Gov. Paul LePage’s order to remove the mural depicting Maine’s labor history from the lobby of the Department of Labor is entirely in character with the totalitarian mindset of the extreme rightists who now run the Republican Party.

In their view, every government-funded cultural forum must represent “business interests,” as if those are America’s only interests.

For them, labor deserves zero representation. They cannot tolerate, for example, public television, because even though PBS programming is overwhelmingly dominated by pro-business shows such as WallStreet Week, the Nightly Business News, CEO Exchange and That Money Show; and while National Public Radio carries the Marketplace Business News, Planet Money, Your Money, and others; even though neither PBS nor NPR carries a single program dedicated to labor or issues of concern to working Americans, the fact that PBS has also included Frontline and Bill Moyers (which have occasionally been critical of some business practices) means that the network exhibits a “liberal bias.”

For the Republican Party, any publicly funded artwork or cultural presentation that is not 100 percent pro-business is unacceptable. That is the proto-fascist mentality of the Republican Party — and I write that as a businessman and CEO of a multi-million dollar construction company.

Richard Smith, New York City

President, CBC Corporation