Bullet train takes a bullet in funding

Re “Trump administration signals it will slash funds for long-delayed high-speed rail project in state” (June 5):

Wonderful news! However, it’s a day late and a dollar short.

More specifically, 17 years late and billions of dollars short.

Not surprisingly our two Democratic senators characterized this sensible conclusion as President Trump’s desire to “punish Californians who didn’t vote for him.” LOL. They seemed stunned that “Secretary Duffy used a review process to appease President Trump.”

What would they prefer, a guess written on a cocktail napkin?

Private investors are not coming to the HSR’s rescue; they’re looking for profits, not uncontrolled expenses.

Enough of this providing life support for a terminally ill project. The bullet train should take a bullet and be stopped dead in its non-existent tracks.

— Greg Sedoff, Anaheim

Proposed Senate Bill 672

Re “Democratic supermajority wants to set killers free” (June 4):

In his opinion piece, Rep. Brian Jones writes, “It is an oxymoron for Democrat lawmakers and the governor to claim that they are cracking down on crime, while simultaneously releasing dangerous convicted felons.”

What a staggeringly hypocritical sentence for Jones to assemble, given that President Trump and the Republicans are doing exactly that! While claiming to be ridding our country of crime, this Republican administration is arresting an assortment of citizens and non-citizens, and denying their right to a hearing before throwing them in foreign prisons for unlimited sentences.

Meanwhile, Trump continues pardoning convicted felons guilty of violent crimes against police officers on Jan. 6, and of swindling everyday Americans out of millions of dollars they’ll never have to pay back now. I don’t have a strong opinion one way or the other about the Menendez brothers, but the felons the president has pardoned are more a danger to Americans than the Menendez brothers are, so perhaps Mr. Jones should also be concerned about that.

— Crystal MacHott, Corona

Tax cuts and government spending

Gary Lynch in his comments about tax cuts and government spending (Letters, June 4) arrives at an incorrect conclusion because he starts from an incorrect premise. The incorrect premise is that the government is entitled to whatever taxes it may choose to levy on the population.

It isn’t and it’s because it’s not the government’s money until it confiscates it from taxpayers. Tax rate cuts don’t cost the government anything — and I can prove it! For example (for a mental exercise), take all the money out of your wallet (or purse). Divide it into two equal piles. Label one “taxes” and the other “personal.”

Now recombine the piles and redivide it into two new piles, one containing 40% of the total and the other 60%. Label the 40% pile “taxes“ and the 60% pile as “personal.”

Did the government just give you any money by changing the tax rates? Obviously not. It just let you keep more of your own money.

So too with all tax rate cuts. Letting the ones paying the tax bill keep more of their own money isn’t giving them anything.

The solution is really as simple as the Ramirez cartoon suggests — cut spending. No sane person would suggest that a government collecting some $5 trillion a year doesn’t have enough of the taxpayer’s money to do the job it is actually chartered to do. You can’t continually spend more than what you take in as an individual. It’s time the government operates under the same principal.

— Daniel Bartkowski, La Mirada

Biden investigation

Re “Trump orders probe into Biden’s actions as president” (June 5):

Just one more chink in the armor of American democracy.

Our country is quickly becoming a police state with the help of Pam Bondi, who promised in her confirmation hearing that there will be no “enemies list” in the U.S. Department of Justice.

There is no effective government to serve the American people.

— Susan Bernard, West Hills