Editorials category, Page 88
Editorial: Healthy investments pay off
The Greater Pittsburgh area will always be synonymous with steel, but it’s definitely become a hub of health activity more than metal in recent decades. That is why it’s good to see area health systems making investments in the services that keep people healthy and keep area workers employed. Highmark’s...
Laurels & lances: Moving on, monuments and memorials
Laurel: To change when it needs to happen. The Westmoreland County Sheriff’s Department has had a rocky couple of years as it faced problems from the top-down. Sheriff Jonathan Held’s public corruption charges continue to hang in limbo after a December 2018 mistrial and subsequent appeals over a retrial. Other...
Editorial: The toll of a cashless turnpike
Some things in life are inevitable. There’s death, obviously. Taxes, of course. And apparently there is also cashless tolling. The Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission says that the state is just two years away from complete conversion to a system that demands you use an E-ZPass transponder or receive a bill via...
Editorial: Marsy’s Law ruling is right
Kelsey Grammer will be disappointed. The former “Frasier” star lent his star power — and his understanding as someone who lost loved ones to violent crime — to the Marsy’s Law proposal that looks to give constitutional standing to victims. A referendum for the amendment was on Tuesday’s ballot. But...
Editorial: Raise your voice, cast your vote
We were all born with a voice. We were not automatically granted the right to use it. That came by standing up and demanding it. When America was a colony, we had the rights that England gave us. We weren’t satisfied with that. We demanded a say in how we...
Editorial: Show volunteers they are valued
We can’t afford to lose the people who keep us safe. But we are. In Pennsylvania, there are 2,463 fire companies. More than 90% of them are staffed by volunteers. According to state Rep. Bob Brooks, R-Murrysville, the number of firefighters had been falling for 30 years or so when...
Editorial: Pittsburgh gun law isn’t a scrimmage
The preseason is when a team warms up, stretches and tries things out. Let’s see how this guy does as a quarterback. What if we pair up these two offensive players on the same line? It’s a way to do a test run on something before the score matters. So...
Editorial: Congress not unbiased jury in impeachment
A jury has been seated for the trial of Rahmael Holt in the November 2017 shooting death of New Kensington police Officer Brian Shaw, slated to start Monday. The jury selection took days. In any such process, there are questions about whether jurors knew the defendant or the deceased. There...
Laurels & lances: Bills, budgets and buses
Laurel: To honoring the memory of those lost with real action. State Reps. Dan Frankel, D-Squirrel Hill, and Ed Gainey, D-Lincoln-Lemington, and state Sens. Jay Costa, D-Forest Hills, and Larry Farnese, D-Philadelphia, marked their remembrance of the Tree of Life shooting with a package of four bills. The legislators are...
Editorial: How do we save manufacturing?
According to the state Department of Community and Economic Development, Pennsylvania has more than 18,900 businesses and 570,400 people engaged in making everything from steel to potato chips to lighters. That is a significant number of companies and employees. It just isn’t what it used to be. The Georgetown Center...
Editorial: The high cost of voting security
Cost shouldn’t always be the most important factor in a government decision. There are plenty of times that you want your leaders to make the right call, not the cheap one. Build a bridge that won’t buckle. Buy a fire truck that works. Short-term savings aren’t always a long-run solution....
Editorial: What we learn from sinkholes
Is there any better allegory for infrastructure than a sinkhole on a public street? It is a collapse of what was put in place for a specific function. There could be lots of reasons a sinkhole happens. It might be the weather, like the one along Route 30 where Greensburg...
Editorial: Follow the path to economic development
A trail can be more than just a track worn through the grass and the dirt by a thousand other travels. A trail can be something that gets you where you need to go — the breadcrumbs you follow to get home, the yellow brick road that takes you to...
Editorial: The lessons learned in mourning
How long should a death be mourned? Does it get measured in days or weeks or months? Is it a year or is it years? Judaism has several — the days between death and burial, the sitting of shiva for seven days after, the 30 days adjustment to the loss,...
Editorial: No mansions for lieutenant governors
There is something about a mansion. It speaks of the worth of the person inside. It regally registers what is valuable. It proclaims importance. And it’s all a lie, isn’t it? A swanky address may speak of net worth but not personal values. Take, for example, the residence of the...
Laurels & lances: Schools, hotel, arts center
Laurel: To being proactive. The Jeannette City School District scheduled emergency drills for Wednesday. It is the kind of thing that every school does, trying to keep the kids ready to follow directions and stay safe in the event of something unexpected. The unexpected happened a day early. Jeannette and...
Editorial: No gratitude for fake school threat
Perhaps we should be grateful that there was no real danger. On Tuesday, a man passed a note across the counter of a North Huntingdon restaurant. It warned of “an active shooter threat and multiple bombs” at Norwin and Jeannette high schools. There was no active shooter. There was no...
Editorial: Declined penalty may teach lesson
Maybe no punishment is the best penalty. On Tuesday, the Western Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic League came to a couple of decisions about Connellsville and Allderdice. The boys soccer teams from the two high schools became the subject of an investigation in September after they leveled allegations of racial and anti-gay...
Editorial: Can communities combat crime?
Four shot in Duquesne. Standoff with armed man in Pittsburgh’s North Side. Police seek man who fled Larimer shooting. One dead and two injured in Wilkinsburg shooting. And that was just Saturday and Sunday. Just in Allegheny County. The hard truth is, crime is a consistent neighbor for many in...
Editorial: Fentanyl strips shouldn’t be illegal
Driving recklessly is illegal. So is speeding. So is driving without a license or insurance. A Pennsylvania driver can understand getting cited for those infractions. But could you imagine if the cop, at the same time, gave you a ticket for wearing your seat belt? That might seem like what...
Editorial: Payouts show volume of victims
The Greensburg Catholic Diocese announced Thursday the amount of money paid out of a compensation fund for victims of clergy child sexual abuse. The local totals came to $4.35 million distributed among 57 adults. That breaks down to an average of $76,315. That’s a significant amount of money. It’s more...
Editorial: Pennsylvania delegation did its job
We don’t just give power to political parties. We vest that power in individuals for a reason. We elect lawyers with military backgrounds like Rep. Conor Lamb, D-Mt. Lebanon, and Rep. Guy Reschenthaler, R-Peters. We elect people who have been involved in government since before the Pirates last won a...
Laurels & lances: World Series, sirens, singers
Laurel: To having a long memory. Can you cast yours back far enough to recall when the Pittsburgh Pirates were more than a perennial paperweight for Major League Baseball? This year marks 40 long, long years since the Bucs took Pittsburgh to the big dance and brought home the title...
Editorial: DEP needs to address hemp smell
New industries will always have growing pains. It shouldn’t be surprising that growing hemp should be experiencing hiccups. After all, growing hemp is something that hasn’t really happened — legally, at least — in Pennsylvania for decades. The namesake of Hempfield Township and Hempfield Area School District may have once...
Editorial: Enrollment decline a competition problem
Pennsylvania’s state-owned universities need more students. According to a census taken on the 15th day of class at the 14 Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education schools, total enrollment dropped 2.6% from 2018 to 2019. That’s a continuation of a trend. In 2010, there were 119,513 students. Today the number...
