Pumping irony [ Michael Ramirez letters]
Was Michael Ramirez's Feb. 25 editorial cartoon, "The weight is over," commissioned by the Trump administration? The cartoon used a mean stereotype to depict the government as getting fat on taxpayers' money. No, federal employees work hard to grant Americans security.
This cartoon enrages me because two friends unjustly lost their jobs. It enrages me because my friend who works at the Environmental Protection Agency had to drive into the office on a vacation day to email her five points demanded by Elon Musk. It enrages me because my sister's job at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which she always loved, has turned morose because of the siege mentality among federal workers. It enrages me because Ramirez mirrored the big lie about government that got Donald Trump elected and that is killing our democracy. Musk is not a trainer exercising the government to be healthier. He is an executioner, slashing agencies and cutting jobs with blind swipes of his big red chainsaw.
Katherine Murphy, Falls Church
Michael Ramirez is a talented artist who has won two Pulitzer Prizes for cartooning, and I greatly enjoy his painstakingly rendered artwork. It's his ideas that often fall short.
Take his Feb. 25 cartoon for example. Aside from the offices established by the Constitution, our "Government" is simply the sum of the departments, agencies and programs established by Congress and signed off on by a president — not something inflicted on a free people by outside forces. Are there programs we no longer wish to support? Are too many resources devoted to a given activity? Are there waste and fraud? By all means, focus on those and make adjustments accordingly, by legislative or administrative action. That's why we have congressional oversight and departmental inspectors general.
I have had some experience in government, including four years as a political appointee in a GOP administration, and I am confident I know more about the bureaucracy than Ramirez does. Whenever I hear someone complain without specifics that the government is "too big," my answer is a rhetorical question: "How big should a box be?"
Robert J. McManus, Bethesda
at the time, I posted this comment on the Post website, and my opinion hasn't changed.
