Letters to the Editor

Last chance to save

American democracy

I was born in the middle of the Battle of the Bulge, the last battle to save democracy for the world.

I fear I will die, the better part of a century later, having watched the lamp of Lady Liberty extinguished.

A vote against candidate Trump in November, regardless of who stands for election against him, may be the last chance this generation has to hold on to American democracy, as we’ve known it.

The Democratic Party must dispatch this crisis speedily. One-hundred-and-some days is not enough time to do anything, but pledge unshakable support for whoever is running on the Democratic ticket. Right now, it’s Joe Biden.

This is no time for jockeying for position, putting forward a raft of candidates, brawling over them on worldwide television.

Insist President Biden get out there and demonstrate he’s up to the task. If he isn’t, it will become evident quickly. In this event, we can only hope the party can pull together, be prepared ahead of the convention, no wrangling, dissension or hesitation. Voters must pledge to immediately rally round any successor.

We need to do what the other guy’s supporters do: forgive our leader all their faults, support them no matter what, with all we’ve got, and make sure they win by an impossible-to-ignore margin in November.

We are one election away, from an American autocracy.

Jane Card
Kennebunk

An issue that

doesn’t exist

I am writing from my personal point of view, not as my role on the Kennebunk Select Board.

First, I found it surprising a few weeks ago that the editor of this publication was fine with publishing the opinion piece of Mr. Moyer. While I understand the concept of free speech, as do newspapers and their editors, this opinion was calling for a book to be banned, which is an infringement of free speech. I guess I would have expected an editor of a newspaper (free or not) to be more protective over that.

Second, Mr. Moyer, in his more recent letter, continues to push against an issue that doesn’t exist. I wonder if this publication did any fact checking before publishing his original opinion piece. After looking into it for myself, I found that “Gender Queer: A Memoir” is not even in our high school library. More fear-mongering, Mr. Moyer? Obsessively fixating on problems that aren’t there? Maybe hiding behind your keyboard is not the most productive use of your time.

Thanks for the idea, though. I will look into purchasing a copy of “Gender Queer: A Memoir” and donating it.

Leslie Trentalange

Kennebunk

Bills will impact

the communities

So, we have wrapped up the second regular session of the 131st Legislature. Hundreds of bills have been enacted that will profoundly impact our community.

While the supplemental budget includes funding for 55% of K-12 public education costs, the cost to the homeowners in our three towns is immense. The demands put on our schools by this same Legislature are overwhelming our system, causing teacher and administrative exodus and damaging our children.

Our housing is undergoing extensive changes due to this congress and our representative Traci Gere. She sponsored a bill to create affordable housing in York County, turning three vacant York County courthouses into affordable housing. Traci speaks to the York County extreme housing shortage while supporting the importation of 75,000 migrants over the next five years into Maine via the Office of New Americans.

Maine has become the 19th state in the country to have an Office of New Americans. This new state office makes no distinction whatsoever between legal immigrants and the thousands of illegal aliens who have breached our southern border and settled in Maine at taxpayer expense since Janet Mills took office. These are unvetted, mostly poor, non-English speaking foreigners who need food, housing, medical care, transportation and education.

At last count, RSU 21, in the upcoming school year, will have at least 33 new children speaking at least nine different languages, and who do not speak English. We should consider ourselves fortunate in that there is currently only an expected increase of 33 such children here.

In the Westbrook school district, according to superintendent Peter Lancia, more that 500 of the 2,300 students – over 21% of the student body require targeted support in English as well as social services.

Is this the future of RSU 21? We need to begin to connect the dots between open borders, free stuff for foreigners and skyrocketing taxes. Unlike Westbrook, which voted down a 9.6% increase in their school budget, the people of Kennebunk, Kennebunkport and Arundel, all of whom must be wealthy, were very happy to vote in the RSU 21 school budget with its 6.91% increase.

If you are not overjoyed to welcome these new Americans and pay for all their needs with your tax dollars, you can no longer sit idly by. We must wake up and pay attention to who the candidates are for school board and select board. And we cannot vote in people like Traci Gere who do not care for the people of our community and do not have the backbone to fight for our interests in Augusta.

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