Two Upper Peninsula Lawmakers Give Their Views on Youth Issues

Recently, as part of 8-18 Media’s preparation to attend and cover the national political conventions, a group of reporters and editors held separate interviews to ask the same questions of State Representatives Steven Lindberg (D-Marquette) and Tom Casperson (R-Escanaba). We discussed some of the political issues that 8-18 Media, and the two lawmakers, feel are most important to youth in Michigan. The topics ranged from the economy to the current healthcare system in America.

8-18 Media: What are some issues in Michigan you believe are most important to youth?

Casperson: Right now in Michigan the biggest issues we’re faced with are jobs for families and sustaining families in Michigan, which relates to the kids. We have good educational systems and we need to even enhance them. But the problem will be if we have young people going through our universities and getting a good education we also then need them to have a job when they come outside of those universities. What’s been happening in the last few years is the young people have been finding jobs, but they’re outside of the state. We’ve got to stop that in Michigan and find ways to shore that up.

Lindberg: We’ve lost a lot of jobs in Michigan, so we have huge economic challenges. We also have huge education challenges in Michigan. Education is a challenge, but it’s also a solution to the problem. We have issues based around water. We live in this beautiful Great Lakes state. We’re surrounded by water. Twenty percent of the world’s water is right here around us. Places like Nevada and Arizona are running out of water. So we’re working right now to make sure that we don’t get caught in diverting our Great Lakes water to someplace else. These are all issues that we’re working on right now: the economy, education, water, and we’re always continuing to work on health care issues. Some people have excellent health care if they have a policy through their work. But there are a lot of folks who struggle with getting affordable health care.

Q: With incidents of school violence on the rise what are you doing to keep schools safe, or what should be done to keep schools safe?

Lindberg: One of the things that we passed in the House is an anti-bullying law, in which all schools would have to come up with a plan to prevent bullying and violence in the schools. That would be a state requirement. That bill has not passed out of the Senate. If you can’t go to school and feel safe you’re not in an environment where you can learn. We have to address that issue where, when students go to school, they really feel safe there. Unfortunately, in some schools we’ve had to put metal detectors at the doors. That was something unheard of back when I was teaching. Due to some of the things that have happened in our society we’ve had to increase security in our schools. We need to continue to do that to make sure that students feel safe when they go to school.

Casperson: I’m concerned with the school violence, especially what we’ve seen lately. I think a lot of goes way beyond the school. By that I mean, I think a lot of the problems we’re faced with today start with moms and dads. That needs to be shored up in the sense of encouraging the importance of parenting. I don’t see a lot of that being talked about. I see a lot of programs to work within the schools and somehow solve the problem. Something has been changing in society. I think the bulk of the change has been with our families. I think there needs to be some awareness and we need to talk more about that.

Q: What will be done to help the young generations pay for Medicare and health care for baby boomers?

Casperson: One of the ways to get around that (exploding retiree healthcare costs) is personal responsibility. Start looking at the future like it’s your future and start working towards programs to take of yourself instead of being so reliant on the government for everything. And there’s way to do that, but it takes discipline and planning. There’s been a lot of discussion on social security. Will it be there for your generation? Social security started out with great intentions and had a great idea behind it. But unfortunately, what’s happened for generations, the government has taken a program like that and just added to it. People now are drawing from social security for things that I don’t believe in the beginning it was ever intended for. But now it is. So the thing gets bigger and bigger as far as the cost, and we can’t keep up. There are no guarantees in life. If you’re putting your hopes and dreams in the government to take care of it, unfortunately you’re heading down the wrong path.

Lindberg: You have this whole group of people who are all retiring soon. We’re living a lot longer than we ever expected to live. The average life expectancy used to be in the mid-60s; now it’s into the 70s. The reason we’re living longer is we have all this medication and good health care that allows us to live longer. We’re going to have fewer people to pay for Medicare. If we don’t address this issue real soon I think this country is in big trouble. I’m not sure what all the answers are. One is to bring down the cost of health care by having more universal health care. We’re going to pay for it in the form of taxes, which isn’t a real popular political decision to make. Also, eighty percent of the money that we spend in health care gets spent in the last six months of life. So we’re going to decide when do we not provide health care for somebody. That’s going to be a very difficult conversation because it implies a lot of moral and ethical issues along with just the cost.

