Dear Editor:
Patience wearing thin and horror growing, we dissidents out here should snail-mail postcards to Musk at DOGE, telling him five things we did last week. Address: Eisenhower Executive Office Building, 1650 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, Washington, D.C. 20504.
My five: 1) Feb. 17th Presidents’ Day protest in Concord, N.H. (against Trump and Musk’s attack on our democracy). 2) Critical-of-him postcards sent to Trump and Chief-of-Staff Susie Wiles. 3) Feeding my five hens and collecting their eggs, cleaning their room before trip to Palm Beach (condo there). 4) Taking canned goods and a warm winter jacket to the homeless in Tilton, N.H., several men being military vets. 5) Buying and reading (paper copy) my New York Times every day and watching Colbert’s “The Late Show” every night.
Lynn Rudmin Chong
Sanbornton, N.H.
Lynn:
Your suggestion reminds us of a famous scene in “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” but—as is so characteristic of our times—in reverse. Or upside down, or inside out, or backwards. Director Frank Capra depicted good guy Jimmy Stuart being deluged with baskets full of letters and telegrams from his home state demanding his expulsion from the Senate. The letters are the product of an astroturf smear campaign being orchestrated by corrupt politicians and amplified by crooked newspapers and radio stations. The film, of course, has a Hollywood ending: a corrupt Senator makes a dramatic confession; Jimmy Stuart is exonerated, and gets the girl, to boot.
The thought of jamming DOGE’s gears with postcards is appealing. We can’t see any reason not to try. But there is no way this approach could be sufficient.
The Editor
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Two Can Play That Game
Hi, Editor,
A few days ago, there was a video clip of Trump talking to a smallish group of (maybe) governors. (I wasn’t listening carefully, at first.) He gets to being prideful about his ban of transgendered students in girls’ sports. Mentions that not everyone is cooperating yet—for instance, Maine. He says something nasty about that—and the governor of Maine, part of his audience, pipes up with something about Maine “following the federal law.” To which Trump replies, “We are the federal law.” (More famously spoken as, “L’État, c’est moi”.)
Anyway, the two of them have a little tiff. He tells lies. He tells her that the people of Maine are with him on this and that her future in politics is bleak. Then—here’s the important part—he tells her that, unless she violates her state constitution and existing federal law, unless she complies with his ban, he will cut off all federal funds that go to Maine. Education, healthcare, police support—everything. And, he warns her that this wouldn’t make her very popular.
Withholding of funds is one of Trump’s favorite tools. In his beginning days, it took the form or not paying contractors for the work they did on his casinos and hotels. Some of them, unable to hold out and/or bear the legal expenses, settled for Trump’s lowball offers. Others just wound up getting stiffed when the “successful businessman” declared another bankruptcy. In more modern times, withholding of funds was used to attempt to pressure Ukraine into opening up an investigation of Biden. And, even more recently, his manipulation of the legal system and its opportunities for delays has kept him from paying most (if not all?) of the recent judgements against him.
Anyway, the important part was: If you don’t do what I want, I’m not sending you any money.
It occurred to me that we, the people, can use this principle to mount a protest against the Kingship of Trump. We can refuse to pay our taxes. File your tax return (as required by law). But, if you owe anything, put it in an escrow account and, instead of a check, enclose a letter. It can be brief. Something in your own words, explaining why, if the regime will not obey the laws of the land, you will no longer fund them.
If enough people did this, it would definitely get noticed. It would definitely make a difference in the government’s bank account. I.e., it would *register* as a protest with some teeth.
And, in terms of ever paying for your misdeed, Trump has helped you out. The DOGE boys are firing a big bunch of IRS agents. The staff that’s left will be swamped by all the normal tax returns. They won’t have time to deal with the conscientious objectors. And, when Trump gets his little hands into fine tuning more IRS dismissals, I’d guess he’ll diminish the investigative squad. Chances are good that you’ll never hear from the IRS at all.
Anyway, it’s an idea. And now, at tax time, is when it could be effectively put into action.
