Featured Commentary category, Page 124
Walter Williams: Bernie Sanders’ fans should look at socialism’s past
Sen. Bernie Sanders’ call for socialism has resonated among many Americans, particularly young Americans. They’ve fallen prey to the idea of a paradise here on Earth where things are free and there’s little want. But socialists never reveal what turns out to be their true agenda. Let’s look at the...
Donald Boudreaux: Globalization, wealth & health
Public emergencies are not opportunities for making permanent changes in public policies. Politicians under the best of circumstances naturally pander to people’s commonplace fears, such as alarm over imports, immigrants and income inequality. But emergencies, by shortening voters’ time horizons and intensifying sensations of individual helplessness, increase voters’ fears and...
E.R. Shipp: America has survived other calamities; we can make it through coronavirus, too
Every day in this covid-19 time brings new urgencies, new revelations, new insights. The most stunning for me, believe it or not, was realizing that I am one of those people all the health officials and journalists are talking about when they mention vulnerable populations. When they used the word...
Doris DelTosto Brogan & Steven Chanenson: Get politics out of public defender system
Recently, Montgomery County, Pa. fired its top two public defenders, Dean Beer and Keisha Hudson, immediately escorting them from their offices with no explanation to their stunned staff or the public. We join the lawyers, academics and other stakeholders who have spoken out because this matters. If the motivation for...
Susan Crawford: Maybe covid-19 will remind us why government is not the enemy
After the stock market collapsed in late 1929, many people in the United States lost their jobs. By 1932, 1 in 4 Americans was suffering from lack of food. President Hoover, enamored of the efficiency of the private market and suspicious of all foreign countries, raised tariffs and waited, confident...
Caleb Verbois: How to talk to your children about coronavirus
My wife and I homeschool our children, so we did not have to suddenly tell our children “no school for the next month,” as we will still be having it. But we did have to talk to them about why we will not be able to do other normal activities,...
Ted Anthony: Americans need a coronavirus hill to charge
When Americans are summoned to deal with an attack or defy overwhelming odds, the response typically goes something like this: Fight. Hold the line. Stand together. This won’t stop us. Keep on living your life. We will prevail. Some of the coronavirus language from leaders has mirrored this imagery. “An...
Pat Buchanan: Will coronavirus kill New World Order?
Dr. Brian Monahan, attending physician of Congress, told a closed meeting of Senate staffers last week that 70 million to 150 million Americans — a third of the nation — could contract the coronavirus. Dr. Anthony Fauci testified that the mortality rate for covid-19 will likely run near 1%. Translation:...
Laura K. Murray: How to cope with stress over coronavirus — it’s as important as hand-washing
I recently returned from Zambia, where I am leading a study focused on implementing strategies to build leaders and scale up treatments known to be effective for coping with the mental health effects of violence and substance use. But like everywhere in the world, coronavirus was a major topic of...
Jonah Goldberg: Debating virus terminology waste of energy
Amid all of the well-placed urgency and occasionally misplaced panic of the covid-19 pandemic, many have decided there’s a pressing need to debate whether terms such as “Wuhan virus” or “Chinese coronavirus” are racist. On one side is a broad coalition that includes liberal pundits, Democratic politicians, the World Health...
Colin McNickle: Pittsburgh Mills TIF comes home to roost
The boomerang that tax-increment financing (TIF) can be has come back to hit some Frazer Township taxpayers square in the wallet, finds an analysis by the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy. “Yet again, the risks of TIF for retail have been laid bare,” says Eric Montarti, research director at the...
S.E. Cupp: Comparing Joe Biden to Hillary Clinton
In the hours surrounding Joe Biden’s convincing Michigan win Tuesday night, adding to his Mississippi and Missouri shutouts of Sen. Bernie Sanders, analysts and pundits, as we are wont to do, deluged the airwaves and social media with assessments and predictions about the state of the 2020 race. Sometimes these...
Andreas Kluth: The case against closing schools to slow the pandemic
Suddenly, every country in the world has to decide whether or not to close schools to slow the covid-19 pandemic. France will, as of Monday; the U.K. won’t, and so on. Within federal systems like the U.S. and Germany, states or school districts have to make the decision. In Germany,...
