Waste of taxpayer money?
In my mailbox recently, I received a copy of Nexus, a publication of the Brewer School Department. It was very informative to read and a well-put-together newspaper. I am sure many of my neighbors received one as well.
However, I do not understand why I received this publication at all. I live in Hancock County, a resident of Fletchers Landing Township, just outside of Ellsworth. Our students here attend either the Ellsworth Elementary-Middle School or Ellsworth High School.
I do have some questions. Was this publication printed at the expense of the taxpayers of Brewer? Why was this sent to folks outside of Brewer and surrounding towns who also go to the Brewer School System? In my opinion, this was an example of government waste of taxpayer dollars, not to mention paper, ink and labor. In this tight economy, towns and cities should be good stewards of their budgets. This was not a good use.
Deborah Madocks
Fletchers Landing Township
Summer giveaway
Re: Shaw’s Sizzlin’ Summer Giveaway — over $2,000,000 in instant-win prizes!
I’ve done my shopping at Hannaford in Ellsworth for over 40 years. When this fabulous offer from Shaw’s came about three months ago I couldn’t resist, so I started to shop there. I usually spend $100 a week for groceries.
Each time you shop, you receive tickets toward filling up boxes (4-6 per category) for 19 different prizes (from $2 to $1,000,000 each). In the first month, I filled every box but one in all 19 categories. After trading with friends and relatives and receiving more than a thousand tickets, I still could not fill up all the boxes for a single prize!
You folks at Shaw’s are really smart at marketing. I am not saying that this is a big ripoff, but I am saying that I’ll be back at Hannaford next week. Miss you guys there.
Kenny Stratton
Hancock
Blue Hill is unique
Blue Hill offers a unique way of life. Some might call it “old-fashioned,” but those are people who don’t understand that’s the way we like it.
Don’t mistake our sentiment for this simple lifestyle as a desire to ignore or impede progress. We are making the argument that expansion and development of business needs to be balanced with the impact on the town that surrounds it.
A large part of what makes Blue Hill so unique is the eclectic mix of culture that exists here. Fishing, music, farming, pottery and many other skills, trades and crafts coexist. The coastal location of Blue Hill provides its own unique and traditional impact on the community, drawing visitors from all parts of the world.
An expansion of Blue Hill Memorial Hospital, which has its own 90-year-old local history, should not come at the expense of the historic properties that surround it and proudly represent more than 100 years of history themselves. A sprawling, “contemporary” medical campus will not provide the draw that has continued to bring people back to Blue Hill for decades.
We support the need for Blue Hill Memorial Hospital to modernize its business and improve the quality of services they provide to the residents and visitors of this town and the peninsula. We challenge Blue Hill Memorial Hospital/Eastern Maine Healthcare Systems to do this by partnering with the local community — balancing the needs of the hospital with the historic and economic needs of the village.
Bill Webb
Blue Hill
Think and write
Every day there are more articles about the decline of the American educational system, the problem with teacher unions, high cost of college tuition, the dropout rate in colleges and the effects of poverty. A major problem with the American educational system is that the students are not taught critical-thinking skills. This is reflected in their inability to think clearly and to write critical essays.
What I have found over the last eight years of teaching is that roughly 95 percent of my students did not know how to write a history essay or a term paper. In fact, their writing skills were limited. I had a chance to ask professor Stephen Walt (at the last Mid-Coast Forum) about the writing skills of his students: graduate and undergraduate students at the Harvard Kennedy School. He said the majority have no idea how to write a critical essay on a given history or foreign affairs topic. He spends the first week teaching them how to write using “A Rulebook for Arguments” by Anthony Weston as a textbook.
Students should learn basic analytical skills of argument, statistical modeling, and laboratory procedure. Professor Stanley Fish, in an article in the Yale Alumni Magazine, “Education: the Deflationary View” (July 2008), argued that these skills are central to politics, ethics, civics and economics.
The problems in our education system go deeper than science, technology and math. We need to teach students how to think and write critically.
