This week’s edition!
Letters
LETTER: Macdonald thanks voters, vows to curb “affordable housing”
To the Editor:
To all the voters who supported my candidacy for Mayor of Lewiston, I send my heartfelt thanks to you. As a veteran of the Vietnam conflict, I know firsthand the pain and sacrifice that our men and women undergo to preserve the right and duty to vote in America.
Now, on to the run-off election on December 13. If you voted for me on November 8, please make a special effort to return to the polls, or vote absentee, on December 13. If everyone who voted for me in November returns to the polls and repeats the vote, we should all benefit from your generosity.
We are going to hear many promises made in the upcoming weeks from our opponent. Choo-choo trains on Lincoln Street, jobs galore and good times for all—everyone getting along here in a wonderful Camelot on the right bank of the Androscoggin River.
LETTER: Don’t tell Mainers how to vote on casinos
To the Editor:
Regarding the defeat of Question 3 at the polls, which proposed a casino in Lewiston, it was interesting to read in Mayor Gilbert’s Twin City TIMES column on November 10, 2011 that neither he nor governor Lepage are “gamblers.”
Here are a couple of revealing quotes from this column. First, from Mayor Gilbert: “As for gambling. I do. Here is the extent of it, I spent $15 in the machines during one week in Las Vegas, and I buy one State of Maine Megabucks ticket weekly and a Powerball ticket when I think of it.”
Second, from Governor LePage: “I do not gamble. The only gambling I do is I get up in the morning and go to work and hope I get home safely. That’s my biggest gamble.”
LETTER: Why bankrupt Social Security sooner?
To the Editor:
Whenever Congress mentions lowering Social Security benefits, we are urged to call Congress and tell them to leave Social Security alone. For decades we have heard Social Security was “going broke.”
The Social Security system, from its beginning, was based on equal contributions by employers and employees, most recently at 6.2 percent of wages. If these contributions were smaller, wouldn’t Social Security be bankrupt sooner?
The December 2010 tax changes and this year’s “American Jobs Act” do just that. To offset the small 2011 increase in workers’ income tax withholding, Social Security withholding was adjusted all year and “for only one year” from 6.2 percent to 4.2 percent.
LETTER: Transitioning from Welfare to Work
To the Editor:
It’s strange, but the experts, the economists, that should understand the economy, don’t, and even when they are convinced they do, they are unable to agree. Of course, like broken clocks, some of them and their theories must be right some of the time, but when and which ones? And, whenever the government interferes, it becomes complicated, sometimes disappointing and sometimes humorous. This is especially evident regarding work and welfare.
For myself, I find economics too complex to understand and I have to simplify it. I imagine a remote New England farming community in the 1890s. In this scene that springs from imagination, cattle graze near large barns; ripening fields of corn race beside their restraining fences until both disappear in the distance. Powerful farm horses, joined to their companion wagons move at a slow, but familiar pace on unpaved roads that serve to both separate and connect individual farms. Within my imaginary scene, the farm buildings, the fields, both those cleared and those planted, and the community roads are evidence of work already completed and the preparation for work yet to be acomplished. The scene, because it’s of my own creation, is always pleasant and always suffused with warm summer sunshine.
LETTER: “Sid the Nazi” joins Occupy Wall Street
To the Editor:
Matt Labash, a reporter for the conservative Weekly Standard, recently spent a couple of days mingling with the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) crowd at Zucotti Park in Manhattan. Thanks to him, we have a photo of Sid in the October 17 issue.
“Sid the Nazi” (the label he has chosen for himself) appears shirtless with tattoos of bare-breasted women, dark glasses, a cigarette dangling from his mouth and an AFSCME cap. He borrowed the cap from a friend.
LETTER: Making good schools great
To the Editor:
As superintendent of Lewiston Public Schools, I want to respond to Dick Sabine’s lengthy criticism of the present contract between the Lewiston School Committee and our teachers (Letter to the Editor: “Teachers’ contract is too generous; school committee is complacent,” TCT, Oct. 27, 2011).
This contract is the result of a negotiation process that results in compromises and trade-offs on both sides. When certain sections are taken separately, most any contract will have provisions that may seem unduly generous or restrictive to employer or employee. Taken as a whole, however, this contract is generally competitive with our neighboring school districts.
LETTER: Vote “No” on Question 1
To the Editor:
Vote “No” on Question 1.
There are ridiculous claims by those who want you to vote “Yes.” They create an impression that you could lose your right to vote unless you support this ballot question. They put forth an innuendo that all of us will need to re-register to vote, and they claim there are precious days for registration that are being taken away from us. What a pile of hooey!
Check these points:
The current law, which these liberals want to overturn, does not take away anyone’s right to vote. It simply stops registration to vote two days before the election (250 other days are available for you to register). This gives the election clerks time to check all of the newly registered voters to determine if they are fraudulent or not. If you have registered once at your current address, you have no need to re-register.
LETTER: Teachers’ contract is generous; school committee is complacent
To the Editor:
Our schools fail because of our teachers, our school committees and ourselves.
Most teachers I’ve known were good—at least two were saintly. Teachers are like snowflakes; they can be individually wonderful, but calamitous in great numbers. And, when they coalesce into a union, they shed both their personality and their good nature. They become self-serving and foreign to the purpose of teaching.
They do not change solely by themselves, but are complicit with their school committees. I know few school committee members and those only casually; I can’t testify to their individual qualities. I have to judge them by their group behavior, and by this judgment they are unattractive. Under their authority, our schools have failed for a decade or more.
LETTER: Teaching English should be first priority
To the Editor:
As hard as we try, we fail to provide an adequate public education for our immigrant children. These children and the adults responsible for their education face a problem so significant that only partial success is possible or expected. Because these children speak little or no English, any hope their parents and their teachers might have for their future must be restrained; in addition to the school lessons all beginning students must learn, they must also learn the language for those lessons.
If we are to understand their problem, we must first be aware of the learning difficulties encountered by children who begin school already speaking English. Educators know that the social economic standing of the family is the best predictor of a child’s academic success. This is so prevalent, it is said that a school can be judged, its academic success accurately predicted, just by observing the quality of automobiles in the student parking lot.
LETTER: Maine People’s Alliance protests “voter suppression effort”
To the Editor:
I’m writing in response to State Rep. Richard M. Cebra’s unbelievable rant in the October 13, 2011 issue of the Twin City TIMES (Letter to the Editor: “Maine People’s Alliance doesn’t represent the people of Maine,” page 3).
For those of you who missed it, he equated the Maine People’s Alliance with a fringe group of anti-corporate hooligans. He cited an action that we undertook in June of this year at a Bank of America in Brunswick to help prove his point. He stretched this to try to invalidate the efforts of over 20 coalition partners in gathering more than enough signatures in just over three weeks this summer to get the election-day registration issue on the ballot.
I’m a proud member of the Maine People’s Alliance. I am a volunteer and not a professional protestor. I was one of the people who spoke at the Brunswick Bank of America this past June. We are part of the 99%.
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