To the Editor:

We have arrived once more to that time and place where we delude ourselves into believing we can cast our single vote and change government.

We try to select the best candidates, but in moments of honesty, we have to admit that we are truly uninformed voters. We don’t know the details of the issues; we don’t truly know the candidates.  And, although we may have seen them in the flesh, may have made eye contact as they, with what appeared to be sincerity, spoke the words we desperately wanted to hear, we don’t truly know them.

But we know from long experience that those that would seek public office have all been invested with the same magical phrases necessary for an incantation to gain the public trust. We hear this litany of phrases: reduce taxes, provide help for the needy, improve education, create jobs, help veterans. Like sheep following a Judas goat, we are comfortably—but wrongly—reassured.

Forced to choose, like adolescents seeking a relationship, we choose to vote for the likeable, for the attractive, and—like adolescents—we are invariably disappointed. Politicians, like overweight, middle-aged men at the beach, holding in their stomachs, have only to appear attractive while someone is looking.

We should be realistic and accept that even sincere politicians will ultimately become infected with the common disease of government whose most significant symptom is inappropriately spending the public’s money. Those campaigning politicians, both Democrats and Republicans, who previously, seductively said they didn’t want to increase taxes, have, like jackals assembled at a carcass, agreed to set aside their differences and agreed to pick the bones of the taxpayers, to increase taxes while placing the blame upon the victims.

The instrument used is a bond package, which is credit-card spending that will ultimately have to be repaid with additional taxes. Thus approving the bond package makes voters responsible for raising the state’s debt and ultimately raising taxes.

Dick Sabine

Lewiston