Featured Commentary category, Page 113
Nick Byrd: The moral trade-offs of public health
Global emergencies cause a series of dilemmas. Consider the covid-19 pandemic. First, many lives have already been lost to covid-19, and many more lives will be lost in the near future. Second, we can drastically reduce the death toll by sacrificing other things that we care about. For example, should...
Kris LaGrange: Will election end attack on organized labor?
Labor Day 2020, like no other in our nation’s history, is absent of parades and large gatherings. Canceled due to covid-19, celebrations are replaced with Zoom meetings that commemorate the American worker as we all hope better days are ahead. Traditionally on Labor Day union leaders boast of accomplishments of...
David Zatezalo: Serving America’s miners Labor Day and every day
As assistant secretary for mine safety and health, I know firsthand how miners across the country — more than 300,000 individuals — provide an essential service to our country. Miners work to extract, process and deliver the minerals, metal and coal that keep America working. President Trump has been a...
Tom Melcher and Morgan O’Brien: A different Labor Day, a real opportunity
Labor Day 2020 certainly is a far cry from this day one year ago. While much has changed, we want to focus on the positive, and the great opportunity now at hand. Perhaps more than any Labor Day ever, we should all have a far greater appreciation for our region’s...
Suzanna Masartis: Don’t give chronic condition sufferers another thing to worry about
In Pennsylvania, covid-19 continues to ravage communities, with the number of cases now exceeding 142,000 and climbing. For people struggling with chronic liver disease, this is devastating news. According to the Centers for Disease Control, Americans with liver disease, including hepatitis B and hepatitis C, could be at an increased...
Carla Hall: Can we leave Nancy Pelosi’s hair alone?
So, let’s talk about Nancy Pelosi’s hair. Or, more specifically, the wash and blowout that the Democratic House Speaker from San Francisco got at a salon there that was shuttered by pandemic rules but somehow managed to open for her — and just her. Of all the rules surrounding the...
Claudine Schneider: Freedom of the press under threat
While Americans focus on the coronavirus pandemic, the ongoing economic crisis and now the presidential campaign, top Republicans in Washington are continuing to attack one of the constitutional pillars of American democracy: our free press. America’s founders knew freedom of the press was so important that they enshrined it in...
Phyllis Chamberlain: We must protect renters, homeowners impacted by covid-19
The coronavirus pandemic has affected our daily lives in unanticipated ways, and our path to recovery won’t be short. Shortly after Gov. Tom Wolf announced he didn’t have the ability to extend eviction and foreclosure moratoriums, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued an order to halt the pending...
Michael Poliakoff: The challenge of anti-racism education
The shock of seeing so many Black people killed this summer in brutal police actions has seared the conscience of the nation. The memory of the 2015 murder of nine African Americans at a Bible study in Charleston, S.C., by an unrepentant white supremacist needs to weigh on America as...
Rep. Cris Dush: Pennsylvanians don’t need massive overhaul just before major election
The results are in from the 2020 primary season, and reports of over 530,000 uncounted mail ballots and silenced voters dominate the headlines. Yet the push for expanding mail-in voting in November continues apace. Pennsylvania is unfortunately no exception. In the state House, Rep. Ed Gainey, D-Lincoln-Lemington, introduced House Bill...
Kenosha News: Moving forward, but learn the lesson from Kenosha
This editorial was published in the Kenosha (Wis.) News on Aug. 29. Kenosha didn’t deserve what happened last week. No American city deserves it. Days of civil unrest. Fire after fire burning in the Uptown that claimed far too many buildings. A Wild West shootout downtown with armed militia. A...
Eli Lake: Trump doctrine: End wars but keep threatening enemies
At the Republican National Convention last week, one could be forgiven for being confused about President Donald Trump’s foreign policy. On the one hand, his endorsers praised his smashing of the Islamic State’s caliphate and killing of Iran’s terror mastermind. On the other, speakers also touted Trump’s commitment to reduce...