C. Patrick Mundy
Spruce Head
EPA standard
Climate change is happening, and there is no doubt as to its cause: human combustion of fossil fuels. We just experienced the warmest July and warmest 12-month stretch on record! Over 27,000 high-temperature records have been broken this year alone! A recent opinion piece (BDN, Aug.) by NASA climate scientist James Hansen noted that we can no longer ignore the scientifically proven connection between climate change and this summer’s extreme weather. In that OpEd, Hansen said the scientific evidence is clear:
“Our analysis shows that it is no longer enough to say that global warming will increase the likelihood of extreme weather and repeat the caveat that no individual weather event can be directly linked to climate change. To the contrary, our analysis shows that, for the extreme hot weather of the recent past, there is virtually no other explanation than climate change.”
More than 3 million Americans agree. That’s the record-breaking and unprecedented tally of comments submitted so far this year in support of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Carbon Pollution Standard for new power plants. If passed, this rule will help fight climate change, clean up our air and spur innovation in clean technologies.
This would be a good chance for Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins to persuade their Republican cohorts to do something for the people for once, by supporting EPA’s new carbon rule and not succumbing to efforts in Congress to prevent it.
Thomas Varney
Argyle Township
Thomas Varney, good letter. It’s a shame that the nay sayers will jump all over this with their own sources of scientific information, the Akin institute, the Tea Party, MHPC, ALEC, etc.
Here’s another look at it–
http://www.upworthy.com/the-one-where-the-weather-lady-freaks-out-on-live-tv?c=cd1
Bill Webb, what exactly are you asking for? No change to the hospital or only changes that meet the standards of the 19th century? I would think that if someone needs the services of a hospital, the last thing on their mind would be does the building blend in with it’s surroundings.
For the most part you’d never know Blue Hill hospital was there. it has never been intrusive on the town. I’m not sure where the expansion is going to take place, but it seem to me that growth of BHMH is a win win for this area I call home
You can always tell when summertime is here. The climate change alarmists come out in droves to push their hoax.
Yes, EJ, these ‘change alarmists’ are trying to take over the world, right? They are perpetrating their hoax to make big money too, right? Do you think they will match the petroleum industry’s yearly $550,000,000,000 taxpayer subsidy , not to mention their $150,000,000,000 profit for this year?
What subsidy are you referring to? Please be specific.
edited 3 hours later
I can’t get over that $550 billion dollar number. Are we cutting big oil a check like that? You have to admit it seems like a number pulled out of an orifice.
Google it before you open your mouth. :-)
Source please.
You are talking worldwide subsidies….$101 Billion by Iran alone. You said taxpayer. It is a fair to assume you meant American taxpayers. But these subsidies you claim…. What are are they really? Do you know???? Or is that natural gas you are blowing?
Natural Gas eh.
Weren’t you screeching the other week about how it’s the burden of others to prove a fact or claim to be incorrect?
It is an easily provable fact that there are more Democrats in government than Republicans… by quite a margin. Look it up…. Try Gallup.
That wasn’t the point of me bringing it up. You said it was up to others to look things like this up and to prove them to be incorrect or whatever. Now suddenly it’s different when you’re the one asking for specifics or saying that a claim is made up.
You must think you’re special or something :)
I made it hard to see if any of you would actually take the time to look it up. You didn’t. All of you were shooting from your biased uniformed hip and made no effort. It was all about the attack and not about the information exchange.
But that’s not what you said then. You were speaking about whose burden it is to prove it, not trying to teach people a lesson about making an effort and not being lazy (lol, thanks, dad).
You’re re-writing history in order to not seem inconsistent. It’s silly.
Did any of you dispute information or not?
Has nothing to do with the fact that we just had the warmest July and 12 month stretch on record. You’ll do anything to change the subject and smear people you disagree with.
And you can count on the climate change deniers coming to life after the first snow fall with their wildly ignorant comments
Nope. I’m a denier all year long.
Sad, but how true (your persistence not your opinions).
I’ll respect that, you’re wrong but I’ll respect that :P
I may be. But, then, you may be.
Still, the questions that I’ve asked have gone unanswered, even by the most ardent GW supporters. If it is real, how much money will be needed to fix it? How can we fix it? Who will be in charge of fixing it? And what if it fixes itself?
A better question is how much is it going to cost us in the future when the climate is no longer our friend?
