Benghazi a Clinton smear campaign
In Beirut in 1983, a suicide bomber drove a truck full of explosives into a Marine compound, killing 241 of our precious servicemen. Security was terrible. The gate was left wide open. Sentries were ordered to use unloaded weapons. This attack occurred just months after the U.S. embassy in Beirut was bombed, killing 63 people.
There was one congressional investigation, only to find solutions and not to place blame on President Ronald Reagan or the secretary of state. They recommended security changes. But they weren’t made, and within nine months there were two more successful jihadist attacks. There were no more investigations.
So far, there have been eight investigations into the deaths of the four Americans in Benghazi. This is more than the combined total investigations for every attack on this country in the past 50 years. This includes Beirut, Oklahoma City, embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, the USS Cole, 9/11 attacks and the Boston Marathon bombing.
All eight investigations showed there was nothing Hillary Clinton could have done to prevent the death of the four Americans. Republicans wasted everyone’s time and tens of millions of tax dollars on a continuous Clinton smear campaign.
John Pankowicz
Boothbay Harbor
Support ranked-choice voting
There are at least four candidates running for president this year: Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, Republican nominee Donald Trump, Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson and Green Party nominee Jill Stein. With this field there won’t be a lack of choice. Instead, we will have to confront the realities of an election system that funnels voters into making a decision between the lesser of two evils.
In Maine, voters already are having the conversation about how to change this in order to fulfill the highest aspirations of a representative democracy. In November, Question 5 on the statewide ballot will ask voters to replace the current plurality system with a more equitable system of ranked-choice voting for federal and state primary and general elections.
Simply put, ranked-choice voting would remove the fear factor from the voting process. Whether voters identify as a Democrat, Republican, Libertarian or Green, this system would allow them to support their favorite candidates without the fear of throwing their votes away and helping to elect the candidate they disagree with the most.
I urge all Mainers to rally behind this movement. Please join me and vote yes on Question 5 in November.
Bobby Mills
Biddeford
Renewable energy the future
Maine ranks 38th highest for cost per kilowatt of electricity at 12.97 cents. The national average is 10.42 cents. But if people can afford it, they can generate their own electricity with solar panels. They can generate electrical power with solar panels and sell the excess back to their power company under net-metering.
The rate that the company credits them, however, is less than what it charges. The power companies now say that even the amount credited is too much and the loss of revenue will be unfairly passed on to those ratepayers that don’t have generation capacity. (Of course, the companies don’t quantify the impact on ratepayers.)
But nowhere in their lament do the companies mention the other stakeholders in the electricity business — the stockholders, not to mention the executive staff. The word is profit, which is sacred, and when that’s threatened the first strategy is to pass costs on to the ratepayers. The governor’s energy office is siding with the power companies.
The fact that the country is slowly attempting to move away from the generation of electricity using fossil fuels and make use of renewable energy might have escaped the administration’s attention, not to mention the thousands of jobs that Maine could see related from growth in solar technology. But Gov. Paul LePage and other Republicans are climate change skeptics.
Peter Froehlich
Whitefield
Ranked-choice voting won’t improve elections
The Constitution says one person, one vote. I believe ranked-choice goes against that principle. The proponents of ranked-choice say it assures the winning candidate has more than 50 percent of the vote. As a July 23 BDN article indicated, this is not necessarily the case. After many instant runoffs, some ballots get tossed out because of voter error, meaning the winner still can win with less than a majority of all votes cast in the first round. I want my votes counted, not tossed out.
If we want to put in a requirement that certain offices must have more than 50 percent of the vote to win and then have a runoff election between the top two candidates, that is fine. It gives the candidates a second chance to convince me to give them my vote, and it is an open process.
Our present system works just fine, and if it isn’t broken then don’t fix it. Ranked-choice voting hasn’t always worked as advertised and in fact has led to reduced voter turnout in some cities. I will be voting no on this issue because I want my vote counted in future elections.
Nancy Grant
Orrington
Trump’s bully behavior
It comes as no surprise to me that Donald Trump spends his days tweeting and verbally attacking anyone who appears, in his mind, to be calling attention to his many shortcomings, the very shortcomings that should be continual reminders as to why he is unfit to be our president.
Nor does it surprise me that he seems so amazed and put upon when someone, by the very strength of his or her conscience, dares to call him out for his rabid vilifications of so many, including the parents of a fallen Muslim-American soldier, a woman who questions his obvious misogynist remarks or a reporter who asks a question of him that requires an answer of some depth and understanding of the important issues at hand.
What does surprise me is the number of people who are persuaded that this behavior, that of a bully on the playground, is what they want from the person who would inhabit the White House, the house of the people.
Ellen Sinclair
Belfast