To The Editor:

I read with great interest John Turner’s Letter to the Editor in your January 5, 2012 edition (“Democrats have their heads in the sand about Maine’s financial mess”).

Mr. Turner asks us how Maine became the poorest, highest-taxed and a state that is going through a population decline. He then spends many paragraphs explaining to us what is wrong, why it happened and who is to blame (Democrats).

What we have suffered as a state, in terms of economic decline and economic instability, is not unique to Maine. Many industrial-based states have suffered the same circumstances.

The loss of manufacturing jobs has changed the economic landscape of America. I would suggest that rather than take a government handout that we push our government at all levels to protect a business climate that allows us all to be independent within our own means.

This is not a Democratic, Republican or independent issue, it is an “us” issue. If, as Mr. Turner suggests, all of the negative issues and problems our state faces lay at the hands of the decades of Democratic mismanagement, perhaps we should look inward at the voters of Maine that kept the Democrats in office.

Don’t we, as voters, hold a responsibility for the people we elect and what they do while in our service? Why at this point in time are Senators Snowe and Collins willing to fight to save the paper industry in Maine? Where were our representatives decades ago when that industry could have been saved?

I close with the following for Mr. Turner. He indicates that we should support Governor LePage and the current House and Senate by stating: “It is very difficult job to clean up a mess in one year that took Democrats decades to create.” This is self-serving, especially when the same people are critical of our President when he says he needs more than one year to clean up the mess left by the previous administration.

John, my friend, we will clean up the “mess.” It will be done by proud Americans. It will not matter your political preference.

Norm Smith