Readers Write: Legislative agendas, mining and Ely, the 1918 flu

What’s the deal? How can a legislative agenda regarding public safety (“Both parties see rising crime as a must-solve problem,” Jan. 30) not include any mention of guns and laws to regulate them better and reduce gun violence?

The vast majority of Minnesotans, including gun owners, favor background check laws that close current loopholes. Yet, once again, bills regarding background checks and Extreme Risk Protection Orders (ERPOs) are not up for consideration.

States that have both these laws in effect show reductions of almost 50% in suicides by gun, domestic violence deaths, and deaths of officers killed in the line of duty. Instead, all the Republican candidates for Minnesota governor favor enacting a “stand your ground” law that would make it easier for someone to kill someone and not be punished. Again, what’s the deal?

Minnesota residents deserve better representation, for sure.

Eileen Collard, Minneapolis

Opinion editor’s note: For additional context, see “Gun violence, gun laws: What state-by-state comparisons show” (tinyurl.com/gun-law-comparison) at Star Tribune Opinion online.

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The opinions voiced by Sens. Paul Gazelka and Warren Limmer in the Jan. 30 article are simply wrong and ultimately counterproductive. Increasing violent crime is a problem nation wide and can’t be laid to local policy decisions.

More important, the fixes suggested by that side of the aisle simply won’t work. I know: I spent about 30 years doing applied criminal justice research in Minnesota. I know that longer sentences will not reduce crime. I know charging juveniles as adults will not reduce crime. I know that all the tired rhetoric about “getting tough on crime” is ignorant at best and grandstanding at worst.

What does work? The things that were working before the pandemic that we have had to stop or reduce because of lockdowns and distancing: things like school-based programs, social-service interventions and other initiatives that make crime less likely in the first place. We know that evidence-based programming for those who have been convicted of crimes that addresses the things that make them high-risk can reduce recidivism. And we need adequate, unbiased policing, so that we don’t increase the disparities present in our justice system.

We have seen the results of the last wave of “get tough” policies in the 1990s. We have seen that better things happen when we reject those policies. We can’t afford to run back into the comforting falsehood of “get tough on crime.” We need to reinvigorate the approaches that were working before the pandemic, and expand them.

Jim Ahrens, Minnetonka

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Climate change was all over the Jan. 30 issue of the Star Tribune. One article (“Whacked by a nasty nor’easter”) noted that climate change was a contributing to the massive snowfall in New England because warmer ocean temperatures lead to increased precipitation. Climate change was mentioned in the article “Less ice this year on Lake Superior,” in a column on whether it’s OK for the owner of an electric car to use a gas station squeegee to clean his windows and in a Science section article about coral reefs off Tahiti. There was an article about solar panels atop big-box stores, and another about NASA recruiting volunteers to help monitor clouds changes related to climate. An interesting article described a small town in Wyoming where coal mining jobs may be replaced by jobs at a new nuclear energy facility.

It seems that everyone is paying attention to climate change except our politicians. The GOP and DFL wrote about their legislative priorities on the Jan. 30 Opinion Exchange page without mentioning climate change. An article by Star Tribune staff reviewed 12 main categories of the legislative agenda. None of these included climate change. An letter to the editor reminds us that the simple proposal to put a price on carbon along with a dividend to all but the wealthiest among us offsets the expense and satisfies both DFL and GOP principles of fairness and protecting the middle class from higher taxes.

Look up, DFL and GOP. Climate change is here, and it is a huge global challenge. Please pay attention.

Duncan Sibley, Plymouth

The writer is a retired professor emeritus of geological sciences at Michigan State University.

‘ONE TOWN, TWO VOICES’

The Jan. 31 article “One town, two voices” pointed out the differences of opinion between those opposed to and in favor of mining who live in Ely. I have lived in northern Minnesota and driven in various areas in the Upper Peninsula where mining has gone bust. Basically what I have noticed is a lot of decay of the towns. No downtowns, no jobs at all. Even Duluth suffered mightily for many years when mining stopped being its main economic driver. Duluth is finally seeing a renaissance now that its economy is diversified. Mining is a boom/bust economy. Ely looks to be one of the few old mining towns that has been spared the decay. I would think the citizens would like to keep it that way.

Susan Pratt, Stillwater

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No mention is made in that article about the economic input the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness adds to surrounding gateway communities — besides repeating the mining company’s talking point that it is less than mining.

A peer-reviewed 2016 study from the Conservation Economics Institute found that $77 million in regional output is created for the communities of Grand Marais, Tofte and Ely each year. That is sustainable economic production in harmony with the lakes and forest, albeit not without careful stewardship, and it stays in the community. One outfitter suggested at the time that this was a model of sustainable economic production for the whole state.

Copper-nickel or sulfide mining is the polar opposite economic model, sending profits away, homogenizing local economies to function only when mining happens, requiring huge public subsidies to carry the extremely high-risk liability (Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, are you tracking?) in a finite exercise creating a certain future dilemma no one wants to address. Regarding copper-nickel mining, it does not give the full picture to simply state the company investment made and the jobs, income and years the mine “would produce” without going into detail about the insanely high-risk, billions in public subsidies and paradox when the mine closes and also stating the alternate economic viability of the sustainable approach.

Paul Danicic, St. Louis Park

The writer is a former executive director of Friends of the Boundary Waters Wilderness.

CURIOUS MINNESOTA

The Jan. 30 Curious Minnesota article “How did Minnesota weather 1918 flu?” quotes Curt Brown’s excellent book “Minnesota 1918” to suggest that Dr. Henry Bracken (my great-grandfather’s second cousin!) opposed public efforts to suppress transmission of influenza that year.

That may have part of his initial response, but as “Minnesota 1918” goes on to describe, “Bracken came around to shuttering schools, quarantining army bases, and forbidding public gatherings. Still, at every turn, education, military and political leaders shrugged him off and refused to listen.” It would be two years before the pandemic subsided and five years before the influenza virus was identified.

Now a century later I am a physician on our COVID response team at Mille Lacs Health System. Medicine has come a long way; it identified the COVID-19 virus within a month and published its genome the following month. However, we still fight the battles of a century ago: convincing the public to follow reasonable guidelines of wearing masks and avoiding crowded gatherings.

Dr. Thomas H. Bracken, Onamia, Minn.

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