Change the travel game
State championship football games have been held in Portland’s Fitzpatrick Stadium for 11 consecutive years. Isn’t it about time to alternate the site annually and seriously consider holding the games at the University of Maine’s Alfond Stadium? Consider not only team travel but the number of Maine high school football fans who might attend even if their football team is not represented.
Richard Mackin, Jr.
Millinocket
A quality hospital
I support approval of the pending certificate of need application for Parkview Adventist Medical Center to join Central Maine Healthcare.
I am president of the Central Maine Medical Center College of Nursing and Health Professions in Lewiston. The college has been sending freshmen nursing students to Parkview for a clinical rotation for several years. The positive influence of CMHC is reflected in the quality of all departments there. We are fortunate indeed to offer our students an excellent experience in a high-quality hospital.
I look forward to continuing working with Parkview to provide our students the unique opportunity that Parkview offers.
Susan Baltrus
Lewiston
Eligible for rebate?
I am writing concerning the heat pump pilot program rebate. I attended both Maine Public Service forums in the last year. After considerable research I had a system installed only to be told that I am not eligible for the rebate because I heat with coal. Only propane, oil, kerosene and electric heating systems qualify. Not once during my conversations with the heat pump vendors at the forum was any mention made that the rebate was restricted to certain fuels.
After reading Gerry Chasse’s column in the Presque Isle Star Herald on Nov. 7 concerning the heat pump program, I am spurred to comment. Not once in the article was it mentioned that the rebate was restricted to any particular type of heating fuels. So, just a word to the wise, before you spend several thousand dollars (like I did) on a heat pump: Be aware if you use wood or coal to heat your home you are not qualified for a rebate.
Donald Rideout
Westfield
Just Fox News
In a recent interview with Politico, Gov. Bobby Jindal, R-Louisiana, said that the Republican Party had to stop being simplistic and referred to it as the “stupid party.”
Now where did this simplicity and stupidity come from? Well, here’s a clue. On election night at the Democratic gathering in Chicago, the main stage was flanked by six large screen TVs. Each was running the election news from six different networks: ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, PBS and Fox News. At the Republican gathering in Boston there was one TV. It was running Fox News. Just Fox News.
And why is this? The folks at Fox tell their audience over and over that all other media sources are part of a conspiracy to bring down America. Only we can be trusted, they say, no matter how inaccurate, partisan and sensational our commentators are. Even when they just make stuff up. Listen to us, they say, and pass the Kool-Aid.
Norman Mrozicki
Surry
Department no-show
As a first-time vendor at the Maine Harvest Festival last weekend, I was impressed with the work that Heart of Maine Resource Conservation and Development, the city of Bangor and everyone else had done. It was a wonderful show.
But where was the Maine Department of Agriculture? The department had a booth at the festival, but no one showed up to staff it.
The department goes to great expense to stage the Maine Agricultural Trades Show in Augusta for large farmers, but when it comes to small farmers, it doesn’t bother show up at the festival. Maine has gained 1,000 farms in 12 years, according to the University of Maine Cooperative Extension, and I’ll bet none of them was a 1,000-acre mega-farm.
Other government agencies were at the festival talking with visitors and showing support for small farms.
I write this letter recognizing that I am putting myself at great risk by criticizing the department because my state license is up for renewal.
Bob Neal
New Sharon
Education reality
Gov. Paul LePage is right about education. Public schools are now more like re-education camps than centers of learning for our youth. Everything except the essentials are taught.
When traveling by air and approaching a city, I look down and see hundreds of yellow buses poised to pick up victims to subject them to hours of mind-numbing propaganda disguised as education. I read about teachers more interested in their pay and their almighty union than working with children to instill respect for the institutions that made the country great.
Then, all, no matter how poorly educated, are expected to go on to “higher learning” in more institutions that teach propaganda rather than curricula that build character and knowledge.
We teach them to be sensible, and then we surround them with beer halls and encourage them to share coed quarters. We even supply them with alcohol in the student union, just to make sure they get the message.
The result is a mass of fruitless sheep bleating to the government to take care of them.
