In more than 50 years of observing some of our northern Maine problems, I’ve learned a few facts. A lack of good jobs is a fact.

Northern Maine has kept at least two Quebec towns and their economies going by letting Canadian workers log in Maine, take the logs to Canada, finish them and sell the finished product in the United States. Didn’t I hear the politicians say they wanted value-added products to be a Maine entity?

For years we had shoe factories. I know those were not high-paying jobs, but the people who worked in these factories got by. Our politicians decided to give foreign countries these jobs by way of incentives to companies there.

We used to grow more than 200,000 acres of potatoes. Less than half that is grown now. Why? After building dams in Washington County, Uncle Sam decided to irrigate a half million acres. That’s more land to grow spuds.

The lack of one good highway north of Houlton is another problem. A modern transportation system is a must for development, yet we’ve seen nothing but studies in the last 20 years.

Loring Air Force Base, one of the more modern bases and closer to Europe, was closed. Our government is concerned with stability worldwide but not in northern Maine.

We keep harping on education. Why? So highly educated people can leave the state for good jobs? One can get a good education elsewhere and come back to Maine, but to what, a job at a fast-food outlet?

There are more and more seniors living in northern Maine. We could use a tax break after the years of backbreaking taxes.

Now can people tell who the enemy is? We have to compete with the government and that is impossible to do. Perhaps some incentive for corporations to locate in northern Maine instead of offshore islands is in order.

Edward Blanchard

Presque Isle