I recently spent a day on Capitol Hill lobbying to eradicate poverty and hunger. It is a complex global challenge that requires immense cooperation but is achievable with our current resources. While addressing global hunger is the long-term goal, we can make immediate progress through our own domestic legislative process.
While in D.C., I personally asked Rep. Rudy Yakym and Sen. Todd Young to support these three critical initiatives:
1. Increase the housing voucher budget to assist an additional 450,000 households, helping families secure the stability needed to escape poverty.2. Extend Indiana’s SNAP benefits deadline to 2030 to allow time to correct administrative errors and secure maximum federal funding.3. Reform the child tax credit laws so the families who need it most qualify for the maximum allowable benefit.
If our representatives vote in line with these initiatives, we’ll be one more step closer to ending poverty.
Corinne Blakemore
South Bend
Gaps in system
On June 21, my 22-pound miniature Australian shepherd, Luna, was attacked while leashed on the grounds of a local middle school near Mishawaka’s Riverwalk. The attacking dog escaped its owner’s control, charged us and had Luna by the neck within seconds. Three adults were needed to pull the dog off her.
Luna suffered catastrophic injuries, including a degloving injury to her neck. She endured three surgeries, a serious bacterial infection and 16 veterinary appointments. Against extraordinary odds and because of extraordinary veterinary care, she survived.
The attacking dog was designated dangerous but has now been returned to its owner. The owners previously failed to comply with multiple attempts to impound the dog for mandated rabies quarantine and accumulated more than $1,000 in fines. The owner then missed the original permit/reclaim deadline. Despite this pattern, Mishawaka officials approved an extension.
I have since learned no professional behavioral evaluation or training was required, and permit enforcement is primarily complaint-driven.
That is unacceptable.
I am calling on Mayor Dave Wood and the Common Council to require behavioral evaluations and appropriate intervention after severe attacks, proactive compliance monitoring and stricter standards when owners demonstrate noncompliance.
Mishawaka officials should act before another animal or person is devastated by these significant gaps in our system.
Paige Walus
Mishawaka
Central time
I disagree with James Colleran (Letters, Aug. 2) regarding permanent daylight saving time if the state of Indiana doesn’t make the change to put the entire state into the Central time zone. If the rest of Indiana was to join northwest Indiana and southwest Indiana on Central they would notice no difference in sunrises and sunsets during the winter and it would also give them earlier light in the summer and an earlier sunset so that it’s not setting until after 9 p.m. Eastern.
I would urge Sens. Jim Banks and Todd Young to vote for permanent daylight saving time in conjunction to placing the entire state on central time.
Dave Hack
Michigan City
Real danger?
Trump claims his ICE agents/brown shirts are in real danger on the job. Well, let’s see. No.1 cause of death: COVID. No. 2: 911 related illness. That is 75% of ICE agents deaths. There is also one death by heart attack during a pursuit, accidental weapon discharge, heat-related training injury and of course death by dengue fever. And one shooting was by a U.S.-born fugitive.
It seems ICE’s masks and arsenal of weapons are unwarranted. The only people in danger are the victims of ICE.
Christopher Leniski
Mishawaka
This article originally appeared on South Bend Tribune: This would bring us one step closer to ending poverty | Letters
Reporting by Letters to the Editor, South Bend Tribune / South Bend Tribune
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By Letters to the Editor, South Bend Tribune | USA TODAY Network
