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Support HR 763

“We are all in the same boat” is a common refrain, but an additional saying is taking its place: “… not in the same boat, but in the same storm.” When I think of Wisconsin and its diverse biomes, I see the wisdom of the newer statement, especially when it comes to climate change and its effects on our state and our congressional districts.

Here in Wisconsin’s Seventh, our water, air, and soil pollution are impacted by unique  climate issues which are different from other districts. However, the effects on our personal health are likely the same. 

Climate change caused by burning fossil fuels has increased air pollution in urban, suburban and rural areas, whether from auto emissions or by huge agricultural practices. The end results are identical, however: increased asthma in children; more respiratory illnesses among the elderly; more costly hospitalizations; lost sick days and wages, to name a few.

A major solution for many of the damaging effects of our changing climate can be found in HR 763 which is awaiting consideration  in the U. S. House of Representatives. This bill proposes carbon fee and dividend (monetary incentives) for industry, governments, small businesses, and ALL of us, to reduce our carbon footprints.  Bottom line: reducing climate damage will reduce health dangers.

It is painless and costs nothing to become acquainted with HR 763;  then, get in the boat with others and we will be better able weather this storm.

D. Charlotte Calhoun
Cornucopia, Wisconsin

Voting for Leonard Peltier

Our elections are organized and run by corporations. Both the RNC and the DNC operate and compete for the same moneyed interests. They are, like all corporations, functionally totalitarian and not democratic. The leadership of these businesses are chosen, or selected, by insiders appointed to a board. The interests of the rank and file are routinely dismissed and ignored as they are ordered to shut up and get in line.

It is common knowledge that high voter turnout favors the Dems and lower turnout favors the Repubs. So of course, the DNC uses all kinds of schemes to manufacture and generate lots of votes. I know this personally. I received four mail-in ballots in the month of October. Would they have figured out how to count all four if it was for the correct candidate? (For the record I voted for Leonard Peltier to be president)

I’ve never seen an election so filled with fraudulent opportunities as this one. The Repubs in turn have been caught all over the place, in every election, scrubbing voter rolls, denying voting rights etc. – big surprise – it’s statistically in their favor to do so. Still the margins of victory in a number of key states have been 1% - 2%. Hardly any kind of “mandate.” Also an indication of how difficult it is, even with widespread cheating, to overcome a popular mandate.

If Trump had been an effective leader able to unify a real populist movement he would have won in a landslide and a few % points would have been meaningless. A major part of the “Trump movement” was never about Trump himself. He was the symbol chosen to express the anger of the working class – the deplorables – toward the official “liberal” establishment. He was a poor choice but he was all that was available at the time. After 4 years the material interests of the vast swath of working people across this country haven’t changed much. In fact, they’ve grown worse because of the incompetence in handling the Covid 19 pandemic – incompetence from Trump himself – and from the for-profit, Balkanized and privatized health care system in the US. After this pandemic subsides, what new figure will arise to speak to the issues of jobs and militarism and unaffordable health care?

What the Repubs are doing now with all the lawsuit challenges is effectively circling their wagons – getting a bunch of establishment Repub money lined up for the midterms and rallying their base. They will also be playing (Reluctantly) to this new base of voters energized by Trump – that should be fun to watch seeing as establishment republicans (like their democratic counterparts) have little interest in the concerns of the working class other than getting their votes.

Also the Republican challenges to election results should be understood as political pay back not some attack on our “precious democracy.” All the shameless RussiaGate red-baiting, the impeachment charade etc...gleefully pursued by the Dems....there is a lot of grievance there. Of course more than half of the GOP leadership endorsed HRC in ‘16, so how much more payback will the Repubs whoop on an incoming Biden administration? Biden is basically a Republican anyway, the most bankster friendly, pro-business Democrat one could imagine – we’ll see. Both political parties are committed to War abroad and austerity at home.

Changing the DNC or RNC by choosing one or another candidate is like thinking you’re going to change WalMart by choosing which cashier to ring up your cheese doodles and Shania Twain discount CDs.

Mark W. Anderson 
Duluth, Minnesota

That confounded letter “J”

Exemplary folk , those Norwegians , ever since they forsook pillaging about a thousand years ago and got serious about fishing.

However, none of thier ethnologists, linguists or even those with postgrad-uate studies in Lefse Baking and Related History  have been able to answer one simple question – which is how did the confounded letter “J” and it’s quirky pronunciation infiltrate the spelling of so many Norwegian words such as fjord, fjeld and fjell?

Also, why do they pick on certain words only and not expand their “J” mania further, and encourage their Norwegian-American cousins to spell their favorite lutefisk ingredient “Cjod fjish” in a similar manner as they have corrupted other of their words and even personal names like Bjork, Kjell and Kjirsten? There’s a few of those so-named individuals bouncing around greater Duluth, confounding their friends and spelling teachers.

Norwegians, though numerous in the Northland, were never able to overwhelm the entire U.S. population, as did German immigrants coming from their much more populous country of origin, and aided by their high birth rate. 

The German invaders, to their credit,  did bring useful traditions here, like the Tannenbaum (Christmas tree), the Beer Barrel Polka and clean orderly neighborhoods.
Quite unfairly,  the Norskes best known import is the “Norwegian rat.”                                          

However, the Germans, eventually, nearly destroyed their good reputation by allowing lederhosen-clad, portly, exhibitionist males to flash their brazenly bare, white, knobby knees high in the air every October.

German words like Uber, Blitz and Leinenkugel permeate our current language usage ever since America’s original Anglo-Saxon founding fathers and mothers with their fancy Mayflower pedigrees gave up, and collapsed in their beds in utter exhaustion while trying to match the frantic reproductive rate of their very distant, ancient Teutonic cousins - the stubborn Germans, who insisted on subsisting on their homemade , sauerkraut and liverwurst, nutrient dense, fertility enhancing diet.

The barbarian Germans of yore perfected their empire busting with big families, first on the Romans. It worked so well that soon America was in their sights. My Prussian-German great grandparent immigrants with a baker’s dozen Minnesota kids were, knowingly or not, part of this insidious immigration wave.

Harvard and Yale historians may have neglected an important Norwegian/German event, yet it resonates with me. In the year I was born in S.W. Minnesota, Nazi forces marched unopposed through neutral Sweden with plans to absorb the Norwegians› sea-ports and capture their king and queen. Being too young to effectively object, all I could do is babble helplessly (my siblings claim that I’ve never stopped), in my crib as events unfolded. 

Had I been more cognizant, I may well have cheered as the farmers around Elverum, where Christian Lindberg, my Norwegian great-grand father hailed from, oiled up their old shotguns and held off Hitler’s army until their king and queen could escape to Britain. 

It’s possible that I had distant cousins that I never knew on both sides of that skirmish, shooting at each other. I hope they kept a relatively  gentlemanly, civil tone, as they fired and yelled insults at each other.  

As a simple child, not knowing for sure which side to cheer for, I could well have developed schizophrenia .  Haven’t yet. But there’s still time.

Imagine then, if you will, such a large colonizing onslaught of Nor-wegians on America’s shores, being as aggressive as the Germans were in their various historic incursions. 

If it had somehow happened, today we might be eating pjizza, drinking bjeer ,driving cjars, smoking cjigars and ordering frijoles. Oops, that last one is from a separate ethnic invasion coming from a totally different direction.

Ken Lindberg
Superior Wisconsin