Letters: True patriots wear masks; Columnist misrepresents progressives’ perspective

True patriots wear masks

Everyone must take a patriotic, personal responsibility to wear masks.

Wearing face masks in public will limit the further spread of the deadly coronavirus.

During my rare trips to the grocery store or pharmacy, many people are outside wearing masks, and we are all grateful to the faithful mask wearers.

Unfortunately I also see many people not wearing face masks.

Anyone not wearing a mask is a potential “Typhoid Mary” placing the rest of us at risk.

Those who feel healthy and fine may still be infected and spread the coronavirus to others.

As business restrictions are eased, masks become more important than ever.

The deadly pandemic can easily spread again without the use of masks.

We must all take personal responsibility to protect our nation, our elderly, our children, our jobs and our businesses.

Let us one and all be true patriots and wear face masks in public.

Columnist misrepresents progressives’ perspective

In Jay Ambrose’s op-ed, “The falsehoods of progressives’ perspective” (CDT, April 29), he claims that we progressives think “some people having more money than others is what makes people poor,” and “Profits … are evil.” Progressives do not think that.

Most of his op-ed intends to show that while there is a lot of difference in income between the rich and poor, the programs that America has created to redistribute income have (unjustly in his opinion) significantly reduced that disparity. He refers to a Wall Street Journal article that has as its source: “Calculations by authors based on official government data,” instead of using well-documented data readily available from the Congressional Budget Office. Surprise! The WSJ article exaggerates the CBO data. The CBO data says the income ratio between the richest fifth and poorest fifth in 2016 was 14 before taxes and transfers, and 6 afterward. Ambrose claims 60 before, and 4 afterward.

It gets worse. He makes the unsubstantiated claim that this redistribution means that poor “people are incentivized to drop out of the workforce.” He claims that rich folks will less productive. No sources cited.

Then he says that raising minimum wages will “cost more than a million people their jobs.” So in the same op-ed he is against redistribution to support poor people, AND against raising the minimum wage so that they can better support themselves.

Here is his coup de grace. Poverty is because of single-parent homes. A sad day for journalism.

Enough with conspiracy theories

Ina a May 1 CDT letter to the editor, the contributor insinuated that in reporting Pennsylvania COVID-19 data Gov. Tom Wolf has a “mission” other than presenting the best information that our state systems could provide. I’m not privy to the thinking (to use the term loosely) of right-wing conspiracy theorists, if that’s where that contributor was coming from, but I imagine that somehow his intimation is related to a plot to keep President Trump from being re-elected, that Governor Wolf’s more focused on defeating Trump than the well-being of our commonwealth. Yeah, sure.

Speaking of President Trump, my understanding is that throughout January and February he was regularly told by U.S. intelligence officials that the coronavirus was a looming threat, yet he continually and publicly denied this and failed to take appropriate actions. I don’t know anyone who thinks for a moment that Trump’s denial and recalcitrance to act on a known threat to our country’s citizenry was part of a “mission” or conspiracy to kill off 100,000 or so people. That would be disgustingly ridiculous. Now if one wants to consider that due to his narcissistic focus on re-election he has an inability to absorb any information that doesn’t fit his agenda, that’s a real possibility.

Notwithstanding this critique, I’m pleased to see local citizens of various persuasions contribute letters to the editor. During our unfortunate current general aversion to discussing politics, it’s one way for us to know how others are thinking. Or not.