Paul Fischler
Rochester, N.H.
Paul:
You and Lynn [see above] seem to be thinking along the same lines. Again, while not, in itself, likely to reverse the course of this administration, this is certainly not a bad idea. Taken together, perhaps they might begin to have a synergistic effect.
This pairing reminds us of an instance in which an energized populace halted a federal juggernaut. In January of 1986, the Department of Energy announced the Crystalline Repository Project: 26 areas east of the Mississippi would be studied and compared; the lucky winner would get a high-level nuke dump. One candidate was the Cardigan Pluton, a mass of granite underneath the area where Sullivan, Cheshire, Merrimack, and Hillsborough counties converge.
To the apparent surprise of DOE officials, contractors from Battelle, and other, less identifiable figures pushing the project, local residents were not enthusiastic to see their property values annihilated, just to give the owners of commercial nuclear power plants a handy place to throw their radioactive trash.
“This decision will be made solely on the basis of geology,” they told us bumpkins, (the editor then living more or less at Ground Zero).
Local opinion, we were told, would not be a criterion in the multi-year selection process. The people pushed back anyway, in whatever manner they could. Elected officials from all the towns formed a Task Force which raised polite, technical objections—mostly based on groundwater, permeability, and such. Ordinary townspeople protested in a variety of ways, some polite, some less so. Most memorably, at one unforgettable public hearing in Henniker, N.H., a slight, gray-haired woman said, loudly and emphatically, with a distinctive New Hampshire accent, “You betta watch it. I keep a shotgun by my doah.”
Six months after the multi-million dollar project was announced, it was quietly cancelled. You never know what you can stop unless you try.
The Editor
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Eggs-Zactly
Dear Editor,
One of the main reasons people voted for trump [sic, passim] was the price of groceries, specifically, eggs. Despite inflation being tamed by President Biden, eggs were still a bit higher last November than before the covid pandemic, which killed over 300,000 needlessly during trump’s first presidency. A slim majority voted Republican, for cheaper eggs.
How’s that working for us? Ummm, not so good. Eggs are now twice the price they were when Democrats lost the election. Some blame bird influenza; some blame inflation. Trump’s pick for Health and Human Services, RFK Jr., is unlikely to control the bird flu since he is anti-vax. If bird flu jumps into the human population, thousands more people will die. You can thank Republican Senators who confirmed RFK’s nomination, along with the other incompetent Cabinet Secretaries, whose only qualification is to follow trump down to oblivion.
Republicans’ policies bring cheaper eggs? You’ve been fooled again.
Bruce Joffe
Piedmont, Calif.
Bruce:
You left out another cause of high egg prices: corporate price-gouging.
The Editor
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RFK Jr. Is Gambling With Our Lives
Dear Editor:
Last week the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) cancelled its scheduled March 13th meeting of the Influenza Advisory Board, when the next influenza season vaccine components would be established. The FDA is under the control of the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), headed by Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. The decision to cancel this meeting raises very serious concerns regarding the timely availability of a safe and effective influenza vaccine for the 2025-26 influenza season. In normal times, this decision is made in March in order to give vaccine manufacturers the needed time to produce and distribute sufficient amounts of vaccine before the onset of the influenza season.
If a safe and effective influenza vaccine is not available in sufficient quantities, or not at all, prior to the onset of the influenza season, the consequences will be catastrophic in terms of public health, the economy, public safety, military readiness, medical costs and social disruption. Each year about 47 percent of Americans receive an influenza vaccine. For people over age 65 it is about 51 percent. In the U.S., from 2010-2020, the average number of deaths due to influenza was approximately 36,000, according to the CDC. The number of deaths depends on the virus strain and vaccine rates.
The mortality due to influenza among people aged 65 and older is very concerning. In the U.S., 90 percent of all flu-related deaths are in people aged 65 and older. That demographic accounts for between 50 to 70 percent of all flu-related hospitalizations.
