Featured Commentary category, Page 120
Adam Marles: Nursing homes need emergency pandemic funding
Like most Pennsylvanians, our commonwealth’s nursing home providers watch Secretary of Health Rachel Levine’s daily updates with hope, but also with concern as we hear the latest numbers of nursing facility and personal care home residents who have tested positive for covid-19. As this battle for the health of Pennsylvania...
S.E. Cupp: Let’s talk about Joe Biden and Tara Reade
Despite an obstacle- strewn ascension similar to a “Game of Thrones” episode, former Vice President Joe Biden managed to slay every metaphorical dragon he faced in becoming the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, from old policy specters to campaign trail gaffes to a primary opponent who was stubborn to concede. But...
Walter Williams: Today’s Americans and yesteryear’s Americans
Dr. Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, a military historian and a professor emeritus of classics at California State University, Fresno. He has written two articles relevant to today’s society. Last October he published, “Members of Previous Generations Now Seem Like Giants,”...
Lisa Gonzalez, Olivia Bennett and Summer Lee: One way to prevent a worsening crisis? Cancel rent.
Every person in our community needs and deserves a safe place to call home. Yet in the richest country in the world, housing is shamefully unaffordable and people are facing unreasonable struggles to pay the rent. Even before this crisis, nearly 12 million people were spending half of their paychecks...
Colin McNickle: Pittsburgh’s road out of coronavirus downturn
Wrestling with a serious coronavirus-induced revenue shortfall, the City of Pittsburgh must cut spending and cannot afford to raise taxes, conclude researchers at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy. “Now would be a perfect time to look at money-saving proposals — such as privatization and outsourcing — to reduce city...
Jonah Goldberg: A modest proposal to counter Chinese pressure on Hollywood
During the filming of the 1939 movie “Jesse James,” a stuntman and his horse went over a cliff and fell 70 feet into a river. The stuntman was fine; the horse died. This incident is what gave rise to that line at the end of many movies: “No animals were...
Andrea Richardson and Tamara Dubowitz: Feeding needy and protecting front-line workers
Workers in food retail, donation or meal delivery are on the front lines of the covid-19 pandemic. Until now, food retailers, food banks and school food services operated under food safety regulations to prevent food-borne disease. But with the deadly outbreak of covid-19, they are developing new standards and guidance...
Pat Buchanan: The one certain victor in pandemic war
“War is the health of the state,” wrote the progressive Randolph Bourne during World War I, after which he succumbed to the Spanish flu. America’s war on the coronavirus pandemic promises to be no exception to the axiom. However long this war requires, the gargantuan state will almost surely emerge...
Joel Pfeffer: Now is not the time for Trump’s immigration order
Joel Pfeffer is a Pittsburgh-based attorney with the law firm Meyer, Unkovic & Scott. He works primarily in the areas of immigration, nationality and corporate law. He is a member of the American Immigration Lawyers Association and former chairman of the organization’s Pittsburgh chapter. President Trump caused a stir when...
Colin McNickle: The dandelion that is a city-county merger
We’ve lost count of how many times the “we-know-better crowd” has proposed a Pittsburgh-Allegheny County merger. And never mind that it repeatedly, as it is said, “had no legs,” a new merger proposal has popped up like a stubborn crop of dandelions. “In short, in decades past and continuing through...
Dr. David Dausey: Coronavirus — now what?
David Dausey, Ph.D., an epidemiologist, is provost and vice president of academic affairs at Duquesne University and a professor in Duquesne’s John G. Rangos School of Health Science. He is also a distinguished service professor of health policy at Carnegie Mellon University. The global pandemic of covid-19 continues to defy...
S.E. Cupp: De Blasio’s parade & failures
On Tuesday night, I called to check in on my friends in San Francisco. One is a lawyer; his grandfather died this month. His partner is a doctor on the front lines of covid-19. In short, they’ve been through it. I asked the doctor, “How is work?” “Thank God we’re...
