Letters: A Christian response to the pandemic; State leaders should focus on flawed legislative processes

A Christian response to the pandemic

The current pandemic has presented many life and death challenges, social, cultural, medical, economic and political. What is, however, also disturbing is the lack of a moral response to those challenges. What would that be from a Christian point of view? Clearly it would be the adoption of the judgment and view of Jesus. What that would be is very clear: Love of God is love of neighbor — “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the law and prophets” (Matthew 22/34). This is the Christian perspective on social morality. Wearing a mask, keeping social distance, washing one’s hands are, then, signs of our love for neighbor and God. For a Christian the issue is not individual freedom or the Constitution; the issue is love of God is identical to love of neighbor.

State leaders should focus on flawed legislative processes

On the heels of numerous court cases challenging the Pennsylvania election, state Sen. Jake Corman announced a bipartisan election review committee. If the election process was flawed, the cause was the “gaps and shortfalls of Act 77,” as county commissioner Pipe recently noted.

The courts upheld the integrity of the election itself, noting that legislative deficiencies were deemed insufficient to overturn the results. By inference, the integrity of the legislative process was questioned.

Perhaps Sen. Corman should reset his priorities to focus on flawed legislative processes. The rules package adopted at the beginning of a session is a good place to start. A handful of Majority Leaders create the package. The rank file must adopt it, without input.

A truly fair and equitable legislative process embraces transparency, accountability and fairness. This process does not. What’s more, under the first rule, leaders and committee chairs are able to block any proposed legislation no matter the reason. It denies other legislators the ability to be fairly and equitably heard, regardless of an issue’s import. Without an inclusive and collaborative process errors will occur, producing gaps such as those noted by the courts.

A comparative study ranked Pennsylvania last in effective legislatures. With one of the largest and highest paid legislatures, we get the least for the most cost. It’s time for Sen. Corman, Rep. Benninghoff and other Majority Leaders to apply the standards of transparency, equity and fairness and eliminate archaic rules, which could mitigate concerns and unnecessary reviews afterward.

What could burnish Trump’s legacy?

The CDT recently published an article about attempts by allies to burnish Trump’s legacy. It focused on a plan to extol Trump’s low unemployment achievements before the pandemic hit.

Yet, Trump’s first three years in office produced fewer jobs than Obama’s last three years. What, then, beyond Trump’s deficit exploding tax cuts for the wealthy — that juiced the stock market — and his court appointments, could burnish Trump’s legacy?

Not the chaos. Nor the thousands of ugly tweets. Not the more than 23,000 lies — especially the lie downplaying the severity of the coronavirus, which guided his disgraceful negligence, which caused thousands of unnecessary deaths, ultimately requiring the economy’s shutdown, thereby causing a great depression.

(How’s that for jobs?)

Not his failure to build even 50 miles of new border wall or to make Mexico pay for it. Not his heartless and possibly criminal separation of children from their parents at the border. Not his criminal obstruction of justice or attempts to bribe Ukraine’s leader. Certainly not his impeachment.

Not his pardons of Blackwater child-murderers and his fellow Russia collusion conspirators. Certainly not any self-pardon, pardons of his children or Giuliani.

Not his post-election preference for golf over governing — in the midst of a national crisis.

And certainly not the bitter petulance and narcissistic delusions of a failed one-term president illegally attempting to subvert American democracy in a pathetic attempt to stay in office.

Attempting to burnish Trump’s loser legacy is like attempting to gold-plate a dungheap.