The unavailability of an influenza vaccine will not only impact the health of the population, it will impact every aspect of society. If people are unable to work due to illness, or to care for sick family members, this will impact our economy. Excess need for medical care, including hospitalizations, will greatly increase health care costs for everyone. A large influenza case load can disrupt and overwhelm already stressed medical capabilities. If police, fire, emergency services, health care workers, and the military are not immunized, and experience high levels of influenza, our public safety, health care, and defense can be severely impacted. As a former Air Force public health officer, I was responsible for the annual influenza vaccine program on my base. It was seen as a mission critical program, to insure that our population was protected, in order to avoid a disruption in our capabilities due to an influenza outbreak. For the same reason, this is why most health care facilities require influenza vaccination of their employees.
Dr. Tina Tan, MD, the President of the Infectious Disease Society of America, put it best. She stated; “Cancelling a critically important FDA meeting that is vital to the development of effective flu vaccines for the next flu season is irresponsible, ignores science, and shows a lack of concern for the protection of the public from this potentially severe disease. This decision and other federal efforts to undermine well-established science about vaccine safety puts everyone at risk, especially when we are currently experiencing the worst U.S. flu season in more than a decade. Cancelling this meeting means vaccine makers may not have the vital information and time they need to produce and distribute targeted vaccines before the next flu season. If the FDA meeting is not immediately rescheduled, many lives that could be saved by vaccination will be lost.”
The most basic function of government is to protect the health and safety of its people. As Secretary of DHHS, Mr. Kennedy has the duty and obligation to fulfill that mandate. Unfortunately, it appears that he is putting his own ideology ahead of the health of the American people.
Rich DiPentima, RN, MPH
Portsmouth, N.H.
Rich:
What the heck—a little flu, a little measles, a little bird flu—maybe all these viruses will cancel each other out. We’ve made it this far, right? Humans are pretty tough. As we understand it, people can even survive brain worms and still go on to serve as top government officials. Of course, it helps if you toughen up a bit by living on a roadkill diet.
The Editor
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Money Is Destroying Democracy
To the Editor,
The top one percent of Americans have taken $50 trillion from the bottom 90 percent since 1975 (Rand Corp, 2020). This vast transfer of money upward is the result of an economic system increasingly skewed against the working person.
Even more astonishing, people earning $1,000 an hour have convinced people earning $30-$70 an hour that people earning $10 an hour, especially immigrants, are the real threat to their well-being. They have convinced many that “government” is the problem. And so, they are taking a chainsaw to needed government positions to “save money.” Positions that: keep the national parks open; help people with their taxes; keep planes flying; promote medical research, public health, clean water, highway safety; support agricultural research… .
And what are they doing with this “saved” money? The Republican Party is putting the finishing touches on a $4.5 Trillion permanent tax cut for the wealthy!
The election of Donald Trump, with his cabinet of billionaires, could well be the final nail in the coffin of any power the working class or middle class has. It is time for Republican as well as Democratic voters to fight back!
Let your voice be heard, call or write your congressman, speak out at political events, organize.
Michael Frandzel
Portsmouth, N.H.
Michael:
Back in the olden days, when half of the population lived on the farm, most everyone had access to a pitchfork. These days, not so much. Amazon sells them for about $30, but buying a pitchfork from Jeff Bezos would kind of defeat the purpose. Besides, if one were to show up in D.C. or Concord with such an implement, the result might not be optimal.
You know what this country needs? A good YouTube video on how to make pitchforks out of papier-mâché.
We’ll never forgive those damn Nazis for tainting torches in Charlottesville. If ever there was a time for that classic old combo… .
The Editor
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Look in the Mirror, Musk!
To the Editor:
Elon Musk claimed his job was to eliminate waste and fraud. He and a bunch of 19- to 26-year-olds have ordered mass firings in departments they know nothing about. If someone points out that those fired were really needed, such as people taking care of our nuclear weapons, they say “oops,” then try to cancel their actions. They cut off money for foreign aid which the Secretary of State had to restore. This has happened in many departments. This is incompetence.
There is also fraud, such as repeatedly calling an $8 million savings $8 billion, and claiming to have saved $55 billion while the Wall Street Journal says the savings is $2.6 billion.
