Featured Commentary category, Page 133
Walter Williams: Fraud in higher education
This year’s education scandal saw parents shelling out megabucks to gain college admittance for their children. Federal prosecutors have charged more than 50 people with participating in a scheme to get their children into colleges by cheating on entrance exams or bribing coaches and administrators. As disgusting as this grossly...
Donald Boudreaux: What does decline in labor-force participation mean?
Imagine that overnight every American’s wealth doubles. From Jeff Bezos to the poorest indigent, imagine that each American today can afford to consume twice as many goods and services as that person could afford to consume yesterday. Making accurate specific predictions about what changes in people’s behavior we’d observe is...
Dr. Arvind Venkat: Patient-centric approach to ending surprise medical billing
Congress now has several options on the table when it comes to ending surprise medical billing, an issue that has for too long hit vulnerable patients and their families with high, unexpected costs. However, not all of these solutions are made equally. In fact, some could make things substantially worse,...
Colin McNickle: New day ahead for Westmoreland transit
The new year will bring a major change in how the Westmoreland County Transit Authority (WCTA) operates. Instead of contracting out the operation of buses it owns, as it has for the past four decades, the authority will operate the mass transit agency itself, a la the Port Authority of...
Pat Buchanan: Let the people decide Trump’s fate
Was there linkage between the withholding of U.S. military aid and the U.S. demand for a Ukrainian state investigation of the Bidens? “Was there a quid pro quo?” This question has bedeviled Washington for months now. “The answer is yes,” said U.S. Ambassador to the EU Gordon Sondland in sworn...
Mark DeSantis: The importance of getting political appointments right
Upon taking office, President George Washington promised to hire people “as shall be the best qualified.” We are struggling to meet that standard and with serious consequences. Today, the federal government is the world’s most powerful and complex bureaucracy within the world’s largest economy and includes, among other things, armed...
Lauren Mishoe: Federal plans would deprive patients of top-tier drugs
Diabetes is an epidemic in Pennsylvania. About one in 10 local adults lives with the disease. And the burden is growing: Roughly 3.5 million state residents are “pre-diabetic,” meaning their blood glucose levels put them at severe risk of developing diabetes later in life. The majority of these folks —...
Jonah Goldberg: ‘Deep state’ contagion has spread beyond impeachment
The deep state is the right’s new bogeyman. I’d wager that until fairly recently, few people had ever heard the phrase. I’d also bet that roughly 99% of those who fling the term around have no idea that it’s borrowed from Turkish politics. The idea of a deep state, or...
Jennifer Rafanan Kennedy & Corey O’Connor: Pa. needs higher wages, self-governance
It has been nearly 11 years since Pennsylvania’s Legislature took any action to raise the state’s depressed minimum wage. While states all around us passed laws raising wages, Pennsylvanians have been stuck at the lowest level allowed by federal law, $7.25 per hour. After years of workers standing up, rallying...
Caleb Verbois: Winter is always coming
One day last month, my father-in-law came to visit for a few hours. Around 3 p.m., he got back in the car for his 90-minute drive home to northeast Ohio — and then sat on the same quarter mile of Interstate 80 for nine hours before eventually getting home. Winter...
Alicia Harvey-Smith: Changing workforce, Act 76 place focus on career education
With deep roots in steel and manufacturing, Pennsylvania is well known as the state that built America. Towering skyscrapers and sprawling infrastructure are Pennsylvania’s long-standing calling card to our nation. Today, with the emergence of advanced manufacturing, robotics, automation and other tech-driven sectors, Pennsylvania is again well poised to drive...
Richard Edley: Services aiding Pa.’s most severely disabled individuals at risk
Even well-intentioned programs can have dire unintended consequences if the implementation isn’t done right, and that’s exactly what’s happening with the state’s Community Participation Supports (CPS) program. CPS is designed to support and facilitate the integration of individuals with intellectual disabilities into the community with meaningful activities, a concept that...
