Letters: Stand up against cruelty to animals; Casino will harm community
Stand up against cruelty to animals
Why is it important to encourage journalists and faith leaders to raise community awareness about “permissible-treatment” of industrial-farmed animals?
Answer: In the words of Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel: “Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.” For readers compelled to call police upon witnessing a dog abused in ways described below, how are we turning blind-eyes toward unconscionable cruelty endured by 10-plus billion Godforsaken animals in the U.S. annually? Does their fate as our food justify making their lives hell on Earth? No. Respectfully informing communities about this hidden torment, and healthy alternatives, sorely needs respected voices of journalists and faith leaders.
ASPCA’s factory-farming webpage substantiates “industry-permissible torment:”
1. Baby pigs in industrial-farms are castrated without painkillers. Unprofitable piglets are legally “euthanized” by holding their tails and whipping their heads into concrete. Google “pig-thumping.”
2. Male chicks hatched into the egg industry don’t produce eggs. They’re legally “euthanized” by macerating them alive.
3. Industrially-farmed dairy cows have tails and horns removed without painkillers. Their lives are spent repeatedly impregnated because their gestation period is 9 months and they’re artificially inseminated yearly. Calves are removed within days of birth to make the mother’s milk available for collection. Though cows’ lifespans are 15-20 years, at 2-5 years their milk production slows, often too crippled or ill to withstand industry-conditions and they’re killed.
Our grocery store choices are making death the sole moment of solace in countless industrially-farmed animals’ lives.
Silence toward mass-cruelty inflicted upon millions of anguishing lives didn’t stop with Auschwitz’s liberation. If factory farming isn’t a sin, Heaven is one hell of a complicitly cruel place.
Scott Pflumm, State College
Casino will harm community
Social media has drastically heightened our susceptibility to mindless, obsessive, reactionary behavior. Attention disorders, the attention economy, destroys our ability to connect, persevere and diminishes our ability to empathize — ultimately undermining our humanity, our free will. Casino and online gambling are deeply embedded in this crisis that has contributed to our societal epidemic of depression and often suicide. A university community offers our young people a sanctuary for learning from and connecting to history and to one another, emotionally and intellectually. Why would we undermine such a precious gift to our youth with the inevitable hazards of a gambling casino in our neighborhood?
Micaela Amateau Amato, Boalsburg
New budget shreds services, undermines public good
Americans understand that adversity can strike anyone at any time — and our instinct is to support our neighbors in times of need. So how can our elected officials justify a budget bill that threatens the security of countless families, while further enriching those already at the top? This isn’t just bad policy, it’s a moral failing.
Despite overwhelming public disapproval of Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill, Republicans were determined to steal from the most vulnerable Americans in order to pass a bill giving even greater power and wealth to the billionaire elites.
This bill will cause 17 million Americans to lose their health insurance; gut Medicaid; close rural hospitals; and take food assistance away from 5 million children.
Four trillion dollars will be added to our already staggering national debt causing interest rates to rise while weakening the U.S. dollar and our nation’s ability to respond to national emergencies.
Energy costs will skyrocket and high-paying jobs will be lost nationwide as we gut renewable energy projects and cede a critical growth industry to China.
Republicans always fail to mention that they eliminated the tax on tips only temporarily while making sure that the billionaire tax cuts are permanent. They also managed to postpone the gutting of Medicaid until after the midterm election.
Call and email your Republican Senators and congress members to let them know that you will not forget their betrayal of hardworking Americans and will hold them accountable in the midterm election.
George Polycranos, Port Matilda