“Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself.”
John Adams, second
I believe that the freedoms that we enjoy are under attack and what scares me the most is I feel many people do not see what is happening.
We have to be vigilant against foreign and domestic terrorists because if we are not the price we pay will be even higher. What many citizens do not see is the ever-growing power of government and the mindset of bureaucrats of which they have no control over. Unfortunately for us, that problem is growing like a cancer that will erode the foundational document of our nation, the Constitution of the United States.
That cancer is growing an inch at a time and silently moves us away from the very reason our nation was founded on, freedom.
I will begin with the town of York denying a petition signed by enough of its citizens for the legalization of marijuana. I don’t agree with the use of it but that doesn’t mean people should feel differently than I do. The First Amendment to the Constitution states very specifically that citizens have the right to petition their government for a redress of grievances. What bothers me the most about the decision by the selectmen of York to deny the citizens’ petition is that they have no place to decide what’s legal or illegal. That is a matter for the courts and law enforcement to decide and if the legalization of marijuana was so illegal as to deny it, why did it happen in Portland?
What’s even scarier is what our federal government is doing in several areas and God knows if anyone really knows to what extent that is happening. Our modern world has become more reliant on electronic gadgets, and that makes spying on our communications even easier for a government that wants to snoop on us. The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution states that the right of the people is to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures. Unfortunately it took an American traitor to reveal the extent to which the National Security Agency is collecting information on our telephone calls and emails and only God knows what else. We have GPS chips in our cell phones and probably all of our newer automobiles, which also contain little black boxes that can tell law enforcement what we did right or wrong if there was an accident. I have no problem with law enforcement obtaining a search warrant to go after a criminal but there is now an appearance that our privacy is under attack without any regard to the Constitution.
I was shocked to read that the federal Securities and Exchange Commission now has its own judges instead of going to federal court. Would you be surprised to learn that the conviction rate has zoomed to 100 percent instead of the 60 percent the commission had in federal courts? Amazingly, they missed someone selling unregistered securities in Maine. I hate to guess what is coming next.
In San Francisco there is now a renter’s law that supposedly protects tenants from unscrupulous landlords. In case someone doesn’t have any idea of what I mean, it’s a law that protects tenants from being ousted from their rental unit by a landlord. I presume the original idea was to protect renters from landlords that didn’t like them but the twist in this law is that the landlord has to make up for any additional rental costs the tenant may face if evicted for reason from their apartment. This law is now being appealed in court.
When I look at the results of Windham’s Wastewater Management Planning Advisory Committee recent report on recommendations for sewerage treatment in North Windham I have a feeling that government once again has stacked the odds against the average taxpayer. This is a committee that has only one objective, sewerage treatment in one way or another. It does not contain one citizen who feels differently.
Lane Hiltunen of Windham believes you can tell government by its smell.
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