Small businesses can’t afford health tax
One of the biggest challenges to my box company is the rising cost of health care. I am concerned about the health insurance tax, which was passed alongside Obamacare. This tax directly increases the cost of my premiums, making it harder for me to provide quality health care for my employees at a reasonable price for them and for the company.
The tax raises the cost of every health care premium a small-business owner purchases by $500. So, for a company like mine, with 50 employees in our health care program, that’s $25,000. I can’t pass that onto my customers, which means I am forced to just absorb it. Money that could be spent hiring more people, upgrading equipment or rewarding my hard-working employees will be headed to Washington, D.C. Who do you think would use that money more effectively, Volk Packaging or Congress?
The tax was suspended for the current year by 400 of Sen. Susan Collins’ colleagues in Congress, who realized just how badly this tax unfairly targets small-business owners. We need her help again to make sure the tax is suspended again for 2018. Frankly, it would be better to just get rid of it, but a suspension is better than nothing.
On behalf of small-business owners across Maine, I ask that Collins work with her colleagues to make another one-year delay of the tax a priority. Neither my family business nor other family businesses can afford it.
Derek Volk
Scarborough
Trump needs to act on climate change
It has been a year of extreme weather not only here in the United States, but everywhere in the world. Climate change and global warming is not something new to people. But have we been taking it seriously enough?
President Donald Trump does not seem to think this is a priority or that we as the people should take responsibility for it. This year alone, we have had hurricanes that have devastated Texas, the Caribbean and Florida. Monsoons have left over a million people without shelter and over a thousand dead in South Asia. But water damage isn’t the only thing harming our earth.
Wildfires have reached a record for one of the worst years of fires, recording almost 2 million acres of land burning. Part of the wildfires has been from the droughts out west. But 84 percent of wildfires are started by humans. The 37,500-acre wildfire in Oregon was reportedly caused by a couple of teenagers who threw firecrackers into the woods.
Here in the United States we hurt for people in other countries suffering from climate change, but we cannot change how they operate. But we can change our policies here in the U.S. to help make a difference. We need our president to stand by his people and our earth. We can’t make these changes without our presidents’ support and interest in this urgency.
Briana Libby
Kennebunk
This violence is out of hand
Violence in America is getting really out of hand. This is real life. This should never be happening in our great country, but it is. The blame has to go to someone or to somewhere. The big shots in Congress never put the blame where it should be. Why? Greed of America. The big TV producers still have way too much violence on every channel. The more killings the better it is. The NRA puts the blame on the person doing the killings.
But take a minute and think. If there were no guns out there, then these people wouldn’t be able to buy them. I’m not saying, give up your guns. We had guns when we were young — single shot, double barrel, pump action and even semiautomatic. We never ever had or needed an assault weapons that spit out 50 rounds in three seconds with long clips that held 100 rounds. We always loved to target practice and to hunt, but we never needed to have a weapon used in the military and for war.
So, who is really to blame? The people who allow these types of guns to be made, bought and used by people who have no right to have them. They should be taken off the market and streets so people who have a problem would not be able to get their hands on them.
Sure there will be killings, but not at the rate that these type of guns can do. So it is up to the greedy in America to put a stop and say, “Enough is enough.”
Eugene Bowden
Bucksport
Woods don’t belong to hunters
Thank you, John Holyoke. Thank you for looking at this last hunting incident for what it is — a failure by a hunter to correctly identify what he was shooting at before pulling the trigger. For anyone to blame the shooting death of Karen Wrentzel on the fact she was not wearing hunter orange is asinine.
I too remember Karen Wood innocently hanging clothes out in her own backyard in Hermon and being shot by a hunter. I was aghast then that she was blamed for her own demise.
I would like to know when a non-hunter can feel safe in the Maine woods and where? It seems to me that one hunting season runs right into another hunting season now in Maine. Just how many days are left to those of us who like to wander and hike and just observe nature? I forget. There is Sunday. And the brave bear hunters and others have tried more than once to “kill” that day of reprieve.
Who goes into the Maine woods without wearing orange? We all should be able to. It is a hunter’s responsibility to know what he or she is aiming at — no excuses. I too stand with Jeremy Wrentzel, Karen Wrentzel’s brother. The woods do not belong to the hunters.
Tonya Troiani
Meddybemps
Reject GOP tax reform
Sen. Susan Collins should vote no on the proposed tax reform legislation in the Senate. This legislation contains a repeal of the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate. Without this mandate, many healthy Americans will forgo purchasing health care. This will cause rising prices for those who purchase insurance and will leave many who need care unable to afford it. This means small, rural hospitals have to swallow the cost of caring for patients who can no longer afford insurance.
This is a bad deal for Mainers. In addition, this tax plan will benefit the very rich at the expense of the middle class and add to the deficit. Collins should vote against this plan.
Lisa Buck, M.D.
Orono