Opinion category, Page 735
Letter to the editor: Supreme Court & our voices
Letter-writer Ron Slabe has demonstrated a total misunderstanding of the functions of the Supreme Court (“Pa. Supreme Court fails us on fracking,” June 28, TribLIVE). He says that they “put their money and voices where it was supposed to count, our judicial system.” The judicial system is specifically designed to...
Letter to the editor: We can repair our political divide
The political climate is indeed divisive, as evidenced in our conversations, the media and our letters to the editor. Perhaps one way to temper this divide is to first seek commonalities in terms of our visions of how caring and respect should be evident in our interactions with each other....
Letter to the editor: Situation at border is not a humanitarian crisis
The situation at our southern border is not a humanitarian or human rights crisis. It is a law enforcement matter. Those people have been detained for violating our borders and laws. They are owed nothing but criminal prosecution. No matter their political motivations, congressional Democrats visiting border patrol stations for...
Jonah Goldberg: Nike fans flames of culture war
Nike is doing it wrong. I don’t mean the shoemaking, though that thing with Zion Williamson was pretty bad, I have to say. No, Nike is doing it wrong because it managed to do something that all the neo-Nazis, Klansmen, alt-righters and other denizens of the lowest coprophagic phylum of...
Gordon Denlinger: Pa. must stop letting surpluses disappear
It was great to learn in early June that Pennsylvania took in much more revenue than expected a month before the end of the June 30 fiscal year, gathering a surplus of over $900 million. There were concerns during budget negotiations that the state surplus would burn a hole in the pockets...
Editorial: Pennsylvania to blame for low Real ID applications
Pennsylvania is concerned that people aren’t jumping on the Real ID bandwagon. Hmm. It’s hard to figure out how 12.8 million people could have gotten the idea that it doesn’t matter. Pennsylvania has balked and delayed to implement Real ID at every turn for years. Yes, the state has finally...
Letter to the editor: Energy innovation & Carbon Dividend Act
Thank you for your coverage of Europe’s efforts to cut greenhouse gas pollution in the steel industry. If the world is to achieve near zero greenhouse gas emissions by mid-century (which is what scientists say is needed to keep the earth’s climate in the range that has supported human civilization),...
Letter to the editor: Bravo for SummerSounds
I was most fortunate to be one of the more than 8,000 fans in St. Clair Park June 28 for the marvelous concert by Leonid and Friends (“Russian Band covering Chicago tunes packs SummerSounds in Greensburg,” June 28, TribLIVE). Words can’t accurately describe the energy and excitement of the event....
Letter to the editor: Food & health care as ‘rights’
Those who claim food and health care are human rights are dangerous tyrants. The right of one individual does not place an obligation upon another. For example, I have a right to express myself, but I cannot demand that the government force you to listen or build me a stage....
Editorial: Body cameras protect everyone
Let’s go to the video. We believe our eyes, but sometimes our eyes might stretch the truth. They might say what we want to hear. They might pick a side. And that is why body cameras on police are important. Today everybody has a television studio in their pocket. Every...
Nathan Benefield: Infrastructure fix requires break from past
Pennsylvania’s infrastructure woes are impossible to ignore. From structurally deficient bridges to mounting debt to rising turnpike tolls that chase away motorists, residents would be forgiven for wondering what they are getting in return for paying the highest gas tax in the nation. Auditor General Eugene DePasquale has been one...
Paul Kengor: Religious symbols & the Ruth Bader Ginsburg standard
I wrote a few weeks ago about one of the major Supreme Court decisions due up in the current term — the Bladensburg cross case, in which secularists demanded the tearing down of a large cross that serves as the centerpiece of a veterans’ memorial in Bladensburg, Md., erected in...
George Will: How can presidential candidates be so silly?
WASHINGTON — If California Sen. Kamala Harris is elected president in 2020 and reelected in 2024, by the time she leaves office 114 months from now she might have a coherent answer to the question of whether Americans should be forbidden to have what 217 million of them currently have:...
