Letters: After primary, grateful for community support; Taxes as revenue for infrastructure plan
After primary, grateful for community support
I want to thank the many people who voted for me for to retain my seat on State College Council in the May 18 primary. I also want to thank the people who put up signs, donated to my campaign and knocked on doors or wrote letters for my campaign.
For the past nine months, I have had the privilege and honor of serving as councilwoman for the State College Borough Council. I am proud of my accomplishments on council and the board of Council of Governments. I am proud to say, I was the first woman of color to serve on council, the first Asian, the first Korean-American woman to serve on our council. I believe it was because of my qualifications, not just because of my race. The new council will be diminished by my voice both as a woman and an Asian-American.
I look forward to working with the community for the remainder of my term. Congratulations and best of luck to the three good men that won the Democratic primary.
Taxes as revenue for infrastructure plan
The president’s idea of maintaining and improving the country’s infrastructure is great, but he will need a large amount of new revenue for it. I can think of a no-brainer. Why do we need the tax breaks for long-term capital gains and qualified dividends? People investing in the stock market aren’t poor. I have done fairly well for much of my life on my investments, but I never saw any reason for not paying my share in taxes on my incomes.
Audits won’t remove mistrust of elections
The beautiful, terrifying, exhilarating thing about democracy is it requires us to trust, nurturing our better angels. When I hear calls for audits and voter restrictions to address security issues with no evidence, I get a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. “Many people are worried. We must restore their trust,” is the rationale behind these actions. The people proposing the actions never ask those “many people” why they feel as they do. Could it be because those who’ve been entrusted with power by those same elections are now spreading the idea without evidence that cheating is widespread? More than 80 lawsuits were filed regarding the 2020 election, only one was initially successful, not affecting the outcome. The rest were dropped or dismissed for lack of evidence.
A consequence of democracy is elections have losers. Sometimes it’s the candidate one supports, but the system requires acceptance of losses to function. The remedy for such losses is to run better candidates with better policies, not to sew unwarranted uncertainty about the process.
A never-ending series of recounts and increasingly burdensome voting processes won’t remove mistrust of elections. It will transfer it to different people. Legislators who promote these solutions do the entire electorate a disservice and would do better by educating their voters (and themselves) regarding the processes of voting and measures to assure its security.
Trust is established with transparency and facts, not suspicions and panicked, ill-conceived responses.
