Letters: Criminal pasts should stay private post-rehabilitation; Beware of payroll tax suspension
Beware of payroll tax suspension
Do you know what Trump signed along with other executive orders last Friday? Suspension of the payroll tax. You think, nice, less tax, more money for us. Except that the payroll tax is how Social Security and Medicare are funded. So the idea is to starve both, and they hope to be able to kill them later.
When happens if you are already receiving both, then prepare to survive without them? Hopefully you’ve got caring relatives and a money stash. If you have relatives that are living on Social Security, be prepared to take them in and support them. Try to get them in your health insurance, if you can.
If you plan to retire, check how much money you have, and determine if you can afford to. You might find out that you have to work until you drop dead.
Or you can vote for Biden, and have him do what is needed to keep Social Security for all of us.
Adriana Ines Pena, State College
Keep criminal pasts private post-rehabilitation
The year may be 2020, however I feel we are living in the world akin to Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Scarlet Letter.” When one commits a crime of any nature they receive a sentence from a judge in addition to court-ordered stipulations, what the judge does not mention upon sentencing is that you are required to wear a proverbial “scarlet C” for the rest of your life in the form of a criminal record. Which in essence makes you judged for your past mistakes for the rest of your life, leaving one with very little incentive to rehabilitate.
Living in a world racked with COVID-19, unemployment and lack of housing, this really causes more harm than good. The scarlet C I am referring to leaves ex-cons trying to rehabilitate themselves with some real obstacles such as finding employment and housing.
Once a person has paid their debt to society (served their sentence) the criminal record should not be available to the public, but only to law enforcement, in case the person does decide to continue their crime spree. Landlords and employers and educators do not need to be and should not have the ability to come to a conclusion about someone because of prior mistakes made. A perfect example is a friend of mine, who was convicted of F3 retail theft a few years ago and since has been rehabilitated, was denied housing by The Park at State College.
You cannot expect rehabilitation without fair access to human needs.
Tony Michelson, State College
A nation uninformed
Are people really that uninformed? Many think it is great that President Donald Trump is trying to take away the very tax that funds their Social Security and Medicare programs.
Many who voted for Trump don’t realize that he put a person in charge of the United States Postal Service who was against it and has since removed top managers who have tried for years to make it work. If Trump slows the mail delivery, when will people get their stimulus checks? They failed to see that Trump tried to get rid of the SNAP program. Now he wants to send the children back to school because he thinks kids don’t get sick from the virus. He is pulling troops out of Germany because he is mad at their leader for “not liking him.“ How much more childish can he get?
Trump has taken us out of NATO and the World Health Organization. We have the largest number of coronavirus cases and Trump says we are doing better then anyone else. People, wake up. Change the TV channel. Get different views. Check facts. Get informed. Your leader is not helping you.
Jim Hironimus, White Hall, Maryland