Mark Davis: Direct support professionals Pa.’s largest workforce crisis
Two out of five workers who care for people with an intellectual disability or autism (called direct support professionals, or DSPs) leave their jobs every year, largely due to the cripplingly low wages they are paid through government funding. Recently, the 2019 version of the Fix the DSP Crisis video...
Joseph Sabino Mistick: Counting votes is simple math of politics
Here is the question Sen. Kamala Harris should have been asked during the Democratic Party’s presidential debate, and it would have been a good question for each of the candidates: “If you were in the United States Senate when the major civil rights legislation of 1964 and 1965 was being...
Sounding off: Don’t like abortion? Try funding birth control
Letter-writer John Ventre (“Liberals & abortion”) says politicians “don’t see the bigger picture” because they allow fetuses to be aborted while we are losing population. George Wandell (“Logical, truthful sex-ed lesson”) seems to feel similarly. But the really big picture is that this earth simply cannot sustain so many people....
Letter to the editor: Look to Depression for real struggles
Joe Mistick’s column “Life’s struggles hit single moms hard” lists among those struggles finding clothes at Goodwill, looking for family hand-me-downs and taking the kids to public parks. Really? I don’t doubt that single moms face all kinds of struggles, but what kind of society believes shopping at Goodwill or...
Letter to the editor: Gerrymandering & democracy
Thank you for the editorial ”Gerrymandering doesn’t represent us.”Gerrymandering can be a complicated subject, but you focused on the essence of the problem with the sentence, “Representative democracy doesn’t work if it’s not representative.” This assessment sums up the reason our state and federal governments are dysfunctional. If we can’t...
Letter to the editor: Democrats’ math & tax fairness
According to the latest Mercatus Center Senior Research, the top 50% of taxpayers pay 97.3% of the total. The top 1% pay over 38%. Leaving under 3% for the bottom 50%! Either the Democratic candidates who are calling for tax fairness flunked math or they just like beating up the...
Greg Hartnett: One year after Janus, Pa. laws behind times
Last year, the Supreme Court ruled that public sector employees like me, who are not union members, don’t have to pay union fees as a condition of employment. For decades, teacher contracts have included union fee provisions that force even nonmember employees to fund a union or lose our jobs...
Walter Williams: Assault on Western civilization
Western civilization was founded on a set of philosophies that focus strongly on the sanctity of individuals and their power of logic and reason. This belief led to a desire to trust things that could be proven to be true or legitimate, from government to science. Judeo-Christian morality has formed...
Editorial: Wideman pardon part of painful justice reform
Forty-four years would have seemed like a lifetime to a 24-year-old man in 1975. Robert Wideman, now 68, was just 24 when charged with second-degree murder. He was convicted the next year and sent to prison for life. Nicola Morena was 24 back in 1975, too. Morena was the man...
Letter to the editor: Don’t like abortion? Try funding birth control
Letter-writer John Ventre (“Liberals & abortion”) says politicians “don’t see the bigger picture” because they allow fetuses to be aborted while we are losing population. George Wandell (“Logical, truthful sex-ed lesson”) seems to feel similarly. But the really big picture is that this earth simply cannot sustain so many people....
Letter to the editor: Trump administration casual about war
Regarding the article “Sen. Toomey lauds Trump for calling off Iran strikes, supports stricter economic sanctions” (June 21, TribLIVE): More sanctions are absurd to Iran. How would we like it if someone took our medicines away? That’s what happened in 2013 before the Iran nuclear deal. Iran rightfully fears that...
Donald Boudreaux: Protection for national defense?
Pleas for tariffs and other trade restrictions are made overwhelmingly for economic reasons. The claim is that such restrictions will create jobs, raise wages and otherwise improve our economy. But it is quite common for those who seek protection from foreign competition also to insist that the requested trade restrictions...
