Letters: Which one is in it for the people?; Democracy doesn’t live here anymore

Which one is in it for the people?

Two fellows graduate from Harvard. Both have privileged childhoods. One of them gets additional degrees from Penn and becomes a famous heart surgeon and television personality. The other caps off his academic studies with a masters in public policy from Harvard but instead of dedicating his life to make loads of money, he joins AmeriCorps and ends up in downtrodden Braddock. He stays, becomes mayor and helps stabilize the community.

Which one of those fellows would you like to have representing you in the United States Senate?

We don’t need another upwardly mobile millionaire in the Senate. We need John Fetterman.

Democracy doesn’t live here anymore

Democracy no longer lives in Pennsylvania, the state where the U.S. Constitution was written and where the Declaration of Independence was signed ... the state considered the birthplace of American democracy.

Pennsylvania’s legislature demonstrated this immediately before recessing until September, when they pushed through an omnibus constitutional amendment (SB 106). In typical partisan fashion, a simple bill intended to let candidates for governor pick their own lieutenant governor became saddled with several controversial measures which:

• require voter ID at every election;
• allow the General Assembly to negate administrative regulations without facing a governor’s veto;
• give the legislature oversight of all election audits; and
• reword the Pennsylvania Constitution to explicitly state that it guarantees no rights relating to abortion.

As we have witnessed repeatedly in Harrisburg, majority party leaders manipulated procedural rules to ram through a bill containing highly controversial measures with no public hearings and no genuine minority party input. Neither the people of Pennsylvania nor most of our elected representatives have a real say anymore in legislation that significantly impacts our lives. Instead, a handful of authoritarian leaders, elected by a mere fraction of voters, have stolen our voice.

What can be done? Pennsylvanians need to vote for democracy! We can do that by making sure the candidates we are voting for will fight for a state legislature that operates democratically as intended. All of us need to vote for public servants who will demand a real voice for themselves and for the people they represent, regardless of party. #FixHarrisburg

Abusers can’t be trusted to make laws

CDT articles about Rep. Scott Conklin’s domestic violence bill omit important context. PA already has a list of crimes disqualifying people from running for office. His bill simply adds domestic violence to the list already including perjury, bribery, embezzlement of public monies and other felonies.

Do Conklin’s critics think domestic violence is less offensive than perjury? Abusers do lie about what they are doing. They convince their victims that no one will believe them if they come forward. That’s one of many factors causing domestic violence to be underreported. The legal process is so difficult that only the very worst cases make it to the courtroom. Cases may end before trial because the victim is murdered by the abuser, as was the case with Conklin’s childhood friend, Traci Raymond.

At a time when public trust in elected officials is at an unprecedented low, the very least we can ask is that candidates don’t batter women so badly that their lives are in danger. If they beat up other men to that extent, nobody doubts there would be repercussions.

Domestic violence rising to the level of criminal conviction is not some technicality. Batterers are not easily reformed. Why are Conklin’s critics so eager to protect batterers’ opportunities to run for public office and make a living at taxpayers’ expense? What about the welfare of their victims?

Women are just over half the voters. By definition, batterers don’t respect women. Why should we trust abusers to make fair laws?