Defend ranked-choice voting
Back in 2014 and 2015, I worked hard to collect to signatures from my fellow residents in Belfast to place the issue of ranked-choice voting on the ballot in November 2016. The potential benefits of ranked-choice voting — majority rule, more choice, positive conduct between candidates during election season — were not a partisan issue. I worked with and got signatures from Democrats and Republicans. It’s really a fix that brings people together.
The issue was put on the ballot and passed with the second largest “yes” vote on a referendum in Maine’s history.
That’s why it shocks me when I hear that lawmakers in Augusta want another shot at fully repealing the law altogether. I hope people who voted for this will contact their representative and tell them what ranked-choice voting means to them.
We need as many voices as possible. Our chance to use ranked-choice voting during the 2018 election cycle is what’s at stake.
Martha Conway-Cole
Belfast
Time for Medicare for all
I’ve been a practicing physician for more than 50 years, and I can’t understand why health care for all is always booted down the road as a lower priority. Things are great when you feel good, but when you get sick there is nothing more important than that.
The time has come for Medicare for all. Medicare works, and it certainly has less overhead than private insurance.
I have never understood why employers are involved in health care. We are handcuffing businesses with costs. Why not remove that health care shackle from businesses and allow them to become more competitive (especially internationally) doing what they do best — their business? We should all be paying taxes for Medicare for all. That’s the largest insurance pool of all, and we all deserve good health care, regardless of income.
This might be a particularly good time to push for Medicare for all. The Republicans are seeing how hard it is to do their thing. Why aren’t the Republicans rooting to have the health care burden taken out of business? That’s the best thing they could do for the economy.
I can hear the complaints about higher taxes and having to pay for others’ health care. Yes, that’s true, but we all are paying for it all right now, and inefficiently so. A lifetime of poor or no medical care produces a mountain of health care bills at the end. Medicare can be the vehicle for better care for all. What is more important in any country than a healthy populace and workforce? Nothing.
Philip C. Groce
Union
John Birch Society smear
The BDN published a column by American Enterprise Institute fellow Marc Thiessen, who claimed, falsely, that the John Birch Society was anti-Semitic at one time. When the error was brought to light by the innocent victims of this ugly lie, “widely believed” was added in as cover. This is dishonest in the extreme.
As a contributor to the society’s publication, The New American, allow me to set the record straight. The society is not and never has been anti-Semitic. In fact, when the California Senate investigated this charge in the early 1960s, it concluded that “our investigations have disclosed no evidence of anti-Semitism on the part of anyone connected with the John Birch Society in California, and much evidence to the effect that it opposes racism in all forms.” This was obvious, considering the prominent Jewish leaders on the society’s National Council from its founding and the fact that the society has always expelled any anti-Semitic infiltrators who may be found out.
Next, the column claims William Buckley allegedly “excommunicated” the society from the “respectable right.” Of course, Buckley wrote in his magazine, the National Review, that whites, as the “ advanced race,” had every right to deny black people the vote. Thiessen’s fellow American Enterprise Institute fellow Charles Murray has been designated a “white nationalist” who promotes “racist pseudoscience” by the left-wing Southern Poverty Law Center.
The John Birch Society, by contrast, has expelled racists and has always rejected racism.
Let’s not let white supremacists and white nationalists define the “respectable right.” And let’s not allow people like Thiessen to smear good Americans with blatant lies.
Alex Newman
Miami, Florida