John Stossel: Freelance workers hurt by new law
Freelance jobs are “feudalism,” says California Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez. She persuaded California’s legislature to pass a new law reclassifying freelance workers as employees. That means many people who hire them must now give them benefits like overtime, unemployment insurance, etc. Politicians said it would help freelancers a lot. Of course,...
Steve Hvozdovich: We need candidates who support blue-collar jobs & environment
Philip Ameris’ perspective on the types of elected officials, projects and policies we need in order to ensure we uplift Pennsylvanians (“Don’t expect labor’s endorsement after opposing blue-collar jobs,” Feb. 29, TribLIVE) only gets it partially right. As someone who came from a union household, I couldn’t agree more that...
Michael Hiltzik: Trump’s payroll tax cut would hurt Social Security without helping workers
It’s natural for decision-makers grappling with a new crisis to dust off ideas tried in the last one, whether they were good ideas or bad. Here’s a bad idea, unearthed by President Trump from a decade ago: Cutting the payroll tax to goose the economy. A payroll tax cut was...
Pat Buchanan: Will Joe Biden kick it away again?
A week or so ago, the candidacy of Joe Biden was at death’s door. Today, Biden’s candidacy is not only alive. He is first in votes, victories and delegates, and is favored to win the nomination and, by most polls, to defeat Donald Trump in November. “The World Turned Upside...
Jonah Goldberg: Calif. primary shows why early voting bad idea
Now will someone listen? Early voting is stupid. Under California’s new election protocols, as many as 40% of California voters voted early, either by mail or at voting centers, for the March 3 primary. And what about those who cast ballots for Amy Klobuchar, Pete Buttigieg, Elizabeth Warren, Mike Bloomberg...
S.E. Cupp: Voters, not establishment, standing in Sanders’ way
The socialist emperor of Vermont has no clothes. The feverish anti- establishment antipathy that’s helped fuel Bernie Sanders’ presidential ambitions over the past few years has relied on a belief that the system (what system? every system) has been rigged against him. From Wall Street to drug companies, from the Democratic...
Nathan Picarsic & Emily de La Bruyère: China, coronavirus & threat of integration
Last month, the Trump administration considered rescinding CFM International’s export license to China. A General Electric joint venture, CFM has provided the Chinese airline industry with engines since the 1980s. This decades-old partnership is a lucrative one: In 2017, China Eastern Airline’s orders from CFM totaled $3.2 billion. The partnership...
Russell Redding: After $3 billion on horse racing, Pa. shifts priorities
A budget is really a list of priorities. In our own homes we spend the most money on necessities like housing, food and transportation, and we spend less on the special things that are still important to us, such as pets or vacations. It’s the same for the state budget:...
Walter Williams: Locusts & climate change in Africa
Here are a few headlines about an African tragedy: “Africa’s Worst Locust Plague in Decades Threatens Millions” (The Wall Street Journal), “‘Unprecedented’ Locust Invasion Approaches Full-Blown Crisis” (Scientific American), “Somalia Declares Locust Outbreak a ‘National Emergency’” (The National) and “UN Calls for International Action on East Africa Locust Outbreak” (Bloomberg...
Donald Boudreaux: The most important two-letter word in the English language
A civilizing feature of any society is the right to say “no.” Indeed, societies can be usefully ranked from good to bad according to the respect that they accord to individuals’ right to say “no” to those who would take their property. The importance of being able to say “no”...
Timothy Lydon: Amazon & the weakening of community
The most salient and lasting reason to not support Amazon is that it weakens your community. The virtue of commerce is that it brings you in contact with your fellow citizens. The rewarding nature of these exchanges cannot be felt by proxy. On the day Bari Weiss’ book “How to...
Pat Buchanan: Establishment’s ultimatum — scuttle Bernie
After Joe Biden’s blowout victory in South Carolina Saturday and the swift withdrawal of Tom Steyer, “Mayor Pete” Buttigieg and Sen. Amy Klobuchar, Super Tuesday is the decisive day of the race for the Democratic nomination. Fourteen states — including California and Texas and delegate-rich Colorado, North Carolina and Virginia...
