George Will’s recent column regarding the political protests in Wisconsin are a quintessential example of ideology masquerading as journalism.

Mr. Will describes the protests as an attempt to “repeal an election.” While Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker was clear during the campaign regarding his intentions to cut spending, Will fails to mention that Wisconsin workers have already agreed to Walker’s demands for economic concessions.

What the workers are protesting is Walker’s post-election power play to take away collective bargaining rights that have been earned over decades of struggle. This blatant attempt to break the unions was never raised during the election campaign, and it is the issue at the heart of the present debate, yet Mr. Will deems it not even worthy of mention.

Mr. Will criticizes unions as interest groups organized to lobby for their own continued growth. He is at least half right here: Unions are interest groups, but their interest lies in preserving and furthering the dignity and rights of American workers.

This role has become even more crucial in the aftermath of the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling in the Citizens United case, which allowed unlimited and anonymous corporate spending in political campaigns.

The effect of this travesty was made clear in the recent midterm elections; Scott Walker was one of the chief beneficiaries of the ruling, receiving considerable financial support from the billionaire Koch brothers and their special interest advocacy group, Americans for Prosperity.

Mr. Will’s claims that the protests in Wisconsin were coordinated by national organizations. In truth, while unions across the nation eventually rallied to the cause in support of the Wisconsin workers, the initial protests were a bona-fide grass-roots expression of the outrage felt by workers across the state.

Mr. Will’s pattern of telling only a portion of the story, while ignoring details that inconveniently conflict with his ideological agenda, exposes him as a partisan political hack. It also raises the question of why The Portland Press Herald continues to publish his column under the guise of serious journalism.

Bill Lundgren
Portland

Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, Gov. LePage and U.S. House Speaker John Boehner have started repeating the mantra, “We’re broke.” But they are wrong. The United States is not financially broke.

It remains the richest economy on this Earth. We have the financial ability to meet any debt obligations as easily today as we did in the past when we faced even larger debts.

We are, however, morally broke, because for years class warfare has raged between the corporate rich and everyone else. If governments cannot pay their bills, it’s not because some schoolteacher hasn’t been paying enough toward her retirement.

The reason governments can’t pay their bills is because since 1976 the richest 1 percent of the people in America have seen their plunder of the nation’s income soar, from 9 percent to 24 percent. Meanwhile their tax rates, and the share of taxes from the corporations they own, have repeatedly been lowered so that this group now benefits from the lowest tax rate since 1928.

No group has benefited more massively from government spending and tax breaks than the elites with corporate ownership of the military industrial complex, pharmaceutical and insurance industry, big oil and of course Wall Street.

These richest elites manipulate policy through the think tanks they have endowed, like the Heritage Foundation, the CATO Institute, the American Enterprise Institute, the media empires they control, and both Democrat and Republican politicians.

“When plunder becomes a way of life for men, they create for themselves, a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.” wrote Frederic Bastiat in his classic work “The Law” in 1850.

This is what the budget battle in Wisconsin and elsewhere is all about. It is about legalizing the plunder of the middle and lower classes, wrapped in the morality of fiscal responsibility.

Dwight Ely
Scarborough

As I read the puff pieces almost daily on state Rep. Diane Russell’s trip to see “democracy at work” in Wisconsin, I have to ask myself, as editor would you have even considered suggesting to the reporter interviewing Ms. Russell that questions like the following could have added some balance to the portrait?

Did you support the similar actions of the tea party against health care as “democracy at work?” If not, why not?

Do you really think the Senate minority fleeing Wisconsin to stop duly elected majorities from voting on constitutional bills is “democracy at work?” If so, how is it?

Had the quorum rules in the U.S. House of Representatives allowed the Republican minority to flee to Canada and stop a vote on health care last year, would you have been supporting that as “democracy at work?” If not, why not?

The paper allowing these stories of pure hypocrisy to run over days, well, to use Ms. Russell’s logic, this is a free press at work?

Gary Vincent
Harpswell 

I read John Krueger’s Feb. 23 letter regarding the inequities of public employees losing COLA raises, and having future raises limited, with great interest.

My husband and I are both on Social Security. We are both professionals who worked for well over 40 years in the private sector. We have not received COLA increases in two years. That is one thing we have in common with public employees.

What we don’t have in common with public employees is the size of our pensions and the rate of increase over the past years. I invite everyone to go to maineopengov.org website and click on the public pension area.

