•Citizen Who Lives on the St. Clair River: “I can remember when the shipping season ended in November right after Thanksgiving. Why in the world does the shipping season last 12 months a year? Ninety percent of the damage being done right now are by the big thousand-footers that are pushing all this ice. If they were to stay in dock, there wouldn’t be all this damage and flooding.”
•Paul from Marysville: “Jim Ketchum’s article on the decline in church attendance missed the mark. It has nothing to do with presentation or convenience. Fewer people are going because fewer people believe in it. Religions are all man-made beliefs people are choosing not to buy into. As the country gets more secular, the economy, education and health care are the best they have ever been. Violent crime and teen pregnancy are at historic lows. Fear not the demise of religion. It is the triumph of science and logic over superstition and fear.”
•No Name: “Kudos to the East China School District for waiting until 6:15 in the morning to close school on Friday. Waiting until probably the bus drivers were at the bus stop and parents were getting ready to drop their child off at child care and for the child care workers that were already at work. What a joke.”
•No Name: “You said the Hollyhock was stuck at the dock for a maintenance project. Why would you take an ice cutter in the middle of winter and do a maintenance project on it? Now if something was broken, I understand it. But to do that at this time of year doesn’t make sense to me.”
Sometimes you can’t predict maintenance do. And you certainly can’t predict the epic chill that struck Dec. 26.
•No Name: “NEL can’t imagine why Norwegians would want to emigrate to the United States. Well, it could be because of taxes. They pay really high taxes. They have a socialist government there and all those social programs.”
Could it be they are the happiest people on Earth because after they pay their taxes they don’t have to pay again for education (from preschool to post-graduate), child care, elder care, public transportation, health care, life insurance or pensions? Or maybe because when you add up all the taxes that we pay to what we pay for those services, it is cheaper to live in Norway.