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The TVA lesson
The June 26-27 BDN told us how Kay Phaneuf, 53, died after National Grid shut off the electric to her oxygen machine. She hadn’t paid her bill. The Boston Globe mentions she was a grandmother, cancer survivor and went to St. Joseph’s parish in Salem, N.H.
The Columbia Missourian reported that 30-year-old Nathan Graham Curry died of hypothermia in his home on Dec. 4, 2009, after his power had been shut off in September.
Michigan Welfare Rights representatives claim 18 people died last winter in Detroit because of DTE Energy shut-offs.
Some people might wonder about our nation. Not I. Jesus tells us we’re offspring of vipers in Matthew 12:34. So what’s that electric guitar distortion pedal shiver when we hear the first illegal fireworks on the Fourth? Could there be fine fruit too?
On MPBN, Libby Mitchell said: “We have entrepreneurs in Maine who are struggling to start photovoltaic and geothermal industries. The high cost of energy is one of the biggest barriers to businesses.”
It appears having lived in the South, Libby learned the lesson of the federally owned Tennessee Valley Authority which
bea.gov says added an estimated $3 billion into the federal budget receipts in the first quarter of 2009, producing inexpensive electricity for 9 million people in seven southeastern states.
Tva.gov says its industrial rates in 2008 were 16 percent lower than the U.S. retail average, commercial rates 9 percent lower and residential rates 20 percent lower. Hit the juice.
Keith C. Taft
Van Buren
View from Van Buren
So, John Boehner and Nancy Pelosi didn’t annihilate the universe by coming in contact with each other at last week’s State of the Union address and the inter-party mingling should continue to throw off our seemingly weekly rampaging gunmen’s target acquisition.
More important than a show of bipartisanship are the substantive steps our nation has taken toward its hyperbole. Turns out, Obama Care isn’t so bad after all now that the corporate media shareholders got their tax break extensions and the health insurers are assured a steady stream of mandated revenue. GM can’t keep up with demand for electric cars as its big government management team and $3 gas return it to profitability. And it seems the Bush and Obama administrations’ TARP bailout and new financial regulations — which kept most of us from wearing sandwich boards and selling pencils for shower money — may actually show a return.
Here in Van Buren, we’re getting a new border crossing over the St. John River thanks to the Recovery Act and Aroostook County’s unemployment rate fell from 10.7 percent in February 2010 to 9.1 percent in November 2010, just in time, along with our recent snowstorm, for internationally televised World Cup Biathlon North American Tour in Presque Isle and Fort Kent. USA’s top biathlete Tim Burke was ranked No. 1 for much of the 2009-2010 season.
Put down the Glock and c’mon up!
Keith Taft
Van Buren
Dismissing disabilities
This story was published on
Oct. 03, 2007 on Page A6 in all editions of the Bangor Daily News
In her letter “Maine’s free money” (BDN, Sept. 25), Alison Link has a complaint about “the amount of money going to people who seem to be unable to work at all at such a young age,” implying that disabled people are just slacking.
She adds that she believes that Social Security Disability (a federal program) was meant to be “help in times of need, to get back on your feet.” Which is perhaps a telling slip of the keyboard as many disabled people are paraplegic. They won’t be getting back on their feet anytime soon. Perhaps Ms. Link underestimates the severity of infirmity one must be afflicted with to receive Social Security Disability payments.
Her letter reminds me of the Republican ideal of cutting social services, Medicaid and welfare for tax breaks for the wealthy. Yet while Republicans seem to hate spending money on programs that actually help people less fortunate than themselves, they are more than eager to spend gobs of it on killing, maiming and dominating people less fortunate than themselves.
They would do well to read Matthew 25:40 and set themselves free from their dark bondage.
Keith C. Taft
Van Buren
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History lesson
Unemployment was 24.9 percent and rising in 1933 until Democrats took the White House and both houses of Congress back that year. Ring a bell? Or do you think the corporations that thought of laying off workers until the economy improves are your new saviors?
Since President Barack Obama took office in January 2009, unemployment stopped rising from 4.9 percent in January 2008 to 10.2 percent in Oct. 2009, civilians killed by U.S.-coalition or Iraqi state forces decreased from 1,004 in 2008 to 151 in 2009, and in 2009 U.S. traffic deaths fell 8.9 percent, violent crime dropped 5.3 percent and property crime fell 4.6 percent.
“Don’t know what you got ‘till it’s gone,” said Cinderella.
Keith C. Taft
Van Buren
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