Editorials category, Page 8

Transparency is important for more than just keeping government accountable. We tend to think about transparency as finding out what someone did wrong. Want to make sure this government department didn’t spend your tax dollars frivolously? Want to know where your legislator got his campaign donations? Want to see exactly...

Congressional Republicans face some tough math. They want to extend tax cuts, set to expire this year, that would add perhaps $4.5 trillion in new deficit spending. To offset such extravagance, they plan to come up with $2 trillion in spending cuts. Can it be done, as the White House...

Some colleges are considered better than others. It might not be fair. It might not even be accurate. But perception can shape reality. For generations, the Ivy League has been seen as the gold standard of U.S. colleges and universities. The Ivy League is a group of eight northeastern schools...

Baseball is a game of numbers. Sure, every sport can claim that to some extent. A scoreboard is all about the numbers, after all. A tie is never broken by an essay question. But baseball may be the peak intersection of jocks and accountants. Even before the book (and movie)...

Laurel: To being canceled. The idea of cancel culture gets a lot of criticism, as it should. There should be less shutting down of ideas and more frank discussion of problems and solutions. But when events get canceled, that’s a little different. Last week, an event featuring both U.S. Sens....

When you have someplace to go and you own a car, your schedule can be in your own hands. You have an appointment at 2 p.m. It’s 2 miles away. Depending on where you are and what traffic is like, you could be sitting on the couch watching TV until...

Please just stop. On Monday, U.S. District Judge Susan Paradise Baxter ruled Pennsylvania’s election boards cannot invalidate mail-in ballots because they don’t have dates on their outer envelopes. Baxter is not the first judge to weigh in on this issue. She’s not the second or third or fourth. She is...

April Fool’s Day is rife with old jokes. It’s a date brimming with fake pregnancy announcements, weird product ad campaigns and classics like switching sugar for salt. Do the tricks catch people? Sometimes. For those that see them coming, however, April Fool’s pranks tend to prompt rolled eyes and heavy...

Europe finally appears serious about rearming. German legislators have agreed to exempt defense from constitutional limits on debt spending. The European Commission is urging members to raise military budgets to 3% of gross domestic product and issue joint debt to fund weapons purchases — moves that could unlock more than...

The auto industry is more than just the business of building cars and trucks. It is the business of selling them. It is also everyone who buys them. The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation lists 12.1 million vehicles registered. Trade group Alliance for Automotive Innovation says total car sales in the...

The Greater Pittsburgh region is home to dozens of colleges and universities. There are the large research facilities like the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University. There are public schools like Indiana University of Pennsylvania and Pennsylvania Western University. There are private colleges, religious colleges, community colleges. There are...

Laurel: To a taste of the past. If picking up a pound of chipped chopped ham at the grocery store deli doesn’t quite scratch the itch of those childhood trips to your favorite deli combined with an ice cream parlor, something is promising to fill that need. Jim Conroy, co-owner...

Just when you think Pennsylvania has decided to zig, it zags. The November election proved the state’s reputation as swingy as a circus trapeze. Keystone State voters have blown with the political winds, siding with Donald Trump, Joe Biden, Trump again and Barack Obama in the last five presidential elections....

The legend of lobbying is that it began in a Washington, D.C., hotel when people would wait for Ulysses S. Grant, pressing the president for political favors. The reality is Grant wasn’t even born yet when the first paid lobbyist was hired in America. It was 1792, three years after...

Pennsylvania has housing issues. There is a crying need for homes — whether houses or apartments — for certain sectors of the population. Specifically, there are needs for affordable housing in low-income and workforce price points where jobs that pay those wages exist. The National Low Income Housing Coalition notes...

It’s been five years since the world came to a sudden halt. Outbreaks of a deadly coronavirus — first in China, then in Italy and Iran, and then seemingly everywhere at once — prompted the World Health Organization to declare the virus a global pandemic on March 11, 2020, bringing...

It’s a tough time to be a college. Spring can be an uncertain time for a Pennsylvania institution of higher learning in the best of times. With state lawmakers still haggling over the budget, universities are making their plans for the coming year, but they do so in the dark....

Mass transportation is a critical part of life in a metropolitan area. It connects people to jobs, doctors, churches and shopping. It makes it possible for families to stay in touch. It breaks down barriers for those who cannot drive or for those who cannot afford cars. But those are...

Laurel: To experienced support. Allegheny Health Network Cancer Institute is using a secret weapon in helping patients navigate their medical journey: survivors. The Community Cancer Patient Ambassador Program launched in February. It connects cancer survivors with newly diagnosed individuals. It offers support for 14 disease lines, helping those fighting blood,...

Westmoreland County is considering putting its various service operations under one roof. The idea is to take the offices of the Human Services Department and move them all into the South Greengate Road building that used to be home to the county housing authority. “There’s nothing in stone yet,” Commissioner...

Aspinwall is not big. The suburban borough in Allegheny County has fewer than 3,000 residents. It always was intended to be a residential area, carved out of a wedge of land along the river. It was a suburb before America really had suburbs. It calls itself “The Town That Pride...

There are few things in life that are more important than water. We need it to drink. We need it to clean. We might need it to control a heating system or a power plant or to run a factory. None of those is as immediate and specific as putting...

In his record-long address to Congress, President Donald Trump reiterated his aspiration to have taxes on tips and overtime pay eliminated, a position that has enough bipartisan cachet that it also forms part of Andrew Cuomo’s mayoral run agenda. This falls into the bucket of a policy that sounds excellent...

If you want to know how political power is ebbing and flowing in Pennsylvania, take a look at Allegheny and Westmoreland counties. Pennsylvania’s politics swing like the clapper of a bell. It can be Democratic one year and Republican another. The 67 counties run the gamut of deepest blue to...

Things can be broken and functional at the same time. It’s not ideal, but it’s true. Boiled down to its basics, that’s the message of Pittsburgh Controller Rachael Heisler’s report on the audit of use of city purchasing credit cards by the parks department. The audit was prompted by concerns...