Tax representation
The Boston Tea Party, a model for the current conservative movement, was based on demands for “no taxation without representation.” As the backing of the original Tea Party by wealthy merchants has been obscured by history, and the funding of its current namesake by wealthy ideologues is ignored by partisans, the irony of current conservative efforts to enforce taxation without representation is also overlooked. For what else can you call the conservative effort to stop American taxpayers from voting for their elected representatives by enforcing unnecessary, inconvenient and punitive requirements for voting?
Shouldn’t every adult American taxpayer automatically be registered to vote? State taxation agencies verify the identities of taxpayers, and in this automated era could certainly coordinate the authentication of residency and taxpayer status with local authorities. In states where voter registration has been automatically coordinated with motor vehicle licensing, voting records have been made more accurate while significantly reducing election costs.
Not only is it ironic that Republicans don’t honor the principle of “no taxation without representation,” it is disappointing that Democrats don’t support efforts to modernize the voter registration system in this way. Why aren’t Democrats demanding that voters be registered automatically and securely by government agencies which have the ability to do so?
Roger Carpentter
Farmingdale
Dill endorsement
In light of Obama’s recent public statement supporting marriage equality, now is high time for Maine to showcase its forward-thinking, progressive values. The candidate perfect for the job is Democratic State Sen. Cynthia Dill, who is running for U.S. Senate.
Dill is a strong proponent of equal rights for all. She voted for the law making Maine the first state in the region to legalize marriage equality, and she continues to support the LGBT community in Maine. On May 9 Dill issued a statement regarding marriage equality, stating that she is “proud to stand with our president and with the thousands of our Maine sons, daughters, friends, neighbors and colleagues in committed marriages who can now look forward to fulfilling their right to equal protection under the law.”
I support Cynthia Dill because, among other progressive positions, she believes in economic justice, equal rights, responsible foreign policy and increased environmental protection. Maine needs a strong woman ready to reach across party lines, fight for the middle class and represent Maine’s independent and progressive voice. For information, visit www.cynthiadill.com.
Fiona Boyd
Camden
Graduation disappointment
May 5, 2012, was to be a special day for my daughter and the family. She graduated from UMaine and several relatives traveled from out of town and out of state.
Imagine the disappointment we all felt as we arrived at the Alfond an hour early to be told it was full and we had to go to the “overflow”.
Imagine the feelings we all had as the video feed we were seeing timed out and was not restarted. None of us who were in the overflow area got to see their loved ones receive their diploma.
Shame on UMaine for not being prepared for this.
Philip Henderson
Hampden
Drug questions
After reading a recent article about a person being arrested and being in possession of a quarter-pound of crack cocaine and hundreds of oxycodone pills which led to another arrest, his supplier, a person from New York bringing hundreds more oxycodone pills in to Bangor, I was surprised to see both subjects had been released on bail possibly in the same day.
Is it time that our bail system be upgraded so that persons trafficking or in possession of these large quantities of drugs and monies can at least be held until a court hearing? Especially a supplier from another state who might not be so easily found when court time comes around?
We are seeing the obituaries of our young people in the papers daily with the statements “died unexpectedly at home,” and there are quotes by the authorities stating that there are numbers of our people that are dying from overdoses of these types of drugs. Just some questions I ask; maybe they are not reasonable.
Darrold Dorr
Franklin
Roger Carpenter–There are many ironies in the disconnect between what tea-partiers say and what they do. The attack on voting rights is one. Their small government/big military mindset is another one.
I think we should make election day a national holiday. It is as important to our history and national welfare, or more so, as any of our declared holidays. It might help some of our more apathetic brethren to understand the importance of our right to vote if we glorified it a little more.
If you would take the time to speak with members of the tea party movement, rather than listening to the anti tea party id10ts, you would find that you agree with them.
I have never heard a tea party member say that they favor a bloated oversized military.
Neither have I.
Do Tea Partiers support cuts to the military? No? Then they support a bloated oversized military, whether they’re aware of it or not.
So you do support a bloated social services structure.
False equivalence. The U.S. military is indeed bloated and oversized. Our nation’s social services, by contrast, are woefully inadequate and terribly underfunded.
