A Moral Matter
The budget is a moral document in that how we spend public tax dollars clearly represents and reflects the kind of society we choose to be.
Every dollar spent on corporate blackmail, based on greed not need, is a dollar does not going to healthcare, education, homelessness.
Big corporations, the politicians that support them, and are basically owned by them, shout to the mountaintops about the “free market.” Capitalism is the altar at which they pray. Until they want our tax money. When we want to spend our taxes on education, healthcare, a social safety net they call it socialism (which is fine with me) … bordering on communism. When they get the money it’s called brilliant when all it is, is trickle down economics….the golden shower all over real people in our country, state and municipalities.
We’ve paid for BIW at the municipal, state and federal level. We already pay for the ships with our federal tax dollars, then again with blackmail tax dollars here at home.
General Dynamics/BIW does not need the money. They just made themselves that much richer with stock buybacks from the tax break they got from Congress (which steals from the national coffers) which only benefits the wealthiest of the wealthy and now they want to take even more from us in our backyards.
Say no to the BIW tax break. The amount now being $45 million only means they’ll come back in 15 years for more. They’re getting the same amount per year…money that is ours and should be used for healthcare, education … our social safety net protecting all of us.
Kathleen McGee,
Bowdoinham
$45 million gift
Patricia Messier’s letter of March 16 (The Times Record, Page A5, “In Support of Activists and the First Amendment”) is a brave and honest comment on what the weekly vigils and witness of people like Bruce Gagnon are telling us to pay attention to, namely a $45 million gift from Maine taxpayers to General Dynamics, a corporation that made $3 billion in profits last year. Thanks, Ms. Messier
Ed McCartan,
Brunswick
Plastic Problem
Many television viewers may have recently seen the extraordinary images of vast quantities of plastic debris in or near coral reefs near Bali. Not mentioned was the unfortunate fact that plastic wastes gradually break down by abrasion, photodegradation, and embrittlement into invisible plastic nanoparticles (PNP) (±100 nanometers), which due to their large surface to mass ratio efficiently sorb toxic environmental chemicals of many kinds (e.g. PCBs). These PNP are then ingested as food by many forms of microbiota, including those in the sea surface microlayer, and are gradually transported to all trophic levels of the biosphere. Plastic nanoparticles are one of several important vectors of the environmental chemicals documented by the CDC in human cord blood, serum, and tissues. Plastic nanoparticles and other nanotoxins, along with greenhouse gasses and nitrogen oxides, are a growing, if invisible, component of our changing climate. All will have a major impact on our fragile finite biosphere, including on humans living at the top of the food chain.
Harold G “Skip” Brack,
Bar Harbor
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