Walter Williams: Liberal agenda a threat to blacks
Former presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke said that racism in America is “foundational” and that people of color were under “mortal threat” from the “white supremacist in the White House.” Pete Buttigieg chimed in to explain that “systemic racism” will “be with us” no matter who is in the White House....
John Stossel: Thanks, private property!
Families argued this Thanksgiving. Such arguments have a long tradition. The Pilgrims had clashing ideas about how to organize their settlement in the New World. The resolution of that debate made the first Thanksgiving possible. The Pilgrims were religious, united by faith and a powerful desire to start anew, away...
Jonah Goldberg: Opponents of ‘unfettered capitalism’ are fighting a phantom
Enemies of unfettered capitalism, unite! For as long as I can remember, people on the left have complained about “unfettered capitalism.” Moderate liberals do it, and of course flat-out Marxists do it. In his new book, “A Bit of Everything: Power, People, Profits and Progressive Capitalism for an Age of...
Earl Tilford: Professors teach, students learn
While all the rage in education, my hackles rise when an educator declares, “We learn from our students” or “Students should construct their own knowledge.” Granted, the 55 years since I was a freshman may explain my antediluvian notion that professors should teach because students need to learn. At 8...
Pat Buchanan: Is Macron right? Is NATO, 70, brain dead?
A week from now, the 29 member states of “the most successful alliance in history” will meet to celebrate its 70th anniversary. Yet all is not well within NATO. The gathering, on the outskirts of London, has been cut to two days. Why the shortened agenda? Among the reasons, apprehension...
Tom Charley: Philly-style tax could impact Western Pa.
I have been working in the grocery industry my entire life. I was born into it. I am fourth generation, and just had my first baby girl who could take it to the fifth generation. These days, I am concerned about the “soda tax” (“pop tax” for those of us...
Doyle McManus: Mick Mulvaney, please call your office
WASHINGTON — A long list of aides to President Donald Trump could have appeared in the House impeachment hearings to defend his efforts in Ukraine, especially since the president insists everything he did was “perfect.” Gordon Sondland, Trump’s ambassador to the European Union, rattled off their names when he testified:...
Jonah Goldberg: The stupidity, and genius, of Republicans’ impeachment strategy
Maybe you’re a fan of Jackson Pollock’s paint-splatter stuff. That’s cool. My only point is that when you flick paint at a canvas, nobody expects the result to look like a tree, a person or a bowl of fruit. Similarly, in politics, when you throw everything against the wall to...
Thomas Botzman: Free college proposals benefit students who don’t need assist
Washington Post education reporter Danielle Douglas-Gabriel recently wrote an interesting article about the “no lose proposition” of free college among politicians stumping across the country. In doing so, she highlights several aspects of this concept that may have escaped notice. I will add to her list with a few others....
Lawrence McCullough: Community colleges can accelerate immigrant assimilation
The fundamental immigration problem America needs to solve is not how to keep people out but how to more successfully and rapidly integrate them when they arrive. America’s community colleges are uniquely well-suited to play a vital role in helping immigrants become better equipped to achieve prosperity and contribute to...
Mark Hendrickson: Prevent Government Shutdowns Act a surrender
U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., is promoting the Prevent Government Shutdowns Act of 2019. The goal of the act is to prevent disruptive government shutdowns. Since Johnson arrived in Washington in 2011, partisan congressional standoffs have led to “three government shutdowns” and “34 continuing resolutions to avoid shutdowns,” and Congress...
Olivia Bennett: Black women should be respected, paid fairly
Thanks to the “Pittsburgh’s Inequality Across Gender and Race” report, Pittsburghers are once again reminded that we live in the worst city in the country for black women. We are dead last in the categories of health outcomes, poverty and income, employment, and education. The September report, a collaboration with...
John Stossel: Debunking climate myths
“How dare you? You have stolen my dreams and my childhood!” insisted teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg at the United Nations. “We are in the beginning of a mass extinction!” Many people say that we’re destroying the Earth. It all sounds so scary. But I’ve been a consumer reporter for...
