Annlinn Kruger. Charles Sidman.

Feb 01, 2026

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What Lesson Do They Want Us To Take From This?

Advocates for interpreting the Second Amendment to mean effectively unrestricted possession of guns, often use two arguments.

A constitutional argument, that the Founders intended us to be able to “bear arms” against a tyrannical government. And a social argument, that Only a good guy with a gun, can stop a bad guy with a gun. Both these arguments are being called into question by the shooting death by federal agents of Alex Pretti—an intensive care unit nurse at a Veterans Administration hospital and a licensed gun owner who never drew his gun or threatened the federal agents who pepper sprayed him, threw him to the ground, pummeled him, and after evidently taking his gun from his holster, shot him to death.

Federal agents enforcing Trump administration policy are using tactics which court after court have found to be illegal, which police leadership describe as outside standard law enforcement practices, which witnesses testify are uncalled for, and which viewers of videos can see are brutal. But unlike these ICE and Border Control Agents, good guys—civilians, law enforcement, and military—are trained to be cautious about using lethal force and held accountable when they are not.

Without evidence, and in contradiction to the evidence we have seen, Trump administration officials, Stephen Miller, Kristi Noem, and Gregory Bonvino, and their Republican enablers, rushed to smear Alex Pretti as a domestic terrorist bent on slaughter.

What lesson do they want us to take from these actions by this administration?

Annlinn Kruger

Bar Harbor

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New Bar Harbor Water Rate Proposal Still Not Fair to Residents

The new water rate proposal formulated by town staff and scheduled for town council hearing and vote later this month still seems fundamentally unfair to Bar Harbor residents. According to town data presented on January 20, 2026 (s/a selected Powerpoint slides/PDF), residential users constitute 70% of town water users and account for 23% of total water consumed. However, while the previous rate schedule required some smaller users to pay seven-times more dollars per gallon than certain larger users, the recently proposed schedule still sets the rate for some smaller users at more than 4x that for certain larger users (s/a town-provided customer examples.) Even the town’s averages from January 20 have smaller (mostly residential) users still paying more than twice as much per gallon as larger users.

Larger commercial, government, and research water users all have variable revenue sources with which to pay evidently now-required increased water rates, whereas residential users, many on limited and fixed incomes, do not. Is it thus fair and tolerable to Bar Harbor taxpaying citizens, who find it increasingly difficult to survive in this increasingly non-residential town, to continue to pay a significant premium rate for their minimal required water use, thus contributing directly to larger users’ bottom lines? Will the town council finally and decisively end this imposed subsidy by their residents of larger, and mostly commercial, users, who are putting so much economic stress on Bar Harbor as an affordable residential community? Citizens should make their opinions known to the council before it votes to continue the past or implement a new and still indefensible subsidy of big business at the expense of their residents. A single, uniform, and fair rate per cubic foot of water consumed should be implemented.

Charles Sidman

Bar Harbor

Bar Harbor Water Rate Increase Presentation 1 20 2026 Selected

177KB ∙ PDF file

Download

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