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Opinion editor’s observe: Star Tribune Opinion publishes letters from readers on-line and in print every day. To contribute, click on here.
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In Hamline College’s try to keep away from what some college students might have known as non secular intolerance or discrimination (and in President Fayneese Miller’s overwrought follow-up assertion), they wandered into territory that they positively do not need to be exploring — taking stances on which religions and non secular practices are extra beneficial, true or worthy of enforcement than others.
To in impact prohibit depictions of the prophet “out of respect for Muslim college students” is akin to prohibiting the consumption of meat on Fridays throughout the season of Lent out of respect for Christian college students. For one factor, not all Christians subscribe to these beliefs or practices, and by instituting such a coverage they favor one taste of Christianity (Catholicism) over others. Beliefs on depictions of the prophet differ between Sunni and Shiite adherents of Islam — by enacting such a prohibition in accordance with Sunni perception, what sort of assertion is Hamline making about their Shiite counterparts?
By assuming that depictions of the prophet are sacrilegious to all Muslims, Hamline undermined the very cause the picture was displayed within the first place: to indicate that variation and nuance exist inside communities, and that treating cultures as monoliths is just not reflective of actuality — which is strictly the sort of liberal worth you’d need to instill in your college students at a self-professed liberal arts faculty, and one for which the professor in query was punished for making an attempt to show.
Marcus Peterson, Minneapolis
MARIJUANA
Relating to William Nicholson’s opinion piece (“Minn. doctors: Limit harm from legal pot”) within the Jan. 10 paper: I do not recall the Minnesota Medical Affiliation lobbying to lift the authorized age for alcohol or cigarette use to 25 as a result of brains aren’t mature till then. In actual fact, each potential hurt he mentions applies to these different leisure medication 10 occasions as a lot, with the added bonus of demise from lung most cancers and drunken driving. To the extent some will divert their use of those extra dangerous substances to THC within the face of legalization, there may very well be hurt discount within the type of fewer deaths. I urge the MMA to rethink body its place on pot legalization in a extra balanced approach.
Timothy R. Church, St. Paul
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The state of Minnesota is pursuing full legalization of adult-use hashish with bipartisan assist.
This invoice severely hampers native management of native governments like Stillwater (“Who will regulate new pot industry?” Jan. 12). The invoice restricts zoning and gives restricted native management or oversight, although the burden of enforcement will fall closely on Minnesota cities.
A typical speaking level is that hashish is as secure (or safer) than alcohol. Then deal with it that approach. When a liquor retailer sells its product to minors, Stillwater enforces the regulation, and Stillwater has the duty to drag the license if the store proprietor doesn’t take their responsibility significantly. I am involved that the Workplace of Hashish Administration will not have the capability to reply to points as swiftly we will. Cities are wonderful at licensing liquor and tobacco and are well-equipped to license hashish.
The proposal hampers our skill to have considerate zoning round the place hashish may be offered. Like liquor, it is not clever to place the shop very near an elementary faculty. What works for one metropolis might not work for others. Considerate zoning is greatest accomplished by the leaders of that metropolis.
Lastly, the laws should acknowledge that this can fall to native regulation enforcement to implement and make sure that a portion of the income from hashish go towards reimbursing native governments for that price.
Knowledge dictates that it is necessary for metropolis governments to have some extent of management over hashish to make sure that the regulation is carried out in a approach that’s secure and helpful for his or her communities.
Larry Odebrecht, Stillwater
The author is a Stillwater Metropolis Council member.
CONGRESS
The Star Tribune Editorial Board is appropriate to be involved about political mischief across the federal authorities’s debt ceiling throughout this time of media showmanship and posturing (“Debt ceiling looms as McCarthy test,” editorial, Jan. 10). The existence of a debt restrict, not the quantity of the restrict, is the true subject.
The debt restrict regulation is redundant, and that allows the shenanigans. The federal government has different legal guidelines figuring out how a lot it is going to obtain in income: its tax legal guidelines. Each time it passes spending laws, it decides how a lot it is going to spend within the context of its tax income. If it decides to spend greater than it has legislated in income, it has decided a debt ceiling or an addition to an already-existing debt. If it has incurred a debt, then it’s legally certain to service that debt.
When the Treasury approaches the statutory debt restrict, then that is when the political mischief begins; some members of Congress — or a president — threaten to forestall a rise within the restrict, thereby threatening to power the Treasury to default. But the Treasury is required by regulation to lift taxes based on the tax legal guidelines and to make expenditures based on the spending legal guidelines and to pay its money owed.
The answer supplied by these against a rise within the debt ceiling is at all times a discount in spending, sometimes by “shutting down the federal government,” i.e., by stopping the Treasury from paying for the applications already enacted into regulation similar to working the nationwide parks or distributing Social Safety checks. By no means do they counsel the plain however equal different of accelerating tax income. By no means do they announce that the Treasury should default. Opposition to elevating the debt restrict is a backhanded path to defund applications already enacted into regulation.
The very best answer to our recurring debt crises is to repeal the century-old debt ceiling regulation, and I name upon the members of Congress to start that course of.
Andrew Larkin, St. Cloud
The author is a retired economics professor.
FREE LUNCH
Whereas I’m all for serving to college students with starvation, after a very good have a look at the numbers concerned within the article “DFL tackles second priority: free student lunch” (Jan. 12), I imagine there have to be a greater approach. Starvation Options states that 1 in 6 college students face meals insecurity, and of these, 25% reside in a family that does not qualify free of charge or lowered lunch (which means the opposite 75% already do). Subsequently, the aim appears to be to assist round 1 in 24 college students, or about 4%. Why are we taxpayers presupposed to feed the overwhelming majority who don’t need assistance? At an annual price estimated to be $180 million, that comes out to roughly $1 million per faculty day. May that cash not be higher centered to assist the smaller quantity that wants it? The concept that we now have a surplus and should spend it in such methods is just not frugal in any respect.
Our household has been on each side of lunch prices. We used to get free lunches for our three youngsters and ultimately obtained to the purpose the place we pay for his or her meals. We don’t want the lunches paid for by the federal government, and I imagine that applies to the vast majority of households with college students. Giving free lunches is simply giving the household a handout. There was loads of cash handed out throughout COVID; Minnesota does not have to be doing extra of that. Deal with the precise, smaller drawback — these on the perimeter — just like the invoice sponsor Rep. Sydney Jordan acknowledged she needed to do, and never simply throw cash round to all.
Chris Bradshaw, Columbus
NORTHROP AUDITORIUM
It’s definitely alarming that a part of the roof of the College of Minnesota’s Northrop auditorium collapsed Wednesday evening (“Northrop closed by roof’s collapse,” Jan. 12), however it is usually ironic that the collapse pressured the cancellation of Physics Drive, a program that “brings collectively a gaggle of highschool academics and U professors to carry out science demonstrations.” Appears that the roof collapse was a wonderful physics demonstration.
D.C. Smith, Minneapolis
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