FairPoint strike
The workers of FairPoint are committed to making our company competitive and profitable in the rapidly changing telecom market. We’ve been extremely flexible in negotiations for a new contract, offering more than $200 million in cost savings. We’ve even offered a health care package that would save the company more money than the plan they’re trying to impose.
The real problem at FairPoint — as we warned before they bought the business in 2008 — is that they were unqualified to take over the telecom system of northern New England. They were a tiny telecom provider based in North Carolina that lacked the financial strength and managerial competence to serve our customers.
Soon after arriving, they installed cheap and dysfunctional computer systems that were so poor they were unable to bill customers properly for service — just one of many managerial failures that quickly pushed the company into bankruptcy in 2009.
Before FairPoint bought our business, they promised to strengthen it by hiring 675 new employees. Instead, they’ve cut more than 600 jobs in northern New England, leaving long-time employees to try and keep the company viable.
FairPoint says it’s the good pay of these skilled and experienced workers that’s holding the company back. In fact, it’s the cynicism of FairPoint executives who want to run a high-tech company with low-wage workers. And as FairPoint’s unqualified replacement workers are proving during this strike, you cannot provide quality service to customers with cut-rate contractors.
Peter McLaughlin
Benton
Park win-win benefit
My wife and I are natives of Millinocket and East Millinocket and we support the development of the proposed Katahdin Wood and Waters National Park and National Recreation Area. With the steady decline of the papermaking industry, closings and dismantling of the mills, the Katahdin region needs new business development and economic stimulus.
We feel strongly that a national park and national recreation area will help provide the foundation for new business and economic stimulus. I have found that many of the people who visit Maine as tourists or summer residents discover a better way of living and move here, many relocating their business or starting a new business here.
During the last four years, I have encountered many of these people while working with Slow Money Maine, an organization devoted to entrepreneurial efforts to develop Maine agriculture and ocean products. Over 70 percent of those attending Slow Money Maine events are young, college-educated people who originally came to Maine as tourists, or are returning Maine natives. I have experienced this activity first hand, presently working with three such enterprising people and know of many others.
This is a byproduct of tourism; many are business people with new ideas and financial resources, not to mention the local income and employment from a park and recreation area.
The park is a win-win benefit for both this region and the state.
Allen Williams
Biddeford
God is not the answer
Thomas Paine’s quote from over 200 years ago “The world is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion” speaks volumes. Whether there is a God, in truth, is not relevant to how one should live; choosing to have faith in an unseen deity is a choice not a necessity.
Throughout the ages religion (God) has not been a champion for higher learning because science does not concern itself with beliefs or faith but the truth. Free thinkers such as Lucretius wrote over 2,000 years ago that human beings should conquer their fears, accept the fact that they are transitory, and embrace the beauty and the pleasures of the world.
What society lacks is not God but a true direction where we all work together and can freely exchange ideas not constrained by a specific set of values that demand we believe in something that defies reason. In the name of God, blood is still being spilled to this very day, horrific acts of violence resulting in the deaths of the elderly and children referred to as collateral damage.
Let us keep God out of our schools and our government and work towards a world where we are all equal. Let us encourage our children to absorb knowledge and replace prejudices against others with different beliefs with having an open mind and then we as a whole would all be much better off.
Dave Richards
Dover-Foxcroft
Fossil fuel warnings
Regarding the Nov. 19 article “Two California cities weigh putting climate-change warnings on gas pumps,” why is it okay for Reuters to quote an oil group’s objection to labels without mentioning the objection is false?
When I was pregnant with my first child, New York City wrote legislation requiring establishments serving or selling alcohol to post warnings that if a pregnant woman drinks alcohol, it could harm the fetus’ health. Liquor industries and the Chamber of Commerce opposed labels for business and economic reasons. Congress followed New York City by requiring alcohol manufacturers to label all bottles and cans. Did anyone sue because labeling is a violation of constitutional rights? Yet Reuters says an oil group claims warning labels are an “illegal attempt to require compelled speech in violation of constitutional protections.”
Why wouldn’t Reuters balance the claim with information that all labeling campaigns emphasize the public’s right to know how products they use could affect them?
My first child now lives in Bangor. He’s the father of my first grandchild, whose health and future can be seriously affected by overuse of fossil fuels. The public has the right to be reminded of that possibility whenever they buy fossil fuels.
Perhaps Sen. Susan Collins would protect her young constituent, my grandson, by helping consumers understand the dangers and costs to society of fossil fuels. The best way to educate the public is by legislating a price on carbon emissions, instead of merely a silly warning label.
Judy Weiss
Brookline, Massachusetts