Re-elect Gratwick
I first met Geoff Gratwick when I started serving on the Bangor Recycling Committee in 2009. It was immediately obvious that Gratwick was a strong supporter of recycling as a way to save money and preserve landfill space. For months, our committee pored over data, talked about solutions, and finally came to the decision that “pay as you throw” would be the best and most equitable way to meet Bangor’s long-term solid waste disposal needs.
Then we received some bad news: The cost would be prohibitive. It became clear that it was not the right time. Even though the committee had a strong preference for “pay as you throw” Gratwick felt the impact on homeowners, taxpayers and users would be too severe. He put aside his own preference for what he had come to see as the “ideal” solution in favor of the more economical plan that the city has recently adopted: single sort.
His approach to recycling is an example of the way he works in the Legislature: He gets all the facts, listens to all sides and, after thorough discussion, does what is best for our community. Bangor and Hermon couldn’t have a better senator working for them in Augusta. I urge you to join me in voting to re-elect Gratwick this November.
Kate Dickerson
Bangor
Cutler, best man
Too many people in the state of Maine think that a vote for Eliot Cutler is effectively a vote for Gov. Paul LePage because Cutler is sabotaging the election to help the Republicans. Nothing can be further from the truth.
Now is the time to draw back the curtains of the two campaigns that are hiding LePage and Mike Michaud from the voters. The remedy for Maine voters is debates, right now, among the three candidates.
Many people should circulate petitions demanding debates. Then, and only then, can Maine voters see for themselves who is the best person for governor and at the same time see what reliable anonymous TV polls reveal. That man will be Cutler.
Frank Weil
Stonington
Not proud of LePage
I like the last line in a Mike Michaud TV spot: “A governor Maine can be proud of.”
What a welcome change that would be.
All Gov. Paul LePage has to offer are bluster, belligerence, resentment and now cronyism of the worst sort — the big bump in paid vacation time for 54 of his appointees. A list of all the harm the LePage administration has done to Maine — to the environment, to the economy, to health — would be very long.
Peg Cruikshank
Corea
Cutler has a plan
The Sept. 20 BDN editorial states, “A leader with the right attitude would acknowledge the state’s shortcomings and offer concrete plans for addressing them.” Certainly Gov. Paul LePage doesn’t have a plan, and I haven’t seen anything from Mike Michaud that has any real content, but Eliot Cutler has an entire chapter in his book, “A State of Opportunity,“ that addresses our demographic challenge with concrete ideas to help bring people into the state.
Cutler is the only candidate who is putting forth specific ideas that can be challenged instead of political pablum to gin up the left or right. I know Cutler and have worked with him. He has concrete ideas for making Maine the kind of place — again — where young people will want to move to.
Robert Knight
Brooksville
We need Sen. Collins
Negative advertisements may work in other states, but here in Maine, we aren’t fooled by them. Particularly offensive is when political operatives from Washington, D.C., come in and convince candidates to attack one of the most revered figures in Maine’s political history, Sen. Susan Collins. If they think false accusations and grainy black-and-white photos will sway voters to dislike Susan: They guessed wrong.
The young activist running against the senator also plays fast and loose with the facts. Shenna Bellows recently claimed Collins voted for a flawed budget proposal when, in fact, Collins did not. Instead of owning up to the mistake, she blamed it on one of her staff members.
In Susan Collins, we have a senator who works hard, gets things done for Maine and knows her job down to the most minute detail. We need her now more that ever. That’s why I’m voting for Collins.
Stuart Smith
Edgecomb
Bait ban overdue
Here we are with another bear baiting question on our ballot. Here we are,10 years down the road with 10 more years of data and the state’s own numbers proving management by baiting, hounding and trapping isn’t working. Had we passed the bear ballot measure in 2004, we might have avoided many of the bear conflicts we’ve had this summer. The state’s own numbers show the bear population has grown by 30 percent since 2004. It’s grown by 253 percent since 1975, not coincidentally — that’s when bear baiting became popular.
Depositing 7 million pounds of calorie-dense food in the woods every year for bears, logically, grows the population, increasing rates of reproductivity and cub survival. In short, more bait equals more bears.
Furthermore, baiting habituates bears to human foods and smells. Bears that associate humans with food lose their natural wariness of people and are more likely to come looking for food where people are. That increases the likelihood of conflicts.
The solution is easy, vote yes Question 1 in November.
Cheryl Avis
Litchfield
Health care logic
I would just like to embellish the information given by Joe Feinglass in his Sept. 17 OpEd, “Payoff for Medicaid Expansion.” Feinglass makes some very strong arguments for Medicaid (MaineCare) expansion in Maine. Most of his points have been made before and are reinforced by studies of all of the developed countries in the world with universal healthcare.
The data are irrefutable that having a population have access to health care not only is morally the right thing to do but economically as well. It simply is less expensive to have a healthier population. This is not an economic debate but an ideological debate.
The same people who oppose MaineCare expansion also point out that they were responsible for paying the hospitals a back debt of several million dollars. What they are ignoring is that by sticking to their “no welfare for the employable” mantra, they are creating more piles of hospital debt in mounting “charity care” bills that a MaineCare expansion would cover. This is not a prudent business approach but, rather, a blind ideological approach by seemingly otherwise logical thinking people, who can’t get over the thought of someone “getting something for nothing,” even if it kills them economically. In the next election, we must remove this thinking for our own economic well-being.
Ken Huhn
Bangor