Remodeling U.S.

When you are getting ready to remodel a room in your house, do you throw a grenade in it first? When you need to replace your roof, do you burn your house down? No, you make a plan, research options and cost.

President Donald Trump is burning down the house. He could be eliminating parts of agencies instead of shutting them down. He could be allowing health trials to plan for a finish date that wouldn’t jeopardize people’s lives with trial implants left in them. He could allow medical research to gradually end its protocols so all the data is not invalidated. He could let the food already in place be delivered instead of rotting on the docks while children starve. He could allow illegal immigrants already given an appointment time to stay in America and be processed while still deporting criminal illegal immigrants.

Instead Trump is wasting taxpayer money: Flying and detaining immigrants at Guantanamo that has to have all its food brought in by costly boat or plane; randomly cutting understaffed IRS employees during tax season that could affect your tax return; causing lawsuits that challenge his closures, wasting time and slowing the courts.

Is this lowering your grocery bill? He is burning down the house of democracy. Stay informed and see what happens, then vote in November.

Gitmo costs

A 2019 public report states that housing at Guantanamo Bay costs U.S. taxpayers $13 million per year per prisoner. Yikes! So, our smartest kids in the zoo headed by Elon Musk want to put 30,000 illegal immigrants there?

That is nearly $400 billion per year, approximately half the Department of Defense budget? Do the math or hope that the per prisoner rate comes down. Do the brilliant minds that President Donald Trump is hiring realize that Gitmo requires us to airlift or ocean lift every bit of needed resources? It might be cheaper to refurb Alcatraz.

Base renaming

Re “Families want to pump brakes on base renaming” (A2, Feb. 19): The article relates the family of Army Lt. Gen. Hal Moore and Julia Moore as they ask the Department of Defense to retain the name of Fort Moore — formerly known as Fort Benning.

Being a lifetime civilian with no military background — similar to our commander-in-chief — I sympathize with the Moore family as they recall the many honorable military achievements of their namesake family.

Their suggestion that the DOD has an “opportunity to embrace honor, integrity, competency, selfless service…” may fall on deaf ears as those laudable attributes do not characterize Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.

We can only hope that Hegseth values respect for military families before partisan politics as he was once part of that family as well.

Backbone

Where have the Republican politicians with morals, a conscience and a backbone gone? Clearly what is going on now in the current administration is seen as chaotic, immoral, unconstitutional, unpopular and an embarrassment on the world stage.

Sure, I get that you, as a so-called-representative of us average Americans, want to keep your job, but at the cost of what, a ratio of your one job versus 5,000 to 10,000 hardworking government workers losing theirs? And you don’t say a word? What a farce.

As a side note: No one elected billionaire Elon Musk to political office. So, why does he go merrily and smugly unchecked, though there are probable conflicting monetary interests now and, in the future, with Trump’s backing? Ask him what a dozen eggs, a quart of milk or a gallon of gas costs.