Opinion

He voted no twice in the last four years. Why?

Letters to the Editor October 17, 2026

As we approach a highly contentious Alpena Public Schools Board of Education election, I am making a conscious effort to give every candidate an equal opportunity to earn my vote. That means researching their records, asking questions, and understanding the decisions they've made. As the parent of a former APS high school athlete and a future APS athlete, I was surprised to learn that current board member AJ McArthur reportedly voted NO twice in the past four years on resolutions supporting APS membership in the Michigan High School Athletic Association (MHSAA). Why does this ...

Has Trump broken his McDonald's promise?

Editorials and columns October 17, 2026

The defining moment of the 2024 presidential campaign, it can be argued, came almost exactly two years ago, on Sunday, Oct. 20, when then-former President Donald Trump traded his suit coat for a yellow apron and worked the fry station and the drive-thru window at a McDonald's. His staff picked a propitious location in the battleground state of Pennsylvania: lower Bucks County, just south of the Pennsylvania Turnpike and about a mile west of U.S. 1, suburban turf settled a generation or two ago by the sons and daughters of blue-collar ethnic communities in northeast ...

Silence is deafening

Letters to the Editor October 17, 2026

Ironically October is National Bullying Prevention Month. The smear campaign literature sent out a couple of weeks ago by the Alpena Republican Party bullying Evan Carlson, Sarah Fritz, Claire Kipfmiller, and Kayla Ratz was deeply troubling and disgusting. School Board elections are nonpartisan and political parties should not be involved. These candidates are our family, friends and neighbors, and they deserve to be evaluated on their qualifications, experience, ideas, character, and commitment to our students—not attacked through partisan political tactics. Just as troubling is ...

It's almost election day, can you tell?

Letters to the Editor October 17, 2026

If you support “Medicare for all” including non-citizens, not funding police for communities, lawless borders for our country and tax-paid abortions at every stage, then Abdul El-Sayed is your man for Michigan senate. If you want classic books like George Orwell's “1984”, “Tom Sawyer” and “To Kill a Mockingbird” banned in school and replaced with How To books on sex for every combination & reason, then the democrat/socialist ticket is for you. If you want economical promises today that end in future government takeovers, vote democrat/socialist to run your life. If ...

What does it take for a child to want to be around an adult?

Editorials and columns October 17, 2026

When I was a little kid, I spent most of my days at Jefferson Elementary School. My family always seemed to have just enough money to get by, but never much extra. And if there was extra, it was usually going to pay for my older siblings' college expenses. That was where my mom and dad’s ...

Abdul El Sayed is not a Democrat

Letters to the Editor October 17, 2026

Even a Democratic strategist admits that the party is not the party of JFK, nor Barak Obama. The Democratic party is embracing socialism. And it sounds WONDERFUL! Free housing, free medical care, free education. Socialism by it's very definition is "the means of production, distribution and exchange should be owned and regulated by the community as a whole." As in, owned by the government, then redistributed. So are you ready for your income to be collected and redistributed? Are government housing and food stamp programs something for you? Would you be exempt? When we were young we ...