Here is my response to state Rep. Sue Allor’s May 1 column: I am neither a Republican nor a Democrat. I believe that both of our political parties — through individual and group actions over the years — have abysmally failed the citizens in both Michigan and the U.S.

Your column today adds to the partisan piling-on, which is so common now that I wonder why I bother writing. You allege that “many businesses will not survive Gov. Whitmer’s orders” and “… many families have been dealing with crippling financial stress caused by the restrictions she has imposed.”

Don’t you get it? Many businesses and many people will not survive the “pandemic.” Nationwide. Worldwide. As you and your GOP colleagues continue to shamefully lay this deadly reality at the feet of our governor, I would ask you to open just one eye to the paragraph on page one of the same edition of The Alpena News as your column. It says “Health Department officials ‘warned’ Thursday that shoppers (inside) the Alpena Walmart from 7 to 8 p.m. may have been exposed to the virus.”

As you rail against unchecked executive authority in our state, you and your colleagues in Lansing and Washington are strangely silent about the unchecked executive in Washington, D.C. The most unprepared and incompetent president in U.S. history has been the single most critical reason why the virus was allowed to fester and spread across the country.

Deny, delay, lie, spread false information and then say — out loud – that the buck does not stop with you.

Two executives … one in Lansing and one in Washington. Is one doing harm and the other “spectacularly well?” If so, which is which? Here is a hint: One has enablers and one doesn’t.

SAM EILER,

Alpena