Recently I read in your paper about the stolen “Open For Business” sign put up to greet visitors to our state. This incident appears to be politically motivated and payback for taking a union mural down.

Is outright thievery considered a victory for state union members? Is an advertisement for out-of-state job creators considered anti-union?

This governor is pro-business, as in Maine business owners who employ those willing to work. Gov. LePage held round-table discussions with Maine business owners to help unravel the government red tape that has plagued Maine businesses and those out-of-state corporations willing to move here. That sign was a welcome mat that read, “Open for Business.”

In Maine, we’re worried about creating jobs and not cutting services to the bone. Unions do not create jobs. But they are expensive. The previous state administration chose instead to cut funding to education and the Department of Health and Human Services.

Gov. LePage suggests state workers increase contributions to help their pension plan achieve solvency. The state workers in the union refuse and are fighting it. Where is the money to come from? Unemployed workers? Single-parent families? Food pantries? Spelling bees?

Maine state employees not willing to be in a union have to pay fees to that union anyway. Isn’t that bizarre? This union will not bend, and then demand money from outside sources to support not a pension plan for union members, but itself.

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A photo on the front page of the June 3 edition of this paper has a state union member holding a sign that reads, “Fighting for the middle class.” Why not put that sign up to greet visitors to Maine. Or how about, “Not One Cent for Tribute.”

Here’s a message for Maine state employee union members. Charity begins at home.

Edward M. Turner

Biddeford 

I’ve been following the “Open for Business” sign theft with comic interest. You know what? Maybe whoever stole the sign is right.

I just paid my CMP bill to a collection outlet in Newark, N.J.. I’ll admit that outsourcing to New Jersey is a bit better than outsourcing to India, but is CMP not able to find competent people in Maine to collect their bills?

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Maybe Maine is not open for business. Food for thought.

Priscilla Clark

Sebago 

So, someone stole the “Open for Business” sign on the turnpike. They probably thought it was retro art going back to the days when people would come to Maine to get a job, go to work and build a future.

They will probably eventually find it in the Portland Museum of Art.

Mike Morrissette

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Harrison  

Green-energy debunker had powerful arguments 

Jonathan Carter’s piece on the folly of wind farms is right on (“The great green wind scam,” May 22).

In spite of his standing as a tree hugger, his data and facts are quite correct as is his conclusion. Now I wish that somebody would do a similar piece on the folly of ethanol.

So far as I have been able to determine, the only beneficiaries are the subsidized mega-farmers while the losers are those who must pay higher prices for corn-derived foods. There is little real evidence that ethanol makes a significant difference in global warming.

Cadwallader V. Noyes

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Harpswell 

Puns on Memorial Day and cemeteries not funny 

I must voice an opinion about the “Maine Gardener” column by Tom Atwell in the Home and Garden section of the Maine Sunday Telegram (“The plots thicken” May 29). It struck me as being in rather poor taste.

I have no quarrel about the information it offers; there’s nothing wrong with being aware of cemetery planting guidelines, nor is it bad to know what sort of plants would do best in a cemetery setting. My objection is to the irreverent (dare I say flippant?) approach which was taken in writing the article. I can’t decide which is worse: the “punny” headline or the first line (“This is the Super Bowl Sunday for cemeteries, says Joe Dumais, Portland’s Parks and Cemeteries director.”)

Even if the Parks and Cemeteries director is crass enough to equate Memorial Day to a sporting event, Mr. Atwell needn’t be crass enough to repeat such a comment.

The act of placing flowers or plants at a gravesite is an important act of remembrance for many people, and can be very painful. The entire point of Memorial Day itself is to honor those who have given their lives in service of their country. It’s about mourning the dead, not gardening.

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Clearly, Mr. Atwell has a lot of good information to share. I just wish he had not decided he needed to be funny (or cute, or whatever exactly he was going for) while doing it.

Cher Lamont

South Portland 

Classical music show is fresh and informative 

Jon Luoma’s May 29 letter to the editor criticized Suzannne Nance’s programming on Maine Public Radio, writing that Ms. Nance’s morning classical radio program does not play music by contemporary composers.

On the contrary, I have been introduced to a number of contemporary composers on Ms. Nance’s classical music program; I always look forward to her program.

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I find that the selections that she plays and the intelligent commentary that she provides are fresh and informative — and enriched by her own experience in classical musical performance.

I have lived on the West Coast, in the Midwest, and up and down the East Coast, and I have found few classical radio programs to compare with the thoughtfulness of Ms. Nance’s programming.

In this age of dumbed-down classical music on the radio — with most stations that even bother to play classical music at all limiting themselves to top-40 snippets, often unidentified — I am very grateful that we in Maine have the good fortune to have Ms. Nance’s morning classical music program on Maine Public Radio.

Michael Mertaugh

Portland 

‘Arctic warming’ a better name for climate change 

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When our cities were buried in snow last winter, people ridiculed former Vice President Al Gore’s accurate statement that “… global warming is the greatest challenge we have ever faced.” They’d say: If it is getting warmer, why is it snowing?

Calling the phenomena arctic warming probably describes it better. It is the melting of the glaciers in our arctic regions that caused last winter’s snow and is causing our constant rain. All that excess moisture has to go somewhere.

Our tremendously increased burning of fossil fuels: coal, oil and gas, causes air pollution which in turn causes global warming and melting our glaciers.

Elbridge Gagnon

Houlton

 


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