Letters to the Editor | June 9, 2023

Like most of the region on Thursday, our 13 school based health centers in Philadelphia were on high alert. Because of the air quality crisis, our most vulnerable asthmatic students were about to experience one of their worst days imaginable. As a June 8 op-ed by Daniel R. Taylor pointed out, asthmatic students are the most at risk from this air quality crisis. Fortunately, some students have access to school-based health centers — facilities with medical providers embedded in schools, which focus on asthma because it is a leading cause of absenteeism. Unfortunately, not every student has that same opportunity available to them. As we see more instances of chronic absenteeism and academic slip post-pandemic, we need to embrace and amplify a proven strategy that works — school-based health centers.

Julie Cousler Emig, executive director, Education Plus Health, PA School-Based Health Alliance

I read with interest the Republican efforts to cut a quarter of the $80 billion targeted to improve the Internal Revenue Service’s ability to provide better service, update its technology, and ensure that the wealthy pay their taxes. Years ago I was laid off from my job and needed employment. I took a job at the IRS service center in Northeast Philadelphia. Despite my reservations, I soon learned that the employees were dedicated, overworked, and extremely underpaid. I spent a year in the collections department. It was run by a handful of women, mothers whose children were grown and who were looking for a way to supplement their family income. They were responsible for enforcing tax collection for the entire East Coast and the Virgin Islands. I learned that over the years the tax codes grew from a few regulatory books to dozens of volumes with arcane rules created for small groups of individuals and companies that had been awarded reduced or tax-free status because of intense, backdoor lobbying. The current attacks on the IRS by these deadbeats and their paid lackeys in Congress are simply another attempt by tax cheats doing everything in their power to demonize a mostly fine government workforce and their ability to make them pay their fair share.

Paul Mercurio, Lafayette Hill

There is a Hollywood writers’ strike that is getting very little attention these days, but a key sticking point is a serious concern that studios will use artificial intelligence to replace writers, and then only offer minimum salaries with no job security to humans who will then turn the AI scripts into something people will watch. We have now seen that AI is not only not ready for prime time but downright dangerous. A lawyer used it to write a brief where the AI created precedents out of thin air. A study in the Journal of the American Medical Association has noted that ChatGPT provides critical resources to people with serious problems only about 22% of the time. I asked it for lyrics to a song, and it just made them up. This technology is no more ready to be out in public than teleportation, which exists in theory but cannot beam us up anywhere yet. Hollywood will lose nothing by acceding to writers’ demands for dignity, job security, and a fair wage.

Kenneth Gorelick, Wayne

Fishtown and Kensington, like lots of other neighborhoods, are overdeveloped and exploited by developers. Here’s an idea: Why doesn’t the planning commission create financial incentives to encourage growth in underdeveloped areas? One way could be for start-up businesses and small companies valued under $1 million to be given a five-year business tax abatement. New zoning codes could initiate residential and business empowerment zones for specific establishments. Zoning incentives and grants could deter businesses from moving to and settling down in nearby counties.

Frank T. Brzozowski, Pennsylvania Democratic State Committee, Philadelphia

I was deeply saddened to read the June 3 article about the change of mission at the Mütter Museum. It is clear that the Mütter’s new leaders, college president and CEO Mira Irons and Executive Director Kate Quinn, lack a fundamental understanding of what makes the museum a unique and special Philadelphia treasure. Shifting the mission of the museum to “health and well-being” sets this 160-year-old institution on a path to bland, sanitized mediocrity. The displays can be hard to look at, but they operate on multiple levels in the way they weave biology, anatomy, medical history, and social history together. If ever there was a place that isn’t broken and doesn’t need fixing, it is the Mütter. It should be viewed as a place we take care of and pass on to the next generation.

Michael Grothusen, Erdenheim

I thought Wednesday’s letter on college debt forgiveness was particularly narrow-minded and harsh. It’s a “shape up or ship out” mentality. The writer equates choosing a college with shopping around for the best deal on a new car. Not quite the same thing. What is not mentioned is how college costs have ballooned exponentially over the past decade or so, a lot of it caused by expanded university administrations whose members enjoy high salaries. Students in many countries pay little or no tuition for a college education, thus are not burdened with large loans when they graduate. We are a wealthy country and surely can afford to support college education to a much greater degree than we do today.

Barry Juran, Philadelphia

I applaud the efforts of employees of the Museum of the American Revolution and other groups to attempt to stop the summit planned by Moms for Liberty at the museum. Moms for Liberty is foremost a hate group that embraces disdain for the LGBTQ community. It pretends that its stated quest to protect children is its core desire. It does this by forcing schools to ban books it deems offensive and to not teach curriculum that exposes its bigotry. It is no coincidence that the books and curriculum it attacks deal with gender identity, racial inequality, and inclusion. Why doesn’t it put its efforts behind common sense gun control? In my lifetime, I have never heard of a book or course of study that attacked and killed children as they sat in their classrooms. It is with the same breath that I criticize the museum’s board for allowing the event to take place. The board said that “rejecting visitors on the basis of ideology would be antithetical to our purpose.” So when the Nazis and the Proud Boys and the KKK come for a permit, are they going to be let in, too?

Jim Lynch, Norristown

In 1502, Pope Alexander VI ordered the burning of all books questioning papal authority. It was a futile attempt to stem the rising tide of new thought exploding across Europe. In the 20th century, the edicts of Popes Pius XI and Paul VI rejecting birth control for Catholics was another hopeless attempt to keep modern thought and contemporary morality back from their natural course. In both cases, as in numerous other examples that could be cited, the old way of thinking simply couldn’t stop the changes occurring in society. It was too late and just too unpopular. Today’s version of this self-proclaimed piety lives in the voices and actions of those like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and extreme right-wing Republicans in power in places such as Tennessee, Florida, and Texas (and the Central Bucks School District). They speak of freedom for some, like parents of school-age children, while making it their mission to limit it for others. Just as they couldn’t stop Elvis from gyrating on stage in the 1950s, so, too, will their current attempts fail.

Joseph Goldberg, Philadelphia