Opinion category, Page 614
Kevin Mitchell: A compromise covid-19 restaurant and bar policy
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...
Thomas Melcher and Jeff Nobers: Joining the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative would hurt Pa.
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) —...
Letter to the editor: Veterans should count
I agree with letter-writer Robert Ebitz (“Veterans should always count,” July 20, TribLIVE). I know there are many who want to be true veterans, but veterans are only those of us who served. I proudly served in the 9th Infantry Division, 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment in Vietnam in 1966-67. Thank...
Letter to the editor: Where is the outrage on other killings?
When Blacks kill Blacks in Chicago, Baltimore and Detroit, don’t they matter? Where are the marches, the daylong memorials? When a white cop is killed by a Black man, when a young girl is raped and killed by an illegal, where is the wall-to-wall TV outrage, day after day after...
Letter to the editor: Mail-in voting is an insult to our heroes’ sacrifices
Valley Forge, Fort McHenry, Gettysburg, San Juan Hill, Belleau Wood, Normandy/Iwo Jima, Pusan, Khe Sanh, Baghdad, Gamsir. It is safe to say the nation’s youth that found themselves in those places would have preferred to have been somewhere else that was safe or “in the rear with the gear.” Yet...
Letter to the editor: Trump unfit to be president
To further give credence to William Hite’s letter “Books about Trump are must-reads” (July 25, TribLIVE), why is it that the more President Trump spews lies, the more his supporters approve of his behavior, which I find boorish and disgusting? Plain and simple, this man has proved time and again...
Letter to the editor: Denouncing the Democratic Party
You’ve got to be kidding! I will never vote for Sen. Pat Toomey again. Where is his loyalty? Where is his determination to denounce the whole Democratic Party for the last several years — Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schiff, et al.? I believe they are all thieves, liars and heathens;...
Letter to the editor: We need cheap, rapid, over-the-counter covid-19 test
As a Pittsburgh infectious disease physician, I applaud Harvard epidemiologist Dr. Michael Mina’s covid-19 surveillance approach, which he outlined in a July 3 New York Times opinion piece and at microbe.tv/#640. He endorses a cheap, rapid, over-the-counter covid-19 test. While it will miss some infections, it will be fewer than...
Editorial: Words matter with covid-19 message
Say what you mean. Mean what you say. It’s a good rule of thumb for everyone, but it’s especially important for elected officials. Politicians get — and keep — their jobs by what they say. Their words shape laws and policies. They send us to war and broker peace. In...
Donna Park: 75 years after Hiroshima, we can end the threat of nuclear war
In early August 1945, the U.S. government dropped two nuclear bombs on Japan, first on Hiroshima and then on Nagasaki. Regardless of where you stand on this decision, hopefully we can all agree that in the future, no innocent civilians — especially children — deserve to suffer and die the...
Letter to the editor: Plan for safe return to schools
After reading an article about schools resuming in-person classes, I came up with a plan to ensure that students can safely return. On Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays, half of the students and half of the teachers would be in school, and the other half would be in school Thursdays, Fridays...
Letter to the editor: Tax breaks for frackers unacceptable
The fracking and petrochemical industries have been profiting off of making people sick for years, and this is not an outdated trend. In October 2019, it was widely reported that ExxonMobil is scouting to build another cracker plant in Beaver County. Actions like this are unacceptable. The General Assembly just...
Letter to the editor: New St. Vincent archabbot a great choice
It is obvious to me that letter-writer Tom Kerek knows nothing about Archabbot Martin de Porres Bartel (“Numbers guys making the decisions,” Aug. 3, TribLIVE). He is an excellent choice to be archabbot of St. Vincent Archabbey. I think having an MBA and a juris doctor might be a good...
Letter to the editor: Peace, respect, work ethic are key
No matter what color the person or uniform, we all matter. It seems the news media does not agree. The death of an innocent person is always a tragedy. If a Black criminal dies by the hand of a white policeman, it is often on the news for months and...
Letter to the editor: Communist threat to America
The United States of America was formed by its Declaration of Independence from tyrannical England. The people wanted to be free to worship God and to live free from dictates of those who ruled. It took a very bloody war of unprecedented sacrifice to accomplish. The greatest document in the...
Paul Muschick: Some shooters defending liberties will ironically lose freedom behind bars
I wasn’t surprised when gunfire erupted outside a local store because of a simple request that a shopper wear a mask. That I expected it to happen is really sad. Mask rage has occurred elsewhere, and it was bound to occur in the Lehigh Valley eventually. Thankfully, the results weren’t...
Pat Buchanan: For Joe Biden, no men need apply
There is a real possibility that this week Joe Biden will be selecting the 47th president of the United States. For the woman Biden picks — he has promised to exclude from consideration all men, black, brown, white or Asian — has a better chance of succeeding to the presidency...
Editorial: Rivera and Lechman — a tale of two departures
The coronavirus pandemic has created all-hands-on-deck situations in areas like medicine and the economy, government and manufacturing. But we are now staring down a deadline for two arenas: education and elections. So what happens when longtime leaders step away from those responsibilities? On Monday, Westmoreland County officials confirmed elections bureau...
Jonah Goldberg: If mail-in voting will be disaster, why isn’t Trump trying to prevent that?
President Trump’s delay-the-election trial balloon on Twitter last week was resoundingly denounced, and rightly so. Indeed, so thorough was the repudiation, including from top Republicans, that the president backtracked a little. “I don’t want to delay,” Trump explained in a press conference to discuss the pandemic. “I want to have...
Letter to the editor: Science, abortion and Black lives
Being that science and anthropology teach us that human life begins with the first cell (zygote) in the mother’s womb, that makes abortion the beginning of killing Black lives and all lives for that matter. Abortion would then be the beginning of racism and opposition to humanity. We have a...
Letter to the editor: Pa. nursing home data errors alarming
After reading the article “Pa. nursing home data used to track covid-19 deaths, cases riddled with errors” (July 17, TribLIVE), I believe one might legitimately ask if there is some conspiracy afoot to shut down the economy. The Pennsylvania Department of Health showed 76,336 residents at an Elk County nursing...
Letter to the editor: Citizens should be able to vote out bad cops
We the people should have the right to vote out a police officer based on proof that he’s a bad cop. Citizens pay tax dollars to pay officers to protect and serve, and that’s not what’s transpiring in many situations. We the people can vote out mayors, governors, Congress members...
Letter to the editor: Trump diverting our attention from his failures
As covid-19 continues to spiral out of control across the country, President Trump runs ads portraying himself as the “law and order” president. He sends faux-military people without identification and without marked vehicles to nab and detain journalists and protesters from the streets of America, similar to when police in...
Letter to the editor: Done with the NFL
Dear Steelers, It’s not you, it’s me. I am a 62-year-old lifelong Steelers fan. I grew up in the Pittsburgh area. I can tolerate crying, whiny, millionaire players, as that really hasn’t changed in all those years. I can even tolerate supporting a cause I don’t agree with. But I...
Letter to the editor: Media mind control
What do The New York Times, Washington Post, CNN and MSNBC have in common? They all play a big role in determining what Americans see, read, think about and ultimately believe. Sprinkle in lesser-known but still large institutions like Slate, The Atlantic, The New Yorker and HuffPost, and you have...
