More diverse council benefits all
This year Bangor residents are in the fortunate position of having six candidates to choose from to fill three open seats on the city council. With two well-qualified woman candidates on the ballot, we also have the opportunity to correct a terrible gender imbalance on the council and, ultimately, serve ourselves and our city by diversifying the voices that represent us.
Over half of Bangor’s population is female but we wouldn’t know it from looking at our elected officials. Today, just one of Bangor’s nine city council seats is held by a woman, Councilor Sarah Nichols. And until we improve the diversity of the pipeline to state and national politics, women representatives at those levels will remain low as well.
Gender diversity is important. So too is a diversity of experience and background. Our two female candidates running for seats this year represent important – and different – industry sectors in Bangor, where 6,160 employees work in food preparation and serving related occupations and 4,700 work in education, training, and library occupations.
We have good representation from men and business sectors. This year, let’s support candidates who will bring voices that are not yet well represented on council.
Amy Blackstone
Bangor
Medicaid expansion benefits
Unfortunately, many voters aren’t swayed by the arguments about the benefits of Medicaid expansion to recipients. There are other important reasons that should be made clear.
First is the idea that Medicaid/MaineCare is just for poor people, children, the aged or people with disabilities. While these groups are the recipients, all Maine people benefit from Medicaid. For example, Medicaid picks up costs such as “bad debt” that otherwise would be paid by private insurance. Hospitals in geographic areas hard hit by poverty, and thus having more Medicaid recipients, are subsidized under “disproportionate share” rules. Medicaid makes up a substantial portion of hospital costs. Many hospitals would close without it (and rural hospitals are already struggling).
Perhaps a more direct appeal to voter self-interest will be more helpful? Some people may not understand that Medicaid recipients do not get money. The money goes to people who provide healthcare (doctors, nurses, technicians, pharmacists, home health aides, etc.).
These medical service providers live in every community in the state. Their wages or fees are spent on goods and services in their communities. This money helps Maine communities to grow since most of it goes for the expenses of daily living, like groceries, clothes, housing, taxes, cars, recreation, etc. It is, then, an investment in ourselves.
Knowing the enormous impact of these dollars on their town, would help people to understand how everyone benefits from the proposed expansion.
Dean Crocker
Manchester
Do our votes matter?
When each of us enters the booth next month and votes for or against Medicaid expansion, we might do well to ask, what does our vote matter? Participation in the democratic process is of course the mainstay of our rights as citizens. Yet as our governor and the Legislature have shown in the recent past, if they want to override the preference of the electorate, they will do so with sweet words and a smile, but without a second thought.
Whether it be the recreational use of pot or ranked-choice voting to name just two issues, our elected officials have no qualms about putting roadblocks in the process. No, it’s not enough that the people have spoken; our representatives think they know better and will delay implementation and go to court with their uncompromising, paternalistic attitude.
We shouldn’t need a law mandating that the will of the people be followed. But we do.
Steve Colhoun
Addison
Vote no on Question 1
If you are having trouble coming to the decision to vote no on Question 1, Google “casinos gambling addiction encouragement” and read the article “ Losing it all” from the December 2016 issue of The Atlantic. Consider these points:
People, families, and businesses in you local community have been destroyed by gambling. Because it is in the best interest of government to play ball with the casinos, we don’t hear about it.
While politicians preach tax equity, the people who gamble the most are the lowest on the economic ladder. It is called a tax on the stupid.
The casino industry consciously focuses on customers they determine are most vulnerable to gambling addiction. The high net worth customers are referred to as whales.
Technology allows the casinos to manipulate the odds. Per the Atlantic article, a “normal” machine has odds of winning of 1 in 10,648. With virtual reel mapping, the odds are one in 137 million!
Vote no on 1. And while we are at it, close down Bangor and Oxford, and shut down the state lottery.
Lewis Payne
Holden
Yes on Question 2
What do people in 31 states, including the all rest of New England, have that Maine people do not? Healthcare coverage through Medicaid that is mostly federally funded, with nine federal dollars to every one dollar spent by the state.
Question 2 on the ballot on Nov. 7 gives Maine the opportunity to expand Medicaid (MaineCare) and bring over $500 million annually in new federal health care funds to our state each year to cover more than 70,000 low-income Mainers who do not have employer-funded insurance and cannot afford their own policies.
In our own Penobscot County, 9,000 adults between the ages of 21 and 64 would be eligible for insurance coverage through MaineCare, and 750 new jobs would be created (nearly 500 of these in our health care sector), according to the Maine Center for Economic Policy. This is a win for people who need reliable, affordable health care, and for our hospitals and community health centers, many of which are struggling to take care of uninsured patients.
I urge everyone to vote yes on Question 2 on Nov. 7. It’s good for the people who will be eligible, most of whom work low wage jobs where coverage is not available or affordable, and it’s also good for Maine’s economy.
Mary Cathcart
Orono
Election notice
The Bangor Daily News has stopped accepting letters and OpEds related to the Nov. 7 election. Not all submissions can be published.
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