Dear Editor:

State Rep. Stephanie Hawke was portrayed in last week’s newspaper as a hard worker.

But what is she busy working on? I sent her an email about my concerns over a proposal, and she never replied. Perhaps she was too busy, so I called her and left a message inviting her to call me to discuss my concerns, but she never called me back. So I went to Augusta to see her in person, and I waited over an hour for her to come out from the chamber to speak with me, but she never came out; even while other members came and greeted their constituents. I guess her business at the state house was more important than mine.

Hawke’s agenda is being “business friendly.” She complains about taxes, regulations, and the cost of workmen’s compensation and unemployment insurance. What about the workers who might be injured working in her business? What are they supposed to do if there is no workmen’s compensation insurance for them? Or if employees are laid off through no fault of their own? How do the pay their bills while they look for new work? Surely the wellbeing of these wage earners and their families cannot be less important than the price of an oil change.

This narrow focus by business owning politicians on being business friendly comes at a severe price to wage earners and their families. It is the reason middle class earnings have been stagnant for the past few decades while the while business owners have prospered.

Being business friendly is a troubling agenda. Business friendly agendas are responsible disappearing pensions, weakened protections for wage earners and consumers, and a declining standard of living for American wage earners.

Tax loopholes and loosening the rules that protect us will not create good paying jobs as recent history demonstrates. Being business friendly benefits business owners, leaving the rest of us who work in those businesses (and support them with our purchases) behind.  Representative Hawke is working hard in Augusta, but not for the wage earner.

Fred W. Nehring

Boothbay