Race to the bottom
What’s the situation? Corporate profits are high, and here in Maine there are many more willing workers than jobs. What better time for a student-worker act that will add more workers earning less than minimum wage to the labor pool! A wonderful idea from our elected economists!
Our Solons have surely brought satisfied smiles to the faces back at corporate headquarters in Chicago and Arkansas. It is a classic race to the bottom. And who knows, perhaps some of those corporate earnings will trickle down into their re-election campaigns?
Robert Tredwell
Brooksville
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Let’s stick together
We at the Chester Baptist Food Pantry are saddened to see what is going with Pastor Hafford and Good Shepherd Food Bank. We have seen the letter he was sent and it appears they cut him off with only one complaint and never asked him about it. We also are faith-based, serving over 125 families in our area. I Care regularly shares their perishable goods with us.
We have been associated with Good Shepherd for many years and have seen the organization change from when its founder was alive. Joanne Pike was a godly lady wanting to get as much food into the hands of Maine’s needy at no or low cost as she could.
It now sadly has become a difficult place to buy food. There is much purchased product for resale that is mostly priced higher than what we can buy in our local stores.We are grateful for the food we get through Good Shepherd. We just wish there was more affordable food available.
There are some really good people working at Good Shepherd. Our concern is about those enforcing policies or changing policies.
Thank you, Pastor Hafford and the hard workers in the local food cupboards. We must stick together.
Pastor Wayne and Ruth Perry
Chester Baptist Church
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Odd talk at kitchen table
You know the metaphor: The family is in financial trouble, and around the kitchen table, they discuss their budget. Dad leads off. “The first thing we have to do is cut our income.”
Huh?!
But that is exactly what Gov. LePage is trying to do. In the face of a $436 million deficit, he proposes a $203 million tax cut. A tax cut has the same effect on the budget as a spending increase.
Tax cuts and spending increases have varying effects on the state economy — depending. The worst tax to consider cutting is the estate tax. That money goes to the heirs, who might easily be in Massachusetts or on the Riviera. Yet, LePage includes an estate tax cut in his budget. Income tax cuts for the rich are second worst, and they are also included.
Spending cuts also vary in their effects on the economy. The worst are those that deprive the state of money from elsewhere, generally from the federal government. Most highway projects attract federal money from the Highway Trust Fund, to which we contribute through federal fuel taxes. But LePage has refused all bonding for any purpose, so we lose there. Similarly, LePage’s plan to cut MaineCare spending by cutting eligibility will reduce what we receive from the feds, since they pay two thirds of MaineCare costs.
In short, we need a new kitchen table conversation, with a balance of tax increases and spending cuts that make sense.
Rufus Wanning
Orland
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Protect consumer health
My husband and I operate Orono Pharmacy. We’re a local, family owned business that offers quality health care products and sound nutritional information to customers. We care about public health issues and policies in Maine as well as nationwide.
I would like to thank my state legislators on the Environment and Natural Resources Committee, including Rep. Jim Parker of Veazie, for supporting strong public health laws such as the Kid Safe Products Act and the phase-out of toxic BPA.
Sound policies protecting children’s health in Maine are important. We need stronger federal laws to keep toxic chemicals out of everyday products. The federal law that should protect consumer health from toxic chemicals, known as the Toxic Substance Control Act of 1976, does little to keep products safe. I urge Sens. Snowe and Collins to follow Maine’s lead by co-sponsoring the Safe Chemicals Act of 2011.
At our pharmacy, we try to offer the best advice to our customers. But in reality, no one is equipped with enough information to keep families totally free of toxic chemicals. We can read food and drug labels for nutrition and safety information.Yet when it comes to everyday consumer products, from packaging to shampoos, manufacturers have almost no obligation to ensure the safety of their products.
Small businesses like ours and more importantly all consumers would benefit from policies that get the worst toxic chemicals out of products and require better safety information. We’re looking to Sens. Snowe and Collins to get our government to do a better job protecting consumer health.
Juli Aghmoosa
Orono
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Misplaced news sense
The BDN’s June 2 article, “Republicans press Obama on spending,” found on page three of the newspaper, belongs on the front page. Instead, the BDN gleefully chose to jab the governor on the front page with “LePage’s business sign stolen from interstate,” a governor the BDN obviously hates.
Norman Labbe
Fort Kent
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Delusionary letter
I’m shocked and infuriated that the BDN would give ink to Robert Bruce Acheson’s paranoid farrago on your letters page (“Absolute corruption,” June 3).
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion that he mentions approvingly is a notorious anti-Semitic screed and a forgery. It is responsible for much mischief historically and for the BDN to print his letter only gives it a credibility it should never have.
His mention of the Federal Reserve, so-called “international bankers” (and what do you think that is code for?), and the New World Order locate him in the fringe going back to Henry Ford in the 1920s that has always seen central banking as a Jewish plot. The Aryan Nation and the Nation of Islam agree with Mr. Acheson about these invisible and malign forces controlling all our lives.
Next: the BDN gives equal time to chemtrail fantasists, Second Amendment gun-hoarders, FEMA concentration camps and all those other delusionary, all-explaining theories the weak, the frightened and the confused fasten on to in an attempt to understand a very confusing world.
John Goldfine
Swanville