Blame the GOP for poor economy
Blame for the woes of displaced manufacturing and coal mining workers lies primarily with the GOP. They demonize taxes, safety net programs and government intervention into the market to cushion places and people from market forces. They tout free markets using models that any student in economics 101 knows are fiction and ignore market failure. They also ignore environmental science, and they are too cozy with the fossil fuel industry instead of alternative energy companies, which will create more jobs than will fracking, extraction and pipelines. They led the movement to destroy unions with their “right to work” laws, jeopardizing pensions and severances owed to displaced workers.
To the extent that Hillary Clinton lost the election over economic fears and insecurities, as opposed to racism and misogyny, WikiLeaks, the FBI and fake news, is due more to the GOP’s and Donald Trump’s — with help from Bernie Sanders — success in convincing everyone that it was Barack Obama’s, Clinton’s and the Democrats’ fault they lost their better paying, pension-providing jobs. The solutions to displacement require a level of taxation and redistribution (to provide high-quality retraining and business development, relocation assistance, extended and expanded unemployment insurance and health care to younger displaced workers, and early retirement and health care to older displaced workers for whom retraining is infeasible) that even a President Sanders wouldn’t have been able to convince Americans, let alone Congress, to go for.
Lisa Morris
Portland
LePage can’t trash opponents’ rights
I am greatly disappointed in the ruling of the U.S. Court of Appeals of the First District in the civil lawsuit by House Speaker Mark Eves against Gov. Paul LePage. Judge Rogeriee Thompson clearly had it correct in her dissenting opinion that held that immunity defense ”hardly gives an official carte blanche to trash a citizen’s constitutional rights.”
The immunity law needs to be carefully interpreted and not exercised as an absolute. It is a protection for the public agent, not a weapon for the agent to use for personal reasons. LePage bragged that he threatened to withhold public funds from Good Will-Hinckley if it hired Eves because he didn’t feel he was qualified.
Eves was the clear choice for the board of directors. LePage was not involved in the interviews, nor was he privy to the discussions to match the best candidate to the mission of the organization. He had no appropriate role in the process, yet inappropriately inserted himself after the board had offered a contract to Eves. The board, though, recognized the threat of withholding funds was real. They were subjected to LePage’s political blackmail.
I served a full career in public service, and I was protected by the immunity clause from frivolous lawsuits for my daily decisions. The tort law has great value in the function of government agencies, assuring that a begrudged individual or group does not delay services and programs. It was never intended for political or personal revenge.
Terry McCannell
Pittsfield
Stand with Standing Rock
In her book “This Changes Everything,” Naomi Klein stresses the value of everyone already working for a better world to “keep on keepin’ on.” That’s how the heroic young, southern African-American leaders of the civil rights movement of the 1960s used to put it.
Those young people opened a door for whites unhappy with supremacy to move away from it and become better humans. And anyone could do it. We left home in droves to work for peace, justice and equality, and we discovered that supremacy links tightly to capitalism and its inevitable offspring, terrorism.
And again comes an answer. Not the answer because there is no silver bullet here more than anywhere else.
Imagine the place of those people at the Standing Rock reservation in North Dakota. Imagine your children and grandchildren there. There are reliable websites and videos that show what is happening there.
Send a jacket, a pair of thick socks, a check or medical supplies along with a personal note with whatever you send to help out. Talk to people. Print flyers to put on bulletin boards. We don’t all need to board a gas-guzzling bus, waving signs. We can be better humans right here at home.
Standing Rock offers each of us a chance to say, “We the people of this land stand together for truth, nonviolence and justice for all.”
That message needs to be heard in Washington and Wall Street now more than ever.
Jane Livingston
Veazie