Sherry Huber is wrong

I am writing in response to Sherry Huber’s OpEd in the BDN endorsing Barack Obama. Huber is absolutely wrong when she says Obama has the vision to lead our country in the right direction when it comes to the economy and energy. Looking strictly at the facts, it is clear Obama does not have what it takes to make our country less dependent on foreign oil and he won’t generate tax breaks for the middle class. John McCain has what it takes.

Obama is not for change. Under an Obama administration, we can expect tax hikes and more bureaucracy in Washington. His record speaks for itself. In the short time he’s been in the Senate, Obama has voted for tax increases an astounding 94 times. Obama and Joe Biden speak over and over again about how they will help the middle class, but Obama even voted to raise taxes on Americans making as little as $42,000 a year. So Ms. Huber is wrong when she claims we can expect middle-class tax cuts from Obama. With a record like that it is doubtful anyone can expect any tax relief.

John McCain’s economic policies embrace small-business owners, entrepreneurs and every hardworking American. I know John McCain has my best interests in mind when he makes economic policies.

Nicholas Smalley

Orono

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Nurse backs Collins

Nurses are the single largest group of health care providers in Maine and the nation. There is a severe shortage of registered nurses looming as baby boomer nurses retire. This retiring further magnifies the shortage of teaching faculty, who educate the next generation of nurses. As a nurse educator, I have had several opportunities to enlist Sen. Susan Collins’ assistance for funding to address this impending nursing shortage.

I have had the rewarding experience of visiting Sen. Collins in her Senate office in Washington. She and her staff go out of their way to welcome Maine constituents, listen to their needs and follow through by advocating for bipartisan support from her colleagues.

Sen. Collins has been one of the leading proponents in the Senate for nurse education and work force development funding. In recognition of her extraordinary support for nurses, she has received multiple awards including: American Association Colleges of Nursing Outstanding Leadership in Nursing Award; American Nursing Shortage Relief Public Service Award; and Friend of Maine Nursing Award from The University of Maine-Husson College Omicron Xi Chapter Sigma Theta Tau International Honor Society of Nursing.

To ensure safe, quality health care and to maintain an educated nursing work force in Maine and the nation, we need to keep Susan Collins in the senate. For these reasons I remain a supportive Democrat for “my senator,” Susan Collins.

Teresa Willett Steele

Brewer

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America not alone

While couching his platitudes about reproductive responsibility in an encomium to Mark Steyn, Hayes Gahagan may have lulled readers into thinking he was being a reasonable political moderate. However, buried in his OpEd piece, “Reproduction and responsibility vital to U.S.” (BDN, Sept. 11), is his major point: We need to breed more white Americans to make sure America does not become like Europe where Arab, Muslim, African, and Asian people are threatening the white gene pool.

Steyn’s book, “America Alone,” is on the best-seller list because some think his political incorrectness is funny. He is not a “culturist,” as he claims. He is a racist. He refers to members of the human race as “Japs, Gooks, Wogs, Prophet-monkeys, and Chinks.” Apparently, he and Gahagan are both ignorant of the fact that Arabs invented basic arithmetic, algebra and trigonometry and that Egyptians invented writing long before our European ancestors did.

If Gahagan’s views speak for all Maine Republicans, then we are all the poorer. In Gahagan’s view, a “nanny government” must be one that practices tolerance of people as individuals, supports religious freedom, and prosecutes hate crimes. It sounds like the Bill of Rights to me.

Pro-life in my book is pro-everyone: women, children, and all human beings. “Pro-lifers” cannot be just pro-baby; they must oppose the death penalty, all war, oppression, and intolerance and injustice here and around the world.

Mac Herrling

Orland

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Islamic threat is real

In a Sept. 18 letter to the editor, William Babson Jr. criticized Hayes Gahagan for his stand on the right-to-life issue. While I am firmly in the anti-abortion camp, my concern with Babson’s letter is that he slides over another extremely significant issue, the threat of “Islamofascists.”

In today’s politically correct society it seems as though the only acceptable targets are Republicans, pro-life advocates and evangelicals. It is apparently impolite to openly discuss or publicize the dangers of radical Islam. Gahagan may be warning us to wake up and stop smelling the roses.

It is possible that Gahagan picked up the term “Islamofascist” from a book by Brigitte Gabriel, “Because They Hate.” Gabriel is a Lebanese native who clearly and frighteningly lays out the threat of these groups to our civilization, and the issue of their use of population growth in order to spread their cancerous campaign. This is a book every American should read. Whether you describe them as “fascists” or “terrorists” is a moot point — whatever you call them, radical Islamists are a real and present danger to all of us.

Robert Merriam

Stockton Springs

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Our nation’s priorities

I am proudly voting for Barack Obama and Joe Biden. They are correct on our nation’s priorities: we need to spend taxpayer dollars here in the United States to start to rebuild our fragile economy for our unmet industrial, education, health, energy and infrastructure needs; and carefully withdraw from Iraq to rebuild our national security.

