Cheers and Jeers
CHEER: Frazier’s Gracen Hartman and West Greene’s Kasie Meek were named to the Pennsylvania Volleyball Coaches Association Class A All-State team. Hartman, a 5-9 junior setter/outside hitter, and Meek, a 5-10 senior outside hitter, led their teams to successful seasons with the Lady Commodores winning the Section 2-A championship and reaching the WPIAL semifinals and the Lady Pioneers finishing second in the section and also qualifying for the playoffs. Both were versatile players who excelled at multiple positions. Meek, a PennWest California recruit, is the first West Greene player to ever be named all-state.
CHEER: A legislative logjam was finally cleared in Harrisburg last week, and public libraries, community colleges and agencies that handle county mental health services will finally get the funding that had been allocated to them in the 2023-24 state budget. Library officials had been nervous that programs, staff or hours would have to be cut in the new year if funding continued to be stalled. In Washington County, the board of commissioners carried out a tremendous service to the county library system by extending it a $165,000 loan that it will pay back once the $660,000 it receives from the state arrives, and advancing payments the county would make later in the year. Diane Ambrose, interim director of the Washington County Library System, said, “This is phenomenal, absolutely phenomenal. We are so grateful.”
CHEER: The lies peddled by Rudolph Giuliani after the 2020 election were despicable not only for the damage they inflicted on our democracy, but also for the damage those lies inflicted on the lives of election workers who were honestly carrying out the vital work of counting votes. The two most notable examples were Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, two election workers Giuliani falsely accused of stuffing ballot boxes in Atlanta. They were justifiably awarded $148 million in damages after filing a defamation lawsuit against him. Apparently unchastened, Guiliani has continued to lie and accuse the women of voter fraud. In response, they have sued him for defamation again. Giuliani, a once-lauded mayor of New York, has already been thoroughly disgraced. If he ends up penniless, he will have only himself to blame.