Letters: Great accomplishment for local coach; Casino not worth the risk
Great accomplishment for local coach
Congratulations to girl’s basketball head coach Katie Glusko Sosnoskie at St. Josephs Catholic Academy. The Gannon University Athletics Hall of Fame class of 2022 recognized the 2009-10 Women’s Basketball Team on Feb. 12. The team went 37-1 and advanced to the NCAA Final Four with the help of assistant women’s basketball coach, Katie Glusko!
Katie loves basketball and the State College community. She is unassuming, modest, cares about her sport and her team and is always prepared and she passes those traits to her players. What a great accomplishment — congratulations, Katie!
Casino not worth the risk
I write to urge fellow residents to publicly oppose the proposed casino in the Nittany Mall, which would pose a significant and irreversible threat to our community’s public health, social welfare and quality of life. The extensive social science and public health research is very clear that the community-born costs of having a casino far outweigh its minimal economic benefits; one scholarly book argues that the cost:benefit ratio is more than 3:1! These socioeconomic costs include clearly documented increases in casino communities in crime, bankruptcy, suicide, compulsive/pathological gambling, alcohol and drug abuse, and domestic violence. They also include business and employment costs, direct regulatory costs and abused dollars.
Moreover, the risks posed by casinos disproportionately affect the most vulnerable in our community: lower income residents, senior citizens, and youth and college students. Among college students in particular, scholars have identified gambling as an “epidemic” that is correlated with alcohol and drug abuse, negative learning outcomes, eating disorders, and the development of serious (“compulsive”/”pathological”) gambling problems. PSU students have enough challenges without the presence of a casino a short bus ride away.
In short, this proposed casino would certainly line the pockets of the casino investors, but it would come at significant price for State College taxpayers, families, students, and our community. We deserve an investment that will actually benefit our public health, social welfare, and quality of life, not one that will directly harm it. Please write to the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board to express your opposition!
What’s really behind the ‘fraudit?’
A CDT letter tells us that Jake Corman is pushing his “forensic investigation” of the 2020 election (aka the fraudit) to advance his campaign for governor.
The fraudit pushed by Corman’s Republican cronies, and paid for by your tax dollars, will probably find some 2020 voting errors, but nothing that approaches election fraud. And Corman certainly knows this.
So, if the forensic investigation won’t uncover enough fraud to overturn the 2020 election (reminder: Biden beat Trump in Pennsylvania by 80,000 votes), and thus won’t do much for Corman’s lackluster campaign for governor, what’s his motivation for doing it?
Wait for it: Despite finding no fraud, the fraudit committee report will make recommendations to secure “election integrity” in the future. To do that they will recommend some or all of the following: limiting or eliminating mail-in ballots, adding requirements to make it harder for people to vote, establishing sketchy election oversight procedures, or eliminating drop boxes. Possibly all of those measures will be established to, you know, preserve that good old election integrity — that already exists.
While Corman and company know they won’t overturn the 2020 election, their real agenda is rigging the system to steal the next one, and the one after that. That’s the real purpose for the Republican’s sham forensic investigation.
To quote Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, “The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.”
Surely Corman did some good things, but now he’s creating election evil to live long after he goes.