PeaceWorks Misleading War

The column about “Endless War” published by Karen Wainberg on Feb. 8 is misleading. She claims that the government spends 54 percent on Military and only 3 percent on Social Security, and 5 percent on Medicare & Health. These numbers come from the web site mentioned in the article (nationalpriorities.org). However, the amount discussed is on the discretionary part of the 2015 budget and not the total budget.

The same website also has the numbers for the entire budget: Military 16 percent, Social Security 33 percent, Medicare & Health 27 percent. The Military spending in 2015 was 16 percent of the total budget not 54 percent. In fact, 73 percent of the total budget goes toward welfare; hardly as she states: “Since over half the budget goes to the military, environmental and human needs are severely short changed.” Her portrayal, of the numbers is misleading and not even close to reality.

Todd Kousky,
Brunswick

Isgro Way Off On Immigration

Nick Isgro’s version of America has never existed. In his op-ed piece on Feb. 9, he references quotes from our founders; leaders who felt people of color were property, women were chattel and unless you were landed gentry you did not deserve the right to vote. Thus the reason for a Republic rather than a Democracy.

I doubt Mr. Isgro understands that at no time in America’s history did we have a consensus on who was an acceptable immigrant. In 1891 the largest lynching in the USA happened to a group of Italians. In his article, “These People are Among Us but not of Us” Adam Serwer posits “Donald Trump’s entire candidacy has been premised on purging the United States of the foreign enemies within as a means of restoring national greatness. Among his most trusted surrogates are men like Paul Manafort, Chris Christie, and Rudy Giuliani, who now speak of Muslims and Mexicans in the same tone and language that was once reserved for their Italian-American ancestors, targeted by the nativist movement that began in the late 19th century.” Add Mr. Isgro to this list.

If the price of admission to this country is to “Assimilate” than we would still be eating Elizabethan food, drinking only cider and ale, teaching only boys. Isn’t this the primary case against Sharia Law? Mr. Isgro is accurate; Founding Fathers had no intention of giving women, blacks, Native Americans or any immigrant the right to have a say in the governance of this country. Their version of an immigrant was an indentured servant, a slave or a soldier. If this is his version of American Values, it has no place in 21st century Maine.

Our government has the responsibility to protect its citizens but not based on discrimination of country of origin, religion, ethnicity or politics. We have a broken immigration system. We also have a society that would collapse if all illegal immigrants were deported. We have created this situation from greed and the “American Value” of entitlement. Perhaps, rather than quoting the framers of the Constitution, Mr. Isgro should have quoted the Constitution and its Amendments. Those are our American Values, no matter what immigrant group is the villainized people of the age.

Lynne Holland,
Brunswick

GOP Has No Interest In Integrity

I was heartbroken when Trump was elected, but consoled myself thinking “at least the GOP legislature will keep him in check.”

But, as the Senate’s rubber-stamping of cabinet choices shows, I was naive. People who have zero qualifications are being confirmed right and left. Even worse, people who would have been rejected in the past are welcomed with open arms.

Too racist to be a federal judge? Here, be the Attorney General.

You employed an undocumented worker in your household and did not pay taxes on her? You be Secretary of Labor.

You bought stock in a medical company and immediately introduced legislation to benefit that company? You be Secretary of Health.

The chief executive refuses to divest his holdings, including a lease that specifically says “No … elected official … shall be admitted to any share or part of this Lease ….” He used his official Twitter account to berate a retailer for dropping a product line of the Trump Organization. The Counselor to President, speaking from the White House briefing room, ignored ethics rules: “I’m going to give it a free commercial here,” Kellyanne Conway says. “Go buy it today.”

And, the only thing the GOP is passionate about is hushing a woman reading the words of Coretta Scott King.

Margaret Chase Smith is surely rolling over in her grave; her party no longer has a conscience.

In the March issue of The Atlantic, George W. Bush’s speechwriter David Frum writes:

“[L]iberty is actually threatened in a modern bureaucratic state… by the slow, demoralizing process of corruption and deceit. And the way that liberty must be defended is not with amateur firearms, but with an unwearying insistence upon the honesty, integrity, and professionalism of American institutions and those who lead them.”

Frum is right. We risk losing everything we hold dear because the party in charge has zero interest in “the honesty, integrity, and professionalism of American institutions.”

God help us.

Michele Stapleton,
Brunswick