Letters To Editor ; In Defense Of Obamacare Tongue In Cheek Dementia Can Hit Anyone Missing The Point God’s Liberalism ‘Buddy Holly’ Rocks Drilling…

Letters To Editor ; In Defense Of Obamacare Tongue In Cheek Dementia Can Hit Anyone Missing The Point God's Liberalism 'Buddy Holly' Rocks Drilling And Ownership Defend Coal Energy

The greatest religious freedom is freedom of the individual to believe or not believe. The Catholic hierarchy and other leaders (including a small local business) claim to not agree with certain provisions of the Affordable Care Act. But in doing so, they are violating the religious freedom of employees.

Even if all employees are of the same faith as their employers, that does not mean that they agree with their employers in matters of health (e.g., the second-highest religious group in the USA to have abortions is the Catholic faith.)

The Affordable Care Act does not require any individual to utilize any of the services covered or to use any medication prescribed or not prescribed.

The cost of the birth control medication is being born by the insurance company and in fact lowers the cost of the insurance (basically because those that use the birth control being covered will result in fewer unplanned pregnancies). It seems to me that those savings could be used to help the poor.

Re: "You can keep your policies if you like them" cancellations were done by the insurance companies, not the government. If you would check, you would find that the canceled policies did not include what is covered under the ACA like pre-existing conditions. Before the ACA in Pennsylvania if you were diagnosed with cancer, you could not purchase individual health care insurance until after five years of the diagnosis. I had personally checked that and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania said, "That is true and there is nothing that we can do about that."

I had part-time work at a men's clothing store where the owner had posted a sign that said, "We have no quarrel with anyone who would sell you inferior goods at a lower cost." The canceled policies may or may not not have been cheaper, but they were inferior in what they covered.

Gerald Lefchik

Lititz

Just in case you may have overlooked them, below are the Top 10 reasons cutting educational funding is a good idea for Pennsylvania:

Your kids will no longer be able to "read" you the riot act. They won't know how.

Creativity will be encouraged as kindergartners learn to crayon within the annual poverty guidelines.

No annoying calls from utility companies looking to sell you "brainpower."

Job opportunities for school nurses will explode when they are called to treat new budget cuts.

Kids will have a lot more class. Just look at the pupil/teacher ratios.

The next generation won't divide the country. They can't do math.

Downsized teachers will find less stressful jobs installing "barriers" to success.

Without phys ed classes, property tax payers won't be the only folks "bent out of shape."

In order to permanently "fix" the system, governor will have it spayed and neutered.

Kim L. Rentschler

Manheim Township

The headline read: "For the LGBT community, dealing with dementia is a challenge" (April 28). The first paragraph then goes on to say that being LGBT causes "extra problems."

Well, here's a news flash for you, dementia is a hideous, insidious and agonizingly slow progressive illness that can strike anyone at any age. My daughter was just 23 when she was diagnosed in 2006 with early-onset dementia. I can guarantee you that she has "extra problems" from her illness unique to her because of her extraordinarily young age. "Extra problems" exist in the subset of all illnesses but your headline implies that being LGBT with dementia is somehow more difficult to manage. I assure it is not.

All dementia patients and their caregivers need support, information and understanding. What we don't need is the implication that there is greater suffering for some.

Gail McAllister

East Petersburg

This concerns the letters written by Richard L. Miller ("Atheists a useless lot," April 23) and John Peiffer ("Liberalism and the Bible," April 25). After reading both carefully it seems to me they have completely missed the point of Christian teaching.

The cornerstone of Christianity is love and forgiveness. Jesus stressed the requirement that his followers treat others as they would wish to be treated.

I do not recall ever hearing that anyone cannot be a Christian for believing that being our brothers' keeper is more than a nice sounding phrase made once a week for an hour. Nor is it a disqualifying quality to say to those who have much that it is a sin to make an active effort to take from those who have little.

I am tired of this incessant labeling of people simply because their opinion differs from someone else's. That speaks more of a person filled with the arrogance of their own virtue rather than the humility born of the recognition of how easily we can fall short from the tenets of our beliefs. I would remind both men of the admonition not to judge lest you be judged in turn.