The front page of the Sept. 19 Wall Street Journal showed how much money the Bush Administration (with a tiny amount from other central banks) has paid in the last month to bail out our financial sector — $465 billion.

Now our leaders are talking about a new “rescue” institution similar to the one that cost the U.S. taxpayers and financial institutions $185 billion during President H.W. Bush administration to rescue 747 failed savings and loan associations.

We need to leave Iraq. Reports indicate that 4,162 U.S. soldiers have died and more than 50,000 have been physically or mentally impaired. U.S. taxpayers have authorized almost $800 billion on direct military operations of this war — almost all borrowed. Our authority to remain in Iraq ends on Dec. 31, 2008. Iraq is a sovereign nation and the government and most Iraqi citizens do not want us there.

This month, Iraq is negotiating a $3 billion oil contract with China National Petroleum. Iraq has just canceled its technical oil field service agreements with ExxonMobil, Chevron and other companies. Our country’s companies are not even getting Iraq’s oil.

Philip H. Person

Orland

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Cell phone usage

We must pass a law concerning talking on a cell phone while driving.

When someone has one hand on the wheel and the other on a cell phone, their focus is on the phone call.

I walk a lot and I know to stay way over on the road or sidewalk because surely these drivers’ focus isn’t on their surroundings.

We passed the seat belt law, and now the smoking in the car with children, and now it is time to pass a law against driving while talking or texting on a cell phone.

Joan M. Robertson

Eddington

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Francis of Assisi

Eight hundred years ago, Francis of Assisi began to live a life in which he embraced poverty and selflessness to take up the cross and proclaim love as the way. He lived in a time of great violence in which his church and society were waging war against the Islamic people.

On Oct. 4, during the Feast of St. Francis, we will celebrate International Keep Space for Peace Week with a vigil at Bath Iron Works. BIW builds the Arleigh Burke class of Aegis Destroyers and has contracted to build the new Zumwalt Destroyers. These destroyers are part of our nation’s theatre missile defense or “star wars” program which places weapons and military satellites in outer space.

With fewer sailors and more weaponry, the Zumwalt destroyers are launching platforms for weapons of mass destruction. They are designed to attack the enemy and to fire missiles at targets hundreds of miles away creating a shock and awe type of terrorism in which human life and environmental degradation are considered collateral damage. These warships are a crime against humanity.

Can we realize and embrace disarmament just as Francis threw off the trappings of militarism and lived in a way that honors all of the creatures of the Earth and beauty of the heavens? Please join us on Saturday, Oct. 4, the Feast of St. Francis, from 11:30 to 12:30 at the BIW Administration Building on Washington Street in Bath, to honor the heavens, to say No! to weapons in Space, and to conspire toward a disarmed world.

George and Maureen Ostensen

Hope

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End sleepless nights

Though I’d hoped the sleepless nights from worrying about Bush’s trashing of the country were finally over, it does seem kind of fitting that his terrorist administration should end with one final, gargantuan assault (adding further insult to countless prior injuries) against his own people.

Assuming that Bush’s finance team is as incompetent as the rest of his administration has been, it would behoove us all to call our senators and representatives as soon as is humanly possible to protest any attempt to leave future generations of everyday Americans holding the bag, (possibly trillions of dollars in bad loans and debt) so that the rich, greedy, outrageously-leveraged, investment bankers don’t have to.

As Robert Reich (Clinton’s money man) said recently, the remedy for the turmoil on Wall Street should be bankruptcy for the mismanaged companies and more (and more transparent) regulation of the banking sector into the future.

Melodie Greene

Calais

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Refreshing story

Two things about Seamore. One, where most of the news we read these days is bad or sad, it was refreshing to have a little miniseries on the abduction and recovery of Seamore the gorilla. Cute story. Happy ending.

Two , the photo of the kids riding in the back of the pickup with Seamore… well, that’s a parade of sorts, don’t you think, with a police escort and people along the route waving and all?

With all of today’s crushing news, it was good to have a story to make some of us smile.

Nannette Romanelli

Princeton

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Don’t be sheep

Many of you will vote for Obama because you want “change,” because he is young and speaks well to a crowd, or because for some reason you see it as a vote against Bush. Don’t be sheep. Actually listen to what the man does and doesn’t say. Pay attention to what we will get if he becomes president.

Thirty eight percent of Americans don’t pay income taxes. Obama plans to raise that number to 50 percent. That goes against my belief that all should pay their fair share. Those who don’t pay any income taxes will also see refunded tax credits for education, mortgage payments, heating costs, and other items.

You can’t pass that burden onto those that Obama classifies as “wealthy” — those who own the businesses that drive our economy. His tax and health care plans will drive us toward economic ruin. Obama will slash military spending to help cover his new welfare programs; this will put us at risk of a terrorist attack as it did immediately after the Clinton years.

