Ex-city employee rejects discrimination findings
I want to say I strongly disagree with the findings in the discrimination investigation in Allentown. There was, is and may continue to be discrimination. I have seen it, heard it and experienced it myself. To indicate the complaints are invalid is also untrue. When City Council members themselves are derogatory to citizens in a public forum, how can they be impartial? I was there; I heard it firsthand! I am a former employee of 42 years who only recently retired last week! I worked there, so I speak on facts and not conjecture.
Miriam Poche
Emmaus
Newspaper has unbalanced viewpoint
Amen to the Aug. 31 letter to the editor in The Morning Call titled “Headlines about Trump policies seem too negative.” This certainly expresses the frustration and disappointment of many loyal Morning Call readers who feel that the newspaper has had an unbalanced viewpoint in its columns, guest views or opinion sections in recent years. Unfortunately, many of them have stopped reading or expressing their opinions. Media Research Center finds 92% of President Trump’s news coverage in his first 100 days by the major network media like ABC, CBS and NBC was negative. Only 31% of Americans express trust in the mass media reports, according to a 2024 Gallup poll. Allentown needs a local newspaper like The Morning Call. It deserves our support but it should also express the views fairly and equally.
Geoffrey Lee
Lower Macungie Township
Cuts to mass transit hurt low-income, elderly people
Two months overdue on the budget, lawmakers in Harrisburg forced SEPTA into painful service cuts (since undone, thanks to an infusion of money from Gov. Josh Shapiro). Here in the Lehigh Valley, we know what happens when politicians turn their backs on public transit. But we would not have had to face these cuts — or any budget cuts — if we simply leveled our unfair tax system by making the wealthy and corporations pay their share.
I have lived in Allentown for 30 years and have always taken the bus to work, the hospital, the market — everywhere. Changes to public transit affect low-income and elderly residents who can’t afford alternatives like Uber. Lawmakers’ shifting priorities have left folks stranded.
SEPTA once ran the Bethlehem Line, connecting our region directly to Philadelphia. But policies that deprioritized transit funding led to its elimination early in the Reagan administration, cutting the Lehigh Valley off from one of the state’s largest economic hubs and forcing thousands of commuters onto clogged highways. Now, the same story is at risk of repeating itself across Southeastern Pennsylvania.
The clock is running out. It’s time for lawmakers to pass a budget that funds public transit and do their jobs, so we can get to ours.
Francisca Mendez
Allentown
Pa. home care system needs help in budget
Being passionate about home care is easy — we all lose people. Many of us have had a family member who could have benefited from home care but didn’t know it was an option or wasn’t eligible. For my own grandparents, it was both. They thought they had done everything right to prepare for their later years. But when my grandmother developed dementia, home care was never offered. Instead, she was placed in a nursing home. Had home care been presented and funded, perhaps she could have remained safely at home.
Home care should be Plan A in Pennsylvania. More than 400,000 Pennsylvanians depend on it every day, yet the system is collapsing. Each month, more than 112,500 shifts go unfilled and nearly 27% of children do not receive the hours they are authorized for. All because Pennsylvania reimburses just $20.63 an hour for in-home care — far less than neighboring states, which pay $25 to $36. Two taxpayer-funded studies have concluded that a 23% increase is needed to stabilize the system.
The overdue state budget is being negotiated now, and Lehigh Valley Sens. Nick Miller and Jarrett Coleman must act to ensure our local in-home care system does not collapse.
Hannah Poole
Bethlehem
‘Electricity vampires’ are only start of a solution
The Associated Press article, “Beware electricity vampires,” in Friday’s Morning CalI raised a good point but did not go far enough. Unplugging unneeded devices and chargers can save a significant amount of electricity, but so can simple behaviors like having the last person leaving the room turn out the lights. It may seem like a drop in the bucket, but every little bit helps save money and reduce carbon pollution that causes climate change.
However, achieving significant emissions reductions requires a national effort to reduce reliance on fossil fuels and adopt renewable energy sources. Unfortunately, our Trump/McCormick/Mackenzie trio of leaders in Washington are moving us in the opposite direction.
Cutting programs and incentives that encourage more efficient cars, appliances and homes, and defunding projects that would provide clean energy supplies, dooms us to dirtier air, worsening asthma and other health outcomes, and bigger, more expensive wildfires, floods, violent storms and other natural disasters.
Individual conservation actions can add up as the article mentioned. A 20% reduction in emissions per year is attainable only if everyone follows its advice. That’s not enough. To make a real difference, America needs a major change in how we produce and use energy on a large scale.
John Gallagher
Bethlehem Township
Pa. senators’ bipartisanship on security was refreshing
It was such a refreshing feeling to read in The Morning Call how Sen. Fetterman and Sen. McCormick worked together on the PRC Broker-Dealers and Investment Advisers Moratorium Act. This act is an effort to protect investors, and economic security, which is not a partisan issue. Let’s hope we see more Democrats and Republicans begin to work together for the good of so many people in our cool USA.
Linda Merkel
Hanover Township, Northampton County
Farmers shouldn’t get handouts after voting for Trump agenda
Many Arkansas farmers voted for tariffs, tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires, and against helping anyone who has fallen on hard times (and asks for a handout). Now that they can’t sell their crops overseas because of tariffs, they want the government to bail them out (give them a handout). Sorry, the government has no money for handouts. Farmers can count on the millionaire- and billionaire-owned hedge funds to bail them out at the sheriff’s sale.
Anthony Louie
Bethlehem
The Morning Call 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.
