LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

To the Editor:

A frequent letter writer (FLW) is at it again spreading his pixie dust of distortion and misinformation. In “United in Lies” (MVI, 3/15/25), as an example of the rampant “waste, fraud, and abuse” practiced by the Democrats, he writes “DOGE has already ferreted out a huge number of people on Social Security who are over 110 years old.” Since I spent most of my working career designing databases, let me enlighten the FLW. In setting up a database, every data item must be given a value. This “default value” is what appears in a blank record or if the actual birth date is unknown. For birth dates the Social Security Administration chose a default date of 1857, giving a person’s current age as 168 years. Since no one lives to be 168 they thought no one would mistake this for an actual birth date. Alas, they did not foresee the ignorance of Musk’s young minions and their enablers. These are simply records in which the SSA had no actual birth date – some thousands in a database covering millions. I do not expect the FLW to know this, but I would expect Musk’s young computer experts, some over whom are being paid well over $100,000, to know it. (Musk claimed they would not be paid anything.) In other words, this example of “waste, fraud, and abuse” is simply an example of the stupidity with which Trump and Musk are wrecking the government.

A few years ago there was a scandal over wait-times at Veterans Administration hospitals. Republicans and their helpers in the media blamed VA “bureaucrats,” some of whom lost their jobs. It turned out that Congress had been under funding and under staffing the VA for decades. Sen. Sanders forced through legislation to increase the VA annual budget by $2 billion including $500 million for new staff. Think for a moment if you will of the size of those numbers and the scale of the crime perpetrated on our veterans for years. Now Trump wants to roll back all of that and cut VA staff by 83,000. (He also wants, among other things, to end the contract to supply sterilized instruments to Veteran’s Administration hospitals, another of their “savings” to us taxpayers.)

Even so, the supporters of Trump’s government demolition mindlessly repeat his claims of having uncovered massive fraud. As in the FLW’s letter, no explanation of their claims are ever offered.

Robert Supansic McKeesport

To the Editor: The purpose for the men who met at the Pennsylvania State House in 1787 was to write a constitution for a growing new-world country. They didn’t want a king controlling them; they didn’t want a monarch telling them what to do; they wanted a government by the people and for the people. They wanted a republic, a democratic republic. And so do a majority of Americans today. Do you recall the preamble to the Constitution: “We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union…” It doesn’t begin: “I Donald Trump, will be ruler of the United States…”

Trump is totally disregarding the critical wording in Article II, Section 3: “… he (the president) shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed…” Trump is lawless. He doesn’t care about the rule of law. He thinks he is the law. Remember the speech he gave to the DOJ? He called himself “chief law enforcement officer in our country.” What rubbish!

Also recall at the same meeting what Attorney General Pam Bondi unabashedly said: “We will never stop fighting for him (Trump) and for our country.” The DOJ is to be nonpartisan and independent of the presidency; it is not an agency filled with attorneys that do the bidding of Trump!

Do you really believe that all the Venezuelan men transported to a horrible prison in San Salvador were part of a criminal gang? If you are a rational person, you would have your doubts. We don’t know how many were deported or their names. Word has it that Trump continues to ignore a federal judge’s orders to stop such deportations, but like I have written above, Trump is lawless! Trump and ICE violated two important Constitutional Amendments, IV and V: unreasonable searches and seizures and lack of due process, respectively. Just maybe, an innocent man with a tattoo was rounded up and will spend a year or an indefinite period in the prison CECOT (Center for Terrorism Confinement).

Read the Constitution amendments. The spineless Republicans in Congress refuse to demand oversight into this situation.

Trump does not understand what damage tariffs do to domestic companies that import goods from other countries. A tariff is a tax, and it is paid by the U.S. company importing a product. Do you really think that the importing company is just going to absorb this tax and not pass it on to you in the form of a greater cost of the product? Of course, they won’t! You will pay more! But you be the judge. Find a website that explains the side effects and advantages of tariffs. In most cases, you will find that tariffs are not a good idea for a country.

To end this letter: Trump is said to have noticed the words “Where law ends, tyranny begins” on some wall of the Department of Justice, and all he is reported to say is, “And I see that.” Nothing of truth affects him!

Edwin Lefevre Monessen