Just a matter of opinion, I suppose. I say they’re both bloated.
But the difference is that Democrats are willing to cut both and Republicans want to cut one so they can increase spending on another.
I’m with you Larry, poor people should just go die.
“Decrease the surplus population.” — Ebeneezer Scrooge
Anti Tea Party “idiots”? Aren’t the TeaPartiers the ones who said, “Keep your government hands off my Medicare.”? The fact is, the Boston Tea Party was more a protest against corporate monopoly than taxes. Yes, they were unhappy with the tax on tea, very unhappy. But the Tea Act actually reduced that tax. But what it also did was give the East India Tea Company a monopoly on the colonial tea trade, thus squeezing out colonial competitors. If the Tea Party wanted to be true to history, they would be out there lobbying night and day against Citizens United and the corporate big money corrupt hijacking of our nation and the rotten horrid likes of Mitt RoMONEY who exist to enrich the already-rich. Interesting too how TeaPartiers hate every social program and service there is, EXCEPT THEIR OWN, and they use MANY of them night and day. Also, the Constitution was written precisely to STRENGTHEN the national government given its ineffectiveness under the old Articles of Confederation. Study history. There’s a thought.
So you contend that the signers of the US Constitution wanted the Federal government to be able to have the most important role in these united states. That is why they created the Bill of Rights. Right?
The signers of the US Constitution created a strong federal government because the weak government provided for in the Articles of Confederation didn’t work.
So yes, it works better to have one president, one Congress, and one Supreme Court, not fifty. Under the Articles, foreign governments didn’t know whether they were dealing with thirteen nations or one. Under the Constitution we became one nation. Of course the states have certain powers, and the federal government has certain other powers. But yes, the federal government, under the Constitution, has an extremely important role, and that’s how the framers of the Constitution intended it.
Could they see all the way through the ages to 2012? No. They were great men, not magicians. Nonetheless, they gave us a tremendous document that, with amendments, is still working.
No, no the founders did not.
Everyone here needs to take some university level American History classes and stop revising history to match their childish political views, on the left AND the right.
The Constitution and the Bill of Rights are two separate documents enacted at two separate times. You can’t seriously claim that the Constitution was not intended to strengthen the federal government. The Bill of Rights sought to set defined limits on how far Congress might go, but, taken together, they still establish the Constitution as the supreme law of the land. Read the supremacy clause.
In which case the 9th and 10th Amendments are null and void.
I contend that the founders only imagined the Federal Government to be concerned with those duties laid down in the Constitution.
I can not imagine that the Founders were setting up an aristocracy or an imperial government.
No. The powers laid out in the Constitution are fairly broad: the power to tax for the general welfare, the power to regulate commerce and the power to use other necessary and proper means to effect the other powers are not limited by the Tenth Amendment, which acknowledges the powers granted by the original Constitution.
The Ninth Amendment, by its terms, doesn’t limit federal power: it merely states that the people have other rights, despite the absence of language so stating. It is the best source for the right of privacy recognized in the sixties in Griswold v. Connecticut. Birth control opponents still have not come to terms with that decision.
I think its interesting that the Tea Party is still electing Members of Congress and OWS has become irrelevant in a few short months. The Dems realized that, made use of ’em and threw them under the bus. I wonder if they feel as used as they should?
Some of the Democrats have used the Occupy movement, but I think that the movement has thrown it self under the bus.
Many of the less extreme members have dropped out, some because they are busy, some because it is no longer fun, some in disgust because of the lawlessness and maybe even in fear of the lawlessnes.
The Occupy was used more by the press than anyone else.
Probably. They did make some additions to the political language, 1% ers and like slogans but little else. No lasting political organizations came out of it that can impact anything at the federal level. No lasting ideas that affect policy.
Even the posters here that rightly pointed out the income disparity don’t understand how it came to be, except in vague ways. They can show all the charts and graphs you could ever want all day long. But charts and graphs don’t provide the why of it. The most I could get out of any poster was things somehow aren’t “fair”. Which is of course not a solution or even a direction towards one.
