Letters to the Editor | April 15, 2025

I’ve never attended the Carnaval de Puebla, a celebration of Mexican culture held annually in South Philly. I didn’t even know about it until recently. But I take it personally when Philadelphians call off a festival for fear of persecution (in this case, that U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement might target the festivities). Mosques, synagogues, churches, and all people of good faith should join festival leaders to organize a Carnaval de Libertad y Unidad. Our City of Brotherly Love, where the nation’s founders led us to freedom and established our union, must declare that we are brothers and sisters, all, and we will never be defeated if we stand together.

William S. Greenfield, Wyndmoor

With Tax Day here, I’m thinking a lot about where my money goes, both locally and nationally. For instance, our tax dollars are paying government lawyers to stonewall a U.S. district judge regarding the wrongly deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia. We are paying the salaries of the masked men who abducted a Tufts student off the streets of Massachusetts and disappeared her to Louisiana.

We’re also paying the salary (and health care and, ultimately, pension) of Sen. John Fetterman, who continues to rank at the top of the leaderboard for legislators who skip the most votes. But then, taxpayers have spent $26 million on President Donald Trump’s golfing outings this year. Philadelphians cover a substantial part of the bills for the commonwealth’s roads and bridges. The state, however, refuses to support our region’s public transit, which helps facilitate the work and sales that generate the money that supports the state.

Here at home, our tax dollars go to pay for the Philadelphia Sheriff’s Office, which has failed to staff courts with deputies, hold required tax sales, or recover missing guns. When I pay my taxes this year, I am very conscious of how much cruelty, laziness, incompetence, and corruption my money is helping to fund. It makes me angry, sad, frustrated. In fact, you could say that it’s all very emotionally, well, taxing.

Jesse Bernstein, Philadelphia

Is anyone wondering who is benefiting from the response of the markets to the tariffs? I would love to read an investigative piece on the effect the administration’s manipulation of the global markets is having on many of the billionaires who are buying low and laughing all the way to their banks, as many of us wonder whether we’ll have enough financial security to pay our rents and to survive in our retirements.

Anne Hill, Gwynedd

On the jacket of William L. Shirer’s memoirs, it is stated that to his intense frustration, the urgency of his message about the Nazis was not believed. Today, as the library at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., retains Mein Kampf and dumps Maya Angelou, as law firms cave to intimidation and threats from the White House, as legal residents are swept off the street, and as military personnel are fired for doing their job, we all must be listening. Whether it’s the new Goebbels spouting propaganda or the new Mengele experimenting on the nation’s health, they must be called out each time they lie. The Inquirer is doing a great job of keeping this covered. I urge you to move it from the editorial page to the front page.

James Hohmann, Langhorne

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