Michigan’s longstanding inability to compete with the Buckeyes on the college gridiron is no secret. Less well known is our state’s struggle to keep up with the educational opportunities Ohio offers to students and families. Thankfully, Lansing lawmakers have a new opportunity to dramaticall…
I heard a news report the other day that went something like this: “Backed-up ports and the corresponding lack of goods going through the supply chain could become a real-life ‘Grinch,’ making for a disappointing Christmas holiday for millions.”
Forget you have a gun
The protest at a Line 5 pumping station in Michigan’s Thumb appears to have been frivolous – a dozen or so young activists mostly hanging out in a parking lot listening to music – but it exposes serious security risks for the petroleum pipeline.
As I write this column, darkness falls. Outside the wind picks up and leaves rustle in the breeze. Inside, the air is damp and cool. The house is eerily quiet, and my instinct is to break the quiet – maybe turn on a nice HGTV home renovation show and make a cup of tea.
Polyfluoroalkyl and perfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, are a class of man-made chemicals that break down slowly in the environment, can accumulate in the human body and have been linked to all manner of negative health effects from cancer to high cholesterol.
Affordable housing
Rob Nixon, Princeton University professor and a leading author and writer on the environment and climate change, has called climate change a “slow violence.” Oftentimes, rather than urgent and unavoidable events, environmental destruction and its aftermath takes place “gradually and invisibl…
An open cookie jar is a tempting thing.
Some California parents kept their kids out of classrooms Monday as part of a statewide protest against the COVID-19 vaccine mandate for schools that the state’s governor has promised.
Who's running the government?
As the weather starts to cool and the days get shorter, I find myself soaking up every minute of time I can spend outside, especially at the beach. I’ve traded my swimsuit for a scarf and my Birkenstocks for boots, but the peace and majesty of the water remains as grounding as ever.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, our border with Canada has remained closed to nonessential travelers. The Biden administration has kept delaying the opening, and now says it will be in early November.
Shabby treatment
As we enter the final few months of our 50th year of service, I have been reflecting on the many local philanthropists that have made Northwest Ottawa County a great place to live, work and play over the years.
Much as Colin Powell deserves a tribute as America’s first Black secretary of state and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he was under-recognized as a bridge-builder and champion of political moderation. Powell, who died Monday, was a Republican who dared to challenge his own party’s or…
A plea for proper English
With the arrival of cozy sweater days and soon-to-be hot chocolate weather, I can’t help but think about what a wonderful feeling it is to get all comfy and snuggle up with a good book.
Serving as the sheriff of Ottawa County is the greatest honor of my professional career. Unfortunately, as everyone knows, working in law enforcement has a tragic side, and having to observe the results of cycles of violence, abuse and poverty that impact young people is part of that.
Faith and science
A new report gives the clearest account yet of the extent to which former President Donald Trump attempted to subvert the Justice Department to overthrow a legitimate election. The report makes clear that a handful of top administration officials heroically averted this attempted coup by thr…
Has there ever been a time when we have had to weigh so much science in our day-to-day lives?
Smart technologies, such as sensor networks linked with powerful computers, have been used with great success to track air quality in Chicago and detect wildfires in the West. Now we need to make the Great Lakes smart, too. The health of this enormous resource – and our drinking water, shore…
There was a time when Thomas Jefferson boasted in one of his State of the Union annual addresses to Congress that he had eliminated federal taxation. That’s when we still at times acted like a federal republic – a small federal government – and life was simpler.
We were taught early on in elementary school English (now called language arts) that “they” and “them” are plural pronouns. And, if we’re not mistaken, there is only one city manager at a time in Grand Haven.
BLP provided security
We have heard a lot about science in the last two years. “We follow the science” has been a common refrain during the pandemic recited by civic leaders and politicians. And that phrase has led to social distancing, lockdowns and mask mandates. And now, since COVID-19 vaccines have been devel…
What Grand Haven needs
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer finds herself in a place where a Michigan governor should not be – at the center of an international treaty dispute with America’s closest friend and trading partner.
We’ve seen an uptick in traffic crashes, and I don’t know about you, but it seems to me that there are many aggressive drivers on West Michigan’s roads lately. It feels like I am fighting for my life in hopes to make it home safely. I have encountered so many aggressive drivers that I have l…
Facebook has become the latest company that everyone loves to hate, and internal documents stolen by an employee have become an opening to blame the social-media giant for America’s ills. The company has made mistakes, but it’s worth sorting the genuine issues from the opportunism of politic…
Upon his election, President Joe Biden stood before the cameras and promised the American people a time of healing and unity, a renewed order where everyone’s voice deserved to be heard, not trampled and insulted.
Imagine President Joe Biden sitting atop a wrecking ball as it swings toward the American family, liberty, our free-market economy, education and reasonable taxation, for starters, and you will have imagined his proposed Build Back Better Act.
Federal and state budget time tends to be one of familiar squabbles. A repeated tradition of absolute posturing and late-night additions and early mornings of resigned reconciliation. Fresh outrage – as if the tug-of-war isn’t the same every year – is part of the ritual.
There is a fundamental inequity in the ability of Americans to enforce their rights under the United States Constitution.
‘Women are just so sensitive these days,” she says through red-tinted lips, a striking contrast to her silver hair. “Not every man who says something to a woman is being offensive. Not everything is about you,” she punctuates this last line with a slight chuckle.
Former Congressman Todd Akin, the Missouri Republican who recently died, sparked one of the biggest political firestorms in the country during the 2012 election year, when he claimed that “legitimate rape” doesn’t cause pregnancy – thus implying that women who seek abortions claiming to have…
BLP deceit persists
A local community activist, Nick Brock, reached out to me last week to see if our church would be interested in hosting a community event.
The state’s recent announcement that it would create a panel to address high levels of lead in drinking water deflects from its failure to reduce the amount of the heavy metal in a community’s water supply.
Facing the crisis
After last week’s House vote that saw all but one Democrat, Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas), and no Republicans vote for the Women’s Health and Protection Act, a bill that would establish a federal right to an abortion, the party that once claimed to stand for “the little guy” – the littlest be…
Ford Motor Co.’s decision to take its $11.4 billion electric vehicle investment and 11,000 jobs to the mid-South should jar Michigan to the reality that it’s unprepared to achieve its dreams of dominating the automotive future.
You’ve surely seen it before on a laundry detergent bottle label, printed on a ready-made salad bag or stamped onto the container of a thousand other products lining the shelves of grocery and retail stores: A symbol with three “chasing” arrows that form a triangle. It may be green or black.…
“Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me three times, shame on both of us.” – Stephen King
The costs of treating unvaccinated people for coronavirus infections were $5.7 billion between June and August, a new report from the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation has concluded. In the world of health care, that might not be much. Americans spent about $3.8 trillion on health care in…
The Biden administration is actively pushing Congress to require banks to report to the Internal Revenue Service on the account activity of a huge swath of Americans. This unwarranted snooping would be an invasion of privacy, and lawmakers should make sure it doesn’t happen.
As part of the state’s pandemic response, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer started a new program that pays for the tuition of frontline health care workers who want to go to community college. Lawmakers are also looking to create and expand other programs aimed at boosting people’s job credentials.
Get the shot
San Francisco Mayor London Breed sent an important but unintentional message recently when she was caught violating her own mask mandates while partying away, maskless, in a jam-packed jazz club. Her excuse was incoherent; she said she was “feeling the spirit,” enjoying the music and so not …
One year ago, when my father was sliding toward the end, I had occasion to call 911 three times in the weeks before he died.
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