“When you come to the fork in the road, take it.” – Yogi Berra.

Lane/Tommy: Have we arrived at the fork in the road with our economic and political futures? If so, which fork will we take, the left or the right? Will our economy come out of the doldrums or will it, as many feel, digress into a significant recession?

Lane:

This a year where we elect a new president. I don’t know what’s worse, the president we now have or one of the three stooges that stands a chance of winning. As in any campaign, the candidates are making promises of giving us everything but what they don’t say is how we are going to pay for it.

Lane/Tommy:

We believe a Democrat will be in the Oval Office next year thanks to the poor performance of the present administration. We can also state that there have been worse. As far as which Democrat will win the primary we personally feel the choices aren’t any better than who is in the White House now.

There isn’t a great choice between the carpetbagger who adopted New York with more luggage than a 747 can carry or the senator from Illinois who claims to be a political outsider and he is definitely not another John F. Kennedy. In the end be prepared to open your wallets to pay even higher taxes. If the senator from Arizona wins, it’s heads I win, tails you lose.

Tommy:

In the event that either Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., or Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., win along with a Congress controlled by Democrats, will the result be the same as Maine run by Baldacci and his Robbing Hood band of Democrats? This could be another experiment of increasing taxes with the belief it will bring the country prosperity. Well folks; that certainly didn’t work for Maine because all we are hearing about now is a deficit in the state budget. The citizens of Maine passed LD-1, which was a mandate for the state to fund our local schools at 55 percent in order reduce our heavy tax burden. It is obvious that the governor and legislature put their foot in their mouths with LD-1 because it is now apparent that the state is incapable of reaching either 55 percent funding for schools or reducing our tax burden. Should we expect anything else?

Lane:

That leads me into a baffling matter that I heard on a recent edition of “Speak Out” on Windham’s local cable access TV station. There was a group of citizens from Neighbors Helping Neighbors, which is an excellent idea that assists citizens in need of fuel, food or whatever.

One of Windham’s legislators stated that this program was necessary because they were not capable (and here I presume the Maine Legislature) of solving Maine’s problems. Let Tommy and I count the ways that the legislators can help Mainers in need. Just like the recent legislation from Washington to boost our economy by giving taxpayers a check by May, maybe Augusta ought to do the same. But wait, wouldn’t it be better if we got to keep our money in the first place so that we can better afford our necessities?

Lane/Tommy:

What we are amazed at is the political bickering at the national and state levels appears no different than that of the Windham Town Council. We have stated in the past that it is difficult to tell who is a true Republican in Windham.

Please remember one of us is a Republican and the other is a Democrat. We sit at Lane’s kitchen table every Saturday afternoon and write this column. At the local level we see no need for councilors fighting each other over personal views when they are, in fact, are elected to do the peoples’ business in the first place. It makes no difference about personalities and which councilor is better. If the Windham Town Council is ineffectual, dysfunctional, inefficient and/or counterproductive then Windham’s future has been put to pasture.

Lane and Tommy of Windham urge all citizens to observe their local government in action, whether attending meetings or watching on their local access station. They realize that our government is only as good as we make it.