Respect for judges not optional
The Founding Fathers gave us three separate but co-equal branches of government: the executive, the legislative and the judicial. These branches function as a system of checks and balances on each other.
Fortunately for all of us, we have a multilayered judicial system. When you disagree with a judge’s opinion, there are avenues for appeal. When President Donald Trump refers to someone he differs with as a “so-called judge” he is not just insulting an individual, he is denigrating our entire legal system. Either deliberately or unintentionally, he is undermining the public’s faith in our judicial system as a whole.
Trump swore an oath of office to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” Respect for the judiciary is not optional.
Carey Donovan
Bernard
Kick military addiction
What’s with this recent craziness about increasing military spending by $54 billion and paying for it by eliminating an equal amount of spending in social programs? With a defense budget of nearly $600 billion, more than the size of the next seven largest military budgets in the world, I can’t help but wonder why we need to spend even more.
Will this extra spending make us any safer, and will ratcheting up our nuclear force — something every president since Richard Nixon has done the opposite of — make the world any safer? Can the F-35, which is one of the most expensive defense systems we have invested in, help against a group like the Islamic State? Did our advanced weaponry and giant military presence bring peace in Iraq and Afghanistan?
The reality of military spending is that it is a bipartisan deal. Everyone loves that military pork. The tragedy of it all is that the only thing made totally in America is war stuff. Not only do we have an obscene military budget, with ridiculous programs such as the F-35 or the Zumwalt, we also supply 40 percent of the Middle East’s arms, where in 10 years time those weapons may be turned against us.
We need to seriously reconsider our addiction to the military-industrial complex and remember what President Dwight Eisenhower said about war and resist this crazy impulse for more of what hasn’t worked.
Donald Gray
Rockland
Press proposals
I am concerned about the economics of the press and sustaining a source of facts, not “alternative facts.”
Proposal No. 1: Watergate and Bridgegate wouldn’t have been found out without reporters, but the number of reporters a newspaper can afford to keep on staff keeps shrinking. How about forming an online network of readers who would dig into subjects locally, not to replace reporters but to provide them with raw facts and save them time? Kind of a Wikipedia of information requested by newspaper staff rather than volunteered information. Pay? Union rules? That’s up to newspapers.
Proposal No. 2: Currently news is collected over 24 hours and published as a copy online and on the newsstand. What if online editions changed hourly or more frequently? The latest online edition would still supply the same depth of research and analysis but might not stay online as long. Truly current news would appear promptly. The hard copy could be the version that was current at a specified time each day.
William G. Anderson
Deer Isle
Give Trump a chance
Sometimes a less than gifted politician (verbally) has some darn good ideas. My limited impression of the Affordable Care Act is that people must get health insurance or pay a fine for not getting it. This serves no one I can imagine.
Getting rid of some really bad alliances and trade deals makes sense, but only after the consequences shake out from the negotiations
President Donald Trump promises. It takes time to evaluate things, something the liberal press and the embittered Democrats will never grant that guy Trump.
Frederick Mendel
Sherman
EpiPen alternative risks
The myriad issues not addressed in the March 3 BDN article about a Maine doctor creating a cheaper option for the EpiPen calls into question deeper concerns and may pose a risk to the public. That Dr. Cathleen London is “using an insulin pen, which she fills herself with epinephrine” should terrify anyone.
Epinephrine is injectable adrenaline. Given in an incorrect dose, it will cause cardiac arrhythmia or death. Epinephrine is available in a variety of dilutions, and an incorrect dose from an incorrect dilution will have dire consequences.
The infectious and contamination risks posed by London’s in-office alchemy are not small. London “bats those worries away” because she is not marketing the device for use outside her practice. This attitude betrays a lack of concern for patients’ welfare and should be severely admonished, at the least by patients and their caretakers.
Jenie Smith, MD
Eastport
Improve Maine’s health ranking
I agree with the March 3 BDN editorial about the current decline in the state’s health ranking that “the LePage administration’s approach to public health is reminiscent of its incessant efforts it cut services and make life harder for the state’s poorest residents.” There needs to be more of an effort made to ensure that people regardless of their socioeconomic status have the health services they need. The governor needs to implement options that will improve the state’s health ranking. Cutting tobacco prevention and other programs that benefit the residents of Maine is not the right option.
The governor should also be more cognizant when it comes to the role that public health nurses play in caring for the state’s citizens. Since the public health nursing program has already seen drastic cuts in an attempt to balance the state’s budget this is an area that should be left alone. A variety of services that used to be offered to new mothers in caring for infants have fallen by the wayside. For instance, nurses used to come into the home to help check infants and mothers for health complications.
Whether it is programs that are being used to help prevent tobacco use by teenagers or the care provided to infants and mothers by public health nurses, there need to be a system of health services put into place that will strengthen the state’s current ranking from 22nd place.
Benjamin Bucklin
Searsport