Sen. Kim Ward: Now is not time for more taxes on electric, gas consumers
Without any input or authorization from elected Pennsylvania House and Senate members, Gov. Tom Wolf effectively shut down the Pennsylvania economy. His unilateral, one-size-fits-all lockdown decree has forced Pennsylvanians to suffer exponentially worse than citizens of other states that have adhered to Centers for Disease Control (CDC) protocols. As a...
Harold Johnson: Public servants and misdirected loyalty
When is it acceptable for people engaged in “public trust” to place loyalty to each other over loyalty to those they serve? The correct answer is never, because it breeds corruption and undermines trust. The fact is clear: No matter the endeavor of public trust ventured, all realize that, because...
Evan Davis: Time to end illegal sports betting in U.S.
In May 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a federal law known as the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA), thereby allowing states to pass laws that legalize and regulate sports betting within their borders. Since that time, nearly half of the states across the country have legalized...
L.E. McCullough: USPS delivers more than just mail
Title 39, Section 101 of the U.S. Code: “The Postal Service shall have as its basic function the obligation to provide postal services to bind the Nation together through the personal, educational, literary, and business correspondence of the people. It shall provide prompt, reliable, and efficient services to patrons in...
Stephen Bloom: Eliminate barriers to crisis-ready health care
An emergency is no time to trifle with bureaucratic red tape. At the outset of the covid-19 crisis, many feared a surge of patients would overwhelm hospital capacity. Health officials sounded the alarm and identified policy changes that would enable them to meet the coronavirus challenge. And in many cases,...
Noah Feldman: Let Steve Bannon arrest be the coda on Trump’s corrupt presidency
Steve Bannon’s arrest on fraud charges is hardly a tragedy in the traditional sense of the word. Sure, the fall of a hero is the hallmark of tragedy, and Bannon considers himself an American hero — a self-perception that comes through very clearly in Errol Morris’s brilliant and edgy interview...
Kenneth Gatten: We must amend Pa.’s charter school law now
In a recent report, Pennsylvania Auditor General Eugene DePasquale called Pennsylvania’s charter school law “the worst in the nation” because it prevents the state from “performing full reviews of charter management companies.” Indeed, a 2016 report by the Pennsylvania School Boards Association (PSBA) finds the PSBA had to take charters...
Rosa Mendoza: Biden plans could harm Latinx, and all Americans’, medication access
Joe Biden is officially the Democratic presidential nominee, all thanks to his moderate reputation. The former vice president trounced over a dozen progressive primary opponents by promising stable, centrist leadership and gradual change. It is now perplexing that Biden is embracing many of his defeated opponents’ ideas, which Democratic base...
Sen. Gene Yaw: Is ‘green’ energy really ‘clean’ energy?
I recently read a commentary in the Sunbury Daily Item titled “Threat of Fossil Fuels.” This is one of many pieces I have seen in which the authors cite the use of fossil fuels as a detriment to our environment. Of course, these articles fail to reference clean coal technologies...
Wayne Gilchrest: Republican senators want to kill health care and now Social Security and Medicare?
Now Republicans are coming after Social Security and Medicare with President Trump’s signature on an executive order that slashes the funding for these two programs. When I served as a Republican member of Congress, we helped thousands of constituents who had problems receiving their Social Security checks or trouble with...
Earl Tilford: Confessions of a draft dodger
Next month I turn 75. The ubiquitous “they” tell me I’m on a covid-19 “endangered species” list. Fifty years from October, with my 25th birthday behind me, I boarded a plane in Miami and headed for the other side of the world. I really was not in much danger, and...
Scott Martelle: Trump’s push to expand Arctic drilling is dangerous and foolhardy
Finishing a task that a Republican-controlled Congress gave it three years ago, the Trump administration has finalized plans for new oil and gas leases in one of the most pristine stretches of the world: the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. It’s a manifestly bad idea that Congress was wrong to slip...
Kelton Edmonds: Shadows of Charlottesville
Three years ago this month, the world witnessed extremely disturbing images emerge out of Charlottesville, Va. as Unite the Right protesters marched through the University of Virginia’s campus, holding torches and shouting ominous chants such as “Jews will Not Replace US.” Rally organizers suggested the overall goals of the marches...
