This week’s edition!
Letters
LETTER: Maine People’s Alliance doesn’t represent the people of Maine
To the Editor:
In June, a group of roughly 50 people entered a local Bank of America branch in Brunswick in the middle of the business day. Many wore hooded sweatshirts pulled over their heads and raised their fists in defiance, reminiscent of the mobs that recently plagued the streets of London.
The group brought business at the bank to a standstill as they filled the lobby, waved signs and voiced their rage through a bullhorn. This exercise in disruption, called a “flash protest,” was produced by a group of professional malcontents known as the Maine People’s Alliance. The MPA is the leading force behind the “Yes on 1” campaign to reinstate same-day voter registration in Maine. The similarities between the street-punk hostilities at Bank of America and the MPA’s referendum effort are striking.
LETTER: The values of Christianity
To the Editor:
As I was reading this week’s Twin City TIMES, I was struck by the difference in tone between the Rev. Douglas Taylor’s Letter to the Editor and Larry Gilbert’s “Mayor’s Corner.”
Taylor’s letter (“Fighting for our way of life,” TCT, Sept. 22, 2011, p. 3) has an undertone of hostility toward Muslims in general and speaks of waging war with them without bothering to mention that the overwhelming majority of Muslims have no quarrel at all with, let alone a hatred of, the United States. His implication seems to be the opposite.
LETTER: Some bogus Glenn Beck diatribe
To the Editor:
I will keep this letter short. What really frustrates the Rev. Doug Taylor? His mangled Letter to the Editor sounds like a less-slick version of some bogus Glenn Beck diatribe (“Fighting for our way of life,” TCT, Sept. 22, 2011, p. 3).
But my guess is that as an evangelical minister whose mission is to spread the gospel, he is frustrated his neighborhood and audience rapidly changed from would-be Christians, or those very receptive to the Gospels, to a neighborhood that is entrenched in a religion different from his. Maybe that’s the source of his frustration and why his letter makes no sense.
LETTER: Stop same-day voter registration
To the Editor:
I cannot understand why some in our state would object to changing same-day voter registration. My thoughts ran to the burden for our town clerks of checking the validity of names, addresses and eligibility requirements on the same day as the voting event.
Here are some other reasons from friends of mine:
1. Some say that there is no perceived problem with voter fraud today. Then at what fraud level should we react to stop it? One percent? Five percent? Shouldn’t we try to prevent fraud before it starts?
Op/Ed: Private-sector leaders are taking Maine government in healthy new direction
By State Treasurer Bruce Poliquin
Some 230 years ago, the founding documents that created our representative Republic acknowledged that free enterprise is the optimal engine of prosperity and liberty.
Our Founding Fathers and their fellow colonists included merchants, trades people and farmers. They understood the importance of hard work and enjoyed the fruits of their labor. They were thrifty and resourceful. They embraced risk and its potential for reward. They invented and competed, and sold their products far from their New World. They were private sector business people.
For more than two centuries, our dynamic free enterprise machine has generated new income and wealth for 300 million fellow Americans. Part of that income is taxed to provide services for our citizens, including national defense. Without a healthy and growing economic engine, we cannot live better lives—we cannot be free.
LETTER: Older Mainers face “food insecurity”
To the Editor:
As Governor Le Page has declared September “Hunger Action” month, this seems a good time for all Mainers to consider the challenges that lie ahead for many of our older friends and neighbors as we head toward winter.
In a recently published report, AARP Foundation reveals that hunger among older Americans has jumped nearly 80 percent in just 10 years. It’s a shocking fact that of the 50 million Americans presently at risk of hunger across the country, 9 million are age 50 and older.
Unfortunately, the statistics for Maine are also shocking. In each of the categories measured in the report, Maine fared very poorly when compared to other New England states. In some cases, Maine had the worst statistics for the entire Northeast region.
LETTER: “Fighting for our way of life”
Letter to the Editor:
Remember, if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck . . . Yet our major news outlets have taken cover with the pre-9/10 mentality of saying, “Duck? What duck?”
Political correctness permeates the workplaces, the media, government and, sadly, many churches. It is going to be the end of us as a nation if we don’t wake up and start making changes fast.
LETTER: Mobilize now to ensure victory in 2012
Letter to the Editor:
About a year ago, I became politically active. I’ve always been conservative, but I never had the guts to actually do the heavy lifting involved with winning an election. It’s easy to talk a good game, but when it comes down to actually putting yourself out there, especially in potentially difficult situations, it is a tough thing to follow through with.
But things had gotten so bad in this state that I felt I had to do something. I looked at the 2010 election as our last shot to turn our state around.
I went door to door and made calls for Republican candidates. I was only planning to do this for two or three hours a week. But I got so caught up in it that it became a 12-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week, two-month obsession. I gave myself a nickname, “Jimmy Lit-Drop,” because I was like Johnny Appleseed spreading those wonderful LePage letters and Levesque palm cards all over Androscoggin County.
LETTER: District lines are like road kill on a map
To the Editor:
It has been a pleasure to watch the howls of outrage that have accompanied nearly every measure the Republican legislature has passed to dismantle the crony state the Democrats constructed in their 40-year reign in Augusta.
Of course, there were some things that not even the Dems could grouse about in public: the end of $3,000 lunches for bond salesmen, the end of tens of thousands of unaccounted for “gift certificates” by the turnpike authority, the end of welfare benefits for “undocumented” denizens, regulatory reform, etc.
But wherever they could complain with great vitriol, they did. Although most of them voted for the budget and the tax cuts, they certainly raised their voices in disdain—after the measures had safely passed. And they really didn’t like the reform that will allow Mainers to buy insurance across state lines. But since insurance costs less everywhere else in the U.S., they couldn’t get up any interest in trying to overturn that reform by People’s Veto.
LETTER: “Less-than-stellar teachers”
To the Editor:
Would Dick Sabine really have us believe that the poor performance of our communities’ students on the SAT is entirely to blame on their teachers? (Letter to the Editor: “School policies should be judged by a jury,” p. 3, TCT, August 25, 2011)
I have no doubt that there are some less-than-stellar teachers in our school system, just as there are some less-than-stellar workers in many of our other workplaces. But the idea that simply eliminating teacher tenure, even if that were feasible or desirable, would magically transform the performance of our students on the SAT is a bit hard for me to swallow.
Students are not passive vessels that simply “soak up” knowledge imparted to them by their teachers. Learning is an active process. Paying attention during lessons, taking notes, asking questions, practicing with the new material and studying are all crucial aspects of the student’s role in the process.
