Too comfortable?!?

To the edtior:
    I am appalled at Governor LePage’s characterization of struggling families who are subsisting on unemployment, food stamps and emergency public assistance as being “too comfortable at home.” First of all, the $227 a week maximum unemployment for a household of any family size is simply not enough to get “comfortable” with. Combine that with the $35 a month for food stamps (for one person) means a person can have one can of soup every day for a month. Pretty comfortable huh?
    It is mean-spirited and simply evil for Gov. LePage to think that the poor and unfortunate workers of Maine who have fallen on hard times, (through no fault of their own, but rather of Republican-sanctioned predatory lending practices, two preemptive wars lasting 10 years, and corporate greed) are going to pull Maine and the country out the economic mess we are in. It would put more of a strain on the Departments who provide for and assist the needy and downtrodden, effectively adding even more debt to our already straining coffers.
    Gov. LePage should do more to create jobs in Maine, (which was what he and his Republican members ran on in the last election) than to blame all of the economic woes on poor people. Create more jobs Governor and we, the comfortable, promise we won’t go out in the woods and catch more poisoned fish to bring home, or jack any more mercury-laden moose and deer, or suck the pitch from the dying Spruce budworm trees. One can infer from his malevolent philosophy, that the best alternative to “being too comfortable at home” is … death.
Richard Dyer
Monticello