Nationalizing health care has another significant element, not often noted. The new Socialist government in Britain in 1945 lost no time in nationalizing coal, steel, transport, freight, education and health. After hovering near bankruptcy for years all those mistakes were unscrambled with one exception – health.

The ‘right to marry’ has become advertised as a matter of “equality,” as if homosexuality was a viable alternative or substitute for heterosexuality.

You couldn’t help but see the title, “The biggest crisis I see in America right now,” in LCN letters recently, but we have crises everywhere.

To the Editor:

I have read with some interest the several letters in this and the other local weekly that lash out at Wiscasset because of traffic backups in that village.

Back in 1989, Diane and I moved to Damariscotta from Florida during the coldest and snowiest December Maine had experienced in years.

Beginning in early July, the Dept. of Transportation Wiscasset Traffic monitors have been in operation and they generate a lot of data.

Here’s the thing about lies: If you tell them loudly enough and often enough, people will believe them. Especially the vulnerable, the powerless, and those who get their “news” from blowhard talk radio.

My son drove into our yard in Bristol after a Saturday morning trip from Massachusetts to pick up their children with whom we had spent a delightful week. Mike greeted me with these words. “I’d forgotten what an adventure it was to come to Maine on a Saturday morning in summer, but we didn’t get stuck in Wiscasset traffic this time.”

At our Newcastle office, we field a lot of phone calls in a given week. We don’t keep track in terms of volume but suffice it to say, the phone pretty much rings off the hook all day, everyday, beginning before the office opens at 8 a.m. and continuing until well after we close at 5.

Two weeks ago I wrote to First District Representative Chellie Pingree with my concerns over the excessive power concentration in the federal government. The answer I got back is not to be believed. My letter and her answer are enclosed. Draw your own conclusions.

I wanted to write my feelings about Bob Reny’s passing so much, but when I read all the wonderful words – so well put, in the tributes – from the governor on down – I thought, “Who am I to add to all that’s been said by those who knew him so well?”

If I dreamed a weekend, it couldn’t have been better – if I hired someone to paint it, it would be Norman Rockwell. Picture perfect weather, flawless execution by the Whitefield Bicentennial Committee chairs, and a little divine intervention.

When volunteers first put up all those American flags in the pouring rain I thought this is what being part of a community is all about and it was contagious – flags went up everywhere along the winding back roads.

Apparently a few years back, back in the days when Maine was truly part of the American frontier, a dispute raged among local homesteaders and people from away who claimed legal title to land Mainers had claimed with muscle, blood and sweat.

Predictably, the put-upon rose to defend their claims with humanity’s age-old standby… violence.

Last Thursday I attended a presentation on tax reform convened by the group Fed Up with Taxes. The event featured a presentation by Al DiMillo, an accountant and self-proclaimed Democrat. DiMillo is no fan of the recently passed proposal that effectively creates a flat income tax rate of 6.5 percent and broadens the sales tax to increase revenues from non-residents and stabilize revenues over time.