Editorials category, Page 75
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...
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...
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...
Editorial: Toomey is example to Senate successor
U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey isn’t going to run for reelection in 2022. Toomey has represented Pennsylvanians in the Senate since 2011. A committed conservative — he was president of the fervent free-enterprise Club for Growth — he took over the seat of Arlen Specter after the longtime senator turned his...
Editorial: County numbers show changing nature of covid
Despite the force and weight with which it has dropped on the United States, the coronavirus pandemic isn’t a meteor. It is a mistake to treat it as such, unmoving and unyielding. Instead, it has to be approached as the wild animal that it is — constantly moving and changing....
Editorial: Remove mystery from Westmoreland elections office move
This is the homestretch. The 2020 election is one month out. Two years — possibly four, depending on how you count it — of campaigning for the top office in the country is about to come to a head in the presidential election. So can we please stop doing things...
Editorial: UPMC says covid-19 vaccine will take longer. That’s normal.
We need a vaccine for covid-19. But we need a vaccine that will work. Maybe it would be something that would be done annually like the flu shot, tweaked every year to address new strains. Maybe it would be like a tetanus shot that would work for a certain number...
Editorial: Trump’s diagnosis shows covid-19 is nonpartisan
President Trump now is one of the 7.2 million Americans who have tested positive for covid-19. Everyone should be able to put themselves in these shoes. Maybe everyone doesn’t have a grandma in a nursing home or a husband working in a hospital. Maybe everyone doesn’t work frontline in a...
Laurels & lances: Super sandwiches, sincere thank-yous, and needless noise
Laurel: To a tasty treat. We know that Primanti’s multitasking sandwiches of meat, french fries, coleslaw and tomatoes between pillowy Italian bread are highly superior to other cities’ staple sandwiches. That’s just logic, right? But it’s always nice to have someone from out of town verify that for the Steel...
Editorial: Balance keeps life rolling along
Just like riding a bike. It’s how we describe things that are so easy a child can do them. Things that take a little practice and a lot of balance. Things that can’t be forgotten because the muscles remember. The Rev. Doug Boyd’s whole life is like riding a bike....
Editorial: Halloween tricks and treats in pandemic
Coronavirus pandemic recommendations and decisions are a mixed bag. You never really know what you will pull out. Reach in and you might get a real treat — something fact-based and commonsense that everyone should be able to realize is the way to go. Don’t cough on Grandma, for example....
Editorial: Electoral votes are people’s voice
Voting is generally seen as a very simple equation. Yes or no. This one or that one. Separate. Count. Whoever has the most votes wins. Easy, right? And yet very, very much not what always happens. For some places, you might be looking for a majority of the vote —...
Editorial: Honesty, action justify confidence at Westmoreland Manor
Westmoreland County seems to have learned from what happened elsewhere. On Sept. 21, officials announced that 20 residents and two staff members at the county nursing home, Westmoreland Manor, had tested positive for covid-19. Most of those tested were asymptomatic and the tests were conducted as part of the routine...
Editorial: No naked ballots allowed
Nakedness is a problem. Not at home, of course. Just when out in public. So please, make sure your ballot is properly dressed when it leaves the house. There is a lot of concern with how this year’s general election will go, and much of it is valid. We are...
Editorial: Stopping animal abuse could head off domestic violence
Abuse is abuse. Violence is violence. And it should be treated that way. It needs to be taken seriously when it is noticed in small ways because abuse escalates, and it often starts with the victims that can’t report it. Animal abuse is frequently seen to be a predictor of...
Laurels & lances: Involved, closed, rejected
Laurel: To youth involvement. Young people are often painted as being unconcerned with what is going on in the world around them beyond their smartphones, Starbucks and avocado toast. That’s why we should encourage and support when our kids are participating in something bigger than themselves. Abby Rickin-Marks, a Fox...
Editorial: House blew chance to overturn Wolf veto
This time, no one gets to say Gov. Tom Wolf is a dictator. Pointing to the governor as an iron-fisted authoritarian has been common over the six months since schools shuttered and coronavirus lockdowns were instituted. We have seen the Wolf administration’s response as being more of a pinball game...
Editorial: Frozen salaries could be start for Harrisburg cooperation
It often seems like no one in government can get on the same page. The president clashes with Congress. The Senate wars with the House of Representatives. The Republicans battle the Democrats. It all repeats at the state level. Every year, over and over, on issue after issue after issue....
Editorial: Open records aren’t for sale, Sen. Scarnati
There isn’t a price tag on the Bill of Rights. Speech, religion, assembly the right not to incriminate yourself, the right to a speedy trial — none of them is a quid pro quo. You don’t have to put up collateral to get them. Transparency works the same way. The...
Editorial: No ‘total victory’ in ruling on Wolf’s pandemic orders
A legal ruling is seldom a total victory for one side or the other. It shouldn’t be. The court’s responsibility is to listen to both sides and come to a fair and equitable decision. That usually falls somewhere between the two ideas of what is right. The recent decision about...
Editorial: Ruth Bader Ginsburg and necessary dissent
Ruth Bader Ginsburg was not a judge. She was a justice. A judge sits on a lower court, hearing criminal and civil cases as they enter into the judicial system. Judges set bail, instruct juries, rule on objections. A justice, on the other hand, sits on higher courts — in...
Editorial: Carnegie diorama should represent evolution of science, history
If you asked the most intelligent scientists in Pittsburgh today what they thought about viruses, would that understanding hold up 150 years later? Take a textbook from a sociology class today and stick it in a time capsule. Open it in 2170, and would those future sociologists be impressed or...
Editorial: Unemployment money shows need for better planning
File for your special unemployment check before the money is all gone! This is the recommendation Pennsylvania’s jobless are getting. The state has just $2.8 billion from the Lost Wages Assistance program to give to those individuals who qualify for the $1,800 lump sum — calculated off $300 a week...
Editorial: Order in the virtual court – it can be done
Courts are the third leg in the stool of our government, responsible not only for judging the guilty and the culpable, but also for serving as a check on the legality of what the executive and legislative branches do. Those decisions can’t just be placed on hold because of an...
Editorial: Duquesne prof’s slur use was wrong choice
To say or not to say. It isn’t a question. It’s a decision. And it’s not something new. It’s something very old. Today’s political climate has a tendency to divide people sharply over everything, but language is a real sticking point. While some are calling out verbal offenses, others are...
