I have that sneaky feeling that government at all levels is contemplating even more ingenious ways of robbing Peter to pay Paul. The United States has a federal deficit above $17 trillion and climbing without doing anything about it. There are stories about the Congress reducing the debt but all that has been accomplished to date is reducing the amount of increase in the debt. The state of Maine has a deficit of some sort or another depending upon which political party and leaders one wants to believe. Here in Windham there is a struggle to figure out a way to reopen town hall to five days a week.

What’s even scarier is under the present administration in Washington, D.C., poverty has increased in the United States. It even gets scarier when one looks at the increase in food stamps. In 2007, about 26.5 million Americans were on food stamps and that figure climbed in 47.6 million by 2013. Of course another thing the government is good at is changing the names of programs in order to make them sound even more lovable. I always say “food stamp program,” but that program morphed into something called Electronic Benefits Transaction (known as the EBT card) and has since been changed to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).

As if all of that isn’t enough to drive up the federal and state deficits, there has been a huge calling for free preschool and even free community college. I just wonder what someone is government will come up with to rob Mary to pay for both Peter and Paul. Maine increased its sales tax from 5 percent to 5.5 percent, which supposedly is a temporary tax increase to which I fully believe in the statement that the most permanent thing is a temporary tax. Now there are calls for huge increases in the sin taxes on tobacco and alcohol. Some states, including New Hampshire which is a state without sales or income taxes, are in the process of hiking taxes on fuels (so-called gas taxes). God only knows what is coming down the pike, which is something we in Maine pay for every time we use it.

Lane Hiltunen, of Windham, sees no great miracles coming from government.