If the Trump administration really wants to get rid of waste and fraud it should begin with firing Elon Musk and his team of incompetents and frauds.
Walter Hamilton
Portsmouth, N.H.
Walter:
Not only is Musk’s campaign farcical and incompetent, the premise on which it’s based is entirely bogus. The reason the government is short of money is because Republicans decided long ago that our poor, deserving rich have suffered enough, and must never be asked to pay taxes at all.
The Social Security tax is capped at $176,100. Eliminate that cap and the system is sound and solvent long into the future. Reverse the Reagan, Bush, and Trump tax cuts, and the deficit would disappear. But noooo… .
The Editor
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End N.H. Vehicle Inspections
To the Editor,
Imagine driving home to Derry after a long day, your 2009 Honda CRV running smoothly, oil undercoated, brakes checked by your own hands. Yet you’re glancing in the rearview mirror, heart racing, fearing a cop will pull you over. Life is busy and you happen to be a few days late to renew your inspection sticker. As a 26-year-old lifelong Granite Stater, I feel this dread yearly. Why? A redundant tax disguised as a “safety” sticker, despite my meticulous care, haunts me, threatening fines and stress.
I want a New Hampshire where we’re trusted to maintain our vehicles without overreach. No more $50 fees to inspection stations, no more forced repairs for trivial flaws that don’t crash cars. Brian Chase, a N.H. State Police vet with 35 years of experience, confirms: only two percent of crashes stem from component failure, and N.H.’s strict inspections don’t change that. Only 11 states mandate annual vehicle inspections. We’d save millions annually, easing the burden on young Granite Staters like me and our elderly fixed income neighbors.
The path forward is clear: support House Bill 649 to scrap this outdated program.
Join me and let’s act! Call and email your State Reps today and ask that they vote in support of HB 649.
Derek Proulx
Derry, N.H.
Derek:
Congratulations! Your letter has jammed our editorial gearbox.
We could argue in favor of stickers because the roads are hazardous enough without having to worry about one of those two-percent vehicles coming across the median at us on I-95 in Greenland.
Or, we could argue against stickers because we can remember only too well driving a serviceable rust bucket we could not afford to replace.
So, we’ll just throw up our editorial hands and embrace the ambiguity.
The Editor
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MAGA’s Simplistic Mentality
To the Editor
Here is what I have figured out about the MAGA mentality.
I want to take as my starting point the “slaughter of the innocents” in the federal government—the mass firings, layoffs, probationary terminations, demands to justify their existence and document their workloads, etc. What a crazy way to run a government, isn’t it? If businesses ran their workforces like this, they would never be able to find and hire another employee. Word would get out. And maybe that is exactly the message here. While MAGA is in charge, you need not apply to the federal government. Go find work somewhere else.
According to the very simplistic MAGA way of thinking, the federal government is an evil institution except for the defense department. Not even the postal service can be trusted. The federal government is conceived in ignorance, raised in misery, and given a lifetime existence by people who don’t know anything about business and life.
In the first place, government is best conducted on the state and local levels if it is needed at all. What is really needed on those levels are roads and energy development, agriculture and country music, harvest festivals and the 4th of July, and maybe a few non-profits. What is not really needed there, but is a bonus in America, is public education and public health care. Corporations and the church are ready and willing to handle people’s education, health care, and welfare needs, with maybe a little support on the margins from local government.
Behind the corporate and religious worlds, as a backup, is the real and very capable God-ordained shadow government system—the system of aristocracy, or private government by the wealthy. This system of government is headed by a God-anointed king who loves and believes in the private system of everything. That is why the wealthy must be elected to public offices at all levels, so they can do the bidding of the king and make sure public welfare does not happen.
Private folks do not need any government supervision and especially not any regulation of their money. Private world folks get their education at church (and they are very well informed there) and at the private institutions and agencies set up by the aristocracy for the benefit of their offspring.
