Letters: Normalcy needed in the White House; Support bills to end gerrymandering

Normalcy needed in the White House

In my mind, the morally, pompous GOP (that impeached Clinton because he lied to them about an affair) is willing to jump off a cliff to follow a narcissistic, pathological liar, who has all but destroyed America’s reputation globally, cuddles up to Russia, Saudi Arabia, etc, and abuses the office of the president. This same hypocritical GOP is hellbent on bringing charges against Joe Biden’s son, but fails to see anything wrong with Trumps’ kids raking in the dough with China deals and Trump hotels catering to the Republicans and world leaders. An egotistic bigot who berates a 16-year-old girl for winning Times Person of the Year!

Now that he’s impeached, perhaps the Senate will follow and try to bring some normalcy and decency back into what is suppose to be the most respected office of the land. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that when Trump is finished destroying America, he will be laughing all the way to the bank with his towers in Moscow and Riyadh.

Transparency, accountability are part of charter school discussion

Ana Meyers’ op-ed on Dec. 19 was interesting in the impassioned rhetoric for charter schools and against school district “one-size-fits-all educational model.” As executive director of the PA Coalition of Public Charter Schools, her agenda is obvious. Unfortunately, it is self-servingly myopic. She may wish to spend some time in local school districts discovering the actual wealth of opportunities currently being offered. As a taxpayer, I’m wondering why she did not mention transparency and accountability relating to finances and governance by charter schools with taxpayer dollars that are currently required to be sent to the charter schools. That might be truly innovative. How do movie screen preview advertisements for charter schools provide effective education support for current students?

Support bills to end gerrymandering

The page one article in the Sunday CDT, “Odds favor Pa. lawmakers winning reelection” states the inevitability that incumbents win reelection. This reality has perils for our democracy. For starters, a preordained outcome in elections discourages voters and minimizes the accountability of our elected officials to the masses. As presented in the article, a major reason for this undermining of our democracy is gerrymandering, the realignment (read: manipulation) of the boundaries of electoral voting districts almost exclusively to favor a certain political party. After every Census — every 10 years — the next one coming in 2020, our state Constitution authorizes the state legislature the opportunity to engage in this activity. Also stated in the article, in the five November elections in this decade, 96% of House incumbents and 95% of Senate incumbents won their reelection.

However, the article fails miserably. It omits the efforts by fairdistrictspa.com to rectify this perversion. Currently under consideration are House Bills 22 and 23, and Senate Bills 1022 and 1023. These bills would create a non-partisan commission enlisted to draw fair districts in Pennsylvania. Once these are passed in two consecutive legislative sessions, an amendment to our Constitution would be put forth to the voters.

Contact your legislators to support these bills so as to provide hope for fair representation in Harrisburg.