Maggie Hassan supports small businesses and New Hampshire's working families: Letters

Maggie Hassan supports small businesses and New Hampshire's working families

Aug. 17 – To the Editor:

As the founder and president of a 30-year-old design studio in Portsmouth – and a single mother of a 17-year-old – I support public officials that champion both small businesses, the women and men who own them, and their families. This is why I support Senator Maggie Hassan.

There are so many factors that can impact a business. On top of the day-to-day challenges of running a business, small businesses on the Seacoast and across the state also have to grapple with workforce shortages, sparse affordable housing, and limited child care opportunities. Senator Hassan understands these difficulties, and she’s fighting in the Senate to provide business owners, their employees, and their employee’s families with the support that they need to overcome these challenges.

For example, one of the Senator’s bills – which she introduced with Republicans and Democrats – will help Granite Staters access job training programs by removing common barriers that can prevent people from looking for work. One common barrier is a lack of access to affordable child care, which continues to be a major concern for Granite Staters. In cases where affordable child care is hard to find, it’s often mothers who make the sacrifice to stay at home, contributing further to the gender wage gap and hurting our economy as a whole.

As a working mom, child care matters to me. The legislation Senator Hassan introduced would help connect workers with child care services, as well as other necessities such as housing and transportation – making the transition into the workforce just a little bit easier for folks who may otherwise have found it daunting. And it is so true, that we need everyone’s talent and passion in the workforce if we are to compete as a state and a nation on the global stage.

Take a walk through downtown Portsmouth, and you can easily see the diversity of small businesses that make up our city. Senator Hassan is fighting for every one of those small businesses in Washington. She knows that small businesses are the engine of our economy. She knows that when our small businesses are successful, everyone is better off.

Maggie comes to her position in the United States Senate with personal experience as a working mother. I appreciate that she had to balance her career in law and public service while caring for her children, Ben and Meg, when they were younger. This experience helps her to understand the intersection of both business and family.

It’s vital that we re-elect Senator Hassan so that she can continue working on behalf of small businesses and families in Congress.

Join me in voting for Maggie!

Mary Johanna Brown

Rye

The law should apply to all Americans equally – even former presidents

Aug. 17 – To the Editor:

It is extremely important that the ongoing investigations involving Trump continue; that he be cleared if there has been no wrongdoing, but that he be held accountable, civilly and criminally, if he has been guilty of misconduct. It is important because this will send a message in two directions that should go a long way to healing the growing divisions within our country.

The first message, to those "at the top" is that no one, including the President of the United States, is immune from prosecution if he or she has broken the law. Ever since Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon –albeit with the best of intentions – the appearance if not the reality over the intervening years has been that high government officials can become laws unto themselves without suffering consequences. This seems to have reached a peak during recent years with many government officials turning a blind eye to questionable, perhaps illegal practices, up to and including Presidential pardons for close friends and political supporters.

The second message is to those "at the bottom" or who feel they are at the bottom, abandoned by our legal system. Take as an example the many people dealing with alcohol or drug addiction, arrested for DWI or simple possession. They are often unable to make bail and so are held in custody long enough to have lost a job and income that has been paying rent and supporting a family. This often leads to eviction, then upon release faced with fines and loss of license, there is an inability to afford transportation for any new employment, or to attend court-ordered rehab programs and/or mandatory reporting requirements while on probation. Families are disrupted, facing difficulties in obtaining new housing, children perhaps uprooted from their schools. The burden in these and similar situations can be severe, not only on the individuals directly involved, but on the taxpayers and society as a whole. In the meantime, these people see that too many of those "at the top" have had a free ride, and this leads to frustration and resentment on the part of those who are victims of the unequal treatment.

So the actions taken by prosecutors in the January 6 attack on the Capitol, the attempts to overturn the election in Georgia, Michigan and elsewhere, the potential perjury and fraud of Trump family members and associates in New York, and the more recent withholding of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago send the message both ways: First, no one is above the law, and second, there will no longer be two sets of laws … one for the wealthy and the well-connected, and one for the great majority of people in this country, those struggling to maintain a basic existence.

This could be a valuable start to restoring a system of justice that applies to everyone equally without prejudice or favor.

Anthony McManus

Dover

Why did Trump take classified, top-secret papers to Mar-a-Lago?

Aug. 17 – To the Editor:

The National Archives and Records Administration has been trying to retrieve government documents Donald Trump took with him after he was no longer president for over a year. His lawyers turned over 15 boxes containing confidential papers in January 2022 and claimed that was everything. It wasn’t. In response to a grand jury subpoena, Trump’s lawyers turned over more boxes including ones containing classified documents this June. They did not hand over everything as we now know from the boxes of classified documents removed from Mar a Lago after an FBI execution of a search warrant this August.

Donald Trump is now claiming he is a victim. He says the warrant was not necessary and all the government had to do was ask to get the documents. The National Archives and Records Administration asked, followed by a grand jury subpoena and finally a warrant. Donald Trump only cooperates as a last resort.

The government information a president receives while in office is property of the government, not the president. If anyone else took home so many classified documents and lied in court about not possessing them they would be sitting in a jail cell awaiting trial. One has to ask why did Trump take classified, secret, top-secret and super top-secret papers to Mar a Lago? What country was he sharing our nation’s secrets with?  Was it Putin’s Russia or China, North Korea or the Arab country that gave his son-in-law billions to play with after Trump left office.

Why are politicians in his party threatening the FBI for retrieving our nation’s secrets instead of the culprit who endangered national security by taking them?  It seems the GOP is no longer the party of law, order and patriotism. Under Donald Trump it has become the party of defunding the FBI, insurrection, espionage and treason.

Walter Hamilton

Portsmouth

This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: Maggie Hassan supports small businesses and NH's working families: Letters