Opinion category, Page 667
Letter to the editor: Tulsi Gabbard is still in the race
In her column “Voting for a woman president” (March 5, TribLIVE) Lori Falce writes: “Sen. Elizabeth Warren was the most recent candidate to pull out of the race for the Democratic presidential nomination. She was the last serious female contender.” Really? I take Tulsi Gabbard’s credentials and candidacy very seriously....
Letter to the editor: Chuck Schumer should resign over ‘word choice’
“It was a very poor choice of words,” Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., said. And just like that, Sen. Chuck Schumer’s attack on two sitting members of the Supreme Court in the most voracious manner was dismissed by some on the left. Those words to Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh...
Colin McNickle: Pittsburgh Mills TIF comes home to roost
The boomerang that tax-increment financing (TIF) can be has come back to hit some Frazer Township taxpayers square in the wallet, finds an analysis by the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy. “Yet again, the risks of TIF for retail have been laid bare,” says Eric Montarti, research director at the...
Letter to the editor: Reject socialism
I watched Bernie Sanders being interviewed on “60 Minutes” and was amazed. When asked how his new government programs would be funded, his answer was “tax the billionaires.” I wonder if billionaire Mike Bloomberg agrees with that. Sanders’ freebies simply cost too much. There are not enough billionaires to pay...
Mallard Fillmore cartoons for the week of March 16
Mallard Fillmore cartoons for the week of March 16....
Editorial cartoons for the week of March 16
Editorial cartoons for the week of March 16....
S.E. Cupp: Comparing Joe Biden to Hillary Clinton
In the hours surrounding Joe Biden’s convincing Michigan win Tuesday night, adding to his Mississippi and Missouri shutouts of Sen. Bernie Sanders, analysts and pundits, as we are wont to do, deluged the airwaves and social media with assessments and predictions about the state of the 2020 race. Sometimes these...
Editorial: Pennsylvania’s handling of school closings gets ‘F’
This is not an editorial about coronavirus. It’s an editorial about questionable government decision-making that just happens to involve coronavirus. The thing is it could be about any big, important issue. Probably a few smaller, more mundane ones, too. For days, there was hemming and hawing about what would close...
Andreas Kluth: The case against closing schools to slow the pandemic
Suddenly, every country in the world has to decide whether or not to close schools to slow the covid-19 pandemic. France will, as of Monday; the U.K. won’t, and so on. Within federal systems like the U.S. and Germany, states or school districts have to make the decision. In Germany,...
Letter to the editor: High heels & mine sites
In her column “Voting for a woman president” (March 5, TribLIVE), Lori Falce relates standing next to a woman wearing high heels in the dirt at a strip mine. The woman was bemoaning the fact that she needed to get home to make pies, and the men on the site...
Letter to the editor: Democratic candidates’ promises won’t work
After listening to the recent Democratic presidential debate, which looked more like “Saturday Night Live,” I wondered: Is this the best the Democrats have to run for president? Bernie Sanders talked about education in Cuba. I ask, how else would you brainwash our kids? Joe Biden said 150 million people...
Editorial: We will get through this coronavirus pandemic together
We are all in this together. The word “pandemic” is scary. It takes the already frightening “epidemic” and turns up the volume and shines a spotlight. The changes are pouring out faster than we can track, like water from a hose. It’s overwhelming. It’s confusing. It’s relentless. We understand. We...
Letter to the editor: Pittsburgh Zoo’s accreditation doesn’t break lease
The editorial “Pittsburgh should OK zoo accreditation” (March 6, TribLIVE) supporting the Pittsburgh Zoo accreditation by the Zoological Association of America (ZAA) as not a lease violation is absolutely correct. The condition that Pittsburgh Councilman Bruce Kraus argues as a lease violation is that the zoo broke the lease when...
Joseph Sabino Mistick: Drastic changes ahead to save lives in the corononavirus pandemic
“If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change.” That is the advice that the Sicilian aristocrat Don Fabrizio received from his populist nephew in Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s novel “The Leopard.” During the late 1800s, the old don was struggling with changes in Italian...
Antony Davies & James Harrigan: ‘Price gouging’ during crisis a good thing
America is officially in a national emergency over the coronavirus pandemic. As conditions rapidly change, medical experts are unable to provide answers to every question citizens will have. But non-experts should be able to answer this basic question: “Should there be a nationwide shortage of toilet paper because of this?”...
Editorial: The $100,000 paycheck club
The state of Pennsylvania employs more than 117,000 people. On a 2019 list of the state’s top employers, “Pennsylvania” doesn’t appear, but four individual state agencies do, making it pretty clear that if you piled the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education, PennDOT, the Department of Corrections and the Department...
Sounding off: Think, verify before you post
With the rise of Facebook and Twitter, we have all become media outlets. With the click of a mouse we can share news links with our family and friends. When we share a story, we are applying our personal stamp of approval. Sometimes, we are saying we think something is...
Letter to the editor: Saving lives via organ donation
Many area hospitals participate in campaigns from Jan. 1 to April 30 to raise awareness of cornea, tissue and organ donation. Part of my hospital’s mission in this challenge is to dispel myths that prevent people from registering for organ donation. While 95% of us say we support organ donation,...
Letter to the editor: Immigrants and coronavirus
While President Trump visited India last month, mobs attacked Muslims in several locations. Over 30 people were killed, including an elderly woman burned to death in her home. A writer for Atlantic Monthly notes that “pogrom” is the correct term for such attacks. As in czarist Russia and Nazi Germany,...
Letter to the editor: Anger, resentment as old as time
If you check most any news source, whether local, national or world, you will see a preponderance of it concerning factionalism, nationalism, partisanism, tribalism, separatism, angry divisiveness between political parties, religions, races, genders and niche identities. We choose our exclusive groups to bond with, then point the finger at outsiders...
Walter Williams: We have no ‘right’ to health care
Sen. Bernie Sanders said: “I believe that health care is a right of all people.” He’s not alone in that contention. That claim comes from Democrats and Republicans and liberals and conservatives. It is not just a health care right that people claim. There are “rights” to decent housing, decent...
John Stossel: Freelance workers hurt by new law
Freelance jobs are “feudalism,” says California Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez. She persuaded California’s legislature to pass a new law reclassifying freelance workers as employees. That means many people who hire them must now give them benefits like overtime, unemployment insurance, etc. Politicians said it would help freelancers a lot. Of course,...
Editorial: Honest info builds trust in a pandemic
Transparency is one of those buzzy kind of words that seem to cluster like flies around government and other like organizations. What is so great about transparency? Maybe we should just call it what it is. Honesty. Transparency is a lack of secrecy. It is opening the door and inviting...
Letter to the editor: Bezos’ wealth could cover a lot
Let’s imagine that Jeff Bezos, who accumulates almost $9 million an hour, lived in a world with Bernie Sanders’ 8% “extreme wealth” tax (on fortunes over $10 billion). A single year would see $9 billion flow into government coffers from Bezos’s $115 billion treasure trove, more than enough to cover...
Letter to the editor: Methodist Church & LGBT people
Western Pennsylvania will soon welcome spring with colorful blooms and sweet aromas. On this Sunday, there’s a sky as blue as popsicles from my childhood. My girlfriend “KB” and I walk hand in hand looking for a church. We walk up to a stately stone United Methodist Church surrounded by...