Q: What are your thoughts on the new types of mineral mines that are proposed for Marquette County?

Lindberg: There were no laws or regulations to deal with that type of mine. So the environmental community, when it became apparent that nickel and copper had been discovered up in the Yellow Dog Plains, came to the Michigan Legislature and asked that they develop rules and regulations and laws to deal with mining in a sulfide ore body. To my surprise, everyone agreed that they came up with good rules and good regulations. It was signed by the mining interests and the environmental interests. Kennecott then went forward based on those rules and regulations and applied for a permit to mine on the Yellow Dog Plains. At the end of the day, unfortunately, whether that mine happens is probably going to be decided in a court of law. Either the court is going to say they can mine or that they can’t mine. Legislatively, I don’t know if there’s anything more that we should have done or could do. If that mine does happen we have to have very close oversight on that mining process. There’s a mining bond of $15,577,000. That’s money a mining company isn’t going to want to lose.

Casperson: I believe that if we do it right, we’ve got the high standards, we should move forward. If it’s done properly you’re going to see this go on for some time to come because the ore body is there. If we don’t do it the demand for that ore body is out there on a global scale and they’re going to go after it somewhere else, possibly China, Russia. You won’t find them using the high standards we’re willing to do here ourselves. You and I are going to use the very products that come out of that ore body. If we’re going to use the product why let China or Russia do it? I would rather we do it––we have the jobs, and we use the highest standards in the world, let’s go do it. We sat down with mining companies, with environmental groups, with the departments. We decided we didn’t have parameters around underground mining like this. So I said we needed to come up with something. The U.P. legislators came together and talked about it and decided to start working towards that. We said, let’s put some parameters around this to see if we can get there with everybody at the table. We had every environmental group known to man at that table putting input into this thing. We came up with 18 pages of underground mining regulations. At the end I was there and everybody said their piece. Everybody agreed that if we could meet these standards they would support it.

Q: What advice would you give someone interested in entering politics in the future?

Casperson: Get in because you believe in something. Don’t look at it as just a position. Politics is not a job; it’s almost a way of life. You’ve got to believe in something. You have the ability as an elected official to try and steer or to lead. If you find you have those abilities you should consider something like this. But you got to have passion. When I first ran I was asked if I had the fire in my belly. I never understood what that question meant. Make sure you have a fire in your belly. If you do and you work hard at it you’re going to find it’s a pretty neat thing to do. And you’ll find that it is kind of addicting to get involved, and you find you want to fix problems. Make sure you’re doing it for the right reason.

Lindberg: Get involved at an early age. If you’re interested in politics go out and volunteer. I graduated from high school in 1962, and there were a couple of things I was sure of. One, I was going to go to college and be the first member of our family to go to college. My mom and dad told me I didn’t have much of a choice. Life will take you down some paths that you have no idea of ahead of time. But if you’re interested in politics this is an ideal year to do it, whether you’re a Republican or a Democrat. There will be a Democratic and a Republican headquarters. If you are interested go there and say, “I’d like to work on a campaign.” That means you’re going to stuff envelopes and put out yard signs. But you’ll, in the process, meet a lot of people. You’ll just get involved in the whole thing. You can do that when you’re in high school or middle school.

We thank the lawmakers for their time and effort. 8-18 Media, a youth empowerment journalism program of the Upper Peninsula Children’s Museum, is currently planning for its traditional trips to cover the Democratic National Convention in Denver in late August and the Republican National Convention in Saint Paul in early September. We will team up with our sister bureau, Y-Press of Indianapolis, for the convention coverage. The 8-18 Media convention team is currently fundraising to help cover the cost of the two trips. If anyone would like to help us by making a monetary donation, or anything else that might help us in our project, please call (906) 226-7874, or send us an email at 8-18media@chartermi.net, or donate by mail: 8-18 Media, 123 West Baraga Ave., Marquette, Michigan, 49855.

Editors Note: This story was written by Chelsea Parrish, 16 and Erin Bozek-Jarvis, 14.