Letters: Get to know the candidates; Amendments include ‘dangerous provisions’

Editor’s note: The Centre Daily Times welcomes letters endorsing candidates in the Nov. 8 election and will accept letters that are received by Nov. 3. Letters are subject to editing, must be based on facts and should avoid attacks on other candidates.

Get to know the candidates

In the coming weeks, we will vote again, to strengthen democracy. During our last general election, 60% of eligible- voters voted, a record. The many attempts to interject confusion mostly failed. Now, we must decipher “campaign-talk” and misinformation, and consider who sounds like “I am not who I am” (from Shakespeare).

Mehmet Oz (R), who made a fortune “hawking” pseudoscience on TV, seems to be the perfect foil for Lt. Governor John Fetterman (D), in the race to become our next U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania. Fetterman offers “something to everyone,” defying politics as-usual. Let’s hope he can gain full recovery from medical problems. Our current Attorney General, Josh Shapiro (D), is a political “centrist,” running against Doug Mastriano (R), who tried to overturn election results in 2020.

Before you vote, listen to Shapiro, Mastriano, Fetterman and Oz tell us why we should vote for them. When Mastriano and Oz campaign, I’m trying to figure out who they are, really. Mastriano in a Confederate uniform? Really. Oz, who lives in New Jersey and has eight homes? Really. We “know” who Shapiro is, and how he worked and went to night school to earn his degree. And we know Fetterman’s progressive record of accomplishments. They are who they are.

We don’t need “workshops” on how to challenge voters at polling places (as Bannon proposed) nor attempts to dismantle election infrastructure. Let’s not let democracy vote itself out of existence.

Amendments include ‘dangerous provisions’

The CDT recently ran a full page ad outlining proposed amendments to the PA Constitution. I encourage everyone to read these changes very carefully, as some of them will deny rights to Pennsylvanians. It is a lot to read, but is worth the investment of time to understand what the legislature is trying to do. One of these amendments states that the PA Constitution does not provide the right to abortion. This creates conditions to allow legislation to deny access to abortion as soon as the legislature has a governor who will sign it. Another section creates voter ID requirements that will make it more difficult for some people to vote, especially with the narrowly defined forms of identification allowed. Such laws have long had the effect of suppressing voting, especially for marginalized populations. These laws are presented under the guise of preventing voter fraud, which is extremely rare, while voter suppression has long been used to limit some people’s access to the ballot. These dangerous provisions have the potential to severely hurt Pennsylvanians.

These amendments have been approved by the legislature once, but will need to be approved again in the next term and then submitted to voters, which is typically done in elections that have lower voter turnout. Pay close attention to this process to know if/when they appear on the ballot and vote when they do. Also consider such demonstrated intentions when voting for representatives to the state House and Senate this November.

Dems are best at handling inflation

Republicans think that inflation is a winning issue for them. In their rush to blame Biden, they conveniently forget that COVID’s supply-chain problems started it. Sanctions against Russia also contribute to inflation, but that’s not Biden’s fault. Leadership in both parties support sanctions.

Some blame Biden’s COVID check, forgetting that Trump issued two of them. Ironically, our good economy and low unemployment create high demand for products, which causes inflation, but a good economy and low unemployment are wonderful things, not something to vote against.

The GOP has no plans for bringing down inflation, unlike Biden and the Democrats who passed the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). The IRA bill originally included provisions to reduce prescription drug costs and eliminate a tax loophole commonly used by hedge fund investors. Even Warren Buffet testified that he has a lower marginal tax rate than his firm’s secretaries — and that we need to fix that. Those two provisions would have helped lower inflation and the U.S. Budget deficit, but every Republican member of Congress was against them.

Most Republican voters think their party is fiscally responsible, but that’s totally incorrect. All Republican administrations (except for Bush I) increased U.S. deficits over the past four decades, while all the Democrat administrations did the hard work of reducing the deficits of their Republican predecessors.

Want proof? Check out this economic research from the St. Louis Federal Reserve: fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYFSGDA188S.

Who’s actually best at handling inflation? Biden and the Democrats. If inflation is your issue, vote for Democrats.

GOP resorts to voter suppression efforts

Sometimes you can learn a lot just from a newspaper headline. At the top of the Oct. 18 CDT the banner says “GOP sues again over Pennsylvania mail-in ballots.”

So the GOP is going to court, yet again, over a silly demand that every mail-in ballot have a hand-written date on it. Since the ballot has both a postmark and a timestamp showing when it was mailed and was received, the requirement for a hand-written date is absurdly pointless.

Let’s dig deeper and ask why the GOP is raising this issue. The answer is right in the CDT article: Democrats are four times more likely to mail in their ballots than Republicans. If you throw out mailed-in ballots for nit-picking reasons, you are statistically suppressing the votes of Democrats.

Republicans realize that their candidates this fall are pretty darn hard to sell to the voters: an insurrectionist for Governor, a quack New Jersey doctor for Senator, an anti-environment Representative. They have few policy positions other than election denial, tax cuts for their wealthy campaign donors, and government regulation of women’s bodies.

So does the GOP respond by advocating positive policies that help people, and nominating attractive and qualified candidates? No, their approach is to deny that they lost the last election, and cheat to win the next one through voter suppression efforts like the lawsuit described in the headline.

Next month, let’s vote accordingly.

Be an educated consumer

I am politically a conservative in that government is not my daddy. If a product is too expensive, don’t buy it and the price will in time drop. After buying a hoagie, I found the sandwich had thin, lifeless bread, soft old lettuce and rubbery ham. I gave this restaurant three chances and this is the end. I felt like this is price gouging when you get less food for twice the cost. We all need to be educated consumers and stop treating businesses like a charity.

End negative campaigning

Please stop the negative campaign advertising. At this point it only serves to produce negative thoughts and feeling toward those sponsoring the hateful messages that they portray. I understand the need for truth in politics, believe me, and I think at this point no one knows where to turn to find that truth. It is most discouraging and disturbing to see over and over again the negative campaign slurs toward opponents. At this point in time we all must take everything we see and hear with the proverbial “grain of salt.” As a candidate why not simply talk about what you believe and what you stand for and what you would like to do in service to your constituents and your country. What we really need are people in government who have the best interests of the people and our country first and foremost in their hearts, not self serving, power and money hungry individuals.