A major plank of the Herbert Hoffman for Senate campaign is conversion of our war-based economy to a peace time economy, which is highlighted by my approach to creating wind power technology in Maine.

Despite apparent differences, the other candidates for U.S. Senate have a “business as usual” view of the state’s heavy industry. Both Sen. Susan Collins and Rep. Tom Allen favor building more military destroyers, at a cost of billions of dollars each – ships that are basically designed to be weapons of mass destruction. They differ only on which type of destroyer they prefer to build at Bath Iron Works, the General Dynamics facility in Bath.

Public statements by Collins and Allen make it clear that while they are concerned about preserving jobs at BIW, they apparently have little or no concern that the products produced, at great taxpayer expense, are designed specifically to destroy lives and property.

I, on the other hand, as a long-time advocate of military conversion, see a brighter and more productive future for BIW as it transitions to serving the needs of the state and nation in the 21st-century. BIW, long an innovator in the marine industry, has the capacity to produce machines to harness the wind and generate electricity for Maine.

Such a conversion would enable BIW to keep their experienced and skilled workforce active and employed, since a job welding a fitting on a generator or fabricating a blade for a machine designed to produce wind power requires similar skills and has immediate economic benefits for the future of Maine and our nation.

I favor spending money here in Maine to upgrade facilities, create jobs, and produce electricity from wind. Plans for wind farms in Aroostook County and on offshore islands are very much in the news yet the machinery to produce this energy – hundreds of wind machines planned for Maine alone – will be imported from Europe.

In addition to Sen. Collins and Rep. Allen, our current Maine federal office holders should be advocating for peace time conversion at BIW. The facility has the skilled workforce and the tools for a smooth conversion to produce wind machines, not machines of war, or to produce vehicles for mass transportation, not weapons of mass destruction.

General Dynamics has an opportunity to get ahead of the curve and begin diversifying its product line. With the recent skyrocketing price of oil, and the resulting push for us as a nation to become energy self-sufficient, General Dynamics should be able to see which way the wind is blowing.

It has an opportunity to be on the cutting edge of military conversion to home-grown, sustainable energy production – this is an opportunity on which I urge them to act.

The U.S taxpayer now struggles to pay an annual military and defense bill of $1 trillion. The necessity for military conversion has never been more urgent for today’s financially strapped workers. The real cost of maintaining a permanent defense industry, a fairly recent addition to the budget and the economy, was best expressed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed.”

Herbert Hoffman of Ogunquit is a retired psychologist and an independent candidate for U.S. Senate.