The LuLac Edition #4,289, May 13th, 2020

WRITE ON WEDNESDAY (PART 1)

Our "Write On Wednesday" logo. 

One of this week’s “Write Ons” deals with a State Representative who was n embarrassment to his party as well as the office he holds in Harrisburg. He apologized for his comments and behavior and that’s all well and good. But we publish this because my philosophy about people like this is 1. They live among us. 2. I’d like to expose them for who they really are mainly because we like to see them coming.

AFFRONT SHOULD DRAW CENSURE

State Rep. Chris Dush, a Republican from Jefferson County, should make an all-out effort to improve history education at whatever school he attended because the curriculum clearly has not served him well.
He raised a valid concern Monday during a meeting of the House State Government Committee: that the Wolf administration has not been as transparent as it should be in providing detailed information on the COVID-19 pandemic and specific information regarding waivers from the governor’s business shutdown order.
The administration has released less information than its counterparts in some other states, and executive branch agencies have shunted aside legitimate public information requests from the news media and others. It can, and should, do much better.
As Dush sees it, there can be only one explanation: “More and more I go back to the German Democratic Nationalist Socialist Party, the Nazi party. I go to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the USSR. This is a socialist playbook.”
Rep. Kevin Boyle of Philadelphia, the ranking Democrat on the committee, objected: “Chairman, this is outrageous. Stop it with these Nazi references. It’s offensive and wrong. Stop it.”
Republican Rep. Garth Everett, the committee chairman from Lycoming County, then directed Dush to stick to the matter hand.
But Dush persisted: “It’s a statement of history. It’s history. It’s history.”
Actually, it’s a statement of nonsense. It’s nonsense. It’s nonsense.
It’s interesting as a matter of history, at least history according to Dush, that the Nazis — fascists and mortal enemies of socialism, communism and the USSR — were using a “socialist playbook.” In World War II, German troops killed more than 8.6 million Soviet troops and the Soviets killed more than 2.2 million German soldiers while wounding or capturing more than 3 million more.
But the biggest issue was that Dush — an elected public official in a republic — so casually would invoke Nazism and communism and all of the historical freight that they carry, in reference to a democratically elected and term-limited governor.
Under pressure, Dush later apologized on the House floor.
Both houses of the Legislature should adopt debate rules calling for formal censure of members who mangle not just history, but simple decency, by invoking Nazism in reference to their political opponents.