In her commentary (“Think again: Fallacies about immigration,” Feb. 3), Shannon O’Neil at least does the service of correctly identifying the advocates of unrestricted immigration: Big Business and the Democratic Party.

Business wants to keep wages low by importing low-cost labor, and the party seeks a permanent constituency of welfare dependents. Neither gives a fig about American workers.

Given our high unemployment, stagnant wages and dire public finances, the current policy of allowing 1 million legal immigrants into the country every year makes no sense at all (unless you are the Cheap Labor Lobby or the Democratic Party).

Big Business is all too happy to perpetuate the myth that there is a shortage of highly skilled labor. It allows them to import low-cost immigrants to compete against Americans and keep wages low.

Look at your paycheck and tell me there is a labor shortage. Look at your kids graduating from college unable to find a job and tell me there is a labor shortage. Look at our veterans trying to find work and tell me there is a labor shortage. This is a disaster for American workers, but it suits Big Business just fine.

The Democratic Party is happy to be complicit with Big Business in sticking it to the American worker. Low wages and unemployment mean welfare and dependency, whether you’re an immigrant or an American citizen. Either way, needing the dole is all gravy to a Democratic politician.

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And now, these two malign actors are promising a “comprehensive” reform to keep the borders open and keep America flooded with low-wage labor, making us all welfare constituents. American workers need to stand up and put a stop to it. It’s bankrupting the country and jeopardizing our children’s and grandchildren’s future.

Christopher Reimer

Arundel

Family’s history entwined with beloved ski resort’s

I was surprised to see the photo of my hometown in the Outdoors section of the Feb. 17 Maine Sunday Telegram (“Spruce does it simple“).

My father, Louis Fournier, an engineer at the Otis Paper Co. in what was then Chisholm, was one of the founders of the Spruce Mountain ski facility, along with my brother Maurice Fournier.

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Many of us as children would slide down the Dean mountain (located at what was then the Dean family farm) on pieces of cardboard or linoleum, often flying over the existing chicken coops. My nieces and nephews and two of my children learned to ski there years ago, and I often feared that one of them would ski through the barn.

My dad was able to get Otis Mill to provide equipment as well as lighting for Spruce Mountain, and it was, and still is, a wonderful community recreation area. I have never tasted their cheese sandwich, worth a nostalgic trip.

Although my dad and brother are long gone, my nephew Tim Fournier is chair of the tri-town community organization that oversees operations at Spruce Mountain and the newly established Androscoggin Trail System as well.

(My dad was a chief petty officer in the Seabees during World War II, and he and my brother Philip, a Navy seaman, were in the D-Day invasion.)

Suzanne Fournier Hedrick

Nobleboro

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Mainers’ wallets can’t take too much taxation ‘fairness’

Susan Feiner once challenged readers to “Do the math.” For her latest commentary, “Beast of Burden,” Feb. 10, the math simply doesn’t compute.

Citing average weekly income of $223 for Maine households in the lowest quintile, she tells us their sales tax bite is $14. That’s on $280 worth of “hammers, hats, shoes, shirts or shovels,” her example of taxable purchases. Presumably, this household also eats, another $165 by her numbers, spent on mostly non-taxed food.

Even before such basics as housing and transportation, her lowest-quintile household has racked up $280 in taxed items, $14 sales tax and $165 for food, a total of $459 — all on an income of $223. Nice going!

In their report “Charting Maine’s Future,” the Brookings Institution concluded that high income taxes “may well be sending negative signals to workers, entrepreneurs, and retirees about the state as a place in which to live and do business.” Among the report’s recommendations: Trim government to invest in Maine’s economy and finance tax reduction.

Coming dead last in Forbes’ annual “business friendliness” ranking of the 50 states, we apparently haven’t done nearly enough, and Feiner wants to raise taxes in the interest of “fairness”?

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True, Maine ranks 12th in income equality, but New Hampshire ranks fourth and has a year higher life expectancy to boot. Income equality explains a mere 7 percent of the statistical variation in life expectancy by state. With economics like Feiner’s, it is hardly surprising that Mainers average only 70 percent of their Granite State neighbors’ earnings.

Her concept of “fairness” is higher taxes on income. But that burdensome income tax beast has already chased jobs from Kittery to Portsmouth, on which her “fair” tax generates zero revenue.

Capitalism’s vice, Churchill observed, is unequal sharing of blessings; Socialism’s virtue, the equal sharing of misery. The road along which Feiner’s “fairness” would take us could not be more clearly marked.

Michael J. Cowell

Yarmouth

Despite top police official’s praise, Israel no role model

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The chief of the Maine State Police appears to have thoroughly enjoyed his recent trip to Israel (“State police chief: Israel impressive,” Maine Sunday Telegram, Feb. 10).

Unfortunately, Col. Robert Williams’ sojourn is an alarming sign of what journalist Max Blumenthal has called “the Israelification of American domestic security.” The Israelis have decades of experience in subjugating and controlling an indigenous population of Palestinians.

There is no question that Israeli internal police and security forces are very good at what they do. And judging by the “counterterror” tactics that were used against peaceful American protesters during the short-lived Occupy Wall Street movement, we are not far behind.

The question for Col. Williams, for Mainers and for all Americans is this: Is the Israeli model of law enforcement really appropriate for us? I believe the answer is clearly “no.”

For some time now we have been moving rapidly toward becoming a full-fledged police state, and if we are to have any hope of reversing course, Israel is the last country we should be looking to emulate.

David E. Bauer

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Portland

Remedial class fee proposal another dig at public schools

In reference to the governor’s suggestion that high schools pay for the tuition covering remedial classes in college (“Legislative bills blur outlook for Maine schools,” Jan. 31), two questions come to mind.

One: Who or what does the governor think a school is? Some private entity with a bankroll? In the end, the taxpaying citizens of the school district would pay.

Second: Where is the student in this equation? The student bears responsibility for his/her performance as well as does the school.

Coming from someone who touts his gritty past and anti-handout philosophy, this is a contradiction.

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It does, however, stay on track for his party line of demeaning the schools in Maine in order to serve his agenda for more charter schools.

If charter school graduates need remedial classes, who does the governor think should pay for them?

Sarah Strouss

Boothbay


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