In the Feb. 8 Sun Journal, announcement is made that the Bush administration is proposing $2 million of taxpayers’ money to put a piece of land in the Grafton Notch area into public ownership. This is land that had been owned as of two years ago by MeadWestvaco.

The deal is hailed by Rocky Freda as “win, win, win for everyone.” It is also praised by Sen. Susan Collins as “truly a testament to the conservation ethic of the people of Maine.”

But some of us disagree. To some of us, it looks like lose, lose. That land was once part of the tax base for the hardworking, highly taxed people of Maine. Whenever real estate is taken off the tax rolls, the money that is lost has to be made up somewhere else. Don’t think that the Democrat-controlled Legislature is going to cut spending to compensate for the loss. So taxpayers have taken another hit. And don’t forget that the business climate in Maine is one of the worst in the country.

Beyond that, we have to look again at that $2 trillion-plus federal budget that the Bush administration has proposed – loaded with pork, loaded with extravagant living, way beyond our means. I suppose that someone will say that the $2 million for Grafton Notch is just a drop in the bucket. But the accumulation of all those drops is spilling over into an enormous shrinkage of the purchasing power of the dollar.

Harvey Lord, South Paris