Maine news, sports, weather from Portland Press Herald / Maine Sunday Telegram, Portland, Maine

August 7, 2012

Letters to the editor:
Remember the USS Indianapolis

On July 30, 1945, the naval cruiser USS Indianapolis was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine in the Philippine Sea. When the ship went down, nearly 900 sailors lost their lives.

Her loss is still keenly felt by the Navy, her survivors (just a few remain alive today) and people familiar with the very important role she played in carrying the atom bomb to a base where it was loaded and dropped on Hiroshima.

July 30 marked the 67th anniversary of her loss.

Her tragedy shouldn't be forgotten because the mission she completed saved the lives of soldiers and sailors. The bombing persuaded the Japanese that any further prolonging of the war was futile and the Japanese decided to end it.

George Nanos

naval historian

Portland

Governor unfairly maligns legal MaineCare recipients

Let me speak frankly to Gov. LePage's assertion that people on MaineCare are accepting "handouts" and all that so dismissively implies.

A significant number of those people are employed and thus paying taxes. They are, in fact, earning those so-called handouts by the sweat of their brows.

There are also those who, though currently unemployed, have paid into the system for years, if not decades, and by law they are also entitled to receive benefits, if they qualify.

People who apply for MaineCare must submit to a rigorous and intrusive process to determine eligibility, sacrificing their privacy for an insurance plan that a very significant number of doctors do not accept, for lack of decent reimbursement rates.

Lastly, there are a significant number of support services the disabled cannot access through regular insurance or private pay, and so they are compelled to sign up for MaineCare to receive those services.

A governor who maligns law-abiding citizens for no other reason than they are receiving services for which the government determines they are eligible is himself accepting a handout -- his salary.

Zoe Goody

Cape Elizabeth

Ultraliberal 'Doonesbury' belongs on op-ed pages

The comics or funnies are a horrible venue for Garry Trudeau's "Doonesbury" polemics.

He insults most of America daily with his ultraliberal ranting, and I can't help but believe that the Donald Sussman influence is the only thing keeping him on the "funny" pages. Where is the balance? Is it the super-conservative "Blondie" or the right-wing ravings of "Beetle Bailey"?

Come on, Press Herald. You have to know that in a one-daily town, most of us who would like to will not cancel our subscriptions. But that does not mean that you have the mantle of journalistic integrity. And, besides, we have to know what the propaganda of the left is at any given time.

I do not suggest that Trudeau's strip be dropped. There is a First Amendment issue with that, and he can be hilariously entertaining when doing his "Doonesbury" thing. When he is pimping for the left-wing agenda, though, he needs to be on the op-ed page.

Robert E. Blanchard

Portland

LePage gets poor grades for positions on education

Once again Gov. LePage has sent a scathing letter of bully content, this time to the top three individuals in Maine education, saying: "My message to you -- the leaders of the largest education organizations in the State -- is simple, help me fix this broken system or get out of the way" ("LePage: High schools should pay for graduates' remedial college classes," July 25).

The study cited in Gov. LePage's diatribe -- "Achievement Growth" -- has not been fully vetted for accuracy and is being used by the governor as a "gotcha" report. One of the co-authors, Paul E. Peterson, is a political science specialist whose pro-charter school stance is no secret.

(Continued on page 2)

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