No one person can be in charge of trying to fix the damage we have caused. It will take all of humanity working together to fix it.
And the climate will eventaully fix itself, or more correctly it will stabilize itself but we may not like where it stabilizes.
So, what you’re saying is that there is no need for panic, no need to take people’s money for wasted projects, and, since it will fix itself, it is a hoax.
That is not what I am saying, Global CLimate Change isno hoax. If you’ve had any Chemistry in HS or college, which I doubt, you would know that all closed systems, which the Earth is, strive for equilibrium.
This Earth’s environment is trying to regain equilibirium which it will do but that equilibrium may make life as we know if much much more difficult for Humanity to survive.
I took Chemistry, and a few other classes that were required in order to graduate.
Yes, the earth does seek to regulate itself. One of the many ways it does this is through the ozone holes over the poles. That is proven science. And, whether you want to believe it or not, that’s one of the many safety measures that God designed into this planet to make it inhabitable by we mere, weak humans.
But, let’s take God out of the equation. It’s still been proven that the ozone holes open and close depending on the amount of pollutants that are in the atmosphere. And recent scientific discoveries show that CO2 isn’t the big problem that we once believed. In other words, we are still discovering how this earth works. No one really has all the answers.
So, with that in mind, and with my experience with global data systems and weather, I’m staying on the AGW hoax wagon.
By the way, you still didn’t answer any of my questions.
The NYTimes–that rag of the left, you’d surely say–recently had a long article on a prominent scientist long skeptical about climate change who has finally seen the light and come to support the concept and the reality. You and yours can rant about this “hoax,” but you have no credentials to refute the scientific conclusions of at least 95% of scientists in the field. But then that hardly matters to you and to Utah’s Senator James Imhofe, who continues to deny climate change from his powerful perch. This is not a matter of political ideology, alas, but of facts that experts agree upon. What evidence have you to refute them? The Tea Party Journal of Science?
If global warming is the threat that the enviros claim it is then why are the leftists advocating for unreliable, expensive wind power instead of clean, cheap, reliable hydro power. Maine should be installing hydro dams as fast as we can, but that discussion is not even on the table thanks to the enviro nuts. It isn’t about clean, cheap, reliable power. It’s about depopulating Maine.
“Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized
civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that
about?” – Maurice Strong, Head of the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro
You seem to be a one issue solution giver unlike those who advocate broader aspects of alternative energy sources. It is about (truly) clean reliable energy sources for the world, not just Maine.
Why would anyone choose a suboptimal solution to the problem?
Wind is not a truly clean, reliable energy source. Not by a long shot.
“Summer time, when the livin’ is easy …” –for the denialists, that is. Whistling past the (our) graveyard.
Alarmists? More like realists.
Yes and Copernicus and Galileo were dismissed also.
There are none so blind as those who refuse to see. It is no hoax. It is responsible science.
Then why is it that the ABW guru, AlGore, refuses to debate anyone on the other side of the issue? Guess he’s too busy counting the money he’s getting to perpetrate this hoax.
Why do I have to go to an English newspaper to learn of tar balls from the Gulf Oil Spill reappearing after Isaac?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/sep/05/louisana-isaac-tar-gulf-oil
Lets keep drilling for oil in sensitive places not only to feed our voracious appitite for oil but to also keep the Earth in a trajectory to keep warming and to permenantly damage the environment.
Good letters all,especially Patrick Mundy and Thomas Varney.
We all know the story about how the cave men started drilling for oil and revved up their SUV’s when they had had enough of the ice age.
That was the natual cycle, one that takes 100’s of thousands of years, or millions of years to occur.
The Man-made climate change is happening in 10’s of years, or a couple hundred at most.
That is the difference.
History is replete with severe sudden climate changes. I don’t deny that this one may be in part man made. I am also not sure it matters all that much if it is. It is not likely to be reversed by man.
China is adding about 1 coal fired plant per week.
Another Inconvenient Truth
Source please.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/6769743.stm
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389×2432942
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/02/chinas-2030-co2/
Too bad you didn’t understand your own information. Re Oil subsidies.
It is real nuts to claim that oil has more government subsidies than the profits they make. Silly really.
