Featured Commentary category, Page 116
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...
Jay Urwitz: Trump administration a disaster for college students
From the moment Betsy DeVos was nominated as secretary of Education, those of us in the education field have been anxious about how the Trump administration’s policies would harm low-income college students. Our fears were justified — and then some. Yet President Trump has not singled out low-income students. His...
Emily Persico: Our future depends on moving past fracking
Earlier this month, the president and CEO of CNX Resources Corp., one of the largest fracked gas companies in Western Pennsylvania, published a dishonest opinion piece in PennLIVE that spoke to the desperation of the fossil-fuel industry. While easily dismissed, Nick DeIuliis’ piece is part of a larger disinformation campaign...
Bobby Ghosh: What Israel, UAE and the U.S. get from historic deal
The most important diplomatic breakthrough in the Middle East in a generation meant so little to the man who first announced it on Twitter that within an hour he had moved on to tweeting about football and predicting the collapse of the United States under Joe Biden. Donald Trump, in...
Dr. David Macpherson: Why you should get vaccinated for covid-19
It seems likely a vaccine will be developed and proven effective against the SARS-CoV-2 virus in the next several months. After the vaccine is released, hundreds of millions of people will be vaccinated. In the U.S., in the following year, about 500 people will be diagnosed with anaplastic thyroid carcinoma,...
Christopher Baxter: With Spotlight PA, a team of investigative reporters hold the powerful to account in Harrisburg
There’s nothing short of a crisis in our state capital. Every year, more of Pennsylvania’s sprawling and costly bureaucracy operates without scrutiny from investigative reporters, the watchdogs tracking how our hard-earned tax dollars are spent, ensuring the vulnerable are protected, and demanding answers from lawmakers about waste, fraud and abuse....
Pete McCloskey: First coronavirus, next climate — the Republican threat to science
More than ever, our lives depend on medical science to provide reliable testing, diagnosing and mitigation of a deadly virus. Scientists in the United States and around the world are studying the coronavirus, working day and night to uncover the secrets of this disease and develop a safe, accessible vaccine....
Timothy L. O’Brien: Can we count on the postmaster general to resist Trump?
Postmaster General Louis DeJoy let the public know in a statement last week brimming with business-speak that he’s overhauling management of the U.S. Postal Service “to capture operating efficiencies by providing clarity and economies of scale that will allow us to reduce our cost base and capture new revenue.” DeJoy,...
Rep. Natalie Mihalek: Anticipated drug shortages highlight need for health care industry collaboration
What do flour, hair dye and toilet paper have in common? Grocery stores ran out of these products as the coronavirus pandemic first crept its way into our country. In the same way that grocery stores experienced supply disruptions at the beginning of the pandemic, the drug supply chain is...
Richard Edley and Mark Davis: Covid-19 funding needed for intellectual and developmental disability community
The coronavirus pandemic is having a profound impact on the well-being of people with intellectual disability or autism and the direct support professionals (DSP) who provide lifesaving support to them every day. Pennsylvanians with intellectual disability/autism largely have been the pandemic’s forgotten faces. These adults and children are among our...
Rep. John Joyce: TikTok, the spy in your child’s pocket, just tip of tech iceberg
During the coronavirus crisis, Americans have increasingly turned to technology for work, school, keeping in touch with friends and loved ones, and entertainment. Staying at home, we improvised and took advantage of the video chats and conference calls that connected us to the outside world. At the same time, droves...
Robert and Rachel Millman: Voting, our most important civil right
As we get closer to Election Day 2020, we hear a lot about our political divide, the unbridgeable tribalism of left and right. At the same time, we’re also told that voters hold common-ground views on a variety of issues. How can both be true? The answer is gerrymandering, a...
