Editorial Roundup: Pennsylvania

PennLive. March 1, 2024

It’s time we changed the tone in our commonwealth and in our nation. People who step up to volunteer to ensure we have fair elections should be treated with admiration and respect. They certainly should not receive death threats.

But that’s the state of American democracy today, and what a sad state it is.

Pennsylvania’s Secretary of State Al Schmidt had to pause to collect himself at the recent Pennsylvania Press Club luncheon in describing what he and his family endured in the last election … just to serve the people.

Schmidt, a Republican, refused to support former President Donald Trump’s charges of fraudulent election results in Philadelphia in 2020. And for standing up for truth, he and his family received death threats from those determined to usurp the will of the people Schmidt vowed to serve.

Our commonwealth owes a great debt to Schmidt and the other election workers in Pennsylvania who would not be bullied, bribed, or cowered into undermining American democracy. We need those kind of people at the polls in 2024. But Schmidt is worried we won’t have enough of them.

In fact, in Pennsylvania and across the country, experienced election directors have resigned. Schmidt says they’ve stepped down for various reasons, but the meanness that is now engulfing our elections has got to be one of the biggest. It’s why so many good people won’t run for public office. They don’t want to subject themselves and their loved ones to the kind of bullying that has become so commonplace in today’s political arena.

The dignified era of statesmen like Ronald Reagan seems to be long gone. We wish it would come back.

Too many voters think it’s ok for candidates to berate, slander, and threaten their opponents, and to cast unwarranted doubt on the results of elections. People running for the highest offices in the land are still hurling lies about the 2020 elections being “rigged.” They even encourage their supporters to do the same.

Folks, it just ain’t true. And it’s just plain wrong. Good people must demand a higher standard of behavior from people who want to lead our nation.

Public servants like Schmidt and the hundreds of people working in county election offices and at the polls deserve our support and our trust. Most are decent people working hard to ensure free and fair elections. They deserve to work in safety and security.

We call on officials of both parties in Pennsylvania to tamp down the vicious and violent rhetoric that is weakening our elections and our democracy.

We call on political leaders to insist the candidates they support uphold the same standards of behavior we demand of our children. No yelling, name-calling or threatening anyone. And we call on leaders of both parties and all candidates for office to denounce those who try to intimidate public servants and election workers.

That’s the only way to ensure peaceful, fair elections for the April 23 primary, and that the voice of the people is heard loud and clear on Nov. 5, 2024.

Here’s a link f or detailed information on the elections, including voter registration and mail-in ballot deadlines: https://www.vote.pa.gov/About-Elections/Pages/Upcoming-Elections.aspx.

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Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. March 2, 2024

Editorial: Helping students in school by providing menstrual products is vital

Governor Josh Shapiro’s new budget proposal includes $3 million in measures to alleviate period poverty by providing free feminine hygiene products in public schools, as well as correctional facilities and temporary housing.

As the Editorial Board pointed out last March: about 15% of menstruating students experienced ‘period poverty’ sometime in the past year, and 10% experienced it every month. A 2017 study found that nearly one in five American young women have missed school or left early due to lack of menstrual hygiene products.

And while many school districts, nonprofits, activist-minded businesses and concerned citizens have stepped up to supply period products to schools, many schools do not have them. Girls in rural areas or who are people of color tend to suffer the most from a lack of access to tampons, pads and other alternatives.

The governor’s budget will keep them in school. Lori Shapiro, the Governor’s wife, has witnessed the problem firsthand.

“Lori has spoken to girls who have literally missed school because they got their period and had to run home in the middle of the day — because nothing was available for them at school,” Mr. Shapiro said. “This budget makes feminine hygiene products available at no cost in our schools because girls deserve to have peace of mind so they can focus on learning.”

The governor’s efforts mirror the work of Sen. Maria Collett, D-Montgomery, who is championing the Menstrual Equity Act through the state Senate. (It already passed in the House of Representatives and is currently the Senate Health and Human Services Committee.)

