Thank you

The Windham Food Pantry would like to thank all who helped make the holidays enjoyable for families in need this year.

For all the organizations that did food drives for Thanksgiving to include all the schools, the area churches and fraternal organizations, Girl and Boy Scout organizations as well as private citizens, a very sincere thank you.

To the Windham Fire Department, Windham Town Clerk’s Office, Windham Weaponry, Rustler’s Steak House, Windham Middle School, the Fraternal Order of Eagles for adopting a large number of families for Christmas and to all other organizations and private citizens who adopted a family or donated Clothing, Toys or gift cards for teens, you made the Christmas Program a success.

This year with the help of the community overall we provided a combined total of 412 Thanksgiving and Christmas Baskets along with five to six gifts to 165 children under the age of 12 and gift cards to 50 teens.

We could not have done this without your help. Thank you.

Madeline Roberts

Social Services ?Administrative Assistant

Solyndra ?just the tip ?of iceberg

It should be painfully and expensively obvious by now that politicians and bureaucrats have no business attempting to choose winners and losers in the marketplace.

The one area of expertise that politicians excel at is the art of accepting money from and then granting special favors to numerous special-interest groups and big campaign contributors. In the realm of free enterprise, politicians are worse than inept.

The Solyndra fiasco, which cost taxpayers well north of $500 million is simply the first of what is surely to be a cascade of green energy companies that are going to go belly-up, taking with them a king’s ransom in taxpayer funds.

Range Fuels, an ethanol plant in southeast Georgia that was supposed to turn wood chips into biofuel, recently sold at auction for $5 million, just 2 percent of the $225 million it cost to build the plant in 2007.

Vinod Khosla, a co-founder of Sun Microsystems and a huge contributor to the Democratic National Committee, helped convince the U.S. departments of energy and agriculture and the state of Georgia to pony up a total of $92 million to Range Fuels.

Guess which investor is backing LanzaTech, the New Zealand-based biofuels company that brought the ethanol plant for pennies on the dollar? Yup, Vinod Khosla. He told a San Francisco audience last October that the willingness to fail is the key ingredient in success. He forgot to mention, particularly when you’re using someone else’s money.

It is only a matter of time before many, if not all, of these green energy companies that are backed primarily by the taxpayers of America go belly-up taking with them billions in precious taxpayer funds. President Obama and the Democratic Party have inflicted horrific and perhaps mortal wounds to the American economic system. If Republicans can take control of the White House and Senate while holding onto the House, we still might be able to save the country from what seems to be almost certain financial collapse. Otherwise, we can all kiss the American Dream goodbye.

America’s voters are the only hope we have against a thoroughly corrupt political system.

Robert Howe Jr.

Bridgton

Shuer thanks petition signers

Thank you to all of those registered voters who recently signed my District 12 Maine State Senate non-party candidate ballot petition.

Having the required petition signatures certified, I’m now officially qualified to appear on the Nov. 6 ballot as an Independent candidate.

In the months ahead I look forward to engaging the residents of Windham, Raymond, Casco, Frye Island, Standish, and Hollis in a discussion of your concerns and expectations of our elected officials.

My platform of M.A.I.N.E. (Maine Alliance In Need of Ethical government) is driven by the desire to reengage citizens in a reasonable, responsive, and common sense approach to our government: by the people, for the people.

Please contact me any time with questions or comments (phone: (207) 892-6360; email: [email protected]) I promise to remain accessible and responsible in serving with integrity as the District 12 Maine State Senator should this campaign end successfully on Election Day.

Martin Shuer

Windham