Yes, sudden climate changes have occured in the past but you fail to mention what may have caused those “sudden” changes in climate. There are 3 causes of “sudden” climate change and they are
1. A sudden change that is external to the climate system such as rapid release of freshwater from a glacial lake, a major volcanic eruption or increase in global volcanic activity or a impact from a celestial body. This is not happening at this time.
2. A threshold is reach after slow changes in external forces similair to how a buffered solution will maintain a stable pH. for example, but as the buffer is used up the system will collapse. This may be something that could happen in the future through a change in the oceans salinity caused by rapidly melting freshwater shutting down the Gulf Stream.
3. Internal, perhaps chaotic changes in the climate system such as El Nino with regional or global consequenses
http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/res/div/ocp/arch/causes.shtml
http://www.wunderground.com/resources/climate/abruptclimate.asp
Of the 3 possible causes for “sudden” climate change, 2 are out of our hands and are not occuring but the 2nd may be and Human activity is the major cause of it. We are putting over 200 million years of sequestered CO2 back in to the atmosphere possibly overwhelming the planets ability to self maintain the climate and we maybe/are heading to a point where a threshold is reached and rapid climate change is imminent. Think of the 350 ppm of CO2 threshold that we passed recently.
On Edit…. fixed 350 ppm of CO2 from 450 ppm.
Never the less there are constant severe climate changes. What we are experiencing is not new. You did forget a 4th that was mentioned by another poster. Radiation variations from the sun.
I did respond to Heistheone about sun spot activity. He was wrong about the length of the sun spot cycle being 720 years, it is a 22 year cycle that was in solar minimum until 2008 and is now entering a solar maximum cycle that will last until 2019. This solar maximum cycle will increase the rate of global warming, which it has done for a billion years without causing the increase in warming to the degree we are seeing now.
I did not include sunspot activity because of the short duration of the cycle (22 years) and the fact that sunspot activity is not and cannot be responsible for a rapid climate change.
If you read the links you would have seen that rapid climate change is the result of either a external source, ie. massive release of stored up freshwater into the oceans, increased global volcanic activity or massive volcanic event, or a collision with space debris; a threshhold is released causing the climate stablilty to collapse, similiar to adding acid to a buffered solution until the buffering is overcome and the solution changes pH rapidly; or something similiar to El Nino but on a much larger scale. Not one site will show that sunspot activity is capable of rapid climate change.
If solar radiation is the cause of the current warming cycle, why did it start to accelerate during a solar minimum cycle?
On Edit… corrected the reference to an earlier response to Heistheone
To be honest I get most of my information from anthropologists I read. I am not up on the science and don’t claim to be. There have been several historical shifts caused precisely because of climate changes. Example: We might have been speaking Chinese now except for a dramatic climate change a few hundred years ago. There was also a point where Greenland was depopulated because of a sudden dramatic cooling.
Not sure what you are talking about in regards to China but the depopulation of Greenland was not caused by a sudden dramatic cooling.
The North Atlantic and Europe experienced a “mini” ice age that occured from the 12 th century to the 15th century that caused crops to produce much less food but it was not a sudden dramatic cooling. The average amount of cooling temperature wise was less than the predicted amount of heating expected in the next 50 to 100 years.
Maybe you should learn the science behind Climate Change, it would surprise you how solid it really is.
I am familiar with the mini-Ice age and yes the fact that crops could no longer grow on Greenland was a reason for the depopulation. It was sudden dramatic and lasted for a number of years. The Norse Population of Iceland was also effected with ships from the mainland being unable to get to shore for most months of the year. This went on for a long time until a gradual warming period took over and melted the ice.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Little-Ice-Age-1300-1850/dp/0465022723
As I said I don’t dispute climate change or that man has contributed to it…. I get the sense that people feel like climate goes on forever with little change. It doesn’t. It changes all the time.
Real scientists (ones who don’t have a political agenda) have found through research that sunspot cycles have been consistent for thousands of years. The data that they have used includes the study of tree growth rings and ocean sediment deposits. The data show that sunspot cycles last for 720 years, with 360 years of warming, followed by 360 years of cooling. We are now in a warming cycle that will peak in the year 2020, after which a cooling cycle will commence. Suffice it to say that we will probably will not see much cooling in our lifetimes, whether man contributes to global warming or not.
