Musk’s wave of destruction will reach all of us eventually

After skiing in Rocky Mountain National Park on President’s Day, I returned to its entrance to find 300 people waving signs. They were there to protest the firings of forest service workers and federal park rangers, some of whom live in park housing. Musk’s indiscriminate firing of essential workers without any regard for the human cost is not only unconscionable, but it also indicates a complete lack of imagination about decreasing government spending. In the DOGE dash to slash numbers, they are not only putting people out of their jobs, they are also putting them out of their homes. Some of those rangers did search and rescue missions and helped fight wildfires close to our homes in Colorado’s Front Range. Without them, we are all more vulnerable.

Firing federal workers isn’t a local problem; it’s a national one as more and more lose their jobs under the Musk regime. Those fired aren’t just numbers; they’re people. All are jobless, some are now homeless, and many have mortgages as well as bills to pay. Among them were nuclear bomb specialists, epidemiologists and bird flu experts. Like the axing of USAID, DOGE agents seem not to have considered the consequences of their actions. Instead, we have Elon Musk, who no one has elected, directing that costs come down, yet not offering to cut any of the $20 billion he receives in federal contracts.

Musk is now considering cuts to Medicare and Medicaid. His ongoing wave of destruction will reach all of us sooner or later. I urge you to call your Senators and Representatives now to object to this ongoing assault on our democracy. One person can make a difference. Be that person.

— Laraine Carmichael Nelson, Estes Park

Don’t privatize the USPS

In 2020, in his first term, the current president’s appointed board chose major campaign contributor Louis DeJoy as Postmaster General, to “fix” things. DeJoy’s mismanagement (junking sorting machines, ending overtime, etc.) slowed first-class mail considerably, and many folks have switched to the competition (in which, BTW, DeJoy is a serious owner/investor). Now the president says he is considering two more steps (BDC 2/22/2025) to re-fix it. Maybe, instead of, “Neither rain nor snow … etc.” the new USPS motto should be, “The floggings will continue until morale improves.”

— Frank Landis, Erie

America should adopt a shadow government

In Great Britain, the party out of power fields a Shadow Government in Parliament led by the leader of the opposition and a head of each department of government. They are there to question the ruling party’s policies and to be ready to assume leadership roles in the event of an electoral shift. It works for the Brits, but it is not our tradition. Perhaps it should be. At this time the Democrats need not only a national leader but experts challenging each department of government with well-founded alternative directions. Democracy requires a strong opposition party; a shadow cabinet promoting reasonable alternative ideas and publicizing them in a coherent manner that might just work in the United States.

— Jim Wolf, Boulder