Letters to the Editor | Jan. 31, 2024

Why not talk the Sixers ownership into rehabilitating the SS United States for their new basketball arena? The Sixers would have a truly unique venue, the folks in Chinatown would be happy, and the ship would be saved. Get the engines running, and the ship might be used for cruises during the offseason or even in-game. And the mobility will make it easier for the owners to move elsewhere when they decide to abandon Philly.

Karl H. Zimmerman, Shippensburg

Save the SS United States — not. We have asbestos-filled and crumbling schools, homelessness, and food insecurity. And they want to spend millions on a rust bucket? Or just keep wasting hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in dock fees? Absurd! It has been reported that the hull is paper-thin in spots. Put it up for auction or tow it down the river to the junkyard.

JA Mauro, Marlton

Janine Yass recently wrote a letter to the editor attacking retiring Philadelphia Federation of Teachers president Jerry Jordan and the teachers’ union. Yass identifies herself as being from the Yass Foundation for Education. She and her husband, Jeffrey Yass, fund the foundation from the billions of dollars he made from investing in TikTok and sports gambling through his company Susquehanna International Group. The Yasses want to discredit and ultimately defund public education in Philadelphia. For years, Yass-funded organizations like the Commonwealth Foundation have attacked public education. But what I find most odd is why this billionaire couple from Lower Merion is so obsessed with Philadelphia. They live on a private drive in the highest-funded school district in Pennsylvania. Some billionaires in our society choose to go to outer space, others live in virtual reality. I would encourage Jeff and Janine Yass to take up a new hobby rather than attacking Philadelphia teachers.

Pele IrgangLaden, Philadelphia

No Labels’ work in Delaware is part of a nationwide effort to secure a place on the ballot that could potentially be filled by a unity presidential ticket in 2024, featuring a Republican and Democrat as running mates. We’re undertaking this work on behalf of the majority of Americans and Delawareans who are unsatisfied with their two likely choices for president and are demanding another option. Unfortunately, many partisans have proven they will stop at nothing to prevent that option from being offered, and Delaware Election Commissioner Anthony Albence is now engaged in a clear attempt to eliminate competition for President Joe Biden in his home state.

Albence wants to block No Labels Delaware from the ballot on the pretext of a ridiculously thin accusation that No Labels Delaware is “tricking” voters during the registration process. Never mind that we utilize best-in-class measures to prevent confusion among all voters we register. Those measures are why Albence can only identify a handful of potential instances of voter confusion out of the 1,316 registrations we have successfully submitted. A 1% to 2% misunderstanding rate does not invalidate the other 98% of our registered voters and does not constitute a sufficient basis for disqualification. To assert otherwise is absurd.

He is also attempting to change the rules of how to register voters to make it impossible for No Labels Delaware to succeed. State law mandates that we register party members to secure ballot access, but he claims we cannot proactively approach or ask voters to register with us, and that the voters must approach us instead. This is a clear catch-22, by making No Labels unable to qualify for the ballot and yet unable to do anything that would allow us to qualify. The real victim of this isn’t No Labels, it’s the people of Delaware at the mercy of partisanship. No wonder so many Delawareans have been eager to register with our party and support a fresh choice in 2024. I can assure them that we will not rest until our party status and ballot access have been restored.

Ben duPont, No Labels Delaware

While I am concerned about crime in Philadelphia, I do not blame District Attorney Larry Krasner. Crime in the city is dropping, as it is nationwide. Krasner ran on stopping cash bail holding people in jail for minor crimes. He ran to correct improper prosecution of innocent people because of false confessions obtained by the police department. How many cases have been overturned since he took office? He is also trying to correct all the bad faith prosecutions by his predecessors who did not turn over discovery or gave other accounts to the underpaid, understaffed public defender’s office. Gov. Josh Shapiro signed the law appointing a special prosecutor for crimes around SEPTA property because it contained funding that was needed to run other programs, and it was the only way to get it past a Republican-run state Senate. Krasner is correct to fight the part of the law that takes away his duty to fight crime in the city. Appointing a special prosecutor is a waste of taxpayer money.

Barney Sloan, Phoenixville

While reading about the potential return of a flip board to 30th Street Station, I was disheartened that it did not mention why the Solari board was retired in 2019. For all the nostalgia and homegrown economic interest involved in bringing a new flip board to the station’s feted grand hall, the plain truth is that the board did not serve the needs of Amtrak’s passengers. Specifically, its hearing-impaired or vision-impaired passengers. Back in August 2016, when this issue was first reported, The Inquirer noted that “a digital board will better meet requirements of the Americans With Disabilities Act by making it easier to read.”

Leaning so heavily into the nostalgic sight and sound of the flip board hides an ugly truth: Prior to the ratification of the ADA, disabled travelers had no protections against systems that did not work for them. We should hope that in his outreach to Amtrak, Oats Foundry CEO Mark Kuhn took ADA compliance and the principles of universal design seriously when addressing shortcomings of the Solari flip board. Amtrak, SEPTA, and NJ Transit form an integral network of transportation access to disabled passengers who may not otherwise be able to travel. Undermining their right to free movement in the name of aesthetics would make 30th Street Station less welcoming for all. In any conversation about our legacy public spaces, we simply cannot afford to shut out the voices of disabled Americans.

Dick Furstein, Philadelphia, rafurstein@gmail.com

Philadelphia neighborhoods are not alone in being victimized by PennDot’s single-minded obsession with moving traffic. In Bucks County, the agency has plotted a plan to turn a safety upgrade of U.S. Route 1 into a major interchange. The result would be a four-lane highway dumping traffic into the Langhorne Borough National Register Historic District, increased traffic at the Pennsylvania Routes 213/413 intersection, and heavy truck impact to historic structures, including the county’s oldest house of worship established by people of color. Langhorne Borough, which PennDot excluded from a crucial 2020 design meeting, has repeatedly opposed the project, citing safety risks to drivers and pedestrians and quality-of-life concerns. In October, the borough suffered its latest pedestrian traffic fatality at the intersection that would most be impacted by the interchange. We second The Inquirer’s call for PennDot not to accommodate traffic at the expense of thriving communities.

Paul Schneider, Langhorne

Bad enough I am a murderer. Now add torturer to the charges. My tax dollars, my Supreme Court, and my government are all guilty in the cruel death of Kenneth Eugene Smith on Thursday in Alabama. I feel even more responsible for his killing by my country’s embrace of capital punishment than I do for our complicity in the deaths of thousands of Palestinian civilians. Most of the world still condones killing by war, but only rogue countries still approve of killing by capital punishment. That means the United States joins countries like Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, North Korea, and China in legitimizing murder by governments. On Jan. 25, I fasted and I protested, but my puny efforts to resist did not stop this outrageous killing. What will it take for us to end our hypocrisy, where most of us profess a belief in “thou shalt not kill.” We can demand the U.S. join 112 other countries that have abolished the death penalty as a cruel and unusual punishment.

Sylvia Metzler, Philadelphia

Join the conversation: Send letters to letters@inquirer.com. Limit length to 200 words and include home address and day and evening phone number. Letters run in The Inquirer six days a week on the editorial pages and online.