Maine news, sports, weather | Kennebec Journal, Augusta, Maine

Pingree's phone meeting just early campaigning

Ring, ring. It's a Chellie Pingree Congressional Town Meeting, by phone!

A regular event with different constituents getting the call each night; early campaigning with the taxpayer (you and me) picking up Pingree's bill.

One question was from a young Portland woman: You're such a wonderful leader on green issues, how can we bring green jobs to Maine? And how do we move that wonderful climate-change legislation (Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade) you passed forward in the Senate?

Awww. Pingree noted that some 80 percent of Mainers burn oil for heat, and, because of the green legislation she passed, we could be free from the awful foreign oil and the awful oil in the Gulf: We would have windmills!

In fact, we would have green jobs building windmills.

Such stupendous ignorance and stupidity might be defended on the grounds that it is shared by her bosses, Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi, and the lefty media.

The huge increases in energy costs Pingree voted for will mean that Maine will lose whatever manufacturing we have left. We will import those expensive windmills from economies with lower energy and labor costs, such as China.

Expensive wind electricity can't replace either base or peak generation (you can't count on the wind), and it can't heat our homes or run our cars.

Man-made global warming is unproven. The U.S. Treasury says "cap-and-trade" will cost $1,761 annually per family (more in Maine), millions of lost jobs, trillions in costs to the economy, and huge payments to the Chinese, international corporations such as GE and Goldman-Sachs, lawyers and consultants (such as those who contribute to Democratic Party coffers).

Pingree, please go away and let someone actually represent Maine interests serve in Congress.

David M. Brooks III

Winthrop