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Pope Francis, first Latin American pontiff, dies at 88
Jane Ladley: How my 8-year lawsuit helped settle public employees’ rights
This Labor Day felt different. For the first time in eight years, I celebrated with family and friends without also battling the state’s largest labor union in court. My long journey through the legal system ended this spring — and its result is relevant to thousands of public employees across...
Sen. Ryan Aument: To curb student debt, reduce college costs
Opponents of President Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan are missing the mark on why it’s a bad idea. Complaining that it is unfair to those who paid their loans, or to those who didn’t attend college, while correct, merely empowers the other side to slap back with a major dose...
Nathan Benefield: Government unions are outsized bullies holding workers, taxpayers hostage
As we enter election season, it’s time we address the elephant in the room. It’s an elephant with an outsized influence on Pennsylvania politics — and few people realize who holds the purse strings and the puppet strings behind the scenes. Government union executives. These union executives enjoy a host...
Paul F. Clark: Today’s workers want a voice at work
It has been a very eventful 12 months for American workers since last Labor Day. At that point in time, the “Great Resignation” was well underway. Spurred by covid, millions of American workers had quit their jobs in the months before Labor Day and millions more would resign in the...
Kenneth J. Broadbent, David Callahan and Jim Snell: Pa. natural gas and labor, forging a reliable, sustainable energy future
While President Grover Cleveland did not make it a federal holiday until June of 1894, Labor Day was first celebrated in New York City on Sept. 5, 1882. Nearly 400 miles away that same year, natural gas from the historic Haymaker No. 1 well in Murrysville was delivered to consumers...
Point: Unions have a stake in ending minority rule in the United States
In 2021, just 10.3% of American workers were members of unions, less than half the proportion we had four decades prior. This collapse in union membership didn’t happen in Canada; it occurred in the United States for reasons specific to this country, including unpleasant changes in labor law and the...
Counterpoint: A free marketeer’s love of Labor Day
One hundred forty years ago, the first Labor Day parade almost ended before it began. On Sept. 5, 1882, thousands of union workers, police officers and gawking onlookers gathered at City Hall in lower Manhattan. Everything was in place, the route was set and the marchers were ready to go,...
Joshua Andy: Gorbachev was Khrushchev’s successor as a reformer; Russia is still waiting
Together, the Russian invasion of Ukraine Feb. 24 and Mikhail Gorbachev’s death Aug. 30 serve as a bookend on Russia’s post-Cold War epoch and the end of the possibility of an era of reform. Born in 1931, Gorbachev was a young child when both his grandfathers were arrested and sent...
Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez: Young voters can save the planet
For America’s young voters, famished for positive action on climate change, the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 is cause for celebration. The passage of this landmark legislation is a signal to young climate activists across the country that unprecedented progressive change is possible. For the millions of young Americans who...
Clarence Page: ‘Quiet quitting,’ work and worth
Just as I was wondering whether various crises were coming too fast to allow our usual “silly season” of oddball late summer news, an appropriately weird-sounding social trend popped up on social networks and intriguingly struck a nerve. It’s called “quiet quitting.” Put simply, it refers to the act of...
Cal Thomas: Will Youngkin be No. 9 in Va. presidents list?
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin has been in office only seven months and already he is listed at No. 5 in a Washington Post story about possible 2024 GOP presidential candidates. In an interview, I asked him to respond to suggestions in some quarters that he might be well positioned to...
Stacy Garrity: When the ‘cure’ becomes torture
The men and women who put their lives on the line shouldn’t have them placed on hold by a Veterans Administration that kept hundreds in isolation long after the rest of our state emerged from covid lockdown. Yet that’s exactly what happened at the Veterans Administration Medical Center in Wilkes-Barre,...
David Chavern: Big Tech is trying to cancel local news
Facebook and Google have become the de facto regulators of news and speech — deciding what content people see and when. Their dominating control over how we communicate has serious implications for freedom of the press and our broader rights under the First Amendment. To be sure, the First Amendment...
