This year’s Nov. 8 midterm election gives us an opportunity to make an impact beyond our choice of candidates and their promises.
Candidates on all sides sacrifice time, energy and money and deserve our applause and approval—they embody the workings of a republic.
As you choose candidates deserving of your vote, please take time to consider their positions on the range of today’s issues—inflation, abortion, employment, climate change, voting rights—rather than a single topic. Independent thinking and expression of ideas are both privileges and duties that protect our democracy and constitution.
It is difficult to accept that opposing views are no less valid than our own. After being voted out of office, Winston Churchill remarked, “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others….”
Take political advertising with a grain of salt. Be willing to compromise for the common good. Talk, listen and question friends, family, neighbors—and the candidates.
It’s our right and responsibility to be informed, to do the hard work of thinking, and to take action. Democracy doesn’t survive otherwise.
Rick Schulz,
State College
Zeigler a Voice for the Voters
Over the last few months, my team and I have knocked over 25,000 doors in our attempt to reach every voter to discuss the issues affecting them and learn about their top concerns. We are still knocking doors in the 23 municipalities I hope to represent because I will work with and for you; not the wealthy few.
A common concern amongst PA House District 171 voters of all parties is that they are not being heard by those they elected to represent them. Voters are tired of “do-nothing” career politicians who are bought and paid for by corporations. These career politicians show up for a photo op or a fundraiser while refusing to directly engage with citizens by doing town halls or knocking on doors.
Not all voters will agree with all of my views, but I am and will remain a strong advocate for all constituents. I will continue to work hard for the people of Pennsylvania as I have done on the Millheim Borough Council. I fought for and brought high-speed rural broadband to over 2,000 households in the area. I pushed for the Millheim Borough to establish a solar field to reduce energy costs and our carbon footprint. While doing this I also worked to cut taxes and have obtained over $1 million in funding for infrastructure and economic development.
I show up for the people, and rural Pennsylvania needs a local advocate for everyone, not continued neglect from a complacent career politician.
Robert Zeigler, of Millheim, is the Democratic candidate for the 171st State House District in the November 2022 election.
Real Solutions to Crime and the Economy
Crime and the economy appear to be voters’ top concerns. Republicans claim that they have solutions to both. Facts show otherwise.
The economy grew in the last quarter. Americans continue to spend. Sales of Halloween items are at an all-time high. People don’t buy costumes for their pets if they can’t feed their children or fuel their cars.
The economy would not be helped by Republicans. They would enact tax cuts for the rich and corporations, using the tired argument that the extra money to the 1% would “trickle down” to the rest of us. Decades of evidence shows that does not happen. The economy has consistently been better in Democratic than in Republican administrations.
As for crime, the GOP again has no plans. Crime rates are higher in Republican-led states than in Democratic-led states. MAGA politicians don’t support even the mildest gun safety laws.
Shockingly, Republicans engage in violence. Armed MAGA supporters intimidate voters at drop boxes. Election deniers threaten election workers and their families. An election denier broke into the home of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, assaulting her husband and looking to attack her.
Prominent GOP politicians explicitly use violent words or imagery in their campaigns. Others stay silent in light of threats to voters, election workers, government leaders, and even our democracy.
Don’t be fooled by promises that have no basis in reality. Protect your future and that of your children by voting for Democrats.
Carol Gall,
Jim Thorpe
Disability Not Inability
John Fetterman’s stroke clearly impeded his ability to perform well in a debate setting. And a “debate” with one minute to answer questions and 15 second rebuttals proves exactly what?
Does Fetterman’s aphasia mean he couldn’t function as a Senator? Of course not. In fact, Sens. Ben Ray Lujan (D-N.M.) and Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) had strokes this year and are back on the job during their recoveries. Both Senators say Fetterman can do the job too!
Television debate is performance art and has little to do with the actual work of a U.S. Senator. How much of the real work of the Senate is done in debate on the Senate floor? Very little. Most of the time a senator speaks on the Senate Floor he or she is reading a prepared speech in an empty Chamber. And have you listened to them when they do debate, as opposed to reading scripted speeches out loud? You won’t be impressed.
Let’s not get so enamored with the performance art of television debate that we believe it is that important to actually doing the job of a Senator.
Fetterman is an intelligent man and his stroke did not impair his moral compass or his core values. He will continue to recover his auditory processing ability. How much better he gets no one can say for sure.
But there are plenty of Senators, such as Louisiana’s John Kennedy, for example, whose verbal communication consists of fractured metaphors and jibber-jabber—and they aren’t endowed with Fetterman’s strong character, nor his empathy for his fellow human beings.