Obama wants a windfall tax on “Big Oil.” ExxonMobil’s profits last quarter were reported to be $1,400 per second. It also paid $4,000 per second in taxes. The government already gets more than its fair share. His plan for oil is to drill less, consume less, and tax more.

Don’t be sheep. Look at what this candidate stands for, to what he says, and realize what he will do to our country. Jimmy Carter was a terrible president — Obama will be disastrous.

Alice M. Herrick

Blue Hill

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Campaign distortions

On Sept. 19, “The News Hour with Jim Lehrer” showed a clip of a speech by John McCain in which he castigated Barack Obama for taking more than $100,000 in campaign contributions from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. After the clip, the TV reporter said that actually McCain had received a much greater contribution from the companies.

Lies and deliberate distortions have been prominent in the speeches of the two Republican candidates. McCain accused Obama of advocating sex education for kindergarten children. This was blatantly false.

Sarah Palin has repeatedly said that she said “thanks but no thanks” to the bridge to nowhere, but she took the money. She rails against pork and lobbyists, but she hired a Washington lobbying firm to secure pork for her state. Alaska has the highest per capita pork allotment of any state.

It is about time we had some honest officials, not attack dogs who do nothing but viciously go after their opponents. It would be nice if we could have an honest discussion of issues.

June Stiller

Sebec

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Supporting Collins

During this hectic election season, one is faced with a wide range of opinions, half-truths, and wildly erroneous statements that paint a very misleading picture of certain candidates. Although most writers are sincere in their support of a candidate, they often resort to inaccurate characterizations of others. This negative approach may attract some, but to me it reveals a lack of personal integrity and a desperate attempt to win at any cost.

I have had the pleasure of knowing Sen. Susan Collins, and working with her to help Maine residents for many years. Her public service has been recognized nationally, and here in Maine she and her local staff provide support and assistance to everyone regardless of party affiliation or philosophical differences. Working with Maine’s growing elderly population, I am keenly aware of Sen. Collins’ interest and ability to further the aims of such legislation as the Older American’s Act, which provides a broad array of services to seniors here and across America. Her ability to reach across the aisle and seek consensus on matters of importance underscores her strength, and ability to get things done. Susan Collins is a strong, dedicated, and knowledgeable senator serving Maine, and her re-election on Nov. 4 is in the best interest of Maine residents.

Nelson Durgin

Bangor

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Save the landmarks

The city of Bangor has seen major improvements to many of its architecturally significant buildings in recent years. There is a renewed appreciation for historic buildings, complemented by streetscape projects undertaken by the city. Residents can look with pride at the restored Opera House, the Vestry building now owned by Merrill Bank, and after many years of neglect, the prominent Nichols Mansion at the corner of Union and High Streets is getting a new lease on life. Many still lament the destruction of so many of the city’s architectural gems through the urban renewal program, but fortunately, many still survive.

However, the pressure is always on to protect historic buildings from damage by careless owners attempting to “rehab” without regard to a building’s integrity thus causing irreparable damage to the building, neighborhood, and the community. In hindsight, the boundaries of the historic district should have been expanded to include other unique structures in the immediate area of the Nichols Mansion. Inclusion in this district would afford some level of protection for the buildings and guidance for owners before making repairs that affect the exterior appearance.

Owners of historic buildings should feel compelled to be good stewards of their properties for future generations. Since that is not always realistic, communities need to take an assertive lead to protect them through appropriate ordinances, code enforcement, and incentives. A review and update to Bangor’s historic district boundaries might help save some of these endangered landmarks.

Ron Harriman

Brewer

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Smiley’s writing

I am responding to the letter written by Andrea Maberry of Deer Isle in which she implies that Sarah Smiley is “grumping” about her move to Maine. Maberry needs to take a more objective look at Smiley’s writing.

Smiley is not making light of Maine’s or an individual’s economic woes, as Maberry suggests. Smiley is writing about her personal experiences, in a humorous manner, about moving from the south to the north. Maberry does not state where she moved from 20 years ago, but moving from different regions of the country is a difficult transition for a family.

I definitely felt Smiley’s same emotions when she brought her children to school and groups of mothers were milling around outside of the school and she and her children knew no one. My family has moved 12 times in the past 31 years, one of those moves to a different country, and two moves from the north to the south. The culture, customs and language are very different in many regions of the United States. Smiley is just making light of her transition to another region and writing about experiences that many other people have had.

Hopefully some kind “Maniac” has taken Smiley under their wing and is helping her with the transition.

With all the negative and “woe is me “ articles that readers are confronted with daily, it is refreshing to read a writer’s column where she writes humorously about her family and personal experiences and can put a smile on another reader’s face.

Susan White

Dedham