Alexis Leondis: Biden’s student loan plan neglects older borrowers
There’s a group of student loan borrowers who may need relief more than anyone else: retirees and others who are smothered by student debt in their senior years. Sadly, President Joe Biden’s student debt forgiveness plan doesn’t do enough for them. Like the whole topic of loan forgiveness, it’s difficult...
Greg Fulton: A covid victims’ memorial?
Should there be a national covid-19 memorial? While some small memorials have been constructed around the country, there may never be a national site to remember the over 1 million people who died from covid during the pandemic and those who were essential in helping our country survive it. The dictionary...
Rev. Jesse Jackson: Right to register and vote is not a partisan issue
The right to vote, Dr. Martin Luther King taught in his famous “Give Us the Ballot” address, is one of the “highest mandates of our democratic tradition.” Democracy is founded on the right of citizens to decide via popular, free and fair elections who should represent them. Across the world,...
Todd Carney: Assessing Pa.’s unusual Senate campaign
The Pennsylvania U.S. Senate race has unconventional candidates on both sides. Republican nominee Dr. Mehmet Oz is a Turkish-born television doctor with a history of supporting liberal causes and sketchy health programs. The Democratic nominee, Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, is close to 7 feet tall and frequently wears a hoodie....
Garry Pezzano: Let’s continue to support long-term care in Pa.
Thanks to the bipartisan leadership of the Pennsylvania General Assembly and Gov. Tom Wolf in the last state budget, Pennsylvania took a good first step in support of Pennsylvania’s long-term care industry. In total, Pennsylvania’s 2022-23 budget invests more than $600 million in state and federal funds so that it...
Nathan Picarsic: Time for Taiwan to be called Taiwan
It’s August in Pennsylvania. That means kids across the commonwealth are getting ready to return to school. But a talented few from Hollidaysburg are too busy to sharpen their pencils just yet: They’re in Williamsport chasing dreams in the Little League World Series. Unfortunately, one of their potential competitors, a...
Doug Sprankle: Skill games mean health insurance for my employees
I could tell hundreds of stories I’ve heard of how businesses, along with fraternal clubs and veterans organizations, have benefited in tremendous ways from legal skill games. Instead, I will just tell my story. Sprankle’s Neighborhood Markets is a small family business run by my father, brother and I with...
Mary Sanchez: Every vote in America is now about abortion
The pro-choice jubilation that overtook the state of Kansas is beginning to subside, as all victorious celebrations eventually do. What’s less clear is if the revelers fully grasp that they’re still running against howling headwinds. This is despite the overwhelming support Kansans showed for reproductive rights in the Aug. 2...
Rich Askey: Mastriano’s school funding cut would mean lost jobs, lost opportunities for Pa. students
It isn’t every day you hear a candidate for office say, “Hey, let’s cut public school funding by billions, lay off a ton of teachers, and send class sizes through the roof.” Yet that’s what state Sen. Doug Mastriano wants to do if elected governor in November, even if he...
William Behre: Higher ed must transform to match needs of 21st century
As a university president, I am all too familiar with the headlines and stories that paint a grim future for higher education. The demise of traditional four-year universities. An end to their relevance in a rapidly evolving world. The crumbling of higher education as we know it. In early August,...
Nicholas Goldberg: Is there anything Democrats and Republicans won’t fight about?
It’s gotten to the point where even the most obviously nonpartisan issues that Americans ought to be able to address cooperatively and rationally have fallen victim to the country’s culture of extreme political polarization. Hostility has grown so intense, especially on the Republican side, that subjects that should be entirely...
Ellen Jovin: How fighting over grammar can help fix a divided America
Four years ago, I decided I needed to host a pop-up grammar-advice stand. The plan was simple: I’d sit on the streets of New York City and help people with their questions. I ordered a folding table, drew a “Grammar Table” sign and waited for the weather to cool. On...


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