In April 2010, Arizona introduced S.B. 1070, its infamous profiling law, which mandated that local Arizona law enforcement officials enforce federal immigration law. It is being challenged by the federal government in court as being in violation of the U.S. Constitution.

This legislation was greeted with outrage all across the country. On May 1 last year, more than 500 Maine residents gathered at a rally to denounce Arizona’s legislation and show support for fairness and social justice. In fact, May 1 equality rallies took place all over the United States, from Hawaii to Alaska to California to Florida.

In Maine, 25 state legislators signed a statement denouncing Arizona’s law. “Legislation like the bill passed in Arizona should never take effect in Maine,” it said.

This group, along with countless others across the state, will work to ensure Maine continues to act legally and responsibly on immigration issues and is welcoming and collaborative with members of its immigrant community.

What a difference a few months can make! Maine has a tea party governor and a Republican majority in the Legislature. Last month, Rep. Kathleen Chase, R-Wells, introduced profiling legislation modeled on Arizona’s “show your papers” law, at the bidding, she says, of an unnamed constituent.

I can’t believe that the hearts and minds of Maine’s residents have changed since last spring. I can’t believe that Mainers have become hateful and unreasonable.

I understand that it’s hard to keep up with all the nonsense coming out of Augusta. But if you believe in fairness and justice, if you believe that scapegoating is wrong, then contact Rep. Chase (www.maine.gov/legis/house) and tell her to withdraw her legislation.

Linda Dumey
Wells 

Congress listens to lobbyists but not to ordinary people 

Our 535 elected representatives in Congress kowtow to the 11,000-plus registered lobbyists down in the capital (not a misspelling) city of the ruling corporocracy.

They are sharpening their claws to rip away even the Social Security and Medicare funding we already paid for but that they borrowed to make their deficits look a little better.

Meanwhile, we are being made to turn a blind eye to something that has cost us multibillions of dollars every year for the past 30-plus years.

This enormous damage to the U.S. economy lies in the widespread damage to our homes, countryside, towns and cities brought on by the carbon releases they protest doing anything about. Only because of our slavishness to the big carbon releasers is the cause of this excessive damage not widely known.

In whom would you prefer to place your faith? The ideologues who are underwritten by the big carbon releasers for their constant campaigning and slavish political service on the releasers’ behalf? Or the Union of Concerned Scientists, which has analyzed and produced clear evidence for its positions, as it has done once again in an article on Feb. 17? The excessive downpours, floods, deeper snows and higher wind velocities, from which the damage over the past 30 years proves to be almost as high as our national debt, are still adding to it by government funding for state emergencies.

We the people deserve to at least have our elected representatives make their priority their dedication to the U.S. Constitution to “ensure the general welfare,” instead of to the interests of international corporations that donate to their campaigns but pay no taxes.

George Eaton
South Portland 

State workers shouldn’t be forced to take cuts 

In 2008 we felt very fortunate when my husband secured a state job through Southern Maine Community College that had basic health benefits.

With a baby on the way, we knew that although the pay was lower than the private sector, we would be able to take care of our growing family should a medical need arise.

Cleaning toilets, scrubbing floors and mucking out broken septic pumps are some of the basics of his job that, although not glamorous, are among the daily tasks that must be done to run an efficient and safe campus.

Many nights and early mornings as you and I lay tucked in warm beds, my husband was up with a crew of other hard-working Maine employees shoveling, plowing and salting so that the state of Maine could keep its promise to open the doors of SMCC to those residents willing and able to learn.

If Gov. LePage makes any more cuts to my husband’s wages, or we are forced to pay even higher premiums on the insurance that we purchase through the state, our family will effectively become another of America’s working poor.

Gov. LePage has also proposed paring back the retirement plans of my husband’s supervisors, some who have put in more than 40 years of service with the state.

Please support Maine state workers by maintaining the dignity and basic benefits they rightly deserve.

Poppy Hiser
South Portland 

With health care in danger, why waste time on trivia? 

As we watched the devastation of Mideast governments collapsing around us, our Legislature spent valuable time entertaining a bill debating whether Maine should select the whoopie pie as our state dessert (or treat).

The media reported this as “breaking news.” Legislators were treated to samples served by a whoopie-pie costumed person, and listening to a song praising whoopie pies as “a slice of heaven.”

