I’m scared. No, not by global warming, though I know it’s happening. Not by the Gulf oil spill and the cancerous dispersants that will be passing Maine on their way to England. And certainly not by gays in the military; gays have served courageously in militaries since the beginning of warfare.

Nope, I’m terrified of Paul LePage.

Three things argue against Mr. Le-Page’s election to the governorship:

First, he’s a businessman. The current economic disaster was caused by businesspeople and their free-market economic warfare against the middle class — think Reaganomics and the 22 million jobs offshored during the George W. Bush years.

Second, Mr. LePage is a tea partier, and he embraces the party philosophy on both the state and national levels.

Finally, Mr. LePage is a creationist.

According to Mr. LePage, dinosaurs and humankind roamed the Earth together. It’s as if his primary sources were the cartoons “The Flintstones” and “Alley Oop.”

Creationists argue for a universe that is 5,000 years old, and pandering tea partiers such as Mr. LePage have taken up this clarion cry.

Worse still, they claim that the Founding Fathers advocated a Christian nation. Nowhere in the Declaration of Independence or in the U.S. Constitution is that proposed.

America was founded on the concept of separation of church and state. Freedom from religious oppression is why the Pilgrims left Europe.

Tea partiers and creationists, groups Mr. LePage welcomes as supporters, advocate fantasy as religion, cartoons as history, and ignorance as science. None of this, however, including Mr. LePage, has a legitimate place in Maine politics.

Paul C. Trahan

Saco

I see signs of a dirty campaign out there, you non-career politicians.

Is this how sloppily you would have run your office? How about picking up your “Vote for Me” signs?

Jeffrey A. Champagne

Portland

I am writing in response to John Condon’s letter regarding the repeal of the “tax reform” bill (“Anti-tax reform group did fine job bamboozling voters,” June 14).

He felt that the “Yes on 1” campaign had bamboozled Maine voters. I disagree. Instead, Maine voters could not be bamboozled into allowing a bad law to stand.

The bill was stated to be revenue-neutral. In fact, it would have raised state revenue over four years by millions of dollars, according to Maine Revenue Services. Even Rep. John Piotti, the bill’s main sponsor, said during a Wiscasset debate that the bill would be only “roughly” revenue-neutral.

Only state government could view an increase of millions of dollars to be no change.

Mr. Condon also stated that 85 percent of Mainers would have received a tax cut. That would have been true for the first year. However, the bill removed indexing for inflation for four years. The Maine Revenue Services report for 2013 estimated that 99 percent of Mainers would pay an additional total of $8 million in taxes because of the lack of indexing.

Because of the new sales tax categories, we all would have paid more now in the hope of receiving it back from the state later in reduced income taxes.

As Sen. David Trahan noted at the Wiscasset debate, there is nothing to prevent the state from increasing fees to keep that money. If the state truly wanted to reduce our taxes, it should do so in a manner that does not require us to send it more money first.

Finally, Mr. Condon appears to believe that we should have supported the law just because the Legislature had worked hard on it. In my opinion, a bad law is a bad law and should be rejected regardless of the effort spent in creating it.

Do you happily pay someone for shoddy work just because they worked hard?

Bob Osborne

Waldoboro

A letter published Monday contained a serious factual error. Author John Condon wrote, “The ‘Vote Yes to Reject New Taxes’ committee did a fine job of bamboozling the citizens of Maine with their campaign.”

Unfortunately, Mr. Condon did some bamboozling of his own when he wrote, “The ‘Vote Yes’ committee failed to mention that a 2 percent cut in income taxes for a family of four earning $50,000 a year would put $1,000 in taxes in their pocket.”

That is a wild exaggeration. A family such as he described would have paid $1,280 in 2009 under the “old” tax system. That’s an effective rate of 2.56 percent, and none of their income would have been taxed at 8.5 percent.

Under the now-repealed law, the same family would have had a $99 net tax cut in 2009. However, assuming just a 2.5 percent inflation rate in years 2011-2013, this small tax cut would become an $18 increase in 2013. suspending the inflation indexing of the tax tables, the repealed law stealthily pushed taxpayers into higher rates.

According to Maine Revenue Services and census data for 2007, the overall effective income tax rate for all Mainers was 3.2 percent. That is because Maine taxes income at progressive rates of 0 percent, 2 percent, 4.5 percent and 7 percent before income is taxed at 8.5 percent.

In 2007, 63 percent of Mainers did not have incomes high enough to have any of their income taxed at 8.5 percent.

The repealed law wiped out the lower, progressive rates and put all taxpayers at a flat rate of 6.5 percent.

Rep. Rich Cebra

R-Naples

Geithner’s excuse to IRS ill-advised for lobsterman

I noticed in the Dispatches section in the Wednesday edition that lobster dealer Frank Donnelly was sentenced to a year and a day in prison because he underpaid his federal taxes in 2003 and 2004. Donnelly’s stated reason for the underpayment was that “he didn’t want his tax dollars being used in support of war.”

He should have blamed Turbo Tax, the online tax software available to everyone. Timothy Geithner did just that, and he was appointed secretary of the Treasury.

Now that I think about it, that may not have worked for Mr. Donnelly, however, because as a lobster dealer he is one of what have been described as “the small people” by the chairman of BP.

I’m sure Geithner would agree.

John Pare

Kennebunk