Opinion category, Page 779
John Stossel: We should choose how our money is spent
Sunday is the Super Bowl. I look forward to playing poker and watching. It’s easy to do both because in a three-hour-plus NFL game there are just 11 minutes of actual football action. So we’ll have plenty of time to watch Atlanta politicians take credit for the stadium that will...
Editorial: What can Bill Murray teach Punxsutawney Phil?
Everyone worries about job security in a world of changing industries and technologies. Manufacturing, medicine, journalism — you name it and someone is concerned about what is evolving and whether it means they should be updating their resume. So when does Pennsylvania’s favorite rodent have to start updating his LinkedIn...
Letter to the editor: Walls may have helped Native Americans
Questions to the question presented in the letter “What if Native Americans had built walls?” (Jan. 22, TribLIVE): Doesn’t this historical event support why a wall might have helped? Did the Native Americans have the ability to build a wall, or did they miss the opportunity? What happened to the...
Letter to the editor: Ideas for border security
On the subject of border security, I have a question and a suggestion. First, the question: Why should the Trump administration, or any administration, have to bargain with the opposition party to achieve needed national security? Shouldn’t national security be foremost with all parties? No negotiations should be necessary. Now,...
Letter to the editor: Pelosi says it’s OK
Nancy Pelosi was speaker of the house in 2008 when she stated a commitment to border security by using options that would work. She also acknowledged the “challenge” of undocumented people in the country and said, “we certainly don’t want any more coming in.” Ten years later and Pelosi is...
Letter to the editor: Goodbye, America
It is with heavy heart that I put pen to paper to bid farewell to the amazing country in which I have been blessed to live and raise a family. I am 78 years old, and as I look around, I do not recognize the great nation in which I...
Donald Boudreaux: Soaking the rich impoverishes us all
An obsession with income inequality would make sense only in a world in which wealth is created independently of the choices and actions of human beings. The same is true for the itch to soak the rich. If food, clothing, medical care, automobiles, houses, diamond rings, airplane seats, rolls of...
Max Boot: On Wednesday, the Twitter mob came for me
In mid-January, waves of outrage swept over the internet because of a confrontation on the National Mall in Washington between a group of conservative high school students from Kentucky and an elderly Native American Marine Corps veteran. The social media mob initially condemned the students for being right-wing jerks. Then,...
Lori Falce: Experience matters
My husband loved The Rock. A wrestling fan and a movie buff who owned a video store, Matthew thought Dwayne Johnson was entertaining and funny. And there’s no way he would vote for him for president. I know this because Matthew was just as passionate about Lynn Swann. He loved...
Laurels & lances: Cold, animals, ‘known cheater’ and death threats
Laurel: To the fire companies, senior citizen centers and other groups which stayed open extra hours this week to provide warming centers or offered additional services as needed during the polar vortex. Thank you for all you do for our communities every day, but a special thanks for the way...
Letter to the editor: Reagan, Trump — one great, one a disgrace
Even though I was not a big Ronald Reagan fan, I can’t deny he was one of the better modern presidents, possibly the greatest Republican president of all time. He led the Republicans to a 12-year stronghold on our country. One of Reagan’s greatest moments came in a 1987 speech...
Letter to the editor: Social justice is envy
A local progressive politician just elevated to lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania recently stated that he is haunted by the inequality of some people being born into wealth while others into poverty. Inequality is a fact of life. Some people are very tall like John Fetterman. Some are more beautiful, athletic,...
Letter to the editor: Peduto, council violating oaths?
Both Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto and District Attorney Stephen Zappala are grandstanding as politicians do. I’m not impressed. This is a no-brainer. In the mayor’s oath of office, did he swear to uphold the constitutions of the United States and the commonwealth? Did members of City Council do the same?...
Letter to the editor: Honored to serve
Donald Boudreaux is probably a fine economist, and I side with his views most of the time. However, his lauding of the end of the draft based on economic reasons is so very far off base (”Draft’s end most pro-freedom move of past 50 years,” Jan. 17, TribLIVE). I’ll dare...
George Will: Klobuchar could break Minnesota’s presidential losing streak
WASHINGTON Surely the silliest aspirant for the Democrats’ 2020 presidential nomination is already known: “Beto,” aka Robert Francis, O’Rourke is a skateboarding man-child whose fascination with himself caused him to live-stream a recent dental appointment for — open-wide, please — teeth cleaning. His journal about his post-election recuperation-through-road-trip-to-nowhere-in-particular is so...
Colin McNickle: Public pension reform bows in Pa.
Pension reform at long last is being phased in for newly hired state workers in Pennsylvania. But it will be decades before those pension plans’ health is restored. And some taxpayers could see their taxes rise before relief comes, according to a review by the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy....
Editorial: Cold kids are ‘soft’?
The governor of Kentucky thinks we all need to just toughen up. Well, good news, governor. Everything has a tendency to get harder in the cold. “Come on, now. I mean, there’s no ice going with it, or any snow … I mean, what happened to America,” Gov. Matt Bevin...
Letter to the editor: We need solutions, not blame
The Tribune-Review wasted an editorial with “Whose shutdown is it?” (Jan. 20, TribLIVE). The question is not who is responsible/owns the shutdown. The question should have been, what should be done to get us out of the impasse? Politicians and the media talk about who is to blame, not solutions....
Letter to the editor: Wecht’s JFK myth is ‘nonsense’
Regarding the article “Cyril Wecht shreds ‘nonsense’ JFK single-bullet theory for Fox Chapel Area students” (Jan. 16, TribLIVE): The only nonsense is that the Tribune-Review and the Fox Chapel AP history teacher would give credibility and a platform for conspiracist Wecht to spread his widely debunked myth of multiple shooters...
Letter to the editor: How to end shutdown
If all the people who want to build Trump’s wall were to contribute $50,000 or $100,000 to the GoFundMe account to build the wall, there would be more than enough money to build it. After all, they saved tens of thousands of dollars in taxes from the great tax cut...
Ryan Crocker: The U.S. is surrendering to Taliban
January 2002. I arrive in Kabul, Afghanistan, to reopen the U.S. Embassy. Destruction is everywhere. Kabul airport is closed, its runways cratered and littered with destroyed aircraft. The drive south from the military base at Bagram is through a wasteland. Nothing grows. No structures stand. In the city itself, entire...
S.E. Cupp: What has age of Trump wrought? People like Ocasio-Cortez
In the wake of his unprecedented campaign and unexpected election, the question always was: What would come after Donald Trump? What were the consequences of electing someone who was inexperienced, undeterred by and uninterested in facts and uncannily adept at whipping people into a frenzy by way of mere gesticulations...
Editorial: Pope lowers sex abuse expectations
Pope Francis thinks hopes are too high for a planned February summit on preventing sexual abuse. In a disaster movie, this is the point where the bureaucratic pencil pusher won’t give the hero the support he needs to keep bad from becoming calamitous. It is the mayor not closing the...
Letter to the editor: Will waxes woefully
In his column “Trump is a sad specimen” (Jan. 19, TribLIVE), George Will is a pompous, thesaurus-wielding arse and accomplishes nothing other than a name-calling “piling on” of Trump. It’s as if his “waxing intellectual” language is somehow educating a large politically illiterate electorate of this country. His rantings are...
Letter to the editor: Citizens ‘did build that’
Regarding Thomas C. Spallone’s letter “Cosmic luck” (Jan. 18, TribLIVE): Tom, our good fortune to have been born in America had little to do with random cosmic luck. We should remain extremely grateful that our parents were pro-lifers, which had an awful lot to do with our having been born...