Let’s have another bond issue to support the university, while they raise the tuition on everyone.
As Ollie would say to Stanley, “This is another fine mess you’ve gotten us into!”
Fred Robinson
Thomaston
Women’s right to vote
The 19th Amendment has been and will be one of women’s greatest accomplishments. Finally, in the history of the United States, women stood up and make a change to their nation. I have grown up in a time where the right to vote wasn’t questioned. I have many women who have now passed to thank for that.
Iron Jawed Angels is a movie I have seen before but not for some time. In watching it, I was shown a life before my time. I knew that I needed to vote.
My experience voting will be one I will always remember. There was a long line, consisting mostly of college students who needed to register to vote. A group of girls was behind my best friend and me, and I overheard them talking. They said one of their other friends was too lazy to get out of bed to vote and just didn’t want to anyway.
I was taken aback, especially since I knew who they were talking about. I am not close friends with the woman, but I didn’t expect her not to vote.
Questions ran through my head and images of all the women who risked their lives to gain us the right to vote. After casting my ballot, I walked out of that building standing a little taller, with my “I voted today” sticker, proud to be a female American.
I know that the women above smiled for me.
Erin Sevey
Orono
King’s independence
Sen.-elect Angus King now says he’s affiliated with the Democrats in the Senate. Talk about changing canoes in mid stream. Independent? Is there more than one meaning for the same word? Tell me you couldn’t see this coming.
Paul Worsaa
Bangor
Fred Robinson: congrats on your incredible insights into contemporary public education. I’m in awe! But I’d love to have you spend a week in a classroom at a Maine public school and see how you’d fare. The fact that you, like Gov. LePage, know almost nothing about this topic obviously doesn’t stop you from making undocumented blanket condemnations. Of course public education in Maine and elsewhere has its problems. What have you done to try to remedy them?
Why, he is obviously listening to Fox News. I’d say that’s where he, and the governor too, get their information. I might add that that is the reason the tea party is on the way out.
He also makes his outrageous generalizations observing school buses from the air. Which reminds me, will charter schools be able to sponge off public school transportation?
Charter schools may use the same busing system as public schools. If they set up their own they will be re-imbursed at the same rate as their local school district pays for transportation.
Laughing at Fred Robinson. That’s what happens when you spend your life flying too low and drinking that “union” alcohol: eventually your perspective on life and your ability to think coherently causes you to write letters to the editor exposing your diminished capacity.
It is amusing in a sad sort of way…to quote Bill Nye from a recent article What I find troubling, when you listen to these people … once in a while I get the impression that they’re not kidding
Fred Robinson–All generalizations are false.
Mr. Mrozicki, your observations of the mind-numbing effects of Fox News help explain Mr. Robinson’s ill-informed letter. Luckily, we have voters like Ms. Sevey who have a sense of history and public citizenship. That is a tribute to her public school education.
The editor of the letters column might wish to know that the word is “suffrage.” It comes from the Latin word suffragari, to vote for, not the Latin word sufferre, to bear. However, the suffragists surely did suffer from the fierce male resistance to sharing the right to vote. Were he to have lived then, Mr. Robinson would surely have opposed the 19th Amendment. I am proud to say that each of my grandfathers backed it.
“sufferage”??? Is that a new word?
The paper appears to no longer have any copy editors.
I think it was invented by the The Man Show. They set up a booth in Venice Beach, California where they asked women to sign a petition ending women’s “sufferage.” They got a boat load of signatures before one woman finally said “hey, wait a miniute, you are trying to take away my right to vote! lol.
Corolla wasn’t playing a sexist pig unfortunately, he was just being himself.
As Pogo once said when asked if he was in favor of women’s suffrage, “I think women suffer enough already.”
canceled
Paul Worsaa, I wonder what you would describe all but a handful of Republicans in Congress. The handful I suppose are RINOs the rest have to call Grover Norquist to find out how to vote on the nations issues.
What were the chances of Angus King being assigned to any commitee of any meaning to the state of Maine if he aligned with the Republicans or remanined Indipendent. In order for his voice to be heard in the Senate he needs to be on commitees. Thats the way it works. Susan Collins voice is heard in the Senate because of this. Even though she has NOT signed fielty to Grover Norquist.
