Bath working together

Bath Heritage Days unites shipbuilders and environmentalists, skateboarders and business owners — even Democrats and Republicans — to celebrate the things that make the City of Ships special.

Let’s hope that the Heritage Days “come together” spirit will endure into this evening, when the Bath City Council reviews last month’s denial of liquor and entertainment licenses for the Black Barnacle Pub on Front Street.

Bath’s downtown renaissance grew from a collaborative approach. Instead of competition, businesses emphasize cooperation. Merchants talk to one another, calculating how what they offer can complement their neighbors’ fare.

The dust-up over the Black Barnacle’s licenses seems anathema to the reputation Bath has gained as “Maine’s coolest little city.” Building on past successes, the city’s government and business leaders ought to be able to find a way to create a scenario in which the Black Barnacle can co-exist with its neighbors.

Encouraging the parties to talk to each other directly about grievance — rather than about each other in public — would be an excellent starting point.

Indoctrination or education?

The Texas Republican Party’s platform for 2012 includes the following position: “We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.”

As the United States continues to lag further behind other nations in terms of innovation and technology education — and as the Higgs Boson breakthrough pushes human knowledge to the threshold of a new scientific frontier — de-emphasizing critical thinking is just stupid.

Spoils of war

Tom Philpott devoted his most recent weekly Military Update column to data from the 11th Quadrennial Review of Military Compensation report that shows enlisted personnel and officers faring better in terms of pay and benefits than civilian counterparts of the same age and experience.

The report shows that enlisted personnel on average received “about $21,800 more than the median earnings of civilians from the combined comparison groups.”

Officers’ average compensation totaled $94,735, which is “88 percent higher than earnings of civilians with bachelor’s degrees, and 47 percent higher than earnings of those with graduate degrees,” the report states.

No fiscal value can be affixed to placing one’s life on the line in service to the nation. For every penny that our military men and women earn in salary, we owe them so much more.

That said, paying people who wage war more than what other Americans earn to teach, nurse, govern and invent represents a dangerous societal shift toward militarism.

Military pay should represent fair compensation for sacrifices made in the line of duty, not incentive to convert the U.S. from a nation born of a civilian militia to one run by a professional warrior class.