John Stossel: Government goes too far
I’m “social distancing.” I stay away from people. I do it voluntarily. There’s a big difference between voluntary — and force. Government is force. The media want more of that. “Ten states have no stay-at-home orders!” complains Don Lemon on CNN. “Some governors are still refusing to take action!” Fox...
Cheri Rinehart: Community health centers on covid-19 front lines
Amid all the uncertainty in our nation as we face and fight the covid-19 pandemic, one thing is certain: Community health centers (also known as federally qualified health centers, FQHCs) will continue to care for all regardless of insurance status or ability to pay. The most vulnerable Americans in urban...
Walter Williams: Benefits vs. costs & covid-19
One of the first lessons in an economics class is everything has a cost. That’s in stark contrast to lessons in the political arena where politicians talk about free stuff. In our personal lives, decision-making involves weighing costs against benefits. Businessmen make the same calculation if they want to stay...
Drs. Terence S. Dermody & Mark Gladwin: Thanks to Pittsburgh for leadership in covid-19 crisis
Terence S. Dermody, M.D., is the Vira I. Heinz Distinguished Professor and chair of the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, and physician-in-chief and scientific director at UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh. Mark Gladwin, M.D., is the Jack D. Myers Distinguished Professor and chair of...
Kelly Dickey: Covid-19 & the USPS
Our country is facing an unprecedented situation. We are all anxious to see what awaits us in the next weeks and months, and what life after will be like. It is the essential workers who are trying to bring normality to our lives, ensuring our hospitals stay open and we...
Jonah Goldberg: Quarantine protesters no heroes of civil disobedience
Our culture has a wonderful way of taking controversial or partisan figures and weaving them into the broader story of America. When Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, for example, his secretary of war, Edwin Stanton, purportedly said, “Now he belongs to the ages,” which was a way of saying that the...
Dan Heit: Funding must continue to ensure help for abused children
Dan Heit founded JusticeWorks YouthCare in 1999 and serves as its CEO. JusticeWorks YouthCare serves families within the child welfare system and youth on juvenile probation. We also operate alternative high schools for students with behavioral problems. Based in Pittsburgh, we work in 45 counties throughout Pennsylvania. Just as nurses,...
John Ash: Preparing for the worst
In the early 1900s, Spanish-American scholar, philosopher and humanist George Santayana wrote, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” His five volumes of “The Life of Reason: Introduction and Reason in Common Sense” rank as one of the greatest works in modern philosophical history. That well-known...
Harry Hochheiser: Earth Day in the time of coronavirus
This is not how anyone expected to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Earth Day. With the world on a coronavirus lockdown, planned celebrations join events from all walks of life in the canceled column, with Earth Day, like everything else, going virtual. For those of us who are alarmed about...
Rex Huppke: Protests against coronavirus stay-at-home orders put us all at risk, may delay America’s reopening
While they are few in number, those who’ve decided it’s their duty as Americans to protest coronavirus lockdowns are putting their self-interest over the health of others. Period. You can disagree with me and call me a liberal schmuck and stand by President Donald Trump and the protesters he’s egging...
Pat Buchanan: What will be the new American cause?
After the Great Pandemic has passed and we emerge from Great Depression II, what will be America’s mission in the world? What will be America’s cause? We have been at such a turning point before. After World War II, Americans wanted to come home. But we put aside our nation-building...
John F. Rohe: Remembering the first Earth Day, 50 years ago
John F. Rohe is vice president of the Colcom Foundation. In 1970, the first Earth Day set a high bar for long-range plans. Its aspirations stretched well beyond the 50th anniversary that we observe on April 22. Now, perhaps more than ever, the original vision of Earth Day brings intergenerational...
Stacy Gallin: Learning from Holocaust in time of covid-19
As we commemorate Yom Hashoah — Holocaust Remembrance Day — this week, I keep thinking about the Hebrew phrase, L’dor V’dor. In English, this phrase means “from generation to generation.” It refers to the essential task in Judaism of passing down traditions and education from one generation to another. It...
