I am utterly disappointment in the actions of our president on the Keystone Pipeline project. He has just parlayed a strengthening of the U.S.-Canadian relationship, economic and energy independence, and North American jobs and security for a woefully unacceptable alternative of environmentalist votes. Newt Gingrich called it “stupid,” and he’s spot on.

We’re not talking about a river of shale oil running through the country. We’re talking about a contained pipeline paid for by TransCanada that distances us a bit from foreign oil (i.e., OPEC greed and clear disregard of our interests). The pipeline would require a small increment in added energy needed to refine it (15 percent), however it would come with the self-correcting reality that the economic system will be incented greatly to reduce those “costs” as quickly as possible. Additionally, our refineries have the capacity and are suited by design to do the job.

Am I the only person alive who remembers the wailing over the Alaska pipeline (Caribou, tundra, permafrost, etc., ad nauseum, all “settled”). This is about homeland security and freedom from exploitation. Other details can and should be worked out. Thank goodness the Canadians appear willing to have another go at it. Hopefully we will wake up.

The pipeline should have been accepted on principle, with agreement to minimize environmental hazards, period. Embracing alternatives to oil is all well and good, but oil, I’m afraid, is part of our reality for some time to come. Telling OPEC to keep more of theirs makes me feel all warm and fuzzy, while buying us the time we need to get to true, beneficial (a wind farm to me is a blight on the landscape) alternatives. Let the free market with reasonable due diligence prevail, for we must do everything we can to let OPEC keep its oil.

R. Ted Laguerre

Yarmouth

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Governor’s rhetoric blurs facts on energy efficiency

In recent news coverage of Gov. Paul LePage’s comments at the MEREDA conference about the proposed people’s initiative on energy efficiency and renewable energy, it was reported: “Pointing to the incandescent chandeliers in the Holiday Inn By the Bay, LePage said the light bulbs give off heat, and if they were replaced by energy-efficient lighting, it would take more oil to warm the space.”

The governor’s rhetoric against this people’s referendum has consistently been recklessly misleading or frighteningly ignorant and sometimes both.

As the Legislature and the people of Maine debate these important questions, they deserve a more thoughtful discourse. We need to push back against the knee-jerk reaction of the entrenched interests and the status quo, and instead consider the facts.

Every major study conducted on the question has consistently found that sensible and cost-effective investments in energy efficiency and renewable energy will result in a net increase in jobs for Maine, as well as a reduction in the energy costs over the long term.

Just as I am sure most Mainers understand that chandeliers are not heating systems, I am confident that in spite of the false rhetoric, the vast majority of Maine voters are smart enough to understand this basic equation:

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Using less energy, especially of the finite and heavily polluting kind, and using more that is local and sustainable will result in lower costs and higher quality of life for all of us.

That’s just common sense. Thousands of Maine homes and businesses have already invested in efficiency upgrades and renewable energy systems and are reaping the benefits of greater comfort, lower costs and lower environmental impacts as a result. It is time to do the same for the rest of the state.

Fortunat Mueller

co-founder, ReVision Energy

North Yarmouth

Election is about stopping Obama from changing us

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As Maine’s caucuses near, we would do well to consider what is at stake in the 2012 presidential election.

President Obama’s presidency must be judged on the basis of his record. He held decisive Democratic majorities in both chambers of Congress for two years, a majority in one chamber for four years and benefits from significant media support.

His accomplishments include destroying our manned space program, ending American air superiority by discontinuing the F-22 fighter jet, defunding our military to nearly pre-World War II levels, courting ultimate defeat in Iraq and Afghanistan through premature withdrawal, humiliating and undermining our British and Israeli allies, displaying weakness to the Chinese and the Russians and bowing before anti-American tyrants.

Other accomplishments are apologizing for America’s legacy of spreading freedom around the world, trying to disarm Americans through government-generated “Fast and Furious”-style gun scandals, stealing our lifestyle freedom through massive federal regulation of nearly every aspect of private life, chaining the free market, smothering small businesses, retarding any return to prosperity through vindictive tax policy aimed at job creators, encouraging class hatred, letting stand without rebuke his allies’ claim that all opposition to Obama is rooted in a pervasive subconscious racism, decimating America’s oil industry, canceling the Keystone pipeline, and disenfranchising our control over our very own bodies through universal health care laws.

Obama’s presidency is a failure by every definition except one. As an “agent of progressive change,” Obama has succeeded in moving this nation sharply away from its constitutional roots and traditions of personal liberty. He is transforming the U. S. into a European social democratic welfare state.

The 2012 election is about whether voters will approve Obama’s effort to fundamentally transform us, or whether we will reverse this trend and remain recognizably American. Nothing less than the soul of our nation is at stake.

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Ralph K. Ginorio

Limington

State, not church, rules on same-sex marriage issue

For decades U.S. bishops and the Vatican have engaged in a conspiracy in contempt of morality, law and society by moving priests who sexually abuse children, when discovered, to fresh territory. None has been held accountable — by church or state.

These same bishops now seek to reclaim authority by illicitly forcing unprayable prayers upon hundreds of millions of English speakers and by appealing to homophobia and ignorance to frustrate the state in meeting its responsibilities to secure the dignity and rights of homosexuals (who have not preyed on children). Currently, they would again deny religious liberty by limiting health care coverage for their employees.

They have largely succeeded in gulling government and the faithful into doing their bidding.

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But it is the state’s responsibility to recognize and regulate same-sex relationships as it does heterosexual relationships. As laws regulating divorce settlements are not the churches’ business, so are laws respecting same-sex relationships.

It is also the state’s responsibility to regulate health insurance provisions. Its obligation to respect religious liberty in doing so does not extend to claims apart from established church tenets. The claimed prohibition forbidding contraception rejected a near-unanimous commission recommendation and is, in fact, not church teaching. It has not been “received” by the faithful; the “sensus fidelium” rejection effectively nullifies it. Here the bishops do not speak for the church.

The bishops (and spokesman Marc Mutty) know this. Priests avoid mention of contraception; confessors do not ask about use of contraceptives (95 percent of Catholics use them). “It’s a dead issue,” a popular Maine pastor declared 20 years ago.

Catholics and office holders should stand up to the bishops’ illicit demands, violative of both religious freedom and the freedom of conscience that Paul VI expected Catholics to exercise. We should thank Kathleen Sebelius, U.S. secretary of Health and Human Services, and Maine Rep. Chellie Pingree for doing so.

Ursula L. Slavick

Portland


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