Bring the message home
President Barack Obama was in Kenya over the weekend. Maybe he should give one of his pep talks to the inner cities here in the United States. Start with the south side of Chicago.
Robert Polo
Carmel
Racist ideologies
John R. Houser, the 59-year-old gunman responsible for the rampage and deaths in a central Louisiana movie theater, is not just a psychologically troubled “lone wolf”; he is a product of the hate in media, radio, news and politics. The entire right wing that has mushroomed in numbers, represented today in Congress and electioneering politics, has enabled such random acts of violence like Houser’s, in my opinion. This fact cannot be ignored any longer or whitewashed.
I recently lost a German friend to a political movement. The parents of this friend of many years lived through the Third Reich. His father was a Jew and his mother a Nazi. When he told me of his attraction to the German anti-Islamization group Pegida, I reminded him of his parentage.
What would his father do? What would his mother do? He followed his mother’s influence and joined. He learned to hate asylum seekers who are mostly from countries America and NATO bomb daily, Mediterranean “siesta people,” Muslims, Turks and anyone on welfare. Pegida populist marches are held weekly; racist violence in Germany is on the rise; hostels accommodating asylum seekers are torched; minorities are threatened and demonized.
The German Office for the Protection of the Constitution labels Pegida and other right-wing nationalist groups “racist, anti-Semitic and revisionist.” The government and anti-fascist movements in Germany are well-organized against them.
But in America, such people have wrapped themselves in the flag, Bible and U.S. Constitution and now are running for president.
Can it happen here? It is happening.
Michael T. Bucci
Damariscotta
Ranked-choice voting
Nine of the last 11 governors in Maine were elected with less than a majority of support. Three or four candidates have often run for an office in a system that is designed to accommodate two candidates.
Ranked-choice elections guarantee results that truly represent the will of the majority of Maine voters. In a ranked-choice voting election voters are able to rank candidates in order of preference. Ballot counters first would tally up all voters’ No. 1 choice. If no candidate has a majority — 50 percent plus 1 — after this round, the candidate with the least number of votes is eliminated. Ballots for this candidate then are reassigned to the other candidates whom they ranked their No. 2 choice. It continues until one candidate emerges with a majority.
By requiring majority rule, the candidates must run more civil and more positive campaigns. Under a ranked-choice voting system, candidates can’t run a negative, “slash-and-burn” style campaign and still expect to build a broad base of support.
Anne Borreggine
Bangor
Natural right to life
In her July 14 BDN OpEd, Andrea Irwin, executive director of the Mabel Wadsworth Family Planning Center in Bangor, asks among other things, “How much choice can a woman have who cannot afford to pay for an abortion?”
Three obvious choices come to mind: First, not getting pregnant; second, both the mother and the father take full responsibility for their actions and do what is necessary to raise the child in a loving, respectful environment; and last, if necessary, placing the baby up for adoption.
Further, Irwin states that the Equal Access to Abortion Coverage in Health Insurance Act co-sponsored by U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree “is so powerful because it declares that every woman’s life matters.” By supporting this act, she adds, “Pingree and other members of congress are proactively seeking to halt this tidal wave of hostility toward women.”
If every woman’s life matters, what could be more harmful and “hostile” toward women than the more than 53 million abortions since Roe v. Wade, of which many would have grown up to be women? If Irwin was truly concerned about women‘s lives, the first order of business would be to cease providing abortions at the Mabel Wadsworth Family Planning Center.
Abortion is wrong and is not only a women’s or religious issue, but most importantly, it is a human rights issue. Every unborn human being has a natural right to be born.
Joe Bertolaccini
Orrington
Business mentality fails public
Gov. Paul LePage’s alleged interference with hiring and firing decisions on boards of nonprofits, such as the World Acadian Congress and Good Will-Hinckley, should not be dismissed merely as the bullying and blackmail of a personality unfit to govern a state. It goes deeper than that; it is an expression of what can and does occur in a highly competitive business world, where LePage was a top corporation executive. But it is an especially unfortunate role reversal for government.
Will he ever learn not to try to govern the state as a business acting in its own interests, and instead govern as a trustee acting in the best interests of its citizens? We should be wary of politicians who promise to bring a business mentality to Augusta — or Washington, for that matter.
Jeff Titon
Little Deer Isle
Time to raise taxes
While reading U.S. Rep. Bruce Poliquin’s July 19 BDN OpEd about his support of veterans by increasing benefits, I expected to read he was pushing equally as hard for a tax increase to pay for this and other benefits already in place. I did not.
Wrapping oneself up in an American flag and going on record supporting that large voting block is right out of the Mike Michaud playbook. Public sector legacy costs and other entitlements are going to crush this country as soon as the rest of the world says we have printed and borrowed enough.
As a fiscal conservative, Poliquin knows this and I thought when elected he was going to drive a stake in the ground, even if it meant putting his re-election against Emily Cain at risk. As painful as it might be, let’s raise taxes and pay our way. The cut taxes and grow the economy story is getting old.
Richard Ginn
Bucksport