I would remind Mr. Miller and Mr. Peiffer the Lord is not flesh but Spirit and totally outside the range of our limited senses. That means "He" is not of a specific race, nationality, political party affiliation or social point of view. He is worshipped all over this country and this planet and called many names. And in all of these faiths there is a requirement that the practitioner show tolerance toward the beliefs of others and treat them as they would be treated.

The Founding Fathers, whom so many leap to cite and too often for the wrong reasons, were only too aware of the explosive nature of the relationship between man and his God, which is why they saw to it there would be no establishment of any religion in our national Constitution.

We are human beings with free will in a free nation with the right to believe or not believe according to our individual consciences. Since I am a believer and in an interfaith marriage, I feel a measure of charity and respect for the opinions of others, whether we agree with them or not, is best here. Remember Jesus' admonition to remove the log from your own eye before criticizing the mote in your neighbor's.

Stephen L. Patrick

Rapho Township

In his April 25 letter to the editor ("Liberalism and the Bible"), John Peiffer informs us that "Christians who follow the Bible should not be liberal." Moreover, "Bible-believing Christian(s) ... cannot be liberal." It seems being conservative is the only way to be a true believer.

If the God followed by Christians and Jews had been a conservative, and therefore chose not to send his son to define and inspire a new view of how earthly followers were to interact with one another, Mr. Peiffer likely would be celebrating the Sabbath on Saturdays.

Terry W. Blue

Washington Boro

If you have a rock 'n' roll bone in your body, you absolutely must see "Buddy: The Buddy Holly Story" at the Fulton. It's like going to a very good play and a great concert in one performance.

Lead actor Andy Christopher has been playing Buddy Holly for five years and it shows. We have seen many excellent shows, but "Buddy" was the most pure entertainment ever. It's no wonder the whole theater was on their feet for the last couple numbers.

Dale Murray

Mount Joy

The question of whether Pennsylvania should impose a special tax on drilling is one that raises a number of serious issues. It seems to me unfortunate that so much of the political rhetoric - especially on the part of gubernatorial contenders - is calculated to inflame rather than inform.

In your issue of April 27, Rob McCord speaks of "resources that belong to the people of Pennsylvania." Excuse me, the resources in question belong to the individuals who own the land beneath which the resources are found.

If in fact the resources were under public land, and thus owned by the people of Pennsylvania, the likelihood is that activists would have by now prevented their extraction entirely.

Would Mr. McCord, I wonder, consider the farmland in Lancaster County to "belong to the people of Pennsylvania?" Should we perhaps tax the extraction of nutrients from the "peoples' soil" by those farmers who have mistakenly thought the soil belonged to them?

Similarly, Katie McGinty complains that the people of Pennsylvania are seeing little in return "for their natural resources" and Allyson Schwartz, more pointedly, asserts that the resources "belong to the people of Pennsylvania." No, Ms. McGinty, they do not. They belong to private citizens who, thank God, are free to lawfully dispose of them as they wish.

Robert Muth

Lancaster

The sword that has hung over America's coal industry for two years is about to fall. The EPA's formal announcement of plans for new air quality regulations that would essentially end power generation from coal threatens to drive up electricity costs and throw hundreds of thousands of coal industry workers out of their jobs.

All of this is totally unnecessary. New technologies already make coal - America's most abundant and affordable energy source - burn far cleaner than in the past. The future will bring even cleaner ways to use this valuable domestic resource.

But that won't happen if EPA is allowed to move ahead. It's time for Pennsylvania's business and political leaders, and our ordinary citizens, to demand that the EPA step back and follow a more sensible, less destructive path.

The proposed regulations are subject to public comment until May 9. Pennsylvanians - who get almost half their electricity from coal, in a state where almost 63,00 jobs are supported by the coal industry - must speak up now, before it is too late to save an iconic industry and the plentiful, affordable electric power that coal gives us.

Aman Singh

Elizabethtown