When Americans act as if health is as an integral part of wealth as money is, we will have universal health care. The skeptic wiping his chin from corn dog juice quips, “It’s my right to do as I want, and this is America!”

Here is an argument saying this is a matter of responsibility. First off, I eat corn dogs and McDonald’s burgers and have a keen understanding of moderation in a healthy lifestyle.

Health is a fairly nuanced topic and by proposing people’s societal accountability to their health, I mean by getting help and understanding on the topic.

However, to reiterate, people have a responsibility to be healthy.

Why? One of the best arguments is “Click it or ticket.” We have a seat belt law because emergency professionals arrive at a scene if someone is injured and seat belts stop a lot of injuries.

You don’t owe it to yourself to wear a belt, you owe it to the child who gets hurt at the same time, sharing the same blood type, and your treatment, that uses the blood the child needed, was preventable by a fastened belt.

Not that good health can prevent a car crash, but it can prevent diabetes, obesity, osteoporosis and other issues. This would drive down the cost of health care because people would not need as much of it.

The snowball effect leads to cheaper health care for healthier people. Wake up, Maine, from the nightmare you are sleeping through. Go out and be active!

Brendan Dagan

Bangor

Who’s hurt if independents voted in party primaries?

The trouble with this country is most citizens just don’t find it convenient to vote, except for the presidential election. This apathy is the root cause of all our failings.

Why is there a nonsensical rule that says a registered independent, which I was for years, cannot vote in the primaries? Why not?

As the selections are so varied, perhaps I would like to vote one party over another but not allowed to vote. It is very discriminatory when you only give a voter the names of his registered party. Maybe they would like to vote for a competing party even though they are registered as a Democrat or Republican.

This writer would like to suggest an easier approach. Send the registered voters of all parties a complete list of candidates and let them select who they prefer. All returning votes would be sent via registered mail. This would require communities to pay for sending out the forms but as we pay taxes, the cost should be accepted by towns, and we pay for the registered mail in return, so it’s a win-win for all concerned.

This procedure would not only encourage more people to vote but also in some matters, concerning education, welfare, etc., eliminate raising hands to vote in town meetings, sometimes alienating neighbor against neighbor.

Frank Slason

Somerville

Only voters bused at UMF were by nonpartisan effort

I was president of the College Democrats at the University of Farmington during the 2008 election. I helped run the UMF van in 2004, and I drove it multiple times in 2008.

I believe Republican State Chairman Charlie Webster is basing his accusations of taking “busloads” of voters to the polls on events at UMF. I was at Farmington five years; he must not have been there the last two presidential elections.

I rocked that van with streamers and a sign that said “Vote Van.” It had nothing even remotely partisan — no signs, no stickers, nothing. It was for helping folks know they could get to the polls. It was for knowing that the common excuse, “I didn’t know how to get there,” was null, because there we were, ready to take them there. I didn’t wear partisan gear in the van — just blue nail polish.

We drove folks in crutches and with canes both election years, who otherwise would not have had a comfortable trek to the polls. I didn’t care who you were voting for, or what your motives were. I just cared that you wanted to vote. If you wanted bipartisan information on how to register, or on the issues and candidates, it was there.

I am truly flattered that Mr. Webster believes I drove “busloads” of people to the polls.

In 2008, the weather and morale were so great that the vote van had more coffee in it than people. We never had more than four or five people in the van at any given time, and many of those people just wanted to go for a ride with their friend(s) who were voting. “Busloads?” I regret to inform you, Mr. Webster, that it was closer to 25 people at most over the course of the entire campaign season.

Kelly J. Basley

Ashland

Wind power backers only aim at despoiling wild sites

Thank you, Angus King, for another smarmy article on why mountaintop wind power should be wholeheartedly embraced by the people of Maine (“Energy choices and the No Free Lunch principle,” June 5).

You get to walk away with millions in the form of taxpayer-guaranteed income, while my family gets to bear the burden of your greed.

We have been property owners for 70 years at Ellis Pond in Roxbury, Maine, where your company Record Hill Wind LLC is in the process of ruining the lake and surrounding mountains to produce minuscule, intermittent, unreliable and grossly expensive electricity.

Property owners like myself, who own family camps in the western Maine mountains that have been passed down for generations, treasure these places precisely because they don’t have what you are constructing: huge out-of-place towers festooned with strobe lights that will blot out what was once the beautiful night sky.

If wind power is so worthwhile, why are wind farms not built in more populated areas where electricity use is greatest and the electrical grid easier to tap into? How about off-shore islands in Casco Bay, off Camp Ellis and Old Orchard, Fort Gorges and Brunswick?

None are proposed for these areas because such inefficient eyesores would not be tolerated. Poor rural communities are targeted and ripe for this kind of development, with many property-owning taxpayers disenfranchised by not being primary residents and thus having no vote.

Rapacious wind power developers are like having a neighbor who throws his trash on your property and lets you deal with the consequences.

Wind power features small amounts of electricity, environmentally destructive to construct turbines that are built in foreign countries, that are only feasible with federal government loan guarantees, even as the government sinks deeper in debt.

That spells boondoggle to me.

Stephen Griffin

Gray

Obama wants to blame Bush, but record shows he’s at fault

In American presidential politics, there is a time-honored tradition that when the incoming administration is of a different political persuasion from the outgoing one, the incoming gets to blame the outgoing for their troubles for a period of up to one year.

After that (pick your cliche): The honeymoon is over, the ball is in their court, it’s on their slate.

In addition, from January 2009 until January 2010 — 24 months — the Obama administration was the beneficiary of a political “perfect storm” — a Democrat in the White House, a Democratic-controlled congress, a virtually filibuster-proof Democratic Senate and — as an added bonus — an embarrassingly friendly, almost obsequious press.

After 28 months of the Obama administration, it’s fair to ask, how’re we doing? Let’s look at some figures since Obama was sworn in:

• Gasoline on Jan. 20, 2009, was $1.83 per gallon. Today it is $3.75 per gallon, plus 104 percent. Unemployment nationally was 7.3 percent. Today it is 9.1 percent, up 25 percent.

• The national debt was $10.6 trillion. Today it is $14.3 trillion, an additional 35 percent. That’s 14 trillion, 300 billion dollars. (That’s not quite a gazillion, but it’s still a lot of money.)

Terence McManus

New Sharon