Sounding off: Thoughts on 'fixed' elections, Mastriano, gun control, Jan. 6, border

No one is ‘fixing’ elections

As the public is well aware, Joe Biden won the presidential election fair and square. The Jan. 6 committee has not produced a final report, but its presentation of the facts makes it clear that everyone, including President Trump, knew there was no election fraud.

We have held elections here in Pennsylvania every year and have never had any problems before 2020.

Many members of the Pennsylvania Legislature continue to tell supporters that the election was fraudulent, including our own senator from Westmoreland County, Kim Ward. Her op-ed, “A step toward election integrity in Pa.” (July 24, TribLIVE), was complete nonsense. She insinuates that 40% of voters don’t trust the election results. There is a reason for that. Republicans all over the country told their voters the election was fraudulent.

The election was not fraudulent. Zero evidence means that they were lying to their constituents. You don’t get to start a fire and claim to be the hero for extinguishing it. Sorry, Sen. Ward, we can see clearly what you are doing, and it has more to do with voter suppression than election integrity.

Act 88 is nothing but a partisan attempt to burden voters with unnecessary procedures. Republicans seem to believe their candidates can’t win if they don’t suppress the vote.

There was nothing nefarious about well-intentioned philanthropists or the courts helping voters, but Ward wants people to believe they are fixing our elections. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Chris Baldonieri

Latrobe

The writer is chair of Region 5 East of the Westmoreland County Democratic Committee.

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Spotlight Mastriano’s positives

I try to catch up with the Trib every day. So far, since Doug Mastriano won the Republican primary (even before that), I haven’t noticed a positive word in your paper about him. Has everything he has ever done in his entire life been negative? I understand he may be considered a right-wing extremist, but is that for the Trib to decide or the reader?

Hasn’t he served admirably in the military for most of his career, retired as a colonel and then served as a state senator? Isn’t there something that some old-fashioned journalism can uncover on the positive side about this guy, even accidentally? We can get the rest of that stuff anywhere.

Mike Paper

O’Hara

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Cracking open the door on gun control

After two recent tragic mass shootings, Congress passed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act. It is common sense to keep lethal weapons away from criminals and those with mental illness, but this act did little but to open the door to future stricter gun controls. History tells us that once the door is cracked, politicians likely will totally knock it down.

When the U.S. income tax was implemented in 1913, the top marginal rate on earned income was 7%. This grew to 25% in 1925 and is now 37%, although “rich” people are demonized for not paying their fair share.

Oregon approved medical marijuana in 1998. Recreational use was approved in 2014, and in 2020 small amounts of all street drugs were decriminalized. In 2021, Oregon’s overdose deaths grew 41% over 2020 amid significant increases in violent and property crimes.

President Obama issued an executive order to grant rights to Dreamers in 2012, and now amnesty and citizenship are being discussed for millions of illegals who flooded our open southern border.

Drug use and crimes are rising rapidly, and our borders are being flooded with illegal immigrants. Is this the time to start implementing gun control laws that criminals will not obey? No, the solution is (begin ital) not (end ital) to limit our Second Amendment rights but rather to get criminals off the street, set appropriate bail and get help for the mentally ill. This act will have minimal effect except to crack open the door.

Anthony T. McGartland

Murrysville

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Both Jan. 6, and investigation, reprehensible

The events of Jan. 6, 2021, were reprehensible and troubling. So is the sham investigation (show) put on by the House of Representatives.

An investigation starts with no predetermined conclusion, examines all the evidence and presents their conclusions in a professional manner. The focus would be to prevent future occurrences. In contrast, a show starts with a storyline determined by a small group of like-minded people. It continues behind closed doors and secrecy. It ignores all details not germane to the storyline. There is no cross examination or witnesses for the defense, and constitutional rights are ignored. It is staged, produced and aired at a time that will create maximum benefit to the investigators (prime time television?).

In my opinion, the Jan. 6 investigation is a political show with a simple purpose of demeaning and indicting President Trump. After 10 months of investigating, they have produced evidence of some bad behavior, but no hard evidence of an actual crime. Most evidence would not stand up in court. There is only a show which is intended to inflame Americans against Trump.

Congress is not intended to be a criminal investigation organization. Congress should focus on needed, meaningful legislation instead of a show.

Bruce M. Argall

Hempfield

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Selective fighting for rights

In her letter “Protesters are protected” (July 18, TribLIVE), Mary Beth Walling defends protesting outside the homes of Supreme Court justices as a justifiable right under the First Amendment. Despite the fact that the examples she gives are of protests that occurred in public places, my supposition is that, by her logic, their recent rulings make it open season to invade their neighborhoods and disrupt their family lives.

By mentioning the Second Amendment, she seems to exhibit a passing familiarity with the Bill of Rights, but she appears not to have read all the way down to the 10th, which assigns to the states powers not relegated to the federal government, which includes abortion, and is the essence of the ruling.

She somehow knows that these same justices are “gleefully” establishing “their own right-wing agenda” (Can’t you just see all those evil justices in the back room, high-fiving each other after another “gleeful” rights-stomping session?).

She finishes by claiming that they are “set to take away all privacy rights from all Americans.” She must have missed the fact that the Patriot Act began that process 20 years ago, continues today with big tech monitoring each keystroke, and now has school districts taking away your teenage daughter’s right to privacy in the bathroom via gender appropriation.

It is incredulous to me that these selective rights fighters don’t see that, as every pregnancy involves at least two living beings, they demand that only one of them has the “right” to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness available to every other citizen.

Bill McMaster

Delmont

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Biden’s deadly border mismanagement

“51 migrants die in trailer abandoned in Texas heat“ was a headline on page B4 of the Tribune-Review’s June 29 print edition. This horrific death scene is the worst incident of the Biden administration’s “pretend it does not exist” mismanagement of the border humanitarian crisis occurring daily in Texas, Arizona and border states.

President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas claim the border is secure. They lie.

An estimated 3 million immigrants have crossed illegally since Biden took office.

Most citizens favor legal immigration; most oppose illegal immigration.

Our federal government’s failure is overwhelming the border and now other states with drugs, disease and death. This crisis should be page-one news. Where is the exhaustive investigation and daily reporting by the three major TV networks, cable TV, the AP, The Washington Post and other news syndicates? Is this indifference why there is so little news about the border crisis in the Tribune-Review?

TV networks and news syndicates overdose their readers and viewers daily with news coverage that supports their political ideology, often avoiding that which does not. These conformists are an embarrassment to journalism’s tradition of seeking and reporting the truth.

Sadly, 51 people suffocating to death in a locked truck abandoned by the cartel, a story that begs for major national coverage, is now old news.

Scott Brown

Greensburg

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Stop blaming government for everything

I’m tired of people blaming the government for everything they see as wrong in the world. School prayer, for instance. If you’re a praying person, and you raise your kids to be praying persons, and your kid doesn’t pray in school, that’s your fault, not the government’s. Likewise, if you truly believe abortion is murder, and you teach your kids that abortion is murder, and your kid goes out and has an abortion anyway, that’s your fault, not the government’s.

Stop pointing the finger and take some personal responsibility for your own failures in this world.

Joe Corcoran

Penn Township, Westmoreland County