James Mayotte’s Monitor letter asks a series of questions, but there’s only room to respond to a few. Two related questions he poses are: “Why do Democrats protest DOGE?” and “Why are we negative about Elon Musk?” DOGE is performing surgery with an ax instead of a scalpel. DOGE’s process is not transparent. What are DOGE’s metrics for performance? How can DOGE measure complicated government processes in only weeks?

DOGE’s 20-somethings may be very intelligent but don’t have the experience to evaluate government programs and performance. Have they interviewed any of the people whose jobs they cut? Do they know what those people really do?Musk’s companies have billions of dollars of federal contracts. It’s a massive conflict of interest having someone with billions on the line, or his youngderlings, deciding which programs go or stay. He shouldn’t be anywhere near any decision making. Musk gave $250 million towards the president’s re-election. Normal people can’t buy their way into a position of enormous power where they lop off government programs left and right or squash the government contracts of their competitors.

Then, there are Musk’s Nazi salutes. You can claim these were accidental and not meant to say ”Heil Hitler.” If he didn’t mean it, he could at least apologize for the remarkable resemblance of his action to the Nazi salute. Instead, he blew off those who saw the similarity as pulling a “dirty trick.”

Corey Belobrow

Concord