“A person whose heart is not content is like a snake which tries to swallow an elephant.”
Chinese proverb

OK, maybe I shouldn’t touch this subject with the old proverbial pole, but then again some should really watch what they say instead of do. I ask Windham residents to watch our town councilors in action and come to their own conclusions as to what is really happening. Some of what councilors say reminds me of politics in our nation’s capital: If you can’t win just be as nasty as you can be in order to twist facts your way and hope you come out smelling like a rose. Sadly, most of the time just the opposite happens and that’s exactly what is happening to  town councilors, although only a minority are causing it to happen.

When I was young politics didn’t seem nasty at all. For sure some of that was because I didn’t fully understand our political system then, and now I realize I was better off for it. Maybe our nation’s press has changed as well. Many Americans had no clue that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt contracted polio because the press at the time avoided the subject. Some presidents had numerous affairs although they were married. The press avoided that subject for quite a while. It’s easy to see that our national networks, especially television, are just as divided as our politicians.

I remember when several news outlets would descend upon Windham hoping they would have the scoop on what was happening in town. In today’s world of technology I can fully understand why newspapers would want to group together in order to survive and use each other’s assets in order to remain solvent. It would nice to see greater television coverage of Windham and other municipalities when it comes to covering government at work. Instead what we see is the news about crime and bad accidents, especially fatal ones. I prefer seeing local coverage instead of reading or watching a story about someone killed on I-20 in Mississippi.

What I hate even more than anything else is what I call the dark side of politics and that is lawsuits. Our system of government costs us a bloody fortune and yet it seems like more and more decisions are ending up in our courts instead of being decided by representatives we elected. The latest huge bombshell recently happened when a Texas judge declared the Affordable Care Act unconstitutional. Now I do not mind telling anyone I firmly believe it was that way when it started, but that is neither here nor there. Once again we might as well abolish government and put a judge in every town, county and state along with some in Washington and save ourselves billions if not trillions of dollars.

Just take a close look at Maine. Central Maine Power is going to increase our electricity bills by 6.8 percent. Thank God some of that will be absorbed by the federal government, giving those of us on Social Security a whopping 2.8 percent increase. Also recently, a news report stated over 50 percent of our pollution originated from vehicles. Some in government responded by saying Mainers should buy more vehicles powered by electricity or increase our use of public transportation. So easy to say and yet difficult to do. Others in government have said we should get rid of the so-called clunkers on the road so people will drive newer vehicles. Oh yeah, wasn’t that tried before only to drive up the cost of used vehicles? Why do so many politicians believe that’s no problem for the so many Mainers that are already suffering with an inadequate income and are barely making it on a day-to-day basis?

It appears to me that Windham isn’t alone with having an elected government mired in a mare’s nest. The one cure that works is for more people listening to what our government does.

Lane Hiltunen of Windham wants to share his Snake-B-Gon.