Re: 'Do we permit a virus to destroy our economy?' [Village News, Miller Letter, 04/02/20]

Boy, where do I start with this one? Ms. Miller seems to conflate her personal thought that “the majority of the people drive a better car than ‘I do’ yet have zero savings.”

I wonder where she gets this idea? I truly doubt the majority of people with no savings are driving a better car than her, unless she is driving at least a 10-year-old car worth about $2,500.

Secondly, she may have a year-plus of savings, but I will bet dollars to doughnuts that she more than likely wasn’t paying an average of $12,000 per year for health insurance for a family of four and an additional $16,000 in copays, out-of-pocket expenses and deductibles, which is the average in U.S. for those not getting their health care through an employer.

If she is so well-off and doesn’t seem to need the $1,200 from the government that she thinks is excessive pork, then I hope she will donate that money to a local food bank. I’m sure the thousands of people who rely on the food bank to supplement their budgets aren't driving around in luxury cars.

She needs to remember that the average family income in this country is around $55,000 per year. Not much left out of that after deducting the average in California $2,000 per month in rent, plus health insurance premiums, copays, etc.

Ms. Miller also blames the Dems for the “pork-filled” relief package – yet, Trump’s Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin was directly involved with the Dems in the house to structure this bill and it has his imprint all over it. From what I can tell from reading the reports on this package, there isn't a whole lot of pork in it.

The biggest “pork” went to the 1% where in Mnuchin’s infinite wisdom, he deleted the maximum $500,000 per year deduction for depreciation, which is going to save Trump millions over the next several years, since it was one way he was able to keep his taxes near zero in the past.

She also is trying to blame the coronavirus infections in California on immigrants crossing the border, yet there isn’t even one documented case of an infected person coming into the U.S. via the southern border.

Then, she goes on to state that she “prays” for our country and four more years of Trump.

Does she not realize that we are in the dire straits we are in precisely because of Trump and his total ignorance. Facts: He totally ignored two of his top advisers last year – and one was head of HHS – who said that what kept them awake at night was the threat of a global pandemic. Last year, he fired the head of the pandemic task force in the White House and dismantled the office completely, and he did this after No. 1 above.

He has systematically, over his term in office, deleted health care for millions through his attack on the Affordable Health Care act and removed millions more from Medicaid. And, he is even now, in the midst of the biggest health crises in the history of the country, trying to get the Supreme Court to find the entire act unconstitutional, thus putting millions more Americans into the uninsured category. It’s no wonder the hospitals asked for $150 billion to pay for the health care of the uninsured for the coronavirus outbreak.

He denied the whole pandemic epidemic for the first three months of infections calling it a hoax from “fake news” and an attempt by Democrats to discredit him. Turns out the real “fake news” about the virus came from Fox News, who, along with Trump, ignored and downplayed the whole issue. FOX is now being sued for their false and misleading narrative on the epidemic.

It wasn’t until we had a quarter million infections and 6,500 deaths – now, as of April 6, 335,000 infections and 10,000 dead – that Trump invoked the Defense Procurement Act to force private industry to produce the PPE and respirators we so desperately need. To date, not one single respirator has been produced, even though New York, Michigan and Los Angeles are expecting to run out of respirators this week.

Trump is now insisting that the National Stock Pile was not intended for the states. He stated that it is “our” stockpile. Just who does he think the “our” refers to if not the American people?

Trump’s total refusal to allow the federal government to handle the procurement process for PPE and respirators has caused total chaos in the states and has led to bidding wars for these critical items. Worse yet, when the states have been able to order critical items, the Feds have stepped in to confiscate the orders and redirect them elsewhere. God only knows where.

This administration has no regard for science nor the scientists who strive to protect us – from climate change to the corona virus. It is time to vote this “perfect genius” out of office.

I would hope that Ms. Miller would get at least some of her news from somewhere other than FOX News, because not only is she uninformed, she is misinformed. Also, a little compassion for the less fortunate would go a long way.

J.K. Walker