State involvement?
Does the state still have to sanction marriages, whether for opposite-sex couples or same-sex couples?
The original reason for state involvement was to protect the welfare of homemakers and children. Let’s get real. Today’s opposite-sex marriages do neither in so many cases. And clearly same-sex couples are not in any way causes of the high rate of divorce, homemaker poverty, absent parents and loss of child support. Mental illness, lack of birth control access and support (with consequent unwanted children), substance abuse and poverty are more indicative of family breakdown than as symptoms of negative post-industrial societal side effects.
Check the statistics. I know many same-sex parenting households that have “traditional” home lives with one partner staying at home raising their children while strengthening family cohesion.
Partnership finance and parent responsibility contracts are more of a state concern so how about leaving marriage, per se, to private-sector social or religious traditions and rites while relegating family legal benefits and responsibilities to the state? Who knows — perhaps same-sex partnerships are part of the “intelligent design” for the future as world population balloons and natural resources decline.
And, if you are offended by same-sex partnerships or marriages, then don’t have one.
Jane Fairchild
Orneville
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Control blown away
I am writing in response to the March 5 editorial, “Wind Resistance.” No one will dispute that alternative energy sources are needed to replace carbon-based fuels; however, I take issue with several points made regarding your support of LD 199.
Rep. Cebra was misguided by the “big wind” industry when he was persuaded to propose LD 199, and the Bangor Daily News is similarly misguided when it supports such legislation. LD 199 assumes that only DEP and LURC should have the authority to decide the future of industrial wind farms in Maine. To imply that the residents sitting on local planning boards are not intelligent or astute enough to make decisions regarding wind-power projects is affront to all Mainers.
Once 400 foot industrial turbines are erected on our picturesque mountains and ridges, they are not coming down any time soon. Local residents should have the right to decide if they want them in their “back yards,” and I don’t think a majority of Maine residents will support such a Maine landscape changed forever. Offshore wind farms make much more sense and are more efficient.
If LD 199 is enacted, what next? Will our legislators decide that local boards don’t have the expertise to review and decide on minor subdivisions or similar planning issues? LD 199 will set a dangerous (and probably unconstitutional) precedent. I urge all who can to attend the hearing on LD 199 on Thursday, March 19, to do so, and let your home-rule presence be known.
Greg Perkins
Holden
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Blame it on the desk
The OpEd by professor Lynn Hudson Parsons (BDN, March 7) blamed school-desk inkwells for the awkward handwriting postures of left-handed people like President Obama. But I suspect the president and I share another reason for our contortions when handwriting. It was the desks themselves.
When I received my first lessons in Palmer Method penmanship, we had those accursed desks with an arm only on the right side, and that widened into a desktop. The teacher was completely intolerant of any deviation from the way she wanted things done. She’d place a sheet of paper on that narrow desktop with the top angled toward the left. That way, a right-handed student’s forearm would rest on the long axis of the paper, and his or her hand automatically would be below the writing area.
But a lefty like me would first have to twist in the seat to even reach the paper, and my hand would come down in a natural position to write down the right edge of the paper. I’d turn the paper clockwise 90 degrees to correct that, but the annoyed teacher would immediately and emphatically turn it back. Even worse, her actions were often accompanied by derogatory remarks about uncooperative pupils.
Eventually, I learned to write in spite of her, but I continued to struggle with those confounded right-handed desks, even in college. President Obama and I undoubtedly share the difficulty of writing in three-ring notebooks, but I’ll bet my first-grade teacher had the most appropriate moniker. Her name was Miss Nutt.
Carroll B. Knox
Caribou
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UMaine not top-heavy
A recent BDN story included a suggestion, attributed to a professor at another University of Maine System institution, that Maine’s flagship university in Orono has too many administrators. This erroneous contention is easily refuted with data UMS routinely submits to the federal government.
These data show 2.3 percent of the UMaine (Orono) staff classified as “executive/administrative/managerial.” This is the second-lowest percentage of any UMS university.
Given UMaine’s land-grant mission — which includes research, service and outreach requiring extensive managerial oversight — a better comparison involves the five other New England state universities. Here, too, UMaine’s percentage is the second lowest. Similarly, the UMaine percentage is smaller than that for 11 of 12 national rural land-grant peers.
Like all Maine institutions, UMaine has been aggressively reducing costs for years. We have eliminated more than 100 positions, realized new efficiencies (including reducing energy costs by more than $3 million), and cut overhead through creative means like outsourcing student health care to a private company (saving another $1 million). These efforts continue as we work to reduce next year’s budget by another $8.6 million.
These concerns amplify the importance of the current taskforce effort to find more sustainable ways to provide public university education.
Systemic change is necessary because continuing cuts will drive us all to mediocrity — the opposite of what Maine needs. The solution lies in a transformed structure where Maine’s universities work together to create the most affordable means for providing the highest quality education possible to support Maine’s people and its economy.
Janet Waldron
vice president for administration and finance
University of Maine
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No bailout for AIG
I just got done reading the article about “AIG holding our government hostage.”
Talk about terrorism… what could be worse? If AIG has 74 million customers world wide and in more than 130 countries, let the other countries bail them out this time.
If I could not pay my bills, then my employees would go without. My clients would have to find someone else and etc. My government would not bail me and a million other small businesses out, and I live here and pay taxes here. I am sorry but I do not feel that my taxes should be used to bail out customers in other countries.
We do not get to go on major trips and get great big bonuses on the government either. We have to use control in managing our money. It is time others do the same thing.
Barbara Marshall
Newport