Sounding off: Immigration, Musk, Trump, kindness top topics this week

Immigration partnership could work

I have a lot of ideas. Sometimes I’m the master of the obvious, and others have thought and written about the same thing. Sometimes, I come up with a good one. I think the following represents a good one.

I raise ideas with our legislators, and I receive responses, probably from staff members, and I understand that we elect them to represent all of us and that they cannot actually consider every individual’s idea. Still, if enough people think an idea is a good one and they all press that idea with the legislator at the same time, something good might happen. It only takes a few to start a movement.

What if we treated Mexico like a friendly nation and worked in partnership with them to fund and operate migration centers on the Mexican side of the border where asylum-seekers and others are collected for entry into the United States? In combination with Mexico, which has the same problem(s) we do, let’s find out why people are coming and try to help the nations of Central America. Why would we want to alienate and make enemies of other nations in our own backyard, or anywhere for that matter?

Let’s get our border secure and also act like the country of immigrants that we are and give a path to citizenship for the “Dreamers” and enforce legal immigration (line jumpers will be returned to country of origin). Let’s get the good hard-working people taking up the jobs we can’t seem to fill with those who are already here.

Timothy J. Kunselman

McCandless

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Scrooge-like ghosts ought to visit Musk

Elon Musk is crying out for an intervention. Do ghosts in the Twitter machine exist who can perform Scrooge-style visitations on the misbegotten magnate and help him reclaim his wayward soul?

It’s hard to picture such a natural born, amoral, noxious blowhard awakening as a reborn and glorious Christmas butterfly, as Ebenezer did. The man is patently and preposterously impervious to self-reflection. One can imagine Musk mocking and eye rolling as the earnest, hackneyed spirits work in vain to convert him to an abiding sense of compassion and charity toward others and away from narcissistic self-obsession.

Could the final grim, ghastly spirit scare him straight with a vision of his human mortality? Nah. Death is for losers and plebs. Elon is planning to upload his irreplaceably precious consciousness to cyberspace, beyond the reach of silly morality tales, where he will rule for all eternity as the all-powerful Ghost Lord of The Machine. All those woke Dickensian ghosts will be banned and abolished for trying to spiritually dox him.

God help us every one.

David Ninehouser

Ambridge

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Let’s follow third-grader’s example and be kind

Regarding third-grader Ava Kostewicz’s letter “Kindness keeps us connected” (Sept. 4, TribLIVE): When I read your letter (which I clipped and kept), it brought tears to my eyes. It wasn’t because it made me sad, but that this was coming from a young lady who could see the needs of others and act with kindness to help them. Something we don’t see enough of these days. So, during this holiday season, let’s all try and do good deeds/mitzvahs and do as Ava has done.

I know, without a shadow of a doubt, that your parents are very proud of you. Our dad would have given you a “Done Good” button, as he wanted us to think of the less fortunate. He always told us that we may not have everything we want, but we had everything we needed, especially since we had (begin ital)love(end ital)!

Thank you for your kindness, Ava!

Marianne Rossi-Brown

Greensburg

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Where are the workers? They’re gone.

The writer of the letter “Where are all the workers?” (Nov. 28, TribLIVE) suggested that Americans don’t want to work. The simple answer is that the pool of eligible workers is maxed out.

As of November 2022, the number of people employed was approximately 160 million, which is at or above pre-pandemic levels. The eligible labor force, defined as the number of people available for work and includes both the employed and the unemployed, is currently around 220 million people.

This means that 72% of the eligible labor force is currently working. Unemployment remains historically low at 3.7% meaning about 6 million people are unemployed. There are currently 10 million job openings, so even if all the unemployed were to find work, there would still be 4 million open positions.

Where are the workers? Early retirement removed 3 million people from the workforce. Loss of child care caused another 3.5 million people, mainly women, to stop working. Between 2 million and 4 million people have left the ranks of the employed due to the health effects of long covid.

So, if a line takes a little bit longer, take a deep breath. Everybody’s working hard and you’ll have a better day.

Kathleen Ervin

Penn Township, Westmoreland County

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Trump trading cards? Again, you can’t make this stuff up.

Many of us who were familiar with Donald Trump and his lifelong pattern of taking advantage of others and acting outrageously were confident that he would not grow into the presidency and that he would consistently embarrass us. We did not know exactly what he would do to bring himself and our country low, but knew that there would be one outrage after another. We have been proven correct again and again.

In the latest chapter of “you can’t make this stuff up,” Trump the grifter is offering a set of $99 trading cards in which he (who else) is featured as a superhero: so much for the dignity of the former president of the United States and his state of mind.

No one — not any former president or anyone of national prominence — has come close to engaging in the buffoonery that is the former president’s calling card.

The trading card fiasco is one more reason that Trump’s bid for reelection should be met with raucous laughter, assuming one enjoys tragic comedy.

Oren Spiegler

Peters

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Blind to destruction

After reading Jim Harger’s letter “There’s no ‘destruction’ happening in U.S.” (Dec. 12, TribLIVE), in which he ignorantly critiques Ed Davis’ letter “Biden will take blame for destruction” (Nov. 10, TribLIVE), I wondered what world Harger has been living in for the past two years. Someone who could seriously ask, “What destruction?” could very well be walking around in a hypnotic state.

Our southern border is a catastrophe, our criminal justice system seems to care more about the criminals than the victims of the exploding crime crisis, our economy is hanging on by a thread, Afghanistan ended in disaster and our education system is third world. Our military, contrary to Harger’s claims, is unable to maintain troop levels as members who refuse the covid-19 vaccine are booted out and recruiting levels plummet, probably because of the “woke ideology” being foisted on them.

It is difficult to imagine that any clear thinking, socially and politically aware person can be so incredibly wrong without having been entranced by some radical left svengali. If you know Mr. Harger, maybe you could try snapping your finger and instructing him to “wake up!”

Richard Byers

Mt. Pleasant

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We must stop legislators’ pay raise ‘affront’

Every year, you run an editorial about the automatic pay raises granted to Pennsylvania’s state legislators and the other covered under the Public Official Compensation Law amendment (“Lawmakers’ big raises are an affront to Pa. taxpayers,” Aug. 19, TribLIVE). As Pennsylvanians, we have a year to bombard the people responsible for this “affront.” Lead the way, and tell us how and who we need to contact.

Monica Yuhas

Smock