To respond to letter writers who:

— Lament voter approval of the RSU 16 budget: Instead of indulging in longstanding bitterness about public education, spend time in the classrooms of Mechanic Falls, Minot and Poland. Having volunteered for a decade at Elm Street School, I know that second-graders can read and comprehend and add and subtract. Go ahead, ask them to read to you. Talk to the teachers. Get off the sidelines.

— Assume that the way journalists vote affects their professional behavior. Wrong. They thrive on conflict. As a member of the Business Week bureau in Washington, D.C., during the 1980s, I voted for Ronald Reagan, but assiduously covered two scandals — Iran-Contra and the “Ill Wind” investigation of defense procurement fraud — and congressional Democrats’ scathing denunciations of nearly every White House move on national security. And you can bet that reporters lined up to cover the bungled Obamacare rollout in 2013, no matter how they voted.

— Call it a “fact” that Donald Trump has accomplished more than Barack Obama. That’s true, sort of. He has denigrated women; alienated allies and shined up to tyrannical thugs; flip-flopped spasmodically on health care reform (about which he knows very little); gone downright Stalinist by calling the press the “enemy of the people;” channeled Mussolini on a Rome balcony by preening for the cameras after shoving another NATO leader aside; and tacitly allowed his family “advisers” to keep getting rich off the Trump brand — a blatant conflict of interest. Those are real “facts.”

Dave Griffiths, Mechanic Falls

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