Let’s talk about Oz. He tells us he’s a doctor, although he’s been more of a television pitchman for as long as I can remember. He claims to have been in the room when a woman and her doctors have had to make hard decisions, and in the same breath says he wants a woman’s reproductive rights to be left to a woman, her doctor, and “local officials.” Local officials making medical decisions for women? If he’s serious perhaps he needs an MRI to determine if he has ample gray matter, or a heart, or perhaps the intrinsic humanity that can’t be seen through imaging.
So here’s the choice—vote for the guy who lives in Jersey, votes in Turkey, and has a calcified soul. We’ll just turn the Senate over to the election deniers and MAGA Republicans. Or, we vote for Fetterman, the big-hearted man who is having some problems with auditory processing as a result of a fairly recent stroke.
I think the choice is clear.
Sadly, I think some undecided voters will be unduly influenced by the debate performance. Fetterman may lose as a result, which would be unfortunate for Pennsylvania. But I hold out hope that the majority of Pennsylvanians will stand firm for democracy and against hatred, and in support of the rights of all Americans to pursue life, liberty, and happiness, and will choose John Fetterman as our representative in the U.S. Senate.
Full disclosure. I had a stroke four years ago. I still have some auditory processing issues and when I’m tired, I occasionally have trouble choosing my words. But I think I could do a better job tomorrow than Dr. Oz—and at least half of the folks who somehow ended up with seats on Capitol Hill in either the House or the Senate. I’m confident that Fetterman can too.
Dean Phillips, of Ambler, is an attorney and former State College Borough Councilman
PSU Ill-Prepared for Proud Boys Event
Having been mentioned in Russell Frank’s column on the Proud Boys incident at Penn State, I offer a couple of observations:
I do not know anything about FIRE as an organization but agree that “allowing threats of violence to shut down an … event” grants a “heckler’s veto.” Imagine a society in which the late Sheriff Bull Connor of Selma, Alabama, fame were still empowered to issue or deny parade permits, on the basis of content, at his personal discretion. Who should decide which message should be heard? The mayor? The dogcatcher? But ensuring the right of peaceful protest, regardless of content, requires wisdom and work.
Things obviously got “out of hand,” last Monday because a lot of student organizations, administrators and public officials were at least naïve, if not utterly irresponsible. The Penn State police claim that they were ”not aware of any credible threats of violence” is preposterous. Unless every member of the department began serving on Jan. 7, 2021, having previously shared a burrow with Phil, over in Punxsutawney, they knew that you don’t invite and subsidize an appearance by the Proud Boys to appear in public and expect a Sunday School box supper.
One must wonder why the University Park Allocation Committee—whatever that is—”agreed to fund the event to the tune of $7,500 worth of student fees.” What was the point? To promote free speech by inviting notorious thugs, the latest avatar of the Brown Shirts, to make a presentation on your campus, subsidizing the event with public funds? Any teaching assistant with a laptop in the history department could put together a video presentation on the Proud Boys, their message, the consequences of their fascist violence, and teach the evils of their views and behavior. Why stage a public event and pay for it?
Once having done so, however, the Allocation Committee’s idiotic decision was courageously (!) “disavowed” by the University, which then allowed events to go forward without any reasonable precautions. As Russell Frank put it in his column, “Not surprisingly, things got a little rowdy.” You betcha! If the Student Committee for Defense and Solidarity—whatever that is—intended to organize a counterdemonstration, why did they not have trained and identified “monitors” on hand to control their own crowd, weeding out the rowdies, preventing a “crowd surge”? Apparently nobody, knowing full well that opponents of the Proud Boys would turn out in force, took steps to keep pro and con demonstrators apart, to ensure that nobody armed with bear spray or firearms or steel “flagpoles” was allowed to participate.
Now if one guy dressed in black using pepper spray, as Russell Frank described him, was what the police referred to as “chemical spray of the crowd,” and the police statement alludes to “one known altercation,” that means that the rowdy crowd was largely peaceful. So why not arrest the perps and let everybody else have a good rally for free speech? As FIRE put it, “Penn State must respond to isolated incidents of violence by removing lawbreakers and allowing peaceful protests and scheduled events to continue.”
Next time, let the Proud Boys representatives—both of them—organize their own shindig, pay for it, and let public officials do their job, which is to arrest those who engage in violence and protect the peaceful demonstrators. When will we ever learn?
David Fishlow,
Volcán, Chiriquí, Panama