We were incredulous at both the amounts of the pensions compared with our Social Security benefits and rate of increase of benefits over the past 10 years. The raises that are reflected there in public pension payments vastly outstrip the raises Social Security recipients have received over the same time period.

I applaud Gov. LePage for attempting to rein in our state’s out-of-control expenses before we are in the same boat as California and Illinois.

Nan M. Rand
Brunswick 

We protect vernal pools but not the unborn?  

A large number of people have recently written to the paper concerned about vernal pools and the life that exists in them. I wonder how many of these same people are concerned about life in the womb.

Paul Anderson
Scarborough

City’s SATs disappointing for elementary parent

The 2009-2010 Portland high school SAT results (Deering, Portland High and Casco Bay) reported in the Feb. 21 Press Herald are appalling.

The students who took the test as juniors are graduating in June (most of them, anyway).

More than 60 percent of them do not meet Maine state standards in math, and more than 50 percent do not meet the standards in science. Reading and writing are not as bad but certainly are not impressive.

The standards are supposed to measure whether or not students are prepared for the next step in their journey — work, post-secondary education, military service, etc.

Clearly most of them are not ready. How can we be graduating students who are so woefully unprepared?

As a parent of an elementary student and as taxpayer in the city of Portland, those results are completely unacceptable. Our job as the adults in this city (parents, teachers, administrators) is to make sure that our children are prepared for whatever they chose to do after high school.

As a community, we seem to be failing miserably.

Leanne Walker
Portland 

Quest for political civility falls short from the start

I was shocked by the front page story in the Press Herald Feb. 23 indicating Sen. Susan Collins said we all, but especially public officials, must endeavor to be civil and our leaders must “set a higher standard.” The senator is being hypocritical in saying that.

Over a period of three years I wrote the senator 14 letters on a subject that not only has a horrendous negative effect on my retirement but also for thousands of other Maine citizens. Her idea of a “higher standard” was to completely ignore me.

Oh, I got a standard computer-generated letter from some staff member telling me what a wonderful job the senator was doing, but I never got a single question answered, and all of my requests to meet the senator were ignored. Is that being civil?

Her idea of the “art of compromise” is truly the art of stonewalling. A member of her staff did eventually call me, but he did not tell the truth about what he and the senator were going to do and never made a promised return call.

The senator said that “re-election is the ultimate reward,” but what she meant was it is the ultimate goal. She, like the rest, will say whatever it takes to get elected but then will do little or nothing for their constituents until the next election rolls around; then the empty promises will come out once again.

Remember, this is a woman who said she would only be a two-term senator, so let’s hope when her current third term is up the voters of Maine send her home so she can then be ignored by her replacement like she has done to so many Maine citizens over the past 14 years.

Gary Phillips
Wells

I was interested to read the article by Dennis Hoey reporting Sen. Susan Collins’ remarks at the Cumberland Club. The topic was a call to members of Congress “to strive for a higher standard of political discourse” and increased civility.

As reported, it came “a day after an announcement that former presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton will be honorary co-chairmen of a new national institute to promote civility in political discourse.”

I hope Gov. LePage will do Maine the honor of becoming a charter member.

Ann Patch
Cape Elizabeth

How can Falmouth schools save? Cut pay, teachers

Aid dries up; schools brace for shortfalls. If you spend the time and do the homework necessary, this whole story is the educator’s version of Chicken Little: “The sky is falling, the sky is falling!”

There’s always plenty of money to educate the children, we just continuously waste it on overstaffing.

Philadelphia just laid off 130 police and firefighters because their fellow union members wouldn’t take a 5 percent cut in compensation to keep everyone on the job.

In Falmouth, we have 21 excess teachers based on Superintendent Barbara Powers’ calculation, at a cost of $1.5 million tax dollars. We have more than 40 too many teachers based on a national standard, at a waste over $3 million tax dollars.

We pay our top 100 teachers $500,000 more than Cape Elizabeth pays its top 100 teachers. Besides the fact that Cape outperforms us on SATs, we get no return on that waste of tax dollars.

When School Board member Chris Murry Jr., made an impassioned plea for members of the public at the January workshop to come up with ways to save money for the Falmouth School System, I stood up and stated, “Let’s match the pay that Cape uses. We’ll save at least $500,000.” My suggestion was met with deafening silence.

Michael Doyle
Falmouth

State shouldn’t back off on tougher seat belt law

Recently there has been a suggestion from one of our legislators in Augusta, Sen. Ron Collins, R-Wells, that Maine’s recently amended seat belt law (making not wearing a seat belt reason for an officer of the law to stop the driver) be changed back to making the offense a secondary violation, enforceable only if another violation is witnessed first.

