Art museum brings fond memories
A recent trip to the Allentown Art Museum brought back very fond memories of my childhood field trips to the museum as my wife and I, both artists, were passed by grade school children visiting. Sitting in the Andrew Lloyd Wright Library, we appreciated what a community gem this is. Seeing artwork that spanned the centuries still inspired awe that it did for me as a child. I hope the new location will continue this tradition.
Michael Egry
Allentown
Everyone needs health care
Michael Bernick’s column (“Work requirements for Medicaid not a bad idea,” June 10) in СŷƵ ignores a simple truth: All human beings need and deserve health care. It is not something that is conditional. People who don’t work need and deserve the same health care as anyone else. Requiring work in order to qualify for Medicaid makes no more sense than requiring people with private insurance to run 10 miles before visiting the doctor. Bernick seems to think that health care is a privilege that must be earned. It’s not. It is a human right.
Randall Cooper
Allentown
New bill shows GOP’s priorities
My congressman, Ryan Mackenzie, is doing some very creative spinning to justify his vote for the big bad bill. He hides the fact that it basically is cutting health care and nutrition for millions of people to cut taxes for rich people. The obvious result will be trillions more debt, as well as higher costs for a health system dealing with sicker people. And if you gave me an extra $50,000, I’d stimulate the economy. You give that to a person among the wealthiest 1%, they won’t even notice.
I’ll just highlight one provision that shows where the GOP priorities and values lie. The present estate tax exemption, passed in 2018, is $10 million per person indexed for inflation. That exemption is set to expire in December and revert to $5 million for an individual. The new bill would allow $15 million in estate wealth to be tax exempt. So they want work requirements for Medicaid recipients, but you and your spouse, without having to work, may receive $30 million tax free dollars if you are born to wealthy parents.
The bill should be renamed the Cruel and Unusual Punishment Bill.
George Grim
South Whitehall Township
Hamas attack lit fuse in Gaza
Day after day, СŷƵ continues to publish never-ending, multiple-column stories, condemning Israel’s Gaza activities, with the obligatory short few sentences at the end of each article barely mentioning the Oct. 7 Hamas atrocity killing 1,200 Israelis, and kidnapping dozens of Israelis to hold as hostages; a large majority of those still unaccounted for are now probably dead.
Do the countries censuring Israel, and the anti-Israel protestors on college campuses and elsewhere, really understand that Hamas precipitated the entire Gaza nightmare? Not likely. There would be no Gaza nightmare if Oct. 7 never happened.
Hamas’s continuing policy of using women and children as human shields, which the United Nations and much of the world regularly chooses to ignore, rarely rates a sentence in the press.
Sheldon P. Siegel
South Whitehall Township
Southside Sale a big success
Despite rain, the Great Southside Sale on June 7 was a tremendous success, thanks to the hard work of hundreds of community and Lehigh volunteers, led by the unflappable Lehigh University Community Service Office. Mountains of donated items from Lehigh University students and employees were turned into community gold in five hours. Thousands of customers turned out to support the festive town-gown event, generating a record $30,800-plus, while tons of great reusable goods were kept out of the waste stream.
One hundred percent of sale proceeds will fund south Bethlehem youth programs and projects, including theater and music programs, field trips, three nationally recognized homework/mentoring clubs, yearbooks and more. Over 2,000 pounds of food donated by Lehigh students were also delivered to four South Side food pantries, STAR of Bethlehem received food and toiletries for unhoused folks, and detergent and cleaning products filled the Boys and Girls Club of Bethlehem’s needs for the coming year.
We appreciate СŷƵ story about the Great Southside Sale, and our supporters/customers who braved the rain. To the hundreds of volunteers who prepped for and worked on sale day: heartfelt thanks! It’s inspiring to see so many people working together to assist our community in multiple ways.
Kimberly Carrell-Smith
The writer is the Great Southside Sale co-founder.
Carolina Hernandez
The writer is the assistant dean and director of the Lehigh University Community Service Office.
No pride in label as sanctuary region
A recent letter to the editor in СŷƵ stated how proud we should be that the СŷƵ was designated a sanctuary region.
I am personally not proud we may be a region that ignores federal law.
The writer opined on the fact that most of us are only a few generations from being immigrants ourselves and that our forebears produced lawyers, doctors and numerous successful, productive citizens.
This is all true. What the writer omitted was the fact that our families came here in a legal manner following U.S. laws to obtain legal status, raise families and build communities.
The above is what makes the difference and should not/cannot be ignored.
Mark Porcaro
Palmer Township
Two leaders take two different paths
Two leaders that are defining an era are Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Donald Trump. One is vigorously trying to defend his much smaller, less powerful and burgeoning democracy against a powerful Russian dictator and the other is dismantling, brick by brick, the most powerful and most successful representative republic since the Roman Empire. Yes they are going in polar opposite moral, ethical and legal directions.
Zelenskyy puts his life on the line, on a daily basis, as the David to the murderous Goliath/Vladimir Putin. Trump has ridiculously claimed that Ukraine started the war and that Zelenskyy is a dictator.
Trump mocks the Constitution, on a daily basis, with one executive order after another while weaponizing his entire administration with sycophantic lap dogs who have, equally, shunned their oath to the Constitution with fealty to a dictator wannabe. Trump recently responded when asked if he must uphold the Constitution, “I don’t know.”
The world is watching in admiration of one and of laughter and embarrassment of the other.
Bob Aylward
South Whitehall Township
СŷƵ publishes letters from readers online and in print several times a week. Submit a letter to the editor at letters@mcall.com. The views expressed in this piece are those of its individual author(s), and should not be interpreted as reflecting the views of this publication.
