Hits and Misses
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Americans have come to rely more than ever on the United States Postal Service. But the postal service has, in recent weeks, become notably less reliable. Customers in this area and around the country have found that bills, packages, Christmas cards and medications have been late in arriving, and some magazines are weeks overdue. The Postal Service has issued pleas for patience, since it has been dealing with unprecedented volumes of mail at the same time thousands of employees have been sidelined because of COVID-19. This also follows cost-cutting measures instituted over the summer by Postmaster General Louis DeJoy. Delivery of the mail will become speedier again once the glut of mail from the holiday season is cleared. But the incoming Biden administration should make fully funding the U.S. Postal Service a priority. No one in America should have to worry about the medications they need on a daily basis sitting undelivered at their local post office.
Whether you agree with their views or not, the wins by Democrats Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff in the runoff election for Georgia’s two U.S. Senate seats demonstrate the progress the United States in general and the South in particular have made over the last 50 years. In 1970, Georgia’s two senators were Herman Talmadge and Richard Russell, two longtime segregationists. Talmadge said in 1954, after the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Brown vs. Board of Education, “There aren’t enough troops in the whole United States to make the white people of the state send their children to school with colored children.” Now, the rapidly changing state will be represented in the U.S. Senate by a Jewish millennial and a Black minister from the same church where Martin Luther King Jr. preached. These are the sorts of changes that, in fact, King fought for in his brief life. This should hearten every American.
The citizens of the 45th Senate District deserve representation in Harrisburg. But they don’t have it now, and there’s no indication when they will have it. That’s because Senate Republicans refused Tuesday to seat Jim Brewster, the incumbent state senator who won the November election by 69 votes. His Republican opponent, Nicole Ziccarelli, has a suit pending in federal court to have mail-in votes that were cast in Allegheny County be rejected because they were not dated, even though everything else about the ballots were acceptable. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled against Ziccarelli and the results have been certified by the state. At the very least, Brewster should be sworn in provisionally until the federal suit is heard. That is similar to what was done recently in the U.S. House of Representatives, where a Republican congresswoman from Iowa was sworn in provisionally until a challenge by her Democratic opponent is resolved.
Southwestern Pennsylvania and the suburbs of Philadelphia are separated by 300 miles and are very different places culturally and politically. But the two areas are apparently united by their preferences in alcohol. The Pennsylvania Capital-Star website pulled together an interactive map based on data provided by the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board and it reveals that the top-selling alcohol in Washington County in 2020 was Tito’s Handmade Vodka. It was also the top-seller in places like Montgomery, Chester and Bucks counties. It’s nice to know there are some things that can pull disparate Pennsylvanians together.