I am full-time staff at Fogler Library, and since last year, we have placed comment boards in the library for patrons to write on.

A continuous source of displeasure has been the Oakes Room Cafe’s shortened hours. It is now closed all weekend. We have placed notices on the boards stating that Fogler does not operate the cafe: dining services does. They have been unwilling to change.

I was hoping to get the word out.

Peter Altmann

Double standards

I am responding to the article about Rep. Joe Wilson. I am sickened by hypocrisy of all who think President Barack Obama is infallible. It is time to stand up for what is right.

Last December, President Bush went to visit the troops one last time overseas. While there, a shoe was thrown at him. While many in the media and on campus thought this was comical, people who actually respected the man for being someone who made hard decisions in pressing times were looked at as the minority. Now, when Obama gets called a liar by a man who represents his constituency, he is seen as a racist and should essentially be publicly hung for it.

Get the facts straight. Obama is not the saving grace. When Bush addressed the American people and Congress the few times he did, he did not call out people for being liars. He did not try to destroy integrity of other individuals to pass his own agenda. Obama unfairly called Wilson and his Republican colleagues liars. They weren’t.

Kenneth Cianchette

Nancy Pelosi lead the attack against the town hall-goers — most of whom had said they never did anything political before — by calling them un-American in an op-ed article for USA Today. Ironically, when it was the Republican administration that was being criticized, it was patriotic to question the government, according to Hillary Clinton in 2008. These angry citizens are mad at being lied to by politicians, but also fearful of what might happen if the health care reform bills are passed in their current state.

Having a public option is the principle issue in the current bills. President Obama says it will create healthy competition, but in reality a business that needs to make a profit cannot compete with the federal government that does not have to. He has since backed off this issue some and is now proposing that it only be applied in certain states where there is little competition. The mandates of the bill also scare many Americans. Employers would be forced to insure all their employees or pay high taxes, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but this would drive many small businesses that can’t afford to out of business. Individuals would also be taxed under the current plan for not having health care.

One of the misconceptions about the bill Americans feel lied to about is that President Obama says we can keep our current insurance. But Page 16 of the thousand-page house bill seems to make individual plans illegal. From the time this bill takes effect, anyone with an individual plan will not be able to change it or get a new one because they will no longer be available. And once the public option has put private companies out of business many years from now, and we have a system like that in Great Britain and Canada, nobody will have their current insurance plan.

On Aug. 8, President Obama said there are 46 million uninsured Americans, but last week he said there are only 30 million. So where did that 16 million go in a month? The fact is the first number was uninsured Americans in 2007, which included illegal aliens and those who did not list that they were insured on census data. According to the Heritage Foundation, the 30 million number is not much better, because of those who cannot afford health insurance. There are 15.6 million Americans that cannot afford health care and are not eligible for medicade. Changing his story is almost an admission of lying.

The lesson we need to learn is that we can’t just rush into massive legislation that affects 17 percent of the economy. The Democrats need to involve the Republicans, other than just our Maine senators, so the best bill for America is written. Health care reform is also not what we need. We need health insurance reform. Nobody in America has a problem getting health care. They have a problem paying for it. For legislation that does not take effect until 2013, we can afford to wait and get it right, especially since so many aspects of it are controversial.

Jonathan Zappala is a senior psychology student.

Obama’s address to schoolchildren on Tuesday was more controversial than it should have been. He wasn’t breaking new ground — two (Republican) presidents have done the same — but somehow conservatives found a way to complain. They were convinced Obama was going to indoctrinate the students and turn them into socialists.

Where this idea came from is unclear. Obama’s message was similar to the two that preceded his. Stay in school; work hard; aspire to do something and follow through with that aspiration.

So where’s the partisan message? “Obama’s going to turn our nation into a country of dreamers?” “We can’t have children who want to do something with their lives?”

Maybe he used subliminal messaging to brainwash this country’s youth. Maybe he hid coded messages in his speech. Or maybe our country is paranoid and overly partisan.

What kind of parents, regardless of their political persuasion, wish to convince their children that hard work and a good education is a bad thing? Is our political climate really so polarized that a universal message can be distorted by obstinate conservatives? Even the worst parents want their children to do well, if nothing else so they can be provided for in their old age.

Obama didn’t have an ulterior motive. His point was to inspire, which he did effectively. He told students about his time living in Indonesia, when his mother supplemented his school teachings with her own — at 4:30 in the morning. Like any other student, he wasn’t particularly enthusiastic about the sessions, but his education obviously paid off.

His story is the prime example of pulling yourself up by your bootstraps. It is the definition of The American Dream; a prime example of our nation’s greatness. It’s inspiring no matter what lens you view it through.