Humor goes a long way, but not when the pressure is on to balance budgets by slashing valuable programs.

The debate about the Affordable Health Care Act, signed on March 23, 2010, is true to my heart. Before the ink was dry, opponents launched a massive campaign to undermine and possibly repeal this act, which has proven its worth to millions of Americans.

What is really at stake?

• As a nation, we may return to a time when people with “pre-existing conditions” can be denied medical insurance.

• Insurance companies can take back health insurance when you become sick.

• Small businesses may lose their bargaining power and their ability to cover medical insurance for employees.

• The uninsured may “go without.”

• Young adults will no longer be able to remain on their parents’ insurance until age 26.

• Adults may have limits on benefits over their lifetimes, even if high medical costs devastate families.

• People on Medicare may no longer receive free preventive care or be able to afford vital prescription drugs.

• And we may no longer be able to access preventive and other care to maintain our health.

Let’s fight to keep what was already signed into law and allow the legislators to work on other critical issues.

Betsy Fecto
Portland 

Please stop this nonsense of the legal challenge to the health care law.

I have worked as an internal medicine physician for 18 years, all of them in Maine.

I can tell you that losing health insurance is catastrophic for patients. They suddenly face bankruptcy if they develop a cancer or even need a simple operation that still might cost tens of thousands of dollars.

Most Mainers do not have $100,000 in the bank for these emergencies.

This law protects patients by prohibiting insurance companies from dropping sick patients or from barring those who happen to be sick from getting insurance in the first place.

I guess Gov. LePage is on the side of the insurance companies that want to deny coverage to those with a pre- existing illness. And is he on the side of the insurance companies that want to stop covering patients that rack up too many bills?

I say that because that is the way business is done now, and that is the way insurance companies will continue to do business in the future if the law does not go forward.

Please save the taxpayers money, drop the lawsuit and start protecting the citizens and patients who live in Maine.

Dr. Thomas McInerney
Cape Elizabeth 

Support for needy families deserves support from state 

My thanks to Tom McLaughlin, Sandra Butler and the advocacy groups for their in-depth study of families receiving help from the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) program (“Aid for needy families supports those who work and have kids,” Jan. 27).

As a former legislator, I know how difficult it can be to make decisions about changes to a program unless you have reliable information about the people the program is intended to help.

In 1996, the Maine Legislature passed our version of welfare reform with a strong bipartisan vote. This legislation has helped thousands of families leave the TANF program for work.

By using strategies like helping parents improve their job prospects through education and training, and by ensuring that families leaving TANF for work had access to health insurance and child care, the number of families receiving assistance dropped by nearly half between 1995 and 2008, just before the recession hit.

Certainly more families have had to turn to TANF during this deep recession as jobs are scarce, but we still have one-third fewer cases than in the mid-’90s. It is critical to keep these work supports in place so that as the economy recovers, families can hit the ground running.

There’s more work to be done in the TANF program. I hope that legislators will use the information and recommendations in this study to come up with thoughtful modifications that will help families succeed and enable them to participate in the economic recovery that we’re all looking forward to in 2011 and beyond.

Elizabeth Watson
Portland 

Legalizing fireworks will make our forests vulnerable 

Remember the great fires that devastated Bar Harbor and York County in 1947?

What is worse than such a natural disaster? A preventable, man-made catastrophe.

L.D. 83, a proposal to legalize fireworks that is sponsored by Rep. Douglas Damon, R-Bangor, would put the entire Pine Tree State at risk. Fireworks have been banned because of our densely wooded environment.

The perverse “logic” of L.D. 83 is that legalization would promote safety. In the real world, irresponsibility is a certainty when the definition of “liberty” is distorted to mean doing whatever one wants, disregarding the common good and common sense.

Supposedly this is yet another pro-business measure. Permit the entrepreneur to sell high-quality products made in China so our freedoms can be celebrated by igniting explosives from a communist nation.

It is worth checking the fine print of this bill. Would salespeople be held liable for peddling defective products that cause injury? Would they be held responsible for damage done to our state’s most valuable resource, its timberland?

If the goal of responsible government is truly the maintenance of public safety, then pyrotechnics should be left to trained and licensed professionals.

Joe Wagner
Lyman 

Copy the Story Link