Letters: Protect the arts at Penn State; Support candidates who protect voting rights
Protect the arts at Penn State
The just opened new Palmer Museum of Art is and will be into the future a wonderful resource for all. As stated in the speeches at the opening, the arts bring an opportunity to investigate who we are and who we are becoming. The arts provide an emotional and aesthetic experience in their own unique language. Matthew Schuyler, the president of the board of trustees, stated that he was a statistics major but it was the experience with the arts at Penn State that he found most meaningful.
While the speeches were grand, the cuts that are being made across the university’s curriculum in the performing arts, the visual arts, and in all of the liberal arts creates great concern.
Let us hope that the speeches made at the opening of the new Palmer don’t ring hollow in the future.
David Werner, State College
Support candidates who protect voting rights
I’m a poll worker, like thousands of other Pennsylvanians. All day long we help voters vote on Election Day. We check them in, answer questions, explain how to mark ballots, and exchange “spoiled” ballots that are incorrectly marked for new ones.
On Election Day, I clock in at an understaffed precinct in my county at 5:30 a.m. and work until 9 p.m., with no time to get to my home precinct to cast my own vote. I therefore vote by mail. But if those who dislike mail-in-ballots have their way, I could be disenfranchised, along with other civic-minded citizens — such as, firefighters, seniors, shut-ins, nurses, military members, and more — who simply can’t get to their polling place on Election Day.
The Centre County Republican Party unsuccessfully sued the county commissioners for accepting 95 mail-in-ballots (out of 8,494) that had inconsequential errors with outer envelope dates. This delayed certification of the Centre County primary election until May 28, making Centre County the last county in Pennsylvania to certify our vote.
These date errors have nothing to do with my legitimate right to vote, or my ability to choose my representatives. But if Republicans have their way, I’d have no recourse to correct an incomplete or transposed date, unlike the hundreds of voters I help on Election Day.
This is unequal treatment under the law.
As you think about who to support in upcoming elections, please choose candidates who pledge to guard every eligible citizen’s right to vote.
Kathleen O’Connell, Lemont
Hypocrisy in ‘carpetbagging’ cries
As President Reagan said to Jimmy Carter, “here you go again.” Democrats and their political hacks are pretty good at the proverbial “OK for me, but not for thee.” I wrote this info about carpetbagging when Dr. Oz was running for the U.S. Senate.
First off, Dave McCormick is not a carpetbagger — I suggest researching the derivation of the word. McCormick was born in PA, is a Bloomsburg high school graduate and is simply returning to his roots.
Secondly, consider these better examples of political carpetbagging: Hillary Clinton was the First Lady for 11 years in Arkansas, then got elected to the U.S. Senate from NY; Robert Kennedy, of the Massachusetts Kennedy family, was known as the Senator from MA, who lived in Virginia and represented the people of NY. Mitt Romney, a RINO, was raised in MI, served four yeas as governor of MA, relocated to Utah where he got elected to the Utah Senate. And, Bernie Sanders was born in Brooklyn, NY, before, dare I say? Carpetbagging to Vermont.
Oh! How sweet it is to dwell in hypocrisy!
Ken Criste, Ferguson Township
