Headline memories
Here are some of the headlines of the last six months of President Bush’s term in 2008; it seems as if some people have short-term memory loss, especially those on the “right” side!
June 7: “Markets slammed by oil, crude leaps”
June 10: “Big loss at Lehman”
June 21: “Ford reels as truck sales plunge”
July 12: “Crisis deepens as big banks fail”
July 16: “SEC moves to curb short selling”
Sept. 8: “U.S. seizes mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac”
Sept. 17: “U.S to take over A.I.G.”
Sept. 26: “Largest failure of banks in U.S. history”
Oct. 23: “Markets fall as fears rise”
Nov. 23: “Manufacturing tumbles globally”
This is just some of what was happening before Mr. Obama arrived at the White House.
Jeff Brawn
Brewer
Disgusting cuts
The fact we are cutting important programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid is disgusting. As Warren Buffet said in his op-ed in the New York Times, we need to “stop coddling the super rich.” We need to raise revenue, not cut vital services.
Timothy McGuire
Bangor
American history twisted
Is it not possible to insist upon the fact that the objection to the original Boston tea partiers had was to “Taxation without representation,” not just “taxation” itself? They were against the unfairness of what the king was doing to them without their having any say in the matter.
They revolted and got to have their own representative government — which, in turn, did tax them. But it favored their interests. And we have been doing that ever since.
We have paid taxes for things we want. We can change our minds about which things we want. But to say that “taxes are evil” is very different from saying, “taxation without representation is evil.” The tea party is not following the Founding Fathers’ intent.
A government needs to be financed. How much it needs depends on what it wants to do and how it will do it. That’s not a new or bad idea. Let’s not throw it all away because we have misinterpreted our own history.
Cheryl Lovely
Presque Isle
Darwin not without God
In response to the comment that “evolution denigrates God by never mentioning Him” (Charles Sykes’ Aug. 18 BDN letter, “Deleting God”), I would point him and any interested readers to Robert Klose’s “The Three-Legged Woman and Other Excursions into Teaching.” Professor Klose points out that he teaches about evolution, not creation.
The quote from page 165 is most telling about Mr. Darwin: “And when we read the very last paragraph of ‘The Origin of Species,’ the charge that Darwin was Godless is shown to be False: ‘There is grandeur in this view of life with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the creator into a few or into one; and that, while this planet has gone circling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved.’ ”
Lin Parker
Penobscot
Pay up for post offices
The U.S. Postal Service is considering doing something “business-like” and wants to close 34 post offices across Maine because the annual income from these locations is less than what it costs to operate them. Next comes the long line of affected patrons and municipalities with tales of woe about how much the loss of each post office will hurt them. They will soon be followed by another line of local, state and federal politicians, pleading the case of their particular constituency.
These politicians, of course, are the same ones who call for governmental agencies to act like a “business,” and when they attempt to do that, the politicians cry foul.
Here is my solution as to how these locations can keep their post office open: Pay the USPS the difference between what your particular post office brings in for revenue, and what it costs them to keep it open. I call this the “pony up” system for post office retention. Let’s give it a try.
Brian Callahan
Searsport
Save our programs
There is a sickness spreading in our nation. It threatens to throw countless American citizens out of their homes and ruin the quality of life for millions. This plague is the potential loss of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. We have an integral right to these vital services and have been paying for them our entire lives. The fact that they are under attack is just disgusting.
Christopher Johnson
Bangor
Obama ‘hapless passenger’
On Aug. 17, the BDN published an editorial page cartoon that depicted President Obama at the wheel of the “Budget Cuts” bus as it rolled over a LIHEAP recipient. The cartoon, I’m afraid, was crude, simplistic, and misleading; it also suggested short-term memory problems in your cartoonist.
President Obama is deserving of criticism for his move to the right and capitulation to the forces of reaction in the discussions of the past year. There is far more suffering to come. It is incorrect, however, to suggest that the president was the driving force behind massive cuts in federal spending.
Over the course of the past 30 years, the Republican Party has been transformed by a coalition of corporations, Ayn Rand acolytes, religious fundamentalists and those who rant without a clue.
It is now controlled by those who truly wish to destroy the government by de-funding it and its programs. LIHEAP is but one of these (think Social Security, clean air and water, Medicare, and on and on). The logical and inevitable consequence of their programs and actions is the further concentration of wealth and power in the hands of those who have.
The bus of change is indeed careening down the highways of America and it will take out many millions before the fuel of greed and hate is exhausted. Obama, however, is not the driver; he seems more and more like another hapless passenger.
Bob Meggison
Belfast
Ron Paul is here
Ron Paul. It’s a name we haven’t heard in a while, despite the fact that he came in a very close second to Michelle Bachman in the Ames Straw Poll in Iowa.
I don’t necessarily agree with his views, but why are we hearing more about Rick Santorum or Newt Gingrich (folks who haven’t the slightest chance of winning the GOP nomination) and not a guy who has unequivocally crushed the other candidates in every debate? (Just watch one!)
If you intend to vote in the GOP primary, and you consider yourself an educated voter, I would encourage you to look at the views and voting history of Ron Paul. The candidate you wish you had may be running already.
Ryan Asalone
Hampden