I have a friend, a divorced mother of three young children. She had no marketable skills and was on welfare. Paying for child care would have taken half the money she could have earned. Add costs for transportation, car, insurance, even clothes in order to be able to work — she was stuck.

I wonder how Mary Mayhew, former commissioner for Maine’s Department of Health and Human Services, sleeps at night, knowing children in Maine are hungry because of her actions.

Education for all children may be the most important investment we can make. The cost to society for the lack of education is readily apparent — crime, teen pregnancy, despair, drug addiction — yet those people making more than $200,000 are whining about that two percent surtax?

Voters approved the measure yet Gov. Paul LePage is, once again, looking for any loophole to change the will of the people to line the pockets of his rich friends.

On another subject, we should be kissing Roxanne Quimby for her generous gift to nature and to mankind. The only reason Bruce Poliquin and LePage fight against the Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument is that they haven’t figured out how to exploit the resources from Quimby’s gift to keep some land wild and free.

The gap between the very rich and everyone else widens, making people more divided. There will never be peace without respect.

My crime? I am such a Democrat, thank God.

Bobbi Wilner, Norway