Sounding off: Fetterman, Trump, abortion, amendments, Pirates and more

Oz’s residency status pales next to Fetterman issues

It seems that letter-writer Richard Patton is questioning candidate Dr. Mehmet Oz’s residency status (“Where will Oz live if he loses?” Aug. 24, TribLIVE). I wonder if Patton was as worried regarding Hillary Clinton’s residency status when she ran for senate in New York?

As for what homes they reside in, I’m sure that candidate Oz paid fair market value for his home while candidate John Fetterman paid his sister $1 for the home he lives in. Fetterman also could not support himself and lived off a stipend from his mommy and daddy till he was in his 40s.

Fetterman also supports the decriminalization of all drugs (including opioids) and the emptying of our jails. With the current crime rate, that is an absolute great idea!

He does not support the jobs that pay Pennsylvania citizens high wages in the energy field. Further, candidate Fetterman’s health is questionable to say the least.

So, Mr. Patton, you can worry about where candidate Oz is going to live; I’ll worry about the issues that everyday citizens worry about and support the candidate that also does, which by far is Mehmet Oz.

Richard Bell

Ligonier Township

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Is abortion just the beginning?

“Jesus never once said anything about abortion.” This was said by Joe Scarborough on MSNBC.

And Jesus never said Joe was a jerk, but … .

To me that seems to be an incredible comment. Can anyone imagine that the son of God, creator of all living things, would even have a thought of killing one of his beings? But yet this line of thinking has permeated the souls of the political left so deeply that it may have an impact on the upcoming elections. Imagine, we have gone so far from the Ten Commandments (“Thou Shalt Not kill”) that we would consciously look for representatives to govern us who would vote to kill unborn babies.

OK. I get it. There are those who do not believe there is a God. But consider for a moment that the Ten Commandments could be just some guidelines to happy living. They could just be a recipe to live a life of peaceful coexistence with our fellow man. If we ignore “Thou Shalt Not Kill,” then what other harmful deeds to our fellow man will we be willing to enact? And where does it stop? Old folks? Children not performing to expectations? Wrong color beings?

This is not the America I know. This is definitely not the land of the free and the home of the brave. It is more like the Russia and the China we read about in our history books … the results of communism.

Maybe that is what we have come to. Only we can decide.

Gil Brezler

Penn Township, Westmoreland County

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Amendments should be few and far between

When it comes to voting on amendments to the state Constitution, I usually cringe and become nervous. The Constitution is supposed to be a guide or set of rules to run the state government. Changes to it should be few and infrequent. The federal Constitution has 27 amendments, and the first 10, the Bill of Rights, were voted on immediately. Only 17 amendments were added to the federal Constitution since 1789 in 233 years.

Our state legislators are now proposing six new amendments to our state Constitution. Why is that? The simplest answer is partisan politics. Republican legislatures can’t pass some bills because a Democratic governor vetos them. Most policy changes are done by the legislatures through the law-making process. But because of the vetos, the legislatures are trying to circumvent that process. To permanently affix simple policies to the state’s Constitution is bewildering.

Be mindful that previous proposed amendments had tricky and questionable language in them. Recall that there was an amendment that reduced the size of our state House from 203 to 151 members. The legislators dropped the ball as it never made it through to the people to vote on.

Nervous? You bet.

Richard Patton

Franklin Township, Beaver County

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Do parents really want government to provide for everything?

Regarding the editorial “School breakfast will help hunger, but lunch would be better” (Sept. 13, TribLIVE): Let’s just jump to the final step like the 1930s in Germany or China or Russia. Just send your kids to the government (for everything) and they can get three meals a day (plus a snack), and then you’ll have no responsibility for raising them at all.

William R. Iski

Penn Township, Westmoreland County

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Trump a patriot?

In his letter “America and Pa. need Donald Trump” (Sept. 12, TribLIVE), Paul Carrick claims Democrats hate America, when it was former President Trump whose words to his armed supporters at the Ellipse on Jan. 6, 2021, incited the insurrection that caused the deaths of five Americans over his “Big Lie” that the 2020 election was stolen from him.

It was the former president who took classified and top secret documents with him upon leaving office to Mar-A-Lago, and despite what he says, those documents are by law required to be sent to the National Archives at the end of any president’s term.

It was Republicans who voted against allowing Medicare to negotiate prescription drug prices and reducing the cost of insulin, and it was Republicans who voted against the Voting Rights Act of 2021. More than 100 House Republicans voted against the infrastructure bill.

Carrick called Trump a “patriot.” A patriot doesn’t take donations from his supporters for his legal defense fund then never use that money for its intended purposes. A patriot wouldn’t have dodged the Vietnam War draft by claiming he had “bone spurs,” an ailment his father allegedly paid a doctor to say he had.

Lastly, a true patriot wouldn’t have called Georgia’s Secretary of State to urge him to “find” 11,000 votes so the outcome of that state’s election for president could be overturned.

I don’t know what America that writer lives in, but it seems the party that in reality hates America is the one that Trump leads.

Paul Moschetta

Penn Hills

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Embarrassment of Pittsburgh Pirates

Mark Madden once again has his finger on the pulse of what’s wrong with the Pirates organization (“Mark Madden’s Hot Take: Ke’Bryan Hayes’ gaffe again makes Pirates a national punchline,” Sept. 17, TribLIVE). The embarrassment of Hayes eating sunflower seeds while at work was just despicable.

The thing is, that’s what’s to be expected from an owner who has previously said he expects his teams to (paraphrasing here) “be competitive on the field.” In the 15 years since Bob Nutting has been the owner, in only two of those years have the Pirates been “competitive” enough to qualify for the playoffs. Sorry, Pirates fans, celebrating the mediocrity of a .500 season doesn’t count, either. As far as I can tell, he is the only owner of all the teams in the four major professional sports leagues who has never once uttered the phrase, “Our goal each and every year is to win a championship.” All teams’ goals should be and only be to win a championship.

The other embarrassment is the amount of visiting fans who come into PNC Park and call it their own. I have seen fans from St. Louis, Chicago and New York come into our house and make it theirs.

This baseball product is less than professional and is below the standards of Major League Baseball. Here’s hoping that the powers that be in the MLB take action and save the Pittsburgh Pirates from Nutting’s ineptitude.

Tony DiPardo

Carnegie

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Outlawing tobacco products would help to end cancer

Regarding the article “Biden hopes ending cancer can be a ‘national purpose’ for U.S.” (Sept. 13, TribLIVE): A good start would be to outlaw all tobacco products, but the government cannot do without the taxes.

Clem Zahrobsky

Delmont