Listening to the aspirants for the Republican presidential nomination vie for the right to run against President Barack Obama next year makes one wonder which group is more willfully obtuse: The right-wing base to which each of the self-proclaimed, socially conservative, anti-tax zealots is pandering or the candidates themselves. The script is all too familiar; only the make-believe demons have changed. Illegal immigration, same-sex marriage, and compromising national defense are so yesterday. The newest imaginary threats to America are the Federal Reserve Board, the Environmental Protection Agency, and a black, foreign-born president who’s a closet socialist to boot.

A situation here in Maine illustrates the need for Americans to think long and hard before casting their ballots in next year’s presidential elections, to say nothing of the Congressional ones.

Earlier this month, the Department of Defense announced the Brunswick-Topsham commissary, a 37-year-old facility where active and retired military personnel and members of their families can purchase groceries and other items at reduced prices, will close Oct. 8. The notification shouldn’t have been shocking; it was first revealed in 2007 that the facility was being targeted for elimination in conjunction with the gradual ”“ and now completed ”“ closing of the Brunswick Naval Air Station. But the recent verification prompted a flurry of predictable and nominally justifiable lobbying activity on the part of Maine’s Congressional delegation. Senators Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, along with U.S. Reps. Chellie Pingree and Michael Michaud, are feverishly advocating to keep the facility open. One of their suggestions: Allow the sale of cigarettes and alcohol at the facility to generate more profits. If and when the closure occurs, 27 government employees and 37 non-government workers will lose their jobs, according to published reports.

Several people have been quoted, including a woman who asserted the closure represents a de facto $4,000-$5,000 annual pay cut for her husband, an Army recruiter. Another interviewee, a 20-year naval veteran from Louisiana who retired to Maine in 1999, in part because the commissary’s availability made it affordable for him to do so, noted ruefully that with the closure the nearest commissaries available to military personnel will be 80 miles south in Portsmouth, N.H. or 100 miles north in Bangor, and that both those facilities are significantly smaller than Topsham’s. A third individual indignantly stated that her daughter’s father had been deployed in Iraq twice, and that depriving their family of the opportunity to shop at the commissary was the equivalent of a slap in the face.

Regular customers of the Topsham commissary are understandably upset by its impending closure. But as a Department of Defense spokesperson pointed out, “Keeping the commissary open is inconsistent with sound fiscal policy, (and) while the department empathizes with the desires to continue commissary operations, the cost of this support is not a good return on investment for the department.”

Or to paraphrase former New York City Mayor Fiorello La Guardia and legions of others who’ve expressed similar thoughts at one time or another: There’s no such thing as a free lunch.

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Those ruing the impending demise of the commissary need to understand that supporting a candidate who pledges to say “no” to any and all forms of revenue collection is ultimately saying “yes” to the reduction or elimination of certain services. Which ones? That’s hard to say, but the likelihood is wherever the cuts are they’ll impact average Americans a lot more than the plutocrats whose “right” to reduced (or nonexistent) estate taxes and capital gains levies Congressional Republicans are defending as though their lives depend on it.

The members of the rogues’ gallery vying for the GOP’s presidential nomination have funny ways of showing their distaste for runaway government spending. The Los Angeles Times reported that one of the shrillest, a Minnesota congresswoman, is a partner in a Wisconsin family farm that’s gotten $260,000 worth of federal agricultural subsidies, and that her husband’s Christian counseling clinic has received almost $30,000 worth of state aid in the past five years. But make no mistake; she’s utterly and unalterably opposed to wasteful, frivolous entitlements. Another of the hopefuls governs Texas, which according to U.S. News and World Report has raked in $24.4 billion in taxpayer-funded farm subsidies since 1996, more than any other state. (Note: 80,000 of those dollars have gone to the governor himself.)

The elimination of the Brunswick-Topsham commissary is the latest example of just how unwise it is to elect politicians whose rigid ideology demands taking loud and absolute stances ”“ such as “no tax hikes” ”“ on every issue. Ideas and words, which make catchy and attractive sound bites, are often counterproductive when actually put into practice. Just ask the folks who’ve got a little more than a month left to shop at the Brunswick-Topsham commissary.

— Andy Young teaches in Kennebunk and lives in Cumberland.



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