When the rich see an area that needs some support, they will graciously step in with the needed philanthropy. Even wealthy Hollywood stars, athletes, and music moguls have already gotten the hang of the way of “nobility.” It has long been called “noblesse oblige,” or the obligation of the wealthy to fix everything. That system has finally been put in place in America with our newly entitled class of centi-millionaires and billionaires. It just needs to be used.
The federal government is currently besotted with all kinds of unnecessary services. What people need to do, rather than rely on the federal government for all their needs, is to get out of bed in the morning and go to work. On the weekend, they need to get out of bed and go to church. The private world of industry, commerce, and banking, together with the correct denomination of Jesus’ church, will solve all problems. People need to grow up and take care of themselves, so the government doesn’t have to do it.
The common working folk need to understand that it is not really that important for them to go to public school, or to get public health, or to rely on social services when their families fail. The private sector in America takes care of all needs and wants, which for the working man and woman should be very minimal. They need to work, marry, stay together in marriage, produce children, go to church, and rely on salvation in the next life rather than comfort and salvation in this life.
The rich are entitled to comfort, but the working people are not. Their job is to do what they are told. That is why MAGA has absolutely no concern about dropping domestic programs like vaccinations, student loan forgiveness, and FEMA, and international aid programs like USAID. The only aid program folks need for their daily lives is belief in Jesus Christ and Donald Trump. The only aid program folks around the world need from America is the “lethality” of American armed forces. Those two great programs will keep the world safe and sound.
Kimball Shinkoskey
Woods Cross, Utah
Kimball
Uh, yup.
The Editor
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A Second Iron Curtain
Sir,
Winston Churchill, in 1946, famously remarked that “from the Baltic to the Adriatic an iron curtain has descended across the continent” thereby separating the Stalinist east from the, albeit imperfect, western democracies.
With the events of the last two months and the possible realignment of international positions one can’t help feeling that a second iron curtain could begin descending along the eastern seaboard of the United States.
David Severn
Portsmouth, N.H.
David:
Perhaps we could stave off this dire future by constructing a huuuge iron cage around the main MAGA miscreants.
The Editor
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Putin Could Have Done No Better
To the Editor:
For nearly a century, the United States has sided with democracies around the world. Recently, we watched the president and vice president of the United States switch sides on an ally, Ukraine, in the middle of a war. They adopted Russia’s talking points, even claiming that Ukraine started the war. If Putin wished to destroy NATO, separate the U.S. from its allies, and oust the U.S. from its position as leader of the free world, he could do no better.
This development marks the end of the United States as the leader of the free world, a place we have held since WW II. It is in line with recent decisions of the administration to end USAID, to cut off all aid to Ukraine, including aid to keep its power grid operational, to levy tariffs on imports from our allies, and to fire those JAG officers who advise as to international and military law.
The result is that our allies will no longer trust us, and our enemies have learned they can manipulate us. This makes the world less safe, especially for the U.S. We will be isolated and weakened for decades to come. The American people must come together and demand better.
Lorriane L. Hansen
Rollinsford, N.H.
Lorraine:
Exactly. This is why we have largely avoided spelunking that enormous rabbit-hole, “is he or isn’t he in cahoots with Pooty-Poot.” Either way, the effect is the same.
The Editor
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Portsmouth Democratic Roundtable Slated for March 11th
Portsmouth Democrats hold a roundtable at a local restaurant on the 2nd Tuesday of every month. The next will be on March 11th from 6:30 to 8:00 p.m. It’s an opportunity for new residents and old friends to socialize without any agenda or rigid structure. New residents can meet those involved in the Portsmouth Democrats and learn of opportunities to get involved, suggest new ideas, or be supportive of planned initiatives. For location and other information contact Peter Somssich at (603) 436-5382 (No Texts Please) or email peter.somssich@gmail.com. In April the Roundtable will be held on April 8th.
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Please and Thank You
To the Editor:
Please continue… we truly need people like you to speak out for us and bring them into the open. Thank you for your persistence in exposing these stories, I only hope that you are allowed to continue.
K. L.,
Eliot, Maine