Conservatives’ claims that Obama will turn their students into liberals exposes a more troubling problem: Parents are using their children as political pawns. Denying them the chance to hear the president speak to them, not to their parents, is a dangerous game to play with formative children. Teaching children that all liberals ­— or conservatives, for that matter — are inherently bad, stupid or otherwise to be avoided will only foster partisanship and widen the chasm between the political parties.

Regardless of whether or not Obama’s message carried another message within, parents and teachers should preach tolerance and acceptance. Parents should set an example by at least listening to the other side before disagreeing. Parents should have encouraged their children to pay attention to Obama’s speech and then discuss it afterward.

Instead, conservatives exploited the situations for headlines and, I’m sure, direct mail pieces. Parents and school boards suppressed the free exchange of ideas in school by not showing the speech.

This country was built and developed through reasoned discussion and compromise, not mind tricks and partisanship. Could you imagine writing the Constitution today? We would still be living under colonial rule if the founding fathers had refused to even listen to each other’s proposals. Today’s discussions are hijacked with snarky comments on talk shows and by sound bites that distort the truth as shown by the way the claim that Obama’s health care reform would create “death panels” was, and is, furthered by pundits and talk show hosts.

The country needs to come down from its fevered political state and return to some semblance of normalcy. If our political system is to operate correctly — whether it be voicing opinions at a town hall meeting, passing any sort of legislation or even discussing the merits of a presidential speech to students — we need to relearn common rules of decorum.

—

William P. Davis is editor in chief for The Maine Campus.

That’s quite a feat in 100 days, and that’s not even half of it.

Obama – like everyone else – must prioritize. After eight years of disastrous foreign and domestic policy, it will take years not months, to extract the country from Iraq, stabilize Afghanistan and repair relations with our former allies. It will take years, not months, to repair our broken economy, find jobs for blue-collar workers and restructure this country’s financial system.

Obama is already facing the job head-on, but nobody – neither Democrats nor Republicans – should expect instant change just because we have a new president.

Obama has actually been moving with incredible speed, despite Republicans digging in their heels every chance they get. Even after Obama handed Republicans billions in concessions – like tax breaks for Limbaugh’s friends – no Republican congressional representatives and only three Republican senators voted for the budget proposal. How bitter can you get? After years of Democrats reluctantly voting for bills, lest they be labeled as against the country’s national security, Republicans apparently couldn’t be bothered to vote for a bill that everyone acknowledged needed to be passed.

The reason was not because they’re inconsiderate to the concerns of the workforce, just that they’re more concerned about their own coffers. I can’t blame them for not wanting to tax themselves, but they should at least acknowledge the conflict of interest, not try to make Obama out to be a socialist. It takes a man to raise taxes on himself.

Nothing that took eight years to screw up can be undone in 100 days, and nobody should expect Obama to move that fast.

I for one am glad he’s not trying to do it all at once. I’d rather get a good economy now and a good national health care system later, rather than a recessed economy and a floundering health care system all at once.

Obama ran an impressive campaign, rallying the country around the idea of a president who will not shrink from a problem because it seems too big. He has already shown his willingness to take on big situations that others on both sides of the aisle would likely avoid. Instead of generically lambasting Democrats out of spite, Republicans should take a second to take stock and decide if they want to start making a substantive contribution to this country’s political discussion.

William P. Davis is managing editor for The Maine Campus.

Home prices finally reached their bottom dollar value, a price determined by the market. It can all be explained by simple supply and demand. Many homes were built, the housing bubble burst and finally the price went down enough to move the supply of homes in a market where there is a low demand because of the recession.

The market corrected itself, which led to a boost in consumer confidence shown by a surge in the markets.

Regulation was supposed to be the answer to the recession – at least that is what the elected politicians told us. They told us the markets would not fix themselves and that banks needed to be regulated because they got us into this mess.

The fact is, this mess was caused by regulation beginning in the ’90s when Congress told banks they had to give out more loans so everyone could own a home. Then – just as the banks expected – these people became unable to pay their loans when times got tough. All because of government interference.

Winston Churchill said, “I contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.” He meant taxing the rich and spending their money in the way the government sees fit is futile and will not produce any results. Yet Obama, who says he is a “citizen of the world,” would not agree with this famous statement.

Another one of the solutions to America’s problems Obama has proposed is to tax the wealthy more and give more taxpayer money to the poor. The government should focus on making a favorable situation that promotes a strong economy while letting the markets run their course, instead of regulating the markets and taxing the productivity of those who run America’s businesses.

The favorable situation should be limited to the laws that keep customers from being cheated by predatory companies who try to take advantage of them. The best solution, and one that has been proven to work before, will happen on its own. American ingenuity working in the capitalist system will cause the markets to fix themselves.

The best solution – the one our politicians are not considering – is to let the businesses that survive make the decisions on how to right the course we’re on, rather than politicians. After all, politicians are paid the same whether they succeed or fail at running our country.

Jonathan Zappala is a junior psychology student.