“Presidential candidate Mitt Romney told donors Wednesday that he cares about the poor and middle class” (“Romney: I care about the poor and middle class,” Sept. 19), but his obvious disdain for the 47 percent of American citizens who “are dependent upon government … for food, housing, you-name-it” sounds remarkably similar to the policy of Charles Trevelyan, British relief administrator, who, during the Great Famine of the 1840s in Ireland, warned of the need to eliminate “the canker of state dependency” manifest in the tendency of all Irish classes to “make a poor mouth.”

Romney’s economic theory is based on the same laissez-faire principles that guided Trevelyan to claim that aiding the starving and homeless Irish brought “the risk of paralyzing all private enterprise.”

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A reader likens Mitt Romney’s comment about government dependency to a British relief administrator’s policy that forced families to flee Ireland during the Great Famine of the 1840s. The Associated Press

The British government closed the soup kitchens and food depots in Ireland in the belief that the free market would reduce the people’s dependence on the government while at the same time maintaining the rights of private enterprise.

We know too well the consequences of this economic policy from that painful chapter of history. I am a descendant of one of the millions of families who were forced to flee Ireland where the policy of the free trade warriors, by emigration and death, successfully removed millions from “the canker of state dependency.”

Robert F. Lyons

Kennebunkport

Mitt Romney’s recent comments about the large number of Americans who receive government benefits but pay no income taxes were, as he later put it, “inelegant.” But even if Romney addressed the issue awkwardly, the consequences of our failure to pay for the costs of modern liberalism are serious.

Certainly many of those who pay little in taxes today have suffered from the effects of the Great Recession. But because of a growing array of deductions, exemptions and refundable credits, individual income tax rates have been declining for decades and averaged only 1.9 percent for the bottom 50 percent of taxpayers in 2009, according to IRS data.

While the tax structure has become increasingly progressive, entitlement and special interest spending have accelerated. The result is that government income has grown more slowly than would otherwise be the case, and deficits and accumulated debt have ballooned.

The reality is that a growing number of Americans have little reason to care about the cost of government because our steeply progressive tax structure makes the cost appear to be cheaper than it actually is. Meanwhile, President Obama continues to tell millions of Americans that someone else should pay for their benefits and for all the “investments” he wants to make.

Raising taxes on the wealthy, who already pay an outsized portion of the tax burden, won’t produce nearly enough income to meet the country’s needs and to slow the rising trend of deficits and debt. If we insist on having the benefits of modern liberalism, everyone will have to pay more, even if no one likes that message.

Martin Jones

Freeport

In his remarks to wealthy donors, Mitt Romney declares that nearly half of all Americans are freeloaders dependent on government largesse. And who are the members of this “dependent” 47 percent who are the targets of Mr. Romney’s contempt?

They are the wounded warriors returning from two needless wars in the Middle East who are dependent on the VA for health care.

They are ambitious young students who can’t, as Romney once suggested, “borrow money from their parents” to get a college education.

They are hardworking families slogging away at two and even three jobs who still make too little to owe federal income taxes.

They are the millions of Americans who’ve been laid off from good jobs in a disastrous Great Recession.

They are the aspiring entrepreneurs who look to the Small Business Administration for a loan to start a business.

They are the victims of disasters like Hurricane Katrina and tornadoes in Joplin, Mo., who need help rebuilding their devastated lives.

They are the aged and the infirm who have no other place to turn for support than to government.

Mr. Romney apparently doesn’t believe in the “social compact” that even Ronald Reagan supported: that it is our job as a civilized society to care for those who cannot care for themselves.

In my view, it is not the 47 percent who deserve our contempt. It is Mr. Romney himself.

James Hayman

Peaks Island

Territory’s voices deserve to be heard on wind project

I’m a Maine citizen who is trying to bring ethics, civil rights and fairness back into the equation concerning the lives of my family, friends and neighbors.

I live in an unorganized territory. There is no recognized “town government” here. We’re too small for that.

But we’re still American citizens — and Mainers. We believe that our voices and our wills should not be disregarded simply because we live in rural Maine.

More than 80 percent of the citizens of my community (Lexington Township) have signed petitions opposing Iberdrola Renewables’ proposed industrial wind facility planned for the mountain summits that rise above our homes and properties.

But because of the 2008 passage of L.D. 2283 (which became then-Gov. Baldacci’s Wind Energy Act), rural citizens in the “expedited wind permitting zone” are not allowed to have any real influence on the future of our communities.

In any other situation, an 80 percent vote would be considered a landslide. The people’s will would have carried the day. Why is this not the case for us?

We have told the wind developer and the landowner (Plum Creek) about our collective decision. We’ve asked them to abandon their wind development plans.

Instead of respecting our resolve, they have continued move ahead with their plans, continued to contact locals — asking them for private meetings (while refusing to hold public meetings), asking them for easements to cross their properties, telling them that property owners have the right to use their land however they see fit.

If sight, sound, smell or other pollution or environmental impacts stopped at property boundaries, this conversation might be different. But everyone in Lexington stands to bear the impacts if this huge industrial facility is built in our peaceful, natural setting.

If we lived in neighboring New Portland, this wouldn’t be an issue.

But … we don’t.

So … it is.

Karen Bessey Pease

Lexington Township

Drugmakers have a right to try to make more money

Concerning the CanaRX story on Sept. 12 (“LePage hopes to revive CanaRx’s sales in Maine”):

Cathy Kilburn, a senior accountant for the city of Portland, makes a comment that “prescription drug companies … want to make more money” by making sure that a Canadian discount drug provider can’t do business in Maine.

My first reaction is that the prescription drug companies aren’t the only ones wanting to make money. Let’s spread the blame around.

The pharmacies and “middlemen” all make money on prescriptions. Like other retail/wholesale businesses, I expect they have huge markups on every prescription they sell.

Every hand the prescription passes through before it reaches the consumer probably doubles the cost. If it were to start at $20 from the manufacturer, by the time it reaches the consumer, I would expect it probably costs an additional $80 to $100, or maybe more. The higher the initial price from the manufacturer, the higher the gains at each level.

Like it or not, this is capitalism, the American way.

Julie G. O’Brien

Scarborough

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