US should work with Russia
The liberals have been going after our president since he was nominated, let alone elected. The other day they were picketing in Washington, D.C., against him, trying to get him impeached, according to the signs. Then an NBC news commentator was raving about how the president was politicizing the terrorist attack on the London Bridge.
They twist everything he says or does into something bad. They are upset about his withdrawal from the Paris climate accord, though it is one of his promises that helped him get elected. The Paris accord would have cost us billions and lost jobs.
They holler about him telling the Russian foreign minister that the Islamic State was developing laptop bombs to put on airliners. President Donald Trump has the authority to share intelligence with Russia, especially since they have had planes destroyed by terrorist bombs before and Russia warned us that Tamerlan Tsarnaev was a radical Islamist two years before he bombed the Boston Marathon.
We should work with all countries to defeat Islamist terrorism. Why should we want to fight with Russia anyway? Russia is not Communist anymore. It is a free country and a Christian country, probably more Christian than the United States. It has been steadily building churches and is paying women when they have babies, while we still fund Planned Parenthood, a top abortion provider in the United States.
Tom Coleman Sr.
Dedham
Ranked-choice voting isn’t the answer
Supporters of ranked-choice voting are trying to make us think there was an overwhelming mandate in support of it, so we should immediately start the process of changing the Maine Constitution to make it legal. Not so.
Actually, only about 52 percent of voters supported ranked-choice voting, which is far from overwhelming support. And quite likely many of the 52 percent would have voted differently if they had known the law would be found unconstitutional, so the whole ballot issue would be a waste of time and millions of dollars.
Creating a new and much more complicated voting system would be no guarantee that better candidates would be elected. Those who don’t like the results of any election should make efforts to find better candidates for the next one and give them their full support. Expensive fiddling with the voting system won’t be the answer.
Lawrence E. Merrill
Bangor
Economic health about more than population
Thanks for Matthew Gagnon’s June 8 BDN column, “Lying to ourselves about cities’ economic health.” The next time I teach critical thinking I will use it as an example of woefully under-thought writing. The only measure Gagnon offers of city health is population. The Economist magazine points out that any single measure (GDP, population, and so on) is a grossly misleading description of a country’s health if not linked with many others. The same holds for cities.
Gagnon holds Fargo, North Dakota, as a paragon of success. The U.S. Census lists Fargo’s population as 120,762, North Dakota’s largest city. Fargo’s population growth parallels the recent growth of North Dakota’s fracking oil extraction. If Gagnon had done his homework, he would have found that Fargo had three times the murders, nine times the burglaries and 15 times the auto thefts per 100,000 that Bangor had in 2015. There is an economic principle about boom-and-bust cycles akin to the one in physics: What goes up must come down. We do well to remember that Mother Nature prefers balance and equilibrium to unchecked growth.
When my wife and I chose to move to Maine last fall, we chose Bangor. We did so not because of its demographic trajectory. We explored and experienced Bangor’s cultural environment, public library, public services, restaurants, churches, newspaper, recreation, natural environment, downtown charm, medical and health care, and friendly people. Economists study “consumer confidence.” The revival and spirit in downtown Bangor manifest a confident, healthy city. We have not been disappointed and know we made the right choice.
Tom White-Hassler
Bangor