March 29, 2024
BANGOR DAILY NEWS (BANGOR, MAINE

Last month your paper ran a front page article that read, in part, “… Magnet school, liquor stores face budget cuts…” Surely you must know that the reader sees such headlines as diversionary tactics to deflect public attention away from the real problems of tax giveaways and corporate welfare that exists in this state. No, those two budget items together did not amount to a hill of beans.

The real problem of this budget is that state governments, past and present, have given too many tax subsidies to corporate interest at the expense of its citizens. The reason Maine’s road system is so poor, its education system unferfunded, its mental health system a disgrace, its Forestry Department only a shadow, and its Parks and Recreation Department nonexistent can all be directly attributed to a policy of corporate pandering by state officials.

Last summer the University of Maine had to sell its prize dairy herd in order to pay for repairs of the cow sheds and now it is being forced to retire more than 100 of its most senior and talented professors before the governor will provide more money to the school — a pitiful situation.

Recently, I sent a letter to the new speaker of the House, Elizabeth H. Mitchell, in which I expressed my thoughts on how the state might come up with savings of more than $100 million a year. I explained at some length how the present tree growth tax subsidy has robbed the people of $70 million to $80 million a year over the last 25 years. I also pointed out that Gov. King rammed repeal of the machinery tax through the Legislature last year which deprives the state of an additional $70 million a year of just taxes owed to the people of Maine. Those taxes were not the governor’s to give away; they were just taxes belonging to the people. Nobody is talking about these giveaways today.

The people of Maine need their just taxes paid by the corporations the same as anyone else. The state does not need to subsidize corpoirations that come into this state which devastate our natural resources, don’t pay their taxes and ship unfinished products out of Maine. At the same time they are doing all of this they are also infiltrating every vestige of our government, polluting our water and air, and evastating our ecology.

While the Hon. Ms. Mitchell has not answered my letter, I understand that she is in a nearly impossible situation. I just wanted her to know that many of these injustices do not go unnoticed by the people of Maine. Paul Hanson Argyle


Have feedback? Want to know more? Send us ideas for follow-up stories.

comments for this post are closed

You may also like