Elect the AG
It’s amazing how the Jan. 25 BDN cartoon and Jan. 23 readers poll misuse the governor’s position on the issue of constitutional officers. The U.S. Constitution was written with three separate branches: executive, legislative, judicial as a set of checks and balances against tyranny. But, Maine’s three constitutional officers are beholden to the Legislature: attorney general, treasurer, secretary of state. Attorneys general are elected by the people in 43 states. But in Maine we get a partisan attorney general. That is, we get Republican or Democrat political bias in our top cop and our top Constitutional attorney.
National political bias in the video record shows then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi saying “We need to pass the Affordable Care Act to find out what’s in it.” With a great deal of trickery the U.S. Congress passed the ACA on a party-line basis. Some 28 (well over half of the states) attorneys general (not Maine’s AG) challenged the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act.
More state political bias: Maine’s Legislature passed a medical marijuana law. The Democratic AG did not declare the law unconstitutional, when the supremacy clause of the U.S. Constitution declares,” the laws of the U.S. shall be supreme …the states shall be bound.” That is, Congress made marijuana an illegal drug in 1914, thus Maine’s medical marijuana law is unconstitutional.
The United States is a republic, not a democracy — that is, a nation of laws. Mainers would be better served by electing our attorney general, treasurer and secretary of state.
Theo Nykreim
Stockholm
The economy is not a garden
Matt Gagnon’s Jan. 21 column “The economy is a garden, not a pie,” doesn’t hold water, just a lot of fertilizer. When one person out of 100 gets more than 50 percent of the garden’s output, for whatever reason, that is definitely not a community garden.
Where his “garden” comparison was laughable (not really) was this sentence: “You do not get rich by making other people poor.” That was a real jaw-dropper.
What cave was Gagnon living in about eight years ago when the economy almost blew up during the Bush administration? A heck of a lot of bank officials, insurance company executives and hedge fund managers, to list three, made a bloody fortune by making other people poor with their business practices.
Maybe someday in the far future, a Republican like Gagnon will be able to really see things from the average person’s point of view, but I doubt it.
Russell Mullins
Fort Kent
Helping hand
Earlier this week, as I hurried to leave my house, I tried to overcome the snow piles left behind by the sidewalk plows and got stuck, far enough out of my driveway that I was blocking a whole lane of traffic. I tried doing all I could to get out: rocking, shoveling around my tires, and occasionally hitting my dashboard, just in case my car didn’t know how frustrated I was getting.
After 20 minutes of me struggling to get free, and watching at least a hundred cars drive around me, a stranger pulled over to the side of the road and helped me out of my situation. It wasn’t easy, but he got me free. Because I was blocking traffic, I had no time to stop and shake hands, but hurriedly yelled “thank you so much!” I don’t know who it was that helped me, and wish I had better expressed my gratitude.
Winters in Maine are a difficult time, as we all know, so if anyone sees a person in need of help, and has a couple minutes free to lend a helping hand, it will make a great difference in the quality of that person’s day if you do.
Keith Parker
Brewer
March for Life ignored
Could 400,000 people descend on Washington, D.C. and march from the Washington Monument to the Supreme Court and go unnoticed by the general news media, including the Bangor Daily News? Impossible you think, but that is exactly what happened on Jan. 22. Not only this year, but the same event with typically the same crowd size has been doing the exact same thing for the past 42 years and has been generally ignored by mass media. Why?
The civil rights march may have been the first march on Washington, taking place in 1963 and attracting a crowd of 250,000. The Million Man march of 1995 attracted 400,000. After that the U.S. Park Service refused to estimate crowds because they got sued. Both of these marches attracted media attention. Both are still talked about. Yet, the March For Life, which is of the same magnitude, is largely ignored. Is it perhaps because it happens year after year? Doesn’t that undervalue the sacrifices that people from all across America make to attend?
The media is involved in a great cover up by suppressing information that the general public should be aware of. As a daily reader of the BDN, a Catholic and a teacher, I am distraught that the BDN would not have given this some coverage.
Jean Barry
Bangor
Bleak future for women
I am writing in concern of the precedents that are being set to regulate women’s anatomy. The unheard of margin by which H.R. 7. passed in the House last Thursday — the anniversary of Roe v. Wade — indicates a bleaker future for women everywhere and I mean for this to be a call to action.
H.R. 7 or the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion and Abortion Insurance Full Disclosure Act of 2014 will cut all federal funding and subsidies for clinics that offer abortions. In addition, any insurance plan that receives a federal subsidy, such as marketplace plans, will be forced to end coverage of abortion. Three Democrats voted for the bill — they were all men.
As an 18-year-old, I must say I am nervous to enter American society where the institutional resort is to not trust women about rape, incest or domestic violence. We are not even allowed to make our own decisions about our reproductive health without being burdened by factually incorrect counseling, societally inherent shame, the rising costs of abortions and limited access to centers that provide abortions. H.R. 7 is making life harder for women.
Changes are necessary to protect the American woman’s right to choose. H.R. 7 must not pass in Senate and we must work together to hold our representatives accountable for their vote.
Madison Crissey Cook
Belfast