Iran nuclear deal flaws
George Mitchell’s Aug. 10 BDN OpEd on the Iran nuclear deal is misleading to say the least. Mitchell states the agreement “is based on verification through the most intrusive and comprehensive inspection regime adopted in the nuclear age.” If a 24-day waiting period is considered intrusive, then he might be right. If being banned from the Parchin Military Facility, where Iran has tested nuclear detonation devices, is comprehensive, then he might be right. And if having Iranian private side deals with the International Atomic Energy Agency that the U.S. is not allowed to review is considered verification, then he might be right.
This deal is bad for the entire world. Mitchell is correct in saying that allowing Iran to have a nuclear weapon would be a serious threat to stability, a direct threat to Israel and would undermine the nuclear nonproliferation agreement, which has successfully persuaded many nations to voluntarily turn over or dispose of their nuclear weapons.
What would be better? A nuclear arms race in the Middle East or tightening the sanction belt securely around the country that has chanted death to America for years and whose goal is complete destruction of Israel? I choose tightening the sanctions.
Michael Foster
Benton
Health care failure
Not long ago our neighbors gathered at a benefit supper for a young man who has been hospitalized for months with some rare, incapacitating disease. Having seen with our own eyes a bill for more than $300,000 for a simple heart operation, we might suspect this young man’s hospital bill will be in the many hundreds of thousands of dollars. We wonder whether anyone at that friendly fundraiser will live long enough to see the family discharge that debt.
That fundraiser might have raised enough money for that family to break even on household expenses for a few months — if they were lucky. And yet, one strongly suspects that many of the kindly neighbors assembled there have voted time and again against the kind of government-administered medical insurance plan people take for granted in Holland, Finland and other progressive industrialized countries.
These good neighbors would look you in the eye and tell you that they prefer the “freedom” they enjoy in this country where they can make their own choice about whether they will or will not have medical insurance.
Today St. George, Maine, has one more honest hard-working family that will live and die with an undeserved, unpaid medical bill. Should we all be proud that this kind of freedom is “the American way”?
Robert Skoglund
St. George
Develop a skilled workforce
I recently learned that Husson University and the Bangor School Department will partner to help high school students develop college-level skills through a new Bangor High School Business Academy. As a business leader who is concerned about the quality of our future workforce, I applaud this move.
That development is crucially important to the economic health of our state. The simple truth is that Maine isn’t producing enough workers who are able to collaborate, think critically and communicate well.
Executive-function skills such as these are essential in the modern workplace, and we’re experiencing a shortage of workers who have those skills. Research spotlighted by the business-leader group ReadyNation shows there aren’t enough Mainers with the level of skill or education necessary to fill available jobs. ReadyNation estimates Maine faces a shortfall of 15,000 highly skilled workers by 2020 if current trends continue.
One crucial way to erase that skills gap is to invest in educational models that connect high school to higher learning and the workplace, which is exactly what the Bangor High School Business Academy will do. These “deeper learning” models integrate academics, career-relevant instruction and work-based learning experiences that help prepare students for college and future employment.
Husson University and the Bangor School Department’s commitment to create innovative high school models is part of an important movement toward deeper learning here in Maine that will help build a better workforce and strengthen our state’s economy in the years to come.
John Rohman
Husson University Trustee
Former CEO of WBRC Architects and Engineers
Bangor