But it was used to “show that the Tea Party” were either 1% ers or chuckleheads that were following the “Koch Brothers”, but that another huge money source was not like that.
I think it was more to show how steep the wealth curve has become.
The two issues are not mutually exclusive.
The two issues are not unrelated.
Don’t you do the same thing with Occupy protestors? Why the double standard?
I don’t know any of the Occupy people, and I don’t think I have voiced an opinion on them. I have voiced opinions about some of the obvious hangers on. The socialist/communists that proudly wave signs, the wild union members, the unwashed, the students with no clue and so forth. Yes the tea party has some of these too.
I believe that the average Occupier has more in common with the Tea party member than the most vocal Occupy leader.
The two groups should get together and find the common ground that exists.
I agree with a bumper sticker I saw: “Tea parties are for little girls with imaginary friends.”
Nice. But how many Congresspeople and Senators did the OWS people elect?
What’s the relevance? The goal of OWS isn’t to elect politicians.
What was the goal?
Their goal wasn’t and isn’t to elect politicians so your point is moot. Their goal seems more to be call attention issues that they believe aren’t receiving enough attention.
Notice how I answer your questions? Still waiting to hear about the C thing.
I see, so they are fading off into the sunset into irrelevancy, nothing more than a memory of a camping trip gone bad.
Have you everr noticed a piece of script on the web you never knew its purpose?
No, you’re faulting them for not achieving a goal they never set. Why is that the rubric for relevancy anyway? Would you say the Salvation Army (or whatever) isn’t relevant and doesn’t achieve goals because they don’t elect politicians? You’re not really making sense.
Ok they made their point I guess. Time to fade away…….
Mr Carpenter Be careful what you ask for. Corporations are taxpayers, should they vote? Our Supreme court has decided that corporations are persons.
“Our Supreme court has decided that corporations are persons.”
The court said no such thing.
Oh yeah?
Go ahead, search the court’s opinions. You won’t find any language that says corporations are people.
Granting 1st amendment rights, for example, to corporations is pretty similar to or at least a step towards considering them people.
Why shouldn’t corporations have the right to free speech? If they didn’t, the government could shut down the Bangor Daily News, CNN, Fox News, and all of the major television and radio networks. That’s a scary thought.
By the way, the court didn’t “grant” corporations free speech; the right has always existed.
Well now you’re changing the discussion. The discussion is about whether the SJC is treating corporations like people and in some ways, they are.
The discussion is whether the Supreme Court said corporations are people. The court said no such thing. The Bill of Rights does not apply only to individual people.
Exactly, so there is no need for you to go on and on about the merits of that.
*Chuckles*
That’s right, really is the same thing, but it was that vulture capitalist Mr. Mitt who actually did say that ‘corporations are people’.
Apparently you’re unfamiliar with the Citizens United ruling.
I’m familiar with it. If you read it, you won’t find any reference in the majority opinion saying that corporations are people.
Darrold Dorr, in order to protect the rights of everyone bail has to be set on any crime. That bail figure is up to a bail commisioner. Under our system of justice, everyone is technically innocent until proven guilty.
I would bet that the bail conditions on these two would include no possesion of alcohol or drugs, no commiting other crimes, they and their residence is subject to search at anytime (this one is better than a court ordered search warrant), there are several other conditions that are pretty much standard. Now if the police deem these people to be a real danger to the community, they can hound them 24/7 to ensure that they are following their bail conditions.
You can hold people without bail, particularly murder suspects. In this case, $100,000 would have been appropriate.
What happened here is that there was no murder. Therefore as part of the process a bail commisioner set bail with what information he had to work with. The information comes from the charges and any information the arresting officers suplied plus any previous record that the jail may have about these individuals.
A reasonable bail is a Constitutional Right and cannot be denied unless the crime is a Capital Offense and the accused is a flight risk.
If a judge grants an unreasonable bail the defendant can appeal and will win most of the time.
Philip Henderson, that is an outrage – I am sorry that happened on such a happy day. For the money your family and everyone who had spent an exhorbitant amount of money for that said diploma, you should get to add that as a tax write off or something – maybe UMO should reimburse a few grand for not being able to attend the actual graduation. I suppose it shouldn’t surprise us? Hey, after all, they have their money.
