National monument wisdom
The idea for a national monument east of Baxter State Park is a very sensible one. I have visited a number of national monuments and national parks around the United States. Without exception (including Cooke City, Montana, by Yellowstone; Bar Harbor by Acadia; and Flagstaff, Arizona, near the Grand Canyon) these parks and dozens of others are gemstones of our country and provide great economic benefits to the people in their areas. The business people would never be without them, they are so important to their communities. The visitors do not have children in schools so they are not burdening the states or towns there.
Our residents who oppose the monument in northern Maine are dreaming if they think the forest products industry will support the whole economy. It doesn’t now and will not carry the whole show in the future. There is certainly some prospect for that industry but not in the form it once was.
I own some forest land in western Maine. I regularly sell stumpage for various end uses. Just this past winter, I got a $5 per cord cut in stumpage price for firewood. Visitors and tourism are important to our area.
I hope the people in the Katahdin area will see the wisdom of a relatively small lot of national monument property in the area as much of our state does now.
Dick Brooks
Phillips
Universities’ economic contributions
Regarding Darren Fishell’s May 23 article about jobs in Maine, an interesting omission from the article and many other such articles is mention of the number of people employed by the University of Maine System.
As of October 2015, the system employed 5,195 people of all kinds: administrators, faculty, salaried, hourly, full time, part time and temporary. By the way, in October 2007, that number was 6,154.
Bill Sneed
Prospect
Onward Program worked
The May 24 BDN editorial, “Failing to Finish: Low College Completion Rates Prove Costly,” omits an important fact. The University of Maine abolished the highly successful Onward Program, through which many nontraditional students finished their degrees. Often working-class and/or poor, these students overcame huge obstacles to finding a place at the university.
I know because I taught them, and they were some of my best students. Once they realized they could do college-level work, there was no stopping them. Often they were too poor at 18 to go to college. Years later Onward guided them to success.
Cutting this program was extremely short sighted as well as an example of class bias. Onward should be reinstated.
Peg Cruikshank
Corea
Drug price shell game
Neither Hillary Clinton nor Donald Trump can be expected to lead our deadlocked, nonfunctioning Congress out of their political games and into problem-solving mode. A majority of voters dislike both candidates, and if elected neither will have much influence with the public or Congress.
Lack of leadership causes dysfunctional government and millions in our society are struggling financially as a result. For example, economic recovery hasn’t restored even a modicum of prosperity to those who lost their jobs, savings and homes following the economic crash in 2007.
The Affordable Care Act was enacted without measures to control rapidly rising health insurance premiums and provider price increases. Congress passed Medicare Part D, with Big Pharma’s help in 2003, and agreed to block Medicare from negotiating lower drug prices. Now drug prices are skyrocketing.
For example, Bloomberg Businessweek reported on May 19 about a shell game called “Copay Charities.” Drug makers fund “copay charities” with billions and pass the cost on to the healthcare system, increasing drug prices. According to Bloomberg, there are seven of these “nonprofit” charities now receiving more than $1 billion in donations from drug makers. Our government ignores or approves this Big Pharma price-inflating shell game.
It is quite unlikely that Congress and Clinton or Trump as president will resolve these issues? Unless a true leader and a better Congress is elected now, the many serious struggles going on in our society today will continue.
Jim Chiddix
Waterville