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Hard-working Americans earn their money; blame the CEOs
The Letter to the Editor (Reader upset about ethanol-livestock article, page 5) published in the July 9 edition disturbed me.
Like many others in this country I feel I have been taken advantage of by the powers that be. I have a family farm that my husband and I operate. It takes every waking minute that we have just to keep our dream going.

In addition to the farm, we also work full-time jobs that require swing shifts of 13 hours, nights, weekends, holidays and very rarely day shift. Those jobs keep my mortgage payment, health care and taxes paid.

We generally each work 100 hours a week. Yes, that’s right, 100 hours each. We never work in air conditioning, and the ambient temperature is usually above 100 degrees F. in June, July, August and September.

At our jobs we repair, change over, operate all of the equipment. We also perform all quality and operational checks to ensure we are packaging quality product for our consumers. My husband is a millwright of 30 years and worked in every facet of manufacturing maintenance.

Our raises haven’t even kept pace with inflation over the last 15 years. But I can tell you this, when everyone else is lying in their bed at night, we are either at work or on our way to work. I know that my school district was extremely happy with the tax levies we paid. They really didn’t care what I did to earn the money.

Yes, I work in a brewery, and I deserve every cent I make as does the rest of the people in this country who work hard, long hours. It is short-sighted opinions about workers that have done an injustice to the American workforce. Ask the millwrights at John Deere, AK steel, Ford, Chrysler if they are worthy of their income. I agree that teachers are underpaid and the schools are underfunded.

Ask yourself where is all of the money going? It is surely not the Union brothers and sisters of this country who are draining this country dry. CEOs, CFOs, board members and hedge fund operators seem to be the overpaid individuals of this economy. Why are they entitled to $30-$40 million in compensation?
I hope that your fortunes take a turn for the better, but please don’t wish hardships on others simply because you lack the understanding of what they do.

Sincerely,
Sherry Boggs
Eaton, Ohio
7/18/2008