The bill seeks to “provide disposable menstrual products at no cost and make the disposable menstrual products available in restroom facilities in a convenient manner that does not stigmatize any individuals seeking the disposable menstrual products” in places like correctional facilities, temporary housing and, most importantly, schools.

“I’m also thrilled to see Governor Shapiro become the first PA Governor to highlight period poverty in his address,” wrote Sen. Collett in a statement. “Far too many Pennsylvanians, including students, struggle to afford or access the menstrual products they need, often forcing them to miss class, impacting their academic achievement, and compounding into long-term repercussions for our economic competitiveness.”

A similar bill is also working its way through the House of Representatives in Washington. H.R.3646 would mandate that all government facilities distribute free menstrual products. It would also ensure that such products are covered by Medicaid. It also remains in committee.

It’s a commonsense use of public funds. We supply schooling. We need to supply things that help students get the most they can from their schooling. “This legislation would remove barriers for those who menstruate and utilize these programs,” said Rep. Darisha Parker, D-Philadelphia, who authored the state bill. “We need to provide dignity (for) women and girls.”

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Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. March 2, 2024

Among the most important events to happen in Pennsylvania this year will be the primary election in April and the general election in November.

It is important to every person in the state, as every state House of Representatives seat and a number of state Senate seats will be on the ballot. So will every federal House position and a federal Senate seat.

It is important to everyone in the country because, yet again, Pennsylvania is poised to be a pivot point for the presidential election.

Each election for years has not ended with the ballot box or the voting count. They have prompted lawsuits, often multiple rounds of lawsuits, which have traveled through state or federal appeals — or both.

The decisions from those suits seldom provide satisfaction for those protesting. Indeed, they frequently lead to even more speculation about election security, deepening political divides.

Countering that has begun with the creation of the Pennsylvania Election Threats Task Force. Gov. Josh Shapiro’s office said meetings have begun. Threats mentioned include dangers to the election process itself as well as voter intimidation and misinformation.

It’s smart to bring together law enforcement, legal and rapid response agencies on the state and federal level for something this critical to our democracy. It is better to be proactive than reactive to potential problems. (Let’s hope the state’s 67 counties are following suit and won’t have issues like Luzerne County running out of paper in 2022.)

This is a necessary move. What is unfortunate is that it is necessary.

What is more unfortunate is that it likely won’t matter when it comes to perception. The state’s election battles just don’t die, as proven by the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals hearing oral arguments last month on whether mail-in ballots should or shouldn’t be counted if they don’t have handwritten dates on the outer envelope — an issue that has been in court more than some lawyers.

This election year will be contentious. The task force can address some issues. But it can only do so much to address the political headbutting before — or after — ballots are cast.

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Scranton Times-Tribune. March 3, 2024

In announcing the formation of a Pennsylvania Election Threats Task Force last week, Gov. Josh Shapiro charged its members with “working together to combat misinformation, safeguard the rights of every citizen, and ensure this election is safe, secure, free, and fair.”

Note that Shapiro listed fighting misinformation first in the task force’s to-do list, not pursuing allegations of stuffed drop boxes, hacked voting machines or counterfeit absentee ballots trucked in from out of state. For good reason. None of those things actually happened in the last presidential election, as proven in numerous court cases and the routine auditing processes state law imposes on county election bureaus.

Misinformation coming from what Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt calls “bad-faith actors” lies at the root of the stubborn mistrust of our voting systems in Pennsylvania and nationwide. And that misinformation and mistrust are inflicting real damage by driving out qualified, experienced election officials worn down by the intense scrutiny and hostility coming from those who refuse to accept the validity of the 2020 election.

Schmidt, a former Philadelphia election official who was the target of death threats for defending that city’s vote count in 2020, recently told the Pennsylvania Press Club that about 70 senior election officials in the Commonwealth’s 67 counties have recently resigned or retired.