I guess you aren’t a young earth Creationist.
We probably can’t generate any cooling (short of world wide nuclear war) but we should be able to reduce our portion of AGW.
“…the number of sunspots visible on the sun waxes and wanes with an approximate 11-year cycle.”
http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/SunspotCycle.shtml
Sunspot cycles are not 720 years but instead are 22 year cycles of waxing and waning and we are coming out of a solar minimum cycle that ended in 2008. You’ll notice that 2010 and 2011 are in the top 5 hottest recorded years and that 2012 is most likely going to be the hottest year on record. We can expect the next 8 to 10 years to get even warmer before we get some, albeit small, slowing in the warming cycle because of man-made climate change.
Thomas Varney- The only way that the Republicans would agree to the EPA rulings on carbon would be for Obama to oppose it. The R’s refuse to believe in science and will do their best to support oil, gas and coal and let them do anything they want as long as the checks keep coming to their campaigns.
C. Patrick Mundy: That is exactly what the powers-that-be want our children to NOT know: how to think critically.
Look around us at all the adults that believe a whole host of incredible things, just because a talking head on a TV screen or a ranting voice from a radio told them that “was reality.”
I would say legislation such as No Child Left Behind is working exactly as intended. Teach to a test, a test of miscellaneous facts, but not one that requires “…basic analytical skills of argument, statistical modeling, and laboratory procedure…”
I always taught my students to question everything, including what I had to say. Question, test, evaluate, and retest and revaluate.
Why else do people so consistently vote against their own best interests? We really do have the leaders we deserve. For example, what do you think of this paragraph?–
Phony populism from a party of corporate America
05 Sep 2012
The opening night of the Democratic National Convention provided a grossly distorted picture of the Obama administration, presenting a right-wing, pro-corporate, anti-working-class government as though it was the second coming of the New Deal…Speaker after speaker bashed Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney as the candidate of wealth and privilege and portrayed Obama as the advocate of working people and his reelection as the key to social and economic progress…In the assault on public workers, Democratic office-holders at the state and local level have taken just as hard a line as their Republican counterparts on cutting jobs, wages and benefits…Deval Patrick, the Democrat who followed Romney as governor of Massachusetts, boasted that he had succeeded in cutting pensions and benefits for state employees where Romney had “only talked” about it. The difference, he pointed out, was that he imposed the cuts “with labor at the table.”…In other words, the Democrats prefer to enlist the unions to help them cut the living standards of the working class, while the Republicans seek to dispense with the union officials and do the job themselves. The end result for the workers is the same.
(from News Updates from Citizens for Legitimate Government, Sept. 6, 2012)
Note, I am not a Dem or a Repub, this is not intended in support of Romney, BTW.
And what the ultra-conservatives consider “critical thinking” is what they try to cram into ant-evolution/pro Creation Science legislative mandates, not realizing that real critical thinking will demolish their invalid alternatives before they even get out of the gate.
The true definition of critical thinking, according to the left, is to think just as you are told to think by those that tell you to think that way. Critical thinking has become a form of brainwashing, in that opposing opinions are presented as flawed from the get-go.
Kenny they have to cover the cost for the game and the prizes somehow. Guess how? Higher prices. Stopped shopping there a while ago just because of the games they play.
They do not actually have to give any money away, they just have to make it look like they will. The American consumer is actually fairly easy to dupe. Just use two words, free and sale as often as possible. Do not worry about being over redundant, everyone is used to it, Most television commercials these days are nothing more than a contest to see who can slip in the free word the most times in a 30 second spot. The best advice has been around since the Romans. Caveat Erempto ( hope I spelled it right) or buyer beware.
caveat emptor
Good advice in any transaction. Watch out when the government does this for you. Not always a good thing. Depending on the situation you may have given up the right to say no.
Thanks for the help with my Latin cheesecake. I learned it from a sexually frustrated nun at the business end of a ruler. Sometimes the correct spelling got lost in the fog of war! lol. I don’t think we give enough credit to the private sector for it’s share in the mess. People having houses they couldn’t afford. Cars they couldn’t afford. Credit cards they couldn’t afford. Student loans they couldn’t afford. And let’s not even get started on the financial and investment industries.
