English politics
Having just returned after spending most of April and early May in England, and being thoroughly steeped in their electoral process, I was surprised to read Jim Fossel’s May 14 BDN column in which his first premise is that the Liberal Democrats are to the left of Labour Party. Not so, like the earlier Liberal party, they are very much middle of the road.
Maybe Fossel got it confused with the Scottish National Party — which is certainly well to the left — that under a charismatic and intelligent leader, Nicola Sturgeon, trounced the Labour Party.
The Conservative Party’s unexpectedly high success was not adherence to high right-wing ideals, as Fossel suggests, but much more earthy. First, England’s economy under the Conservatives is doing very well, much better than any other economy in Europe. Secondly, there was the fear that if the Labour Party was asked to form a government they would have had to invite the Scottish Nationalists to join them.
If there is any lesson for the GOP to learn from this election (and maybe there isn’t — East is East and West is West) it is that fear of a takeover by extremists will drive voters away to the Democrats.
Eric Charlton
Camden
Dechaine and the scarf
At the hearing before the Maine Supreme Judicial Court regarding the Dennis Dechaine case, one justice referred to the scarf with which Sarah Cherry was strangled as “Sarah’s scarf.”
While common sense should tell us that it would be most unlikely that a girl kidnapped from a home that was not her own on a sweltering summer day would have been wearing a woolen scarf, anyone who has followed this case knows that simple logic should never be assumed.
Establishing ownership of the scarf is critical because the justice referred several times to the possible significance of a partial DNA profile obtained from the scarf from which Dechaine could not be excluded. Dechaine claims that the scarf was his, a gift from a friend (the son of a retired Maine Law School professor), and that the killer removed the scarf from Dechaine’s parked truck.
Obviously, Dechaine’s DNA could be expected to be found on his own scarf, and DNA from the scarf could have been transferred to other clothing it contacted. Not mentioned was the more complete DNA profile obtained from the scarf from which the prime alternate suspect cannot be excluded.
William Bunting
Whitefield
Preserve Maine’s forests
Maine is exceptional in many ways. Our coastline (3,478 miles) is exceeded by only three other states: Alaska, Florida and Louisiana. We also have one of the oldest populations in the United States, but that may not be something Maine wants to be known for.
Maine’s most exceptional quality is that Maine is the most forested state in the nation. Eighty-nine percent of Maine is covered in forest land — that’s almost 18 million acres. A new national park and national recreation area in Maine, located on up to 150,000 acres east of Baxter State Park, would make this exceptional quality known to the world.
The 150,000 acres, located on either side of the mouth of the East Branch of the Penobscot River, is primarily spruce-northern hardwood, beech-birch-maple and spruce-fir-broom moss forest. The land also contains rare silver maple floodplain and maple-basswood-ash forest, as well as patches of mature forest that have never been touched by humans.
The proposed national park and national recreation area, known today as the Katahdin Woods & Waters Recreation Area, is an outstanding example of Maine’s forest land and should be preserved as such.
Amy Hughes
Bangor
Metal mining dangers
I had the dubious pleasure of attending a public hearing before the Environment and Natural Resources Committee. While the purpose of the hearing was to find out what people thought about how the metal mining industry should be regulated, it seemed as if the legislators were not that interested in what regular people had to say.
Our representatives seem willing to hand over the regulation of the mining to the corporations that are doing the mining. One of these legislators actually said that because there’s already arsenic pollution in the Bald Mountain area due to the minerals found in the rocks, what difference does it make if we add a whole lot more arsenic (plus some cadmium, lead and whatever else might be there) by pulverizing the rocks to extract the minerals we want.
Right now the mining industry is limited by regulations enacted in 1991. What the committee seeks to do is create new rules, designed to invite more mining to Maine, to extract our resources and theoretically provide a few temporary jobs
Few on the committee (Rep. Denise Harlow, D-Portland, was the exception) seemed to grasp that our water, necessary for life, is all connected under the ground. Perhaps they think we can all just switch to bottled water.
Patti Dowse
Cambridge
Public schools overhaul
Since 2011, the Nellie Mae Education Foundation has pumped more than $13 million in grants to nonprofits and public schools in Maine to promote its agenda of having all Maine schools award proficiency-based diplomas.
The mandate, enacted in 2012, requires that all students demonstrate proficiency in eight subjects to receive a high school diploma. Championed by a Nellie-Mae funded organization, Educate Maine, and the state Department of Education, this mandate has allowed newly formed organizations such as the Great Schools Partnership and the Reinventing Schools Coalition, each of which have also been beneficiaries of multi-million dollars grants from Nellie Mae, to establish contracts with local school districts to guide them as they transition to a new way of structuring our local schools.
The law, which these organizations promote as a progressive, “student centered” method of learning, is an attempt to push digital and online learning on our public schools. While technology has a place in our classrooms, there is no research to support the idea that this form of learning is best for our children.
Meanwhile, companies like Microsoft, Apple, and start-up software companies like JumpRope, have received thousands of dollars from our local budgets to support this model of learning, leaving little behind for needs like additional teachers and ed techs.
In the wake of major pushback against standardized testing and Common Core, this mandate cannot go overlooked. It is time we start asking who is responsible for this overhaul of our public schools, and who truly stands to benefit.
Emily Talmage
Auburn