That type of turnover can bleed an election bureau of institutional memory, leading to mistakes that once would have been written off as human error but are now attributed to dark forces aiming to alter voting results.

In Luzerne County, for instance, which has had four election directors in 4½ years, a shortage of paper needed to print out ballots in November 2022 led to delays at the polls and a gratuitous seven-month criminal investigation that concluded, predictably, that inexperience, not wrongdoing, was the culprit.

That is not to say Shapiro’s task force, which will include law enforcement agencies, civil defense officials and election administrators, should or will ignore instances of fraud or faulty election procedures.

But its priority must be building and maintaining trust in a system in which thousands of dedicated public servants and part-time poll workers perform the most essential task in our democracy, ensuring the fairness of our elections.

As part of that mission, the state has posted a fact-checking page at vote.pa.gov that addresses some of the more widely spread, and definitively debunked, conspiracy theories about elections. Anyone wishing to gauge the veracity of claims by election deniers should make that webpage their first stop.

Our election system has long been one of the best-run and most-trusted sectors of our self-government. Shapiro’s task force and all of us have a duty to ensure it is not further damaged by a deceitful few acting on their worst impulses.

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Uniontown Herald-Standard. March 2, 2024

A well-worn argument of nativists and xenophobes is that immigrants come to this country seeking only benefits, unlike “our” grandparents and great-grandparents, who found prosperity through back-breaking toil and relentless sacrifice.

There is no doubt that immigrants who came to this country in the last century and the century before endured brutally hard work and made numerous sacrifices. Walk through any cemetery in this region and there are all too many graves of people who died in their 40s or 50s, and they could have been immigrants who worked in a mine or were claimed by contagion or the foul air that was so prevalent in places like Pittsburgh.

But a recent story in The Washington Post made clear that immigrants to this country now aren’t looking to wreak havoc or live off the fat of the land. They’re looking for work and opportunities to better their lot – just like all those other immigrants did generations ago.

The Post outlined how foreign-born workers are part of the reason the U.S. economy rebounded so quickly from its moribund state in the depths of the COVID-19 pandemic. It pointed out that in the 12 months between January 2023 and this January, half of the labor market’s growth came from workers who were not born in the United States. Pia Orrenius, a vice president and senior economist with the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, told the newspaper, “You can’t grow like this with just the native workforce. It’s not possible.”

It’s estimated that the U.S. labor force will grow by a little more than 5 million people over the next decade, and immigrants will be a portion of that. Foreign-born workers are expected to add an additional $7 million to the economy during that time.

And the idea that immigrants are taking job opportunities away from native-born Americans really doesn’t hold much water. For the last couple of years there have largely been more job openings than there have been job seekers, and employers have had to raise wages and add other incentives to get applicants through the door.

Critical industries in the United States are also fueled by immigrant labor. It’s estimated that more than 70% of the workers who pick crops on American farms are immigrants. Some are authorized and some are not. Immigrants can also be found in manufacturing, health services and many other sectors. Like those immigrants who arrived here a century ago, the work they do is hard and often thankless. Without their work, we’d likely be paying a lot more for many goods and services.

Catalina Amuedo-Dorantes, an economics professor at the Merced campus of the University of California, told The Washington Post, “More than any immigration policy per se, the biggest pull for migrants is the strength of the labor market.”

This reality should lead to a more rational debate on immigration – yes, we want people to come here legally, but how do we also put those who did not on a path to citizenship, particularly if they have been here for a long time, have been employed and productive and have no criminal record?

Discrimination and vitriol directed at immigrants is a story as old as America, even though immigrants built this country. German, Irish and Chinese immigrants were all subject to prejudice in the 1800s, and in 1924 Congress approved and President Calvin Coolidge signed a measure meant to choke off the number of Eastern European, Italian and Jewish immigrants being admitted. It may have been hysterically claimed then that immigrants were bringing pestilence and crime, but history has shown that they actually brought great benefits to this country.

