Opinion category, Page 482
Editorial: Rental assistance tied up in strings
Westmoreland County received almost $13 million in emergency rental and utility bill funding to help residents who were at risk of losing a place to live or the means to heat or power it because of the coronavirus pandemic. But according to Union Mission Executive Director Dan Carney, just 11%...
Letter to the editor: Democracy dies by a thousand cuts
Since the completion of his 2020 election loss, Donald Trump and his enablers continue to spread the “big lie” that the election was rigged and that there was voter fraud, despite a lack of any evidence. Spreading such falsehoods will lead to the death of democracy by a thousand cuts....
Mallard Fillmore cartoons for the week of July 26
Mallard Fillmore cartoons for the week of July 26....
Editorial cartoons for the week of July 26
Editorial cartoons for the week of July 26....
Mona Charen: Can national solidarity solve our race problems?
On Oct. 16, 1901, President Theodore Roosevelt invited Booker T. Washington to dine at the White House. As Edmund Morris relates in “Theodore Rex,” many Americans were pleased with this precedent-shattering dinner. But not all. Definitely not all. In the South, disgust and vitriol shook the rafters. A sample of...
Gov. Kay Ivey: Federal-state-local partnership helps tap into Appalachia’s potential
This commentary is part of a series from governors of the 13 states in the Appalachian Regional Commission. ARC is an economic development agency of the federal government and state governments focusing on 420 counties across the Appalachian Region. The hit country song “Mountain Music” by the band Alabama may...
Letter to the editor: Time to repurpose the Trump House
Donald Trump lost the presidential election, so now it’s time to repurpose the Trump House. I think Rep. Leslie Rossi should replace the Trump statue with one of herself made of gold, at least 75 feet tall, and change the name to “Rossi Kingdom.” After all, isn’t it time for...
Letter to the editor: Continued covid awareness important
Though I respect his reasons, I disagree with letter-writer Steve A. Fazekas’s challenge to the Tribune-Review to remove the daily covid count from its publications (“End daily covid case count,” July 14, TribLIVE). With covid cases and hospitalizations increasing in areas with lower percentages of the population getting fully vaccinated...
Letter to the editor: Amazon facility would degrade Churchill
I grew up in Churchill and still have family and friends living there and family members who have passed on are buried near Churchill. I lived right next door to the George Westinghouse Research Park at two different residences and knew that green space nurtured our community’s air and peaceful...
Editorial: Hospitals shouldn’t have to force vaccines on employees
In December 2020, after months of wondering when a vaccine for covid-19 would be finished and when it would be available, bringing the end of the pandemic into view, people watched as trucks left loaded with shipments bound for hospitals across the country. The delivery was highly anticipated. Once in...
Letter to the editor: We must de-politicize our rhetoric, resolutions
Jonah Goldberg’s “Defenders, opponents of critical race theory prone to exaggeration” (July 9, TribLIVE) is probably one of his better columns, but I don’t agree that there is equal exaggeration. However, it is useful in understanding our current racial climate. It is axiomatic and understandable that a proportion of Black...
Letter to the editor: Schools need to plan for student success
There is a reckoning coming in Westmoreland County schools, and we are not prepared for it. The lack of consistent schooling over the past 18 months, combined with the rising levels of racial consciousness in our youth, will bring unprecedented challenges to the public school system. We have a choice:...
Joseph Sabino Mistick: Tough choices for small towns
As Pittsburgh City Council voted on how to divvy up $335 million in covid-19 relief money last week, the people of Wilkinsburg continued to wrestle with a proposal to merge their small town into Pittsburgh. Small towns that are part of a metropolitan area have big-city problems. But they often...
Rep. Emily Kinkead: Pa. leaders must focus on recovery
More than 75% of Pennsylvania adults have received at least one covid vaccination dose and 61.5% are fully vaccinated. Our state is finally reopening. But the long road to economic recovery is just beginning. With campaigns for 2021 and even 2022 underway, new statewide and local leadership is on the...
Michael Churchill: School funding lawsuit could help students across Pa. get what they need
In the article “Massive boost in state education funding is not much help to Franklin Regional” (July 14, TribLIVE), Franklin Regional School District Finance Director Jon Perry suggested that a ruling in the school funding lawsuit headed for trial this fall could cause his district to lose revenue. I am...
Sounding off: TV’s influence on conspiracy theories
TV may be at fault with the problem we have today with QAnon and other conspiracy theories. Once upon a time, History and the Travel Channel were my favorites. Now they should be renamed Pseudoscience Channels 1 and 2, as they are filled with programs about UFOs, Bigfoot, ghosts, ancient...
Alexandra Wimberly and Shawna Murray-Browne: Want to reduce overdose rates? Treat poverty first.
Overdose rates are higher in areas where people live in poverty and even higher among people of color living in poverty. In the last decade in Maryland, the proportion of opioid-overdose deaths involving Black people has continually risen, while the proportion involving white people has declined, mirroring nationwide trends. This...
Letter to the editor: Police fitness standards unfair to those who are out of shape
A settlement was reached in April after the U.S. Justice Department sued the Pennsylvania State Police for sex discrimination for giving applicants a physical fitness test that many women could not pass. Under the terms of the agreement, the police have lowered their standards, paid $2.2 million into a compensation...
Letter to the editor: Red-light camera grants tainted
I’m glad to see Wimmerton residents opposing the project for a Route 30 light to be funded by a grant from PennDOT’s Automated Red Light Enforcement (ARLE) funding program (“Wimmerton residents protest plan to end left turns onto Route 30 in Unity,” July 9, TribLIVE). While many ARLE grant projects...
Editorial: Nursing homes, covid and what’s right
Just because something isn’t illegal doesn’t mean it is acceptable. On Thursday, the U.S. Justice Department informed Gov. Tom Wolf that it would not be opening an investigation into whether this order to Pennsylvania nursing homes requiring admission of residents treated for covid-19 in hospitals violated federal law. Pennsylvania wasn’t...
Letter to the editor: A pro-choice/pro-life bird dilemma
I try to dissuade birds from building nests around my house … too many areas to nest and too much bird crap to clean up. Well, one robin probed my defenses and built a nest in a previously unprotected area. I decided to dump the nest. But I got up...
S.E. Cupp: Megyn Kelly’s vile attack on Naomi Osaka
The pioneering American journalist John Chancellor once said, “The function of good journalism is to take information and add value to it.” So it’s hard to see what value people like Megyn Kelly, an influential, smart and accomplished journalist, despite her well-known and well-earned controversies, are adding when they use...
John Stossel: Woke language
Have you noticed how our language is changing? At a congressional hearing on “Birthing While Black,” nearly every politician used the words “birthing people” instead of “women” or “mothers.” Asked why, Shalanda Young, President Joe Biden’s budget director, said, “Our language needs to be more inclusive.” Activists have also changed...
Baltimore Sun Editorial Board: Insurrection investigation — will GOP rise to the moment?
Whatever one may think of Donald Trump or the circumstances of last year’s election or even the bitterness of this nation’s partisan divide, it ought to be easy to condemn the events of Jan. 6 and to support a broad inquiry into what happened and how to prevent it from...
Ronn Pineo: More pandemics coming; will we heed warning signs?
We should have seen it coming. There had been too many near misses for devastating human pandemics: the Ebola virus, beginning in 1976; the “bird” flu H5N1, first appearing in 1997; SARS in 2003; Zika, beginning in 2007; MERS, starting in 2012. There were others. We had ample warnings before...