I would bet even money that you voted for Charlie Summers. He would have joined the rank of Republicans in Congress that have to kiss Grover Norquists ring.
N. Mrozicki, E. Sevey: good letters.
P. Worsaa: read more, including all during the campgaign. Often predicted, now fact. So Waht?
F. Robinson: How do you really feel about that? Talk about propaganda, your outrageous rant typifies absolutist propaganda at it’s worst. And from the air yet.
Fred~ You see all that from the air? Impressive eye sight.
However that is about the most outrageous bunch of lies you just wrote. It’s sad you have such a dim view of life.
You attended school in a different time with different jobs available to you on graduation. The times have changed you haven’t changed with them.
The GOP lost for many good reasons.
I think Fred epitomizes much of the Republican Party and is a good example of why they lost.
Agreed! I was cringing while reading his words. Apparently they don’t want to understand why they lost. They are still beating the same old dead horse.
Fred Robinson……I can’t do much but try and laugh at what you wrote.
It’s almost sad, but I think you are the one who has been “indoctrinated”.
Norman Mrozicki . .you speak the truth! Many Universities have done in
dependent studies culminating in the same results . . .those who depend of Fox News for their news, are the most ill informed and sim;ply oblivious to the real truth once the “news” gets filtered by Fox.
The GOP has been living in a bubble. Any attempt to break through that bubble is meant with anger and terms such as “Lame stream media” are used. When you see and hear the lies coming out of Fox News it is truly concerning.
We are all allowed our own opinions. We are not however, allowed our own version of the truth!
The GOP bubble has been burst . . the recent election results have sent a strong message that this nation is not moving backwards. We need a Nation with two strong political parties. The GOP is in jeopardy of becoming irrelevant if it does not tone-down it’s harsh words and changes need to be made to policies they support.
The crazies have taken over the GOP. Booing an active duty soldier currently serving in a war zone because he is gay. Laughing about a scenario where a sick person is wheeled into a hallway to die due to no healthcare coverage. Refusing to accept a budget deal where 1 dollar of revenue is off set with 10 dollars of budget cuts. Presenting “self deportation” as a method to solve our immigration problem. Supporting “personhood” amendments giving a fertilized egg the right to property. Talking about Planned Parenthood as if it were a scourge in our society while ignoring the fact the MILLIONS of women depend on PP for their only source of healthcare. Cheering about all the people that have been put death in Texas as part of their penal system. Refusing to accept empirical scientific data gathered about climate change and evolution.
Tone it down GOP . .be more accepting and tolerant . .be more inclusive . .and please . .learn to cooperate when elected to serve ALL OF THE PEOPLE!
It’s up to the GOP members to make the changes needed or risk extinction.
They always blame the media, except for Fox “news.”
Norman – Get a clue. First of all, Jindel’s “stupid party” comment was taken out of context. He didn’t call the party stupid, but you’d actually have to look up the transcript to find that out. The left, however, will run with whatever the left wind media feeds them.
Second, FOX was at the Dem gathering to represent the news network and give an unbiased and untainted coverage of the goings on. FOX was at the Romney headquarters, because FOX is the ONLY network that was willing to cover both sides.
And, of course, you have to finish your anti-Fox rant by claiming that FNC makes stuff up, but fail, just like the rest, to back up your claims. Typical.
You must have a sense of humor, EJ, using “Fox” and “unbiased” in the same sentence!
The Republicans only watched Fox because they were trying to escape from reality. Fox slants the news the way the Republicans wanted to hear it. Notice the Democrats had Fox on as well as the reality-based networks.
EJ Umm, Fox got it wrong, for months and months Fox was wrong. You surely, not now, after Fox’s public disgrace, aren’t trying to tell us that Fox gets it right; all the other stations are telling lies. Even you aren’t that gullible, are you?
Fred Robinson – I think you would be wise to heed Abraham Lincoln’s words. “It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.” I’ll thank my public school history teacher the next time I see him.