Re the Henderson letter: it’s becoming clear that hundreds of parents, siblings, other relatives, and friends were similarly cheated out of watching the graduates receive their degrees. Those responsible for this disgrace should be named and fired. At the least, the official photos of the graduates now being offered at hefty prices should be given for free to these graduates. Had this been a UME Hockey playoff game with overflow opportunities, there would have been a backup system in case the feed failed. But because it was merely an academic ceremony, nothing was backed up. Meanwhile cars with the correct political stickers–that is, for the Republican Party that controls the UME System Board of Trustees–reportedly got through the “blockade.” How pathetic.
As someone who recently graduated, I can tell you that it was fairly well run. The problem is that the University requests that people limit their guests to 4 and the people feel entitled to bring more than that. This leads to the overcrowding issue that we witness. This entitled feeling obviously extends to the letter writer who insists that we should issue 6 tickets to everyone (I am assuming the number of guests they brought).
Interestingly enough, I too was at the graduation, the afternoon one. I arrived 30 minutes before graduation and at that point people were still finding seats with no one being delayed outside. It was approx. 15 minutes before the ceremony started that officials requested people move over so more people could get it. Even so, well before the students started their walk the overflow was seated behind the students themselves. Assuming the Henderson party attended the morning graduation, was there really that much difference in the number of attendees and graduates that arriving a full hour early meant no seating? I’d be interested in knowing the number of graduates per session…
Good letters all.
Roger Carpentter – Have a revenue agent determine your voting status? Interesting. You think state tax agencies verify the identity of taxpayers? I talked with a Maine tax person several years ago and he said they don’t match ss# & name with the IRS. He said file with a SS# not used by anyone else with the state and the return would be accepted. Can you say illegal aliens? How about the millions who do not file a tax return? How about non-citizens here legally?
When I worked for the Maine Bureau of Taxation (now Revenue Services) there was an information sharing program with the IRS that included individual taxpayer info, and it still appears to exist, according to the IRS. Source: http://www.irs.gov/govt/liaisons/article/0,,id=239912,00.html
However, nothing prevents an individual state from initiating a voter-registration program based on tax records. Identity verification would be required. There is nothing stopping state motor vehicle bureaus from doing this right now, however, as several states already do.
I am well aware of the sharing of information between IRS & MRS. The major one being those that file a federal return with a Maine address. One will get a letter from MRS if one filed a federal return with a Maine address and the income from the federal return is enough to create a liability and a Maine return was not filed. I stand by my statement that if you file a Maine return with a ss# not used by anyone else in the state system then they will accept the return. Of course if you file for a refund with fake W-2s then the return could be flagged by the state for review but from my understanding Maine has no program or system that asks the IRS is this ss# valid and does the name match the ss#. Of course several years have passed since I was told that. I know they have a subcontrator working on a new system to identify potential non-filers. Personnally that is good for income as working with clients with letter from MRS is a big profit maker for my business.
IRS involvement is a red herring. Automatic voting registration is a state function and any link to other databases would apply only to state records with appropriate verification measures (i.e. DMV-quality) if it were to be implemented. As you describe, those measures are not now in place.
Graduation……UMaine has become a 2nd rate educational institution; too bad
bunyan1 said “Meanwhile cars with the correct political stickers–that is, for the
Republican Party that controls the UME System Board of
Trustees–reportedly got through the “blockade.” How pathetic.”
Really bunyan1?
This is possible, I suppose, but highly unlikely. The graduation situation is truly outrageous, as your comment rightly argues. But it’s not necessary to go completely tin-foil conspiratorial on this to make your point!
Roger I can’t agree with alot of what you say but after living in a state where you register to vote, sign up for jury duty, and register your vehicle all at one time it works really well. In that state you have to have a vehicle inspected just before it was registered and you were also not allowed to register a vehicle if you had not paid your property taxes. It is also a state that has a balanced budget admendment.
And what state is this ? The state of delusion ?