I heard about that nun. I was spared in public school…
People do need to be a bit more prudent in their personal financial matters.. I recall a recent new immigrant friend, unfamiliar with the system, called on me for financial advice about a home loan she was offered during the bubble. She was mystified as to why she would be paying so little for such a big costly home. I took one look at her note and saw it was an interest only with a balloon principal (re-fi) after 5 years. As soon as it was explained she ran, got a conventional mortgage and has almost paid off her home in 10. Smart woman.
Smart woman alright, smart enough to seek advice before signing her life away. Like I said, the financial industry is not blameless either. I have been debt free for going on ten years now and loving it. Nowadays, I do what I want, as opposed to what I had to do in the past, just to make the payments.
Caveat Emptor. I’ll add TANSTAAFL, there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.
Mr Mundy You only have to read the letters and replys here on this forum to see that critical thinking is totally lacking here.
Critical thinking seems to be agreeing with exspurts and parroting whatever things they spout, even when it is obvious nonsense.
Knowing what your usual opinions cover, I’ll ask for your current list of commenters and experts that you disagree with and see if your critical thinking leads to valid conclusions.
I can find common ground with most posters here but also find disagreement with almost every post. I do not keep a list of those I agree with or ones I disagree with so I can not give you such a enumeration.
You have defined radical critical thinking. What used to be problem solving has been twisted into brainwashing and thought twisting usually perpetrated by liberals or those that support unpopular issues. Liberal critical thinkers are nothing more than mind-numbed zombies touting the mantra of their handlers.
That is where I was going. Every time I have heard educators talk about “critical thinking” they seem to be saying “you already know things your parents don’t” (VP Albert Gore)
Where are the studies on the suns effect on climate change? Suns temp does flucuate you know…..weird……..Where are the studies on the earths core (it is molten nickel you know) and the natural release of heat into the earths atmosphere? you know, just because there isnt an active volcano spewing lava that is photographed for all to see, doesnt mean that heat is not escaping into the earths atmosphere from the earths core……i know, weird….i bet its heat temps are cyclical too…up a little this century, down a little the next….
Climate change is natural and not man made, and people can ignore the fallacy of man made climate change because it is simply not true and has not been proven. ..maybe you can add climate change denyers to your list of ‘haters’, so then we can be arrested…which is what you want…or maybe have the next Republican President brought up on human rights violations and arrested because he denied man made climate change…….go try to push that lie in China, where they pollute the crap out of everything while gorging on natural resources…..oh, I see…you’d be jailed….gotcha
Yes the amount of solar radiation does vary but you would not be happy to know that we are just coming out of the Sloar Minimum, which is a cooler part of teh solar cycle. The Sun’s :heat” output just started increasing since 2008 and we are likely to see increased global warming because of the Solar Maximum cycle we are heading into. This effect is not what is driving Climate Change.
The Earth’s core is a moltne Nickel/Iron that is being heated by both pressure and racioactive decay. Our climate is not affected by this heat, the mantle is a prety efficient source of isulation from the escape of this heat. If it wasn’t the core would be a lot cooler then it is now.
You DO understand that 3 million is less then ONE PERCENT of the US population?
“ON RECORD” goes back a measly 120 years or so?
I am one of what I can only assume are millions that believe that climate change is occurring regardless of what we do. I do believe we have sped the process up but WE ALONE are not responsible. And, i’m not sure what we can do to change that fact at this point. I’m not suggesting we just give up but I do not believe hindering progress in the name of Global warming is counter productive and most people willing to sacrifice are those most able to afford that sacrifice..
Little example. CASH FOR CLUNKERS. had really no impact. However, because perfectly good cars with PERFECTLY GOOD PARTS were destroyed. I now find myself in a position of paying MORE FOR THOSE PARTS . Not to mention that poor people buy USED CARS and the price of those used cars has gone up. Now, the president won’t have any problem buying a new THINK car, “(which no one is driving by the way. They went under) but i’m still stuck driving my ten year old car.