Featured Commentary category, Page 97

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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,...

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....

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....

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,...

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...

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...

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...

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...

President Trump unleashed an American energy revolution. During a speech at the Double Eagle Energy oil rig in Texas July 29, Trump detailed the historic accomplishments of his administration on restoring American energy dominance. “For the first time in nearly 70 years, we have become a net energy exporter,” he...

The Supreme Court was very clear less than two months ago: President Trump broke the law when he tried to end Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), a federal program that protects immigrants who were brought here without documentation when they were children. The program has allowed hundreds of thousands...

Video of a Minnesota police officer casually squeezing the life out of a compliant Black suspect jolted the world into renewed appreciation of systemic racism’s wicked clutches. For me — white, male, born in Britain — it prompted the memory of my first police encounter. I’d been driving in America...

Every American president since Jimmy Carter has revealed their tax records. In fact, President Trump personally promised to make his taxes public, tweeting in May 2016: “I told AP that my taxes are under routine audit, and I would release my tax returns when the audit is complete, not after...

As if the Lebanese haven’t suffered enough. For months, they have been caught between an economic meltdown, crumbling public services and a surging pandemic. Now they must count the dead and survey the extensive damage to their capital after two giant explosions on Tuesday. The blasts, especially the second, were...

Gov. Tom Wolf’s most recent and well-intentioned approach to covid-19 mitigations in the operations of restaurants and bars addresses an important health safety concern but unnecessarily creates other problems. Like other governors, his goal is to halt the increase in spread of covid-19, which has been heading in the wrong...

Gov. Tom Wolf is unlawfully scheming to circumvent the Pennsylvania General Assembly and, by his own estimates, impose a $2.36 billion tax on fossil fuel-fired electric generation plants in Pennsylvania over the next 10 years. Wolf’s goal is for Pennsylvania to join the 10-state Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) —...