The same holds true today.

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LNP/LancasterOnline. Febraury 28, 2024

We’re old enough to remember a time when Republican leaders supported NATO and aspiring democracies like Ukraine in the face of Russian aggression. We’re wondering where those fierce GOP proponents of democracy went.

Any ideas, U.S. Rep. Lloyd Smucker?

In a recent Sunday LNP ‘ LancasterOnline profile of the Lancaster County congressman, he expressed his belief that his constituents want him to stand up for conservative values on the national stage.

Is democracy still a conservative value post-Jan. 6, 2021? Do conservatives including Smucker still believe, as President Ronald Reagan did, that the “strength of America’s allies is vital to the United States, and the American security guarantee is essential to the continued freedom of Europe’s democracies”?

If so, then Smucker needs to do what his constituents have urged in letters to the editor to this newspaper and press for his colleagues in the U.S. House to approve military assistance to Ukraine. And, separately, Smucker needs to push to extend protections for Ukrainians who are living in Lancaster County after fleeing their war-torn country.

In the words of Lancaster Township resident Karen Deering, Smucker must “return to conservative ideals to protect national security — placing country over party, order over chaos and allies over aggressors.”

As Verne Weidman of Lititz wrote, Smucker must make absolutely clear his choice between supporting democracy or authoritarian rulers such as Putin. Both Weidman and East Hempfield Township resident David D. Haught pointed out that history will record what happens — or what fails to happen.

Haught wrote that “not supporting Ukraine places the United States and its reputation in an untenable position; our allies will quickly reach the conclusion that we cannot be a trusted partner in the fight for democracy.”

As LNP ‘ LancasterOnline’s Enelly Betancourt reported Saturday, Smucker said in an email that he would support extending temporary protected status for Ukrainians residing in the United States. That status is set to expire April 19, 2025. These new members of our community must not be thrown back in Putin’s path.

“For two years, the Ukrainian people have demonstrated their bravery, defending their homeland against the authoritarian thug and war criminal Vladimir Putin,” Smucker said. “I have supported and continue to support military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine to assist their citizens in the fight to defend their nation.”

These are encouraging words. But Smucker should prove his sincerity by working to convince U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson that sending more aid to Ukraine — with urgency — is in America’s best interests. A Putin victory in Ukraine would be a nightmare for Europe, NATO and, by extension, the United States.

We’re aware that former President Donald Trump, the front-runner for the GOP presidential nomination, has some sort of twisted affinity for Putin. But as Smucker said himself, Putin is an authoritarian thug and war criminal, and so Russia cannot be permitted to prevail in Ukraine.

Bucking the desires of Trump would require courage — a quality demonstrated daily by the people of Ukraine.

Dr. Vera Guertler, a physician residing in Lancaster County, wrote a column for the Sunday LNP ‘ LancasterOnline Perspective section. Guertler’s late mother, Katherine Kochno, fled with her family from Ukraine after Guertler’s grandfather, a Ukrainian Orthodox priest, was sentenced by the Soviet regime to a Siberian concentration camp, where he perished.

Guertler has visited Ukraine to deliver medical supplies and care to people living there. She wrote of Russian soldiers blowing up kindergartens, maternity wards and houses of worship, and seeking to eradicate the Ukrainian language and culture by destroying libraries, torching books and kidnapping Ukrainian children.

She cited President Reagan’s role in standing up against Russia (then the Soviet Union). And she cited the words of another Republican president, Dwight D. Eisenhower, who said that “history has taught us the grim lesson that no nation has ever been successful in avoiding the terrors of war by refusing to defend its rights — by attempting to placate aggression.”

Placating Putin’s aggression would be a profound error. Failing to protect Ukrainians who have taken refuge here would be another. So we strongly urge Smucker to stand up for the Ukrainians living here — and to advance American interests by ensuring that Ukraine can defeat Russian forces and thwart Putin’s antidemocratic ambitions.