This change has been defended by its supporters as a matter of personal freedom, having no consequence for anyone but he or she who chooses not to wear a belt. In fact, like many choices we make each day, the effect falls on not just ourselves, but others as well.

By the testimony of a spokesman for the Maine Chiefs of Police Association, the rate of usage of seat belts has risen in our state, enhanced, in part, by the passage of the seat belt law.

To turn back the clock would, inevitably and unfortunately, lead to more injury and death in our driving population.

Such injury will also lead to greater costs for automobile insurance, which we are all required to carry. I would not argue the right to freedom of choice but, as is often the case, along with freedom comes responsibility.

I would object to people who do not wear a seat belt saddling the rest of us with higher costs for insurance. Perhaps the compromise is to have those not wearing a seat belt waive the expectation that the insurance company pay for their injuries if an accident were to occur.

Finally, I wonder why, with all the important work that needs to be done in Augusta, our legislators are spending time on something like this which has to be way down on the priority list.

It certainly raises a question in my mind about the judgment of Sen. Collins and his time management skills.

Theodore Brown
Warren

Facts on power production show wind has tiny effect

Electricity suppliers in Maine are required by law to provide fact sheets called “uniform disclosure label.” The Central Maine Power fact sheet that recently arrived at my residence shows the following contributors to our electric power supply:

Hydro, 30.2 percent; natural gas, 29.7; nuclear, 25; coal, 8.6; oil, 3.9; wind, 0.5; other (biomass, solar, etc.), 2.1.

The promoters of wind power and other so called “green energy” sources use “reduction of foreign oil imports” as one of the justifications for their product.

The above data show that the amount of our energy supplied by oil (foreign or otherwise), is so far down the list that building windmills in Maine (or any other part of the country) is a waste of our money.

This waste is compounded by the fact that wind energy production can be “justified” only by large taxpayer subsidies.

Engineering economic analysis shows that wind power as an energy source is prohibitively expensive, despite the fact that the wind itself is “free.”

Allen Bingham
Scarborough

Maine joins expensive suit when it shouldn’t have

U.S. District Court Judge Roger Vinson in Florida declared the new health care law void. The state of Maine joined 25 other plaintiff states in this suit Dec. 20, 2010, at the estimated cost of $400,000. This lawsuit, like so many, represents a full employment act for the legal community.

There will be appeals. There will be decisions. This will eventually work its way up to the Supreme Court. A decision will be rendered. And what are the benefits? A ton of billable hours for the legal community.

Such is the American way in this litigious society. And what does the state of Maine get out of this legal lovefest for its entry fee? Another bill for the additional legal work.

The total coast will undoubtedly balloon to much more than the initial estimate. So again what do we get? Nothing but a “feel-good” moment for the governor.

I say let the other states squander their money on this useless exercise. Any eventual ruling by the Supreme Court will cover the entire country. Let the other states, in their wisdom, pursue this if they want to. I think the state of Maine has much better uses the money than to chase this exercise in legal posturing.

Frank Wright
Cape Neddick

Online comments need more discretion, refereeing

I’m not exactly sure where the disconnect occurs between The Press Herald’s “Terms of Use Policy” for its online comment section and the actual comments, but it does occur, and it’s disheartening.

So instead of pondering where exactly that fault lies, I’ll make a plea to the commenting community directly.

Strive to stay on the topic at hand. If an article is about environmental policy, please, don’t go off on a tirade about immigration unless your digression is a well-thought-out corollary to the initial discussion. Just so we’re clear, a single sentence like: “Yeah, just like immigration,” is not a well-thought-out digression.

Avoid needlessly inflammatory rhetoric. If I wanted to hear about Nazis on a daily basis, I’d turn on the History Channel. Also, avoid attitudes and postures best left to the playground, such as “we won, get over it,” “he should be beaten with a birch branch” and the recent trend of name calling.

Next, avoid using ALL CAPS. It’s unnecessary and tends to make even a well-thought-out response look immature. Take the time to rephrase, or substitute italics for if emphasis, if needed.

Finally, make use of the flag function (and request the paper add an “off topic” or “digression” button) to point out comments that are derailing the conversation.

There are often wonderful responses from people on all sides of an issue, but they are also often buried among the muck.

Eric Brokofsky
Westbrook 

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