Letters to the Editor

Your vote matters

Unfunded government pensions. A blind squirrel is finding nuts in these strong financial markets. Unfunded pensions are due to incompetence and gross negligence. Government employees, it’s your job to monitor their progress. Not the taxpayers. It’s your retirement.

Education. Stop following angelic-speaking academics and union hacks drinking Red Bull and telling you they have wings down perverse dark alleyways. They aren’t angels. Parents, it is your responsibility to manage the education of your children. Do it. Use vouchers to escape bad situations. Competition raises all boats. Don’t settle for inferior schools.

Affordable housing. Raising property taxes does not make housing more affordable. Landlords pass on property taxes by increasing rents. Escrowed mortgages are increased by property taxes. Paid-off homes are leased from the government. They are never owned. Rent or own, you pay property taxes. Permitting and zoning regulations make building and remodeling more expensive and take more time to build. Every delay is financed at current interest rates, a cost that is passed through to the homebuyer.

Interest rates. There was a time when granny bought food with her bank CD interest. The CDs financed community homes. Zero and negative interest rates are a way to promote excessive government borrowing that your grandchildren will have to pay — and you pay via inflation.

Elections are won by those who vote. You have a civic duty to vote. If you can’t or won’t make it to the polls, vote by mail. It’s never been easier. It will never be ideal. If you don’t like a candidate, write someone in or leave that dot blank. There is no excuse for not voting. In the past no one told whom they voted for. I miss those days.

GREGORY MCQUAIDE

Hampton

Tired of slimy political ads

A powerful case can be made to never contribute a dime to someone who is running for office.

Virtually each time one turns on the television, and no matter what they are watching, they can expect to be coated in slime by virtue of the sleazy negative political ads that rely on distortion and that television stations are required to place on the air.

It is not bad enough to have to see the slugfest between my state Sen. Camera Bartolotta and Jodi Borello (both should be ashamed), but ads are run for races in which I have no vote. The race between Butler County state House candidates Scott Timko and Brandon Dukes appear, even ads for the Ohio U.S. senator race between Sherrod Brown and Jon Husted.

We will get a brief respite from the ugliness on Nov. 4.

Television stations are supposed to operate in the public interest. The slinging of mud does not fit that classification, but we are saddled with it every darned election cycle.

OREN SPIEGLER

Peters

Energy consumers deserve real choice

Anya Litvak’s Oct. 18 article (“What best serves electric consumers?”) highlights an important debate over electricity affordability and consumer choice in Pennsylvania.

FirstEnergy’s proposal — automatically returning customers to utility default service when competitive electricity contracts expire — may be well intentioned, but it risks undermining the very competition designed to benefit consumers.

Certainly, customers should be protected from unexpected rate increases. However, automatically switching them away from their chosen supplier, potentially even a more affordable option, is not the answer.

The reported $888 million in additional costs paid by FirstEnergy’s shopping customers since 2017 deserves scrutiny. But that figure doesn’t distinguish between customers who unknowingly pay higher rates and those who intentionally chose alternative products, including renewable energy.

There’s a better solution: Allow customers to decide at enrollment whether they want to return to default service or renew with their supplier when their contract expires. Clear notices and the ability to change that preference would strengthen consumer protections without restricting choice.

Pennsylvania’s electricity affordability challenges require meaningful solutions, not policies that weaken competition. The Public Utility Commission should continue to reject the proposed automatic-switching requirement and put consumers, not regulators, in control.

JOSHUA SCHUBERT

Butler

The writer is a policy analyst for the Commonwealth Foundation.

GOP must condemn Ramaswamy ad

As the Republican mayor of Seven Fields and a practicing psychotherapist, I believe local officials have a responsibility to speak when national political conduct undermines the values we ask our communities to uphold.

Ohio gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy’s campaign advertisement featuring his opponent Amy Acton’s estranged mother attacking her account of childhood hardship warrants that response.

In our communities, we ask children to tell a trusted adult when someone hurts them. We encourage families to seek help. Those messages lose credibility when political leaders turn a person’s childhood suffering into an instrument of humiliation.

Public office requires scrutiny. Ask hard questions about a candidate’s competence, decisions and proposals. A childhood marked by abuse is no moral failing, and seeking therapy is no reason for shame.

Here in Western Pennsylvania, we should expect our leaders to practice the respect we teach at home, in schools and across our neighborhoods.

I urge fellow Republicans to reject this advertisement and ask that it be withdrawn. Party loyalty should strengthen our commitment to principle, including when speaking up is uncomfortable.

KEVIN CARIDAD

Seven Fields

Strengthen kinship care system

A caseworker calls a grandmother in Wilkinsburg at 9:07 p.m. Two grandchildren need somewhere to sleep tonight, and she’s it. No second bed, no stocked fridge. She says yes anyway, because the alternative is a stranger’s house.

I grew up in state care and transitional housing, and I know how much it matters whether the adult saying yes has real support or is doing their best with nothing.

In the late 1990s, kinship placements made up roughly 20% of out-of-home care in Allegheny County. By mid-2024, that had climbed to 65%, according to Allies for Children. Kinship care is now the system’s main plan, but the system hasn’t planned for it.

Meanwhile, Wilkinsburg’s Foster Love Project says it has distributed more than 24,000 bags of clothing, diapers and school supplies since 2014. A nonprofit is filling a gap the county left open, even as foster parent numbers decline across southwestern Pennsylvania.

Family is almost always better than a stranger’s house, which is exactly why caregivers shouldn’t be left to manage alone. The budget is stretched, but this is a question of priorities, not whether resources exist.

Readers can support Foster Love Project. You can also ask your County Council representative why kinship stipends haven’t grown with kinship placements. Two-thirds of the system runs through people who never applied for the job. They just answered the phone.

JAMIE MARK BLACKMAN JR.

Squirrel Hill North