Citizens need protection from authorities who seize their property

Asset forfeiture is legalized theft. We have a problem when the police can legally take any asset involved in a crime. A law that was supposed to topple drug gangs is now being used to steal someone’s car — or even his house — and sell it to profit the police. This is being done even for minor crimes. While I don’t condone people being criminals, this law doesn’t help protect us, or anyone for that matter.

Lee Knohl, Evanston

Free enterprise economy

To those who believe that corporations like General Motors should not be permitted to close factories or layoff workers: We do live in a free country with a free enterprise economy. No one wants these sorts of things to occur, but the alternative is much worse … to live in a country that controls all companies, a la Cuba or North Korea. I believe having and encouraging privately owned companies are a key to the US way of life, it’s just unfortunate that GM isn’t selling enough cars.

John Parker, La Grange

Hare-brained scheme

Mayoral candidate William Daley has a hare-brained scheme to implement a commuter tax on suburbanites who work in the city, indicating that suburbanites “enjoy a police and fire department to protect them. They enjoy getting workers from the city who go through our school systems.” This idea would collapse like a house of cards when the suburbs would, in turn, implement a commuter tax of their own on workers from Chicago.

Mike Koskiewicz, Portage Park

Bad faith actors

It was refreshing to read S. E. Cupp’s piece “Conservatives had better snap out of their mindless denial of climate change,” though I’m disappointed she stopped short of calling global warming deniers what they really are: liars.

As Cupp clearly writes, scientific consensus confirms that climate change is real, it is caused by human activity, and its effects will be exponentially worse each year we fail to significantly curb greenhouse emissions. Quite frankly, I’m furious that we let bad faith actors frame the conversation around “belief” instead of scientific fact. If politicians like Rick Santorum are so anti-science, I propose they put their money where their mouths are and stop relying on scientists, full stop. I eagerly await the day I see these cherry-picking politicians forced to live their lies: no more modern medicines or vaccines developed by microbiologists; no more mass-produced food engineered by agronomists; heck, no more gerrymandered districts created by political scientists.

As for the rest of us, I look forward to using every scientific and political tool at our disposal to combat this global crisis. Bring on the experts in earth science, ecology, oceanography, and more. And while we’re at it, let’s put our political muscle behind the issue and pass the recently introduced bipartisan Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act (H.R. 7173); it will reduce America’s emissions by at least 40 percent within 12 years while creating 2.1 million additional jobs over the next decade. We have the tools and the will, and we know the way forward. Let’s stop dilly dallying and listening to out-of-date opportunists, and instead start creating a new green economy built on fact-based evidence.

Amelia Estrich, Rogers Park