Letters: Where’s Pa.’s vaccination plan?; Worthy topics demand transparent review 

Where’s Pa.’s vaccination plan?

I entered the New Year envisioning light at the end of the COVID tunnel. However, after a few days I feel like I am back in the dark. Over the holiday I learned that older adults in Texas, Florida, Colorado, New Mexico and West Virginia are already receiving vaccinations for COVID. A State College couple who moved to Florida last year has appointments for the vaccination this week. I have not seen information that vaccinations for older adults in Pennsylvania have started or are even planned. I have not heard of residents of Pennsylvania retirement homes being vaccinated, all of whom should be treated before other older adults. Other states have computerized systems for signing up to schedule vaccinations — Pennsylvania apparently has no system in place.

It appears that state government leadership knows how to shut down our lives and economy, but has not planned for the future to quickly bring us back. People are dying daily and businesses going bankrupt, but in Pennsylvania there appears to be no urgency to provide the one thing that will end this torture!

Readers of this letter should have strong concerns with this situation. There will be an order to the vaccination process; Pennsylvanians at the end of the process will find themselves months behind the rest of the country and still locked down! I urge our local and state representatives as well as the media to bring massive pressure on our “do nothing except shut down” government officials to get moving.

Worthy topics demand transparent review

Sen. Corman has once again rationalized his commission to study the 2020 election by stating that people are asking for a review. Ignore for the moment that the courts and appropriate agencies have done that. It has been deemed to be worth additional tax expense to do it again.

Using the Corman standard that if enough people ask for it, it will be done, I would like to add my voice to the request for a review of the legislative rules package that is currently force fed to the members of Pennsylvania legislature. Plenty has been written about the irregularities that surround such a practice which effectively disenfranchises all elected officials save those few legislators in leadership positions. Such a review seems to be a bigger need for all Pennsylvanians because it is a fact-based request.

Gerrymandering is another topic that thousands have decried as unfair. We may not need a bipartisan commission to review this topic because the best bipartisan review was done by the Pennsylvania legislature Sen. Corman wants to muzzle with the rules package. A 2020 bill on the topic authored by a large bipartisan group of legislators and endorsed by a bipartisan group of counties and municipalities was denied a floor debate by the leadership anti-debate rules.

These worthy topics demand a transparent review by the legislators to ensure fair legislative practices. Please contact your local legislators and demand these issues are afforded the same standard of action as given the 2020 election review commission.

GOP actions are hard to believe

When I read the news I feel like I am not living in the United States. Where am I? I almost understand Donald Trump’s temper tantrum challenging an election that has been certified by election commissioners and judges, many of whom are Republicans. I suppose it is hard to lose when you have such a big ego.

But now I read that Republican senators in Pennsylvania refuse to seat a duly elected senator, Jim Brewster, whose election win by 69 votes has been certified, and results verified by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. In a sly political maneuver, Jake Corman and his cabal of Republicans remove Lt. Gov. Fetterman from his constitutional role as chair of the Senate so they can prevent Brewster’s swearing in. Both of these story lines sound like my son’s stories of the politics of Mexico, where he lived for five years. In the past, I have voted for members of both major parties, but now seems the greatest current threat to American democracy is the Republican Party.