Take power to the polls
The Women’s March, through a loosely organized group called Indivisible, sparked a movement that arose spontaneously in towns and cities across the United States. The goal of that movement — to resist President Donald Trump — has become more critical with every passing tweet.
There is not space enough here to list all the ways in which the country and the world are being damaged. Beyond the latest outrage about “shithole countries,” there is the ongoing plan to build a wall, the failure to protect the “Dreamers” and the wide-ranging attack on the environment, including a plan to massively expand offshore oil drilling. Federal courts are being packed with Trump’s unqualified, right-wing nominees. The State Department is being gutted and the president brags about the size of his nuclear button.
It’s all too surreal to digest, and I confess to being freaked out. Yes, as a child of the 1960s, that term still comes to mind.
We have failed before but we must try again. There is no other option. This time the protest energy is not coming primarily from college campuses, as it did in the ‘60s. It is coming from everywhere, geographically, and it cuts across race, ethnicity, gender and age. It is coming from the deeply felt need to change the direction of our government. And that can only be done at the ballot box.
So the next stage of the resistance has to be about the serious work of grass-roots politics. Support good candidates, work on voter registration and against voter suppression. This is the time to take our power to the polls.
Dixie Hathaway
Bar Harbor
Hope for health care
On Dec. 22, President Donald Trump signed into law a tax reform bill with a number of intended and unintended consequences. In the health care field, these will likely include increased numbers of uninsured Americans and increased premiums for those who are insured.
But here in Maine there’s hope: Just two days before that signing, a Task Force on Health Care Coverage for All of Maine held its first meeting in Augusta “to study the design and implementation of options for a health care plan that provides coverage for all residents of the State.” One of three options presented would be “a design for a government-administered and publicly financed universal payer health benefits system that is decoupled from employment, that prohibits insurance coverage for the health services provided by the system and that allows for private insurance coverage of only supplemental health services.” The other two would be “a universal health benefits system with integrated delivery of health care and integrated payment systems for all individuals that is centrally administered,” and one that “allows individuals to choose between the public option and private insurance coverage.”
Here then, for those concerned about health care, is a suggestion for a New Year’s resolution: Write to members of the task force, telling them what kind of health care system you would like to have. Better yet, to go to one of the next meeting on March 2 and tell them face to face.
It’s an opportunity not to be missed.
Daniel Bryant, M.D.
Cape Elizabeth
Make military service compulsory for all
Every American should serve this country for a minimum of two years. No exceptions. No exemptions. Black, white, Hispanic, Asian, man, woman, Jew, Catholic, Muslim, Baptist, Congregationalist, gay, transgender, rich, middle class and poor. We all must serve. It is what we owe for the privilege of living in this free and democratic society.
I was raised in a small, nearly all-white small town in the hills of western Massachusetts. Arriving at Fort Dix in June 1961, I began sharing a barracks with most of the above. We were awoken at 5 a.m. to the recorded sound of reveille, trained in close order drill by a Puerto Rican sergeant, given firearms training by a black noncommissioned officer, and led by another rough white drill instructor. We cleaned latrines, crawled under barbed wire under fire. We found we shared the same humanity, the same gripes and became a unit under adversity. And it gave me a perspective on race that has lasted a lifetime as a civilian and citizen.
Wealth and privilege and the elimination of the draft have insulated them from military service, and that is a shame. They have been deprived of the privilege of sharing those same barracks with their peers and of cleaning those same latrines.
I hated my three years of military service. But I am a better citizen because of it.
Our president has not served. And our nation and the world in this nuclear age suffer mightily from that lack of service.
Dick Hoyt
Lubec
Trump’s vulgar remark
I was outraged when I heard what President Donald Trump said about Haiti and African nations. To think this man holding the highest office in the land could make such a vulgar comment boggles my mind. But why should I be surprised; it isn’t the first time he’s made disparaging remarks. Doesn’t he realize or care that he’s putting our military people in danger as well as private American citizens living in these countries.
If Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin hadn’t been in that room that day, maybe the American people would never had known the vile comments that Trump made. The president denies it, of course, as usual. But in his first year in office, he already has told more than 2,000 lies, so what’s one more?
Thank goodness Republican Lindsey Graham, one of the six Republican senators in the meeting, supported Durbin’s account. Republicans David Perdue of Georgia and Tom Cotton of Arkansas initially said they couldn’t recall Trump saying those awful words, then later denied he said them at all.
The Republicans should be ashamed of themselves for enabling this man for all his terrible misdeeds, and this time it was one of the worse. The president and all branches of government are supposed to represent the American people who sent them to Washington, and they certainly aren’t doing a very good job.
I hope when election time comes around, their constituent’s remember all the missteps they took to lie for Trump. I know I will.
Estelle J. Bowden
Bucksport