OK, I get it. After reading your paper for the past 40 years, I understand the press has very little good to say about any Republicans.

I also understand that Bill Nemitz is your “in-house, left wing liberal provocateur.” It is clear that Mr. Nemitz has an agenda and promotes it while getting paid as your featured columnist. I accept that as well.

However, when Mr. Nemitz assumes that most of your readers will blindly follow him like lemmings on whatever anti-LePage path he is trailblazing that day, that is where I draw the line.

In last Thursday’s diatribe, good Mr. Nemitz asks, “What was going on in LePage’s head when he ordered the removal of a mural and the names of meeting rooms — all commemorating Maine’s deep and rich labor history?”

I would in turn ask, “Bill, where in Maine was Cesar Chavez born? What Maine high school or college did he attend? Where in Maine did he and his wife raise their children? What Maine labor union did he form?”

In the midst of his dutiful fact-checking on the names of all meeting rooms in the Department of Labor, did he overlook the room named for Mr. Chavez? My Maine public school education taught me that Mr. Chavez was born in Arizona and spent most of his time out west and particularly in California with establishing the United Farm Workers Union.

Is there another “Maine” Cesar Chavez whose name adorns one of the meeting rooms in question? I almost didn’t bother to write, but Nemitz’s continued hubris made me more nauseous than usual.

This will put Mr. Nemitz on notice that there are those of us who read The Press Herald and will call him to task when he puts hyperbole ahead of good research and honest writing.

Jay Tilley

Saco

This letter is in response to M.D. Harmon’s commentary on March 25 on what Gov. LePage “might be thinking.” I totally agree with Mr. Harmon.

I only wish that The Portland Press Herald had the gall to put it as a lead piece in Section B as it does Bill Nemitz’s column. As I previously wrote, an editor should read Mr. Nemitz’s column and, if it is political in nature, it should be referred to the commentary/editorial page.

Often, it isn’t newsworthy, it’s just political garbage. Mr. Harmon made reference to the fact that Gov. Le- Page received approximately the same percent of the vote as Mr. Nemitz’s hero, John Baldacci.

Mr. Nemitz probably praises Mr. Baldacci’s recent appointment to another federal job. Why didn’t Mr. Nemitz question the logic in a job that is probably a duplication of effort but puts Mr. Baldacci on the federal payroll? Why can’t Mr. Baldacci find a job in outside world that doesn’t have us taxpayers paying for it?

We now have a governor who isn’t a politician and stumbles over his choice of words. So what? He wasn’t elected to be a speech expert.

Gov. LePage was elected to get us out of the mess that the Democratic Party has put us in. The liberal leftists can’t accept it. But then again, it would take the editors to get off their “you know what” and take action to put Mr. Nemitz’s political columns in the right location.

Alas, that will not occur. They concur with everything he says — “the gospel according to Mr. Nemitz.” At least give the same location to Mr. Harmon’s column or label Mr. Nemitz’s as a “political statement.”

With Mr. Nemitz, it’s not personal, it’s political. I continue to not believe Mr. Nemitz’s political columns.

John Heppell

Bath

We all hear the controversy and concern about our new governor’s plans in the local media (TV, radio, papers).

Just keep in mind that we have had Democrat-dominated government in Maine for decades, and that has left us being rated the least business-friendly of all 50 states, according to Forbes.

Many people like to use businesses as a whipping boy for our society’s problems, but keep in mind that the primary impact of businesses on our society is the provision of the vast majority of jobs that we all enjoy (at no charge to us or the government).

And we all know that we are in a time when we need them to create as many more jobs as possible. So why would we make it more difficult for them to create jobs?

We should be doing exactly what our new governor is doing, finding ways to make it as easy as possible for businesses to operate and expand in our state.

Being business-friendly does not mean that we don’t support workers; we need to get beyond the historic antagonistic mindset of workers and businesses being enemies. We are all in this together.

If we treat businesses well and they create more jobs, then both the existing workers and the new employees are better off.

And Maine taxpayers are better off because we have fewer unemployed Mainers to take care of.

It’s easy to fall into the trap of judging our new governor based on the labor-versus-employer mindset of the past, but we need to get beyond that. That mindset has put us where we are now, dead last.

Let’s start climbing a few rungs of the ladder to become a state where businesses actually want to operate, and workers are happily back at work.

Mike Chaplin

Standish

There is a disturbing trend in American politics that is slowly tearing away at the fabric of fruitful political discourse. In a recent opinion piece in the Bangor Daily News, Gov. LePage was compared to the Ayatollah Khomeini.

In writing the “governor’s decision does resemble the sort of Islamic edicts that were commonplace in post-revolution Iran,” Mr. Roger Bowen added hyperbole to a political climate that is long on rhetoric and short on pragmatism.

The point that is made in the piece regarding Gov. LePage’s well-discussed decision regarding “the mural” is drowned out by the intensely expressed but highly attenuated nexus between LePage and the leader of the Islamic Revolution.

Speech of this ilk has, unfortunately, become commonplace in American political discussions, with both sides of the political divide guilty. Fox News and its pundits such as Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity have been long decried by the left for spewing inflammatory rhetoric.

Although this criticism is deserved for comparing President Obama to Mao Zedong and Adolf Hitler, it is hard to take the left seriously when politicians, commentators, and private citizens attempt to analogize the political battle in Wisconsin to the recent events in Egypt, Gov. Walker to Hosni Mubarak, or make any other vacuous analogies that eviscerate a climate for serious and productive political discourse.

One simple question needs to be asked in the face of this practice: What will it accomplish? Do people believe these are the tools to help bridge the political divide in this country?

If there will be bridge or resolution to the political problems facing this country and the states, the only mechanism to seek remedy for them is through civil and substantive discourse.

Although not all problems will be remedied through this medium, it offers a far better chance than through ad hominem attacks on those you disagree with.

John Haskell

Portland