribute to any of the university’s programs as long as
embryonic stem cell research and therapeutic human cloning continues.”
If the university believes the research will damage revenues, it is
possible that steps will be taken by the university to end the
research.
Thank you!
Paul A. Ibisch
La Crescent
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A crisis in our court system
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Editor’s note: The following appeared as a letter to the editor in
the March 8 Winona Daily News. One of our loyal readers told us of
it. She felt it was well-written, and quite thought-provoking,
and we agree!
By Dennis Challeen,
retired judge / Winona
There is a crisis in our court system. It’s been coming for the past
century and will get worse unless lawmakers have the wisdom to change
the system.
We have a criminal justice system designed by normal responsible people
that usually works on normal responsible people (who self-correct) but
fails on the addicted and the irresponsible (who don’t know how to
self-correct).
Let me explain.
Recent newspaper articles report how 14,091 Minnesota motorists are
driving without valid licenses; that one in eight has a DWI on record
and that most offenders that go to jail or prison return to commit more
crimes. The official response by the normal responsible people who make
the laws is to increase fines or mandate more jail time. Simply said:
Get tough, increase the penalties. Sooner or later, they’ll get the
message and become law abiding.
It doesn’t work, and we now know why.
In any society there are people who are irresponsible. We never seem to
understand if a person never learned how to be responsible or to
control childish emotional impulses, punishment by itself doesn’t solve
the problem. We cannot force them to return to being responsible when
they never understood responsibility in the first place, so they endure
the pain and continue to resume the same irresponsible life as they
know it.
Unless we begin to understand the erroneous belief systems of chronic
offenders (“It’s an unfair world,” “Everyone lies, cheats and steals,”
“Some people luck out — some don’t,” “My life would be fine if the cops
just left me alone”), we are doomed to repeat the same worn-out
liberal/conservative correction theories over and over again.
We must lock up and isolate the dangerous offenders we fear — not to
change them but to protect us. But for the vast majority of chronic
offenders that irritate, annoy and anger us, we must teach
responsibility, re-educate, civilize, change their erroneous beliefs
and show them a road map to normal behavior they never learned in their
childhood — behavior most law-abiding citizens fortunately learned on
the way to adulthood.
Judges don’t change people, people must change themselves.
Corrections in the 21st century must point the way to responsibility,
not be part of the problem. The science is available, we must use it.
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We encourage 'letters to the editor'... within reason
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We here at The Argus value reader input on this very page. We
believe it is part of what helps make a community newspaper of value to
the communities it serves.
That being said, we will no longer be running Letters to the Editor
which exceed the 500 word limit. We also will not run letters to the
editor which promote unsubstantiated claims against an opinion or party.
Given the turn-over in our editorial staff over the past year, we
felt it was time to clearly state our policy. We reserve the right to
deny any letter on the basis of our judgement. Of course, the word
limit is a simple measure. However, letters which offend other readers
with slanderous or unsubstantiated or sometimes false information, will
also not be printed. We believe this is our responsibility to all of
our readers.
We also reserve the right to deny a letter to the editor based on the
number of submissions on a given subject. While we feel it is important
to have every viewpoint expressed, we do not view the Commentary page
as a place to continually rehash a point and beat it to death.
Once a point has been made, our readers have expressed to us in
conversation that we not continue to allow that point to be made over,
and over and over and over at the expense of other opinions.
We intend to honor their wishes in this regard.
While we do not intend to limit the number of times a letter can be
submitted by one person, we will give priority to those voices who are
not heard on a regular basis.
The opinions expressed in a letter to the editor do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this editorial staff.
We appreciate being the medium by which opinions are and can be
expressed. However, we have a responsibility to all parties involved to
do so in a fair and balanced manner.
-Daniel McGonigle
-Charlie Warner
You can contact Daniel McGonigle at
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You can contact Charlie Warner at
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