Opinion category, Page 580
Editorial: Election hiccups shouldn’t shake faith
Ideally, the closer we get to Nov. 3, the more election issues should be ironed out. Problems should have been anticipated, solutions planned, outcomes corrected. Preparations, after all, have been underway for years. In Westmoreland County, the $7.1 million elections machines were ordered in 2019. They had verifiable paper trails...
Joseph Sabino Mistick: Coronavirus is the one big issue
Two hundred and ten thousand dead and counting. Millions infected, with millions more to come. The staggering toll of the coronavirus in America was the opening topic of the vice presidential debate between Democratic Sen. Kamala Harris and Republican Vice President Mike Pence. “The American people have witnessed what is...
Sounding off: GOP has changed
The letter “History lesson on Republicans vs. Democrats” motivated me to do my own research on the topics discussed. Yes, Abraham Lincoln was a Republican, but my, how the GOP has changed! Although I believe that Eisenhower was a productive and respectable president, he did not “integrate the military.” Harry...
Colin McNickle: Allegheny County’s sick-leave proposal a nonstarter
It is an idea whose time should not come again in local governance, researchers at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy say: Allegheny County Council has proposed an ordinance, that as in the City of Pittsburgh, would mandate that businesses offer paid sick leave to their employees. “This is a...
Letter to the editor: Remembering Greensburg Det. John Swank
The article “Greensburg police Det. John Swank dead at 51” (Sept. 27, TribLIVE) was very well done. Swank was always the consummate professional when he spoke to my criminal justice writing classes at Westmoreland County Community College. He had amazing communication skills and gave in-depth presentations. He always stressed that...
Letter to the editor: Legalized marijuana will ruin lives
Gov. Tom Wolf and Lt. Gov. John Fetterman have renewed their call to legalize adult use of marijuana (“Gov. Wolf renews call for legal recreational marijuana,” Sept. 3, TribLIVE). Seriously, Gov. Wolf, you call it adult to use marijuana? Yes, just like adult use of alcohol, adult movies, adult bars...
Letter to the editor: Reduce size of Pa. government
The editorial “Frozen salaries could be start for Harrisburg cooperation” (Sept. 23, TribLIVE) provided a glimpse of what can be accomplished in our state if both the House and Senate can agree on important issues. While the Legislature is still warm and fuzzy with each other, this would be a...
Letter to the editor: Are media provoking unrest?
This is the lead paragraph from a Sept. 27 Associated Press story regarding the police in Portland, Ore., shutting down a recent protest: “Law enforcement declared an unlawful assembly late Saturday, forcing protesters from downtown Portland, Oregon, and making several arrests, just hours after demonstrations earlier in the day ended...
Letter to the editor: We must take action on climate change
Our planet is on fire and still our president denies climate change. On Sept. 14, President Trump held a briefing on wildfires at McClellan Park in California. Natural Resources Secretary Wade Crowfoot stated, “If we ignore that science and sort of put our head in the sand and think it’s...
Editorial: Hogging credit shouldn’t be politics as usual
If government does something good for the people, what is the most important aspect? Is it what happened and how it will help? Or is it who gets to take the bow? Too often, politics focuses more on the credit. This week, Allegheny County was awarded a $2 million grant...
Walter Williams: The fight for free speech
The violence, looting and mayhem this nation has seen over the last several months has much of its roots in academia, where leftist faculty teach immature young people all manner of nonsense that contradicts common sense and the principles of liberty. Chief among their lessons is a need to attack...
John Stossel: Fake fact-checking
Recently, I released a video that called California’s fires “government fueled.” A few days later, Facebook inserted a warning on my video: “Missing Context. Independent fact-checkers say this information could mislead.” Some of my viewers now feel betrayed. One wrote: “Shameful, John … what happened to you!!? Your reporting was...
Mike A. Sabat III: Here’s why union members support Biden
When Tenaris idled its Beaver County pipe-making plant and laid me off this spring, I walked out the door with a lifeline — six months of employer-paid health insurance that enabled me to keep providing for my family. The owners of Tenaris didn’t provide this crucial health care coverage to...
Jonah Goldberg: Is America really a democracy?
Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) has been tweeting some interesting things. During Wednesday night’s vice presidential debate, Lee declared on Twitter, “We’re not a democracy.” That raised some eyebrows, to say the least. He followed up by tweeting, “Democracy isn’t the objective; liberty, peace, and prospefity are. We want the...
Letter to the editor: Save lives by wearing a mask
Long after the world recognized how to defeat the spread of covid-19, the American deniers continue maskless events to propagate up to 1,000 new daily deaths. And now preexisting conditions don’t count? Comorbidity, or having a preexisting health issue, was not a conscious choice for most of the 211,000-plus American...
Letter to the editor: What Biden-Harris ads should say
I have been so disappointed with the political ads presented by the Biden/Harris campaign. I hope they consider one such as this: Universal health care — FREE. Note: We furnish your doctor and only six to eight months for an appointment. College education/tuition — FREE. Raise taxes by $4 trillion...
Letter to the editor: Election cheating underway
Caught again, it looks like the Pennsylvania Republican Party doesn’t think it can win an election without cheating. According to reporting last month by Barton Gellman in The Atlantic, they have been coordinating a plan/plot with the Trump campaign to set aside the results of the presidential election and appoint...
Laurels & lances: Returning, reclosing, remembering
Laurel: To being back on the job. On an October 2018 morning, Pittsburgh Police SWAT Officer Timothy Matson suffered multiple gunshot wounds responding to the mass shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Squirrel Hill. Eleven people were killed and seven wounded that day. It has been almost two...
Lori Falce: Veep is more than spare tire job this year
There are very few things as disappointing as a near miss. It is an honor just to be nominated, but runner-up seems to sting more than honorable mention because you were just that close to the crown. That’s probably part of why the office of the vice president of the...
Ron Klink: Trump’s reference pricing order imports joblessness
Never in the history of the modern world has there been such a desperate need for the pharmaceutical industry to be able to save our world and return all of us to a form of normality. Covid-19 is impacting everyone, including the leader of the free world and his family....
Letter to the editor: What BLM really wants
In 2015, Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors said in an interview that she and co-founder Alicia Garza are “trained organizers … We are trained Marxists.” The BLM website reads like a communist manifesto, using terms like “comrades” and “communal networks.” Cullors spent more than 10 years being mentored by...
Letter to the editor: Debate was a debacle
The Sept. 29 uncivil presidential “debate” produced no winner; however, the American people were the losers in the most juvenile presidential debate in our nation’s history. In fact, what I witnessed wasn’t a debate at all, but an exchange of attacks and counterattacks between President Trump and Joe Biden. The...
Letter to the editor: News flashes for today’s situation
People enjoying well-cooled workplaces should not dictate, enact or recommend mask requirements for warm or hot workplaces. Further astounding news: My face is inseparable from my rights, these superseded by nothing short of God. I am, like everyone else, above mask requirements beyond medical facilities. Freedom is the heart of...
Editorial: Consistent policies remain Wolf’s hobgoblin
“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds,” said Ralph Waldo Emerson. He was probably right about those times that people cleave to one set of rules without thought. A speed limit is a speed limit, but if an ambulance or a fire truck has to go faster, that...
Jonah Goldberg: Is Trump’s treatment an example of VIP syndrome?
A few years before he died, my friend Charles Krauthammer, a psychiatrist turned Pulitzer-winning political commentator, told me that the quality of health care you receive tends to rise in tandem with your income — up to a point. For some people, the two lines separate when they get so...
