Citizens must demand change for Pennsylvania

Elizabeth Stelle’s Jan. 16 Perspectives commentary, “A Better State Budget,” is an alarming review of Pennsylvania’s poor fiscal health. Along with Ms. Stelle’s list of corporate welfare producing little to no economic benefit, a flawed sentencing system resulting in the highest incarceration rate among Northeast states and the “ghost” special funds with little or no visibility or accountability, we can add the highest gas tax in the nation, the ninth year in a row for turnpike toll increases and the largest full-time state legislature in the nation.

Articles like Ms. Stelle’s go a long way in shedding light on a Pennsylvania Legislature entrenched in a broken political system of mismanagement, special interests and self-preservation. Let’s hope this information will inspire more of us to demand, or vote, for change. FRANK PASQUALINO

Fox Chapel about. Did he mean Donald Trump or his boss, Barack Obama?

Four years ago, the Defense Intelligence Agency warned the White House that ISIS’s activity in Syria had created “grave danger” that could have “dire consequences.”

In the following years, officials at the CIA and State Department would issue numerous similar reports on the rise of ISIS.

Yet in 2014, after ISIS captured Fallujah, President Obama dismissed the ISIS problem as much ado about nothing, saying “if a JV team [junior varsity, second string] puts on Lakers uniforms, that doesn’t make them Kobe Bryant.”

So the Russians have hacked some Clinton campaign emails? The U.S. and Russia have been spying on/hacking each other for decades.

But in the U.S. alone in the past 13 months, we’ve experienced seven ISIS-inspired terrorist attacks resulting in the deaths of about 70 citizens, and the toll worldwide from such attacks by ISIS is in the hundreds.

So who exactly is Mr. Biden calling “mindless”? C. COLPO Burgettstown

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Trump’s plan to repeal Obamacare that will protect us seniors, who are currently saving lots of money because the “doughnut hole” has been closing year after year with the Affordable Care Act. Our medicine may, once again, be out of reach for most of us seniors when we fall into that giant hole that Mr. Trump will recreate.

Well, with Republicans in control of everything, I’m sure the wealthy donors will do just fine. As a former conservative, I will be paying attention to everything this Republican tenure will cause and be ready to vote appropriately in 2018. Hoping for the best for all of us Americans. BILL MILLER Bethel Park