Letters: Grateful for Spotlight PA’s reporting; Put an end to nonsense in Harrisburg

Grateful for Spotlight PA’s reporting

It’s again time to say thank you to the Centre Daily Times for adding Spotlight reports to our local newspaper. Spotlight’s investigative reporting is essential to keeping track of goings-on within our state government, and by individual state senators and representatives.

For example, without Spotlight, how would we know that our own Senator Jake Corman, who says he supports lobbying reform, scooted off to Arizona to rake in money from Republican lobbyists at a high-end resort? Or that Senator Corman speaks from both sides of his mouth when he claims to support more open reporting of legislators’ spending yet won’t freely display details of his own spending? Or that Corman and Representative Kerry Benninghoff are acquiescent and playing dumb at Republican efforts to “audit’ last fall’s election and rig our future elections.

Spotlight exposes hypocrisy and dishonesty from elected officials at all levels.

According to its website, Spotlight PA’s mission “is to hold powerful private and public forces across Pennsylvania —especially governments, businesses and special interests — to account through urgent and compelling investigative journalism that drives change and strengthens our democracy, the state and all who live here.”

We thank the news organizations from Philadelphia, Harrisburg, and Pittsburgh behind Spotlight, and the CDT for bringing Spotlight to us.

More Spotlight, please!

Put an end to nonsense in Harrisburg

I am so disgusted with the party-vs-party nonsense going on in Harrisburg. It is time for our representatives to grow up and do what is right for the people. It is not a question of color, sexual orientation, party affiliation, or any other excuse for acting like children.

Redistricting reform should be lawmakers’ priority

As a taxpayer and voter, I am fed up with the clamor of “concerned” legislators to go down the rabbit hole of a fruitless, expensive, time wasting election audit that will surely wind up in court. While many Republicans in their gerrymandered districts won, Trump lost.

Instead, the Assembly should push harder to bring SB222 and HB22 to end gerrymandering to a vote. With so many bipartisan cosponsors and 72% public support for five years, redistricting reform deserves to pass.

The Assembly should quit punting their job of making hard votes and instead legislating by constitutional amendment to bypass the Governor. With no hearings, a small fraction of ill-informed voters do poorly the Assembly’s job of making thoughtful decisions.

But if they refuse, they should give voters the right of legislative initiative and referendum so we can bypass our ineffective and unresponsive Assembly. Or eliminate 40 senators and 190 representatives since only a handful seem to play any real role in moving legislation.

We have the most expensive, least effective legislature in the country. Perhaps that is part of the reason for our struggling economy and loss of population in the conservative regions.

Honor the heroes, throw out the zeros

A CDT letter on June 6, D-Day, contrasted what happened on the beaches of Normandy that day in 1944 with what happened in Washington, DC, just five months ago on Jan. 6.

The letter presented a striking comparison of how far our country has fallen from the days when we were the envy of the free world, and when our leaders and citizens fought for democracy rather than against it.

The men and women who sacrificed on Normandy and in military service are heroes. The elected cowards who won’t speak out against blatant election lies and voter suppression are zeros.

The soldiers at Normandy saved freedom and democracy. They fought against the Big Lie and lying leaders. They fought to destroy threats against open and honest elections.

People like Glenn Thompson, Fred Keller, Jake Corman, Kerry Benninghoff and Stephanie Borowicz swallowed the Big Lie and kiss up to our disgraced former president. They work to destroy free and open elections.

And someday Thompson, Keller, Corman, Benninghoff, and Borowicz will shamelessly take generous pensions and benefits from the very governments they tried to destroy.

The June 6 CDT letter couldn’t have been clearer about who are heroes and who are zeros. Thompson, Keller, Corman, Benninghoff, Borowicz and all who voted to destroy our democracy are zeros and should resign immediately.

If any of these zeros have the gall to run for reelection in 2022, then a previous CDT letter made clear what we must do: Throw the zeros out.