Letters: Pandemic assistance is no luxury; Global response needed in COVID-19 fight

Pandemic assistance is no luxury

When I hear Republican lawmakers talk about “weaning” those who are receiving $600 a week in assistance off of that amount, I can’t help but wonder how it is that $30,000 a year seems to these elected officials and the lobbyists who influence them like an exorbitant income in the 21st century. If folks receiving pandemic assistance are hesitant to go back to work — either for health reasons or simply because they are making more on assistance than they would be clocking hours at the gas station — who can blame them? And why is it that we are supposed to be grateful to them for “giving” us this money, when in fact they should be grateful to us for the under- and unpaid work we do, decade after decade, century after century, so that the rich can make another trillion off of our endless labor? The only reason anyone works for $7.25 an hour, for 10 hours a day — or for less than that and longer than that in meat packing factories, in fields, mopping floors at night — is because they are desperate and have no other options. None of the elected officials who wish to “wean” us off of the luxury of being able to buy food would ever do these kinds of work. Calling us lazy for refusing to give away our entire lives in exchange for more poverty is odd logic.

Global response needed in COVID-19 fight

As Penn State prepares to bring students back to campus, our community is faced with the threat of a spike in COVID-19 cases. Students will be coming from around the globe, where the novel coronavirus cases are continuing to increase and more people are put at risk.

Unfortunately as we have learned, viruses respect no borders. If we hope to protect our Penn State community, bring students back to class, and return our lives to normal, we must begin expanding our fight against this deadly virus to the developing world.

As a member of the State College and Penn State community, I want to do everything I can to protect those around me from this deadly virus. So, I have been advocating on behalf of The Borgen Project to encourage our Congressional leaders to support a better COVID-19 response package globally, which will implement measures to help slow the spread of COVID-19 at home and abroad.

The Borgen Project is a nonprofit committed to eliminating global poverty through advocating with our Congressional leaders. This is a surprisingly effective way to help the worlds’ poor, which will bolster our own economy and safety from future pandemics, like COVID-19.

I encourage you all to reach out to your representatives and ask them to support a more comprehensive COVID-19 relief package for developing nations. We need to defeat this virus abroad if we are ever going to defeat it at home.

Too many ‘no’ votes to support Keller

On July 27th, I received an email from Congressman Fred Keller with the headline “We need to get Americans back to work.”

Looking over Congressman Keller’s voting record, I feel what we need is for Congressman Keller to leave office because:

• For him to vote no to remove Confederate statues from the capital is a lack of historical knowledge on his part.
• For him to vote no prohibiting underground nuclear testing is unbelievable!
• For him to vote no on repairing national parks and funding public lands is so disheartening.
• For him to vote no to nullifying bans on Muslim-Majority Immigration is racist.
• For him to vote no on ensuring legal counsel at ports of entry is shameful.

In November, remember what an embarrassment Congressman Keller is to Pennsylvania and this beautiful country of ours and vote him out.