February 2, 2025
Dear Senator Shelley Moore Capito:
After another week of the Trump administration I find myself writing to you again. Please explain why we have to endure four years of women and minorities being blamed for all the bad things happening in this country. Wildfires? Women leading firefighters and cities are to blame. Airplane crashes? Women and minorities who work at the FAA. Helicopter crashes? Women and minority pilots. Fabricated increased crime rate? Illegal aliens with brown skin. It seems that if we had white men in charge of fighting fires, being mayors of large cities, working as pilots and air traffic controllers, and volunteering for military service, we would be a great country “again.” Where does the verbal assault on women and minorities end?
I have several friends who work for the federal government and I believe we’ve lost sight of the fact that federal workers are actual people who will be harmed by layoffs, firings, the change in work-from-home policies, and the toxic masculinity I mention above. They have families, kids in college, some live in Washington, D.C. (one of the most expensive cities in the country in terms of housing as you well know), and they are all dedicated civil servants. If we want the federal government to operate efficiently and work better for the American people, gutting it and lowering morale is not the way to succeed. And why should they trust that they will actually receive severance pay? Why must they endure the condescending “take a dream vacation” attitude by billionaires? Maybe a better approach would be to make working for the federal government more attractive so that we have the best people there.
It looks to me like the people currently in charge and the people nominated for cabinet positions are approaching the government from the point of view of a multi-billion dollar corporation. This is unfortunate because the goal of the federal government is not to make a profit, but to be of service to its citizens, the vast majority of whom are not millionaires, much less billionaires.
Now the latest news is that Elon Musk, an unofficial government official, is in control of the Treasury Department’s computer payment system. If this is acceptable to you, then I am sure you would have approved of Bill Clinton or Barack Obama installing a foreign-born political surrogate to this same position without vetting or any qualification whatsoever. You would have believed them when they told you that it was necessary to bring down the cost of government, that it has nothing to do with the potential interference of social security payments, staff paychecks, or hacking their “enemies’” personal information. You would have been OK with no transparency, no precedent, and blind trust.
I have yet to see how any of these actions, including tariffs and the freeze on grants which I haven’t even mentioned, are going to make this country great “again.” How does making sure only white men are in charge of everything help West Virginians? How does randomly firing dedicated federal employees make the federal government work better for the American people? Why should I have a positive outlook about the direction the country is currently heading?
