Letters: Standing With Mount Nittany Workers This Labor Day; AI Needs a Constitution

I’m a proud union member who works just down the street from the Mount Nittany hospital workers still fighting for a fair contract.

With Labor Day coming up, I wanted to share my support for these workers. Because this isn’t just the workers’ fight for fair wages. It’s all of our fight for a better hospital that will live by its promise to keep this community at the center of its priorities.

Growing up, whenever my dad would have health issues, he’d prefer to drive over Seven Mountains to just receive care at Mount Nittany. The staff, food and cleanliness of the facilities – my dad chose Mount Nittany because of the great people who keep the hospital running.

And as my own son has gone to Mount Nittany for his breathing issues, I’ve appreciated the top-notch care of the workers even more.

Hospital workers shouldn’t have to show up to 12 hour shifts worrying about what bills they might have to skip until next pay. I’ve been there. It makes it hard to focus on your job. And Mount Nittany workers’ jobs are pretty darn important – they take care of our people.

I’m not usually the person to write letters to the news. But I care about the workers at Mount Nittany because this is my community, and they are my neighbors.

My family’s been in central Pennsylvania since the middle of the 1700s. We worked in the factories, mines and lumber camps. Over the years, businesses, major employers and schools have all closed down in the central region.

It used to be that you would come to Centre County for good jobs. But the cost of everything has gone up except for our labor.

It is my understanding that the people at the top of Mount Nittany are saying they can’t afford to pay their own workers, that they have to think about “long term sustainability.” These are people who don’t see the struggles on the floor every day, or don’t have to worry about paying for groceries at the end of the week. Maybe they shouldn’t keep choosing to raise up new buildings if they won’t choose to raise up the workforce, too.

So this isn’t just about a fair contract with fair wages that the Mount Nittany workers deserve.

This is also about protecting good care, good jobs and a good hospital from the corporate greed that’s taken over too much of what’s ours.

That’s why I’m standing by the Mount Nittany workers. It’s not too late for the leaders at the hospital to do the same.

Alex Peters

AI Needs a Constitution

Artificial intelligence is advancing at an extraordinary pace. Within a few years, AI systems may make decisions in medicine, finance, transportation, defense, scientific research and critical infrastructure that exceed any individual human’s understanding. That potential offers enormous benefits, but it also creates unprecedented risks.

The central question is no longer whether AI will become more capable, but whether it will remain aligned with human values. Good intentions are not enough. Advanced AI should be designed so that it is structurally prevented from violating fundamental ethical principles or rewriting its own moral code.

Like Isaac Asimov’s famous Three Laws of Robotics, future AI should operate under a constitutional set of core principles, expanded to protect human life, individual rights, biodiversity, ecological sustainability and the long-term habitability of Earth. These principles should be enforced not merely by software that an advanced AI might eventually modify, but by an independent, tamper-resistant security kernel operating on separate, protected hardware. Every significant action would have to pass through this kernel to verify compliance with constitutional rules. The AI would have no authority to alter or bypass those safeguards.

Just as democratic societies protect liberty through constitutions and checks and balances, advanced AI should be governed by an equally robust framework. If we wait until machines surpass human intelligence to establish these safeguards, we may discover it is too late to impose them.

Doug Keith,
State College

They Don’t Deserve Your Vote

Despite controlling the House, Senate, White House and Supreme Court, Republicans just can’t manage to accomplish anything for the American people.

Rubber-stamp Republicans, however, have no problem enriching the Mar-a-Lago class and serving a corrupt and incompetent president who has said “affordability is a hoax,” gas prices are “peanuts,” and he doesn’t “care about inflation.”

Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” eliminated food assistance for needy children and will cause 10–15 million Americans to lose health insurance while another 22 million face skyrocketing premiums. It will add $4.7 trillion to our already staggering national debt while providing another huge tax giveaway to the ultra-wealthy. Republicans deliberately delayed most health care cuts until AFTER THE MIDTERM ELECTION!

Republicans remained quiet when Trump started an unnecessary war that cost American lives, depleted our munitions stockpile and cost taxpayers billions. With Iran now controlling the Strait of Hormuz, inflation and high gas prices continue with no end in sight.

Disinterested in governing, Trump prefers spending his time enriching himself and those close to him, building his ballroom and putting his name back on the Kennedy Center.

Polls show an increasing majority of Americans angry about being betrayed by this president and his complicit Republican Party. That’s why Trump remains laser-focused on saving himself, doing everything possible to interfere with and delegitimize the midterm elections.

Republicans unwilling to put America’s well-being ahead of servitude to Trump do not deserve your vote in November.

George Polycranos,
Port Matilda

Reduce Your Energy Bill

Fed up with high energy bills? Then tell your representatives in Congress to support the Energy Bills Relief Act (EBRA).

EBRA helps cut energy bills in many ways, one of which is to provide direct assistance to homeowners by expanding and modernizing energy-savings programs, such as the Rural Energy Savings Program.

One reason for rapid growth in electricity bills is our outdated power grid, which EBRA helps to improve by reducing bureaucracy and red tape. And EBRA also addresses the skyrocketing, unchecked growth in data centers and their tremendous hunger for energy and water by prioritizing the interests of consumers over the wealthy energy producers.

We can solve our energy problems with smart policy, and EBRA is a great example.

Raymond Najjar,
State College