Editorials category, Page 82
Editorial: Local leaders should be better than Congress
Vandergrift Council’s recent Zoom meeting might be the perfect example of the relationship between some government officials amid the coronavirus pandemic response. It had everything. Important things that needed to be done. Action to be taken to stay in compliance with a higher authority. A dictate that was really pointless...
Editorial: Accounting for the way Wolf’s waivers went
More of Pennsylvania is getting back to business as Gov. Tom Wolf slowly turns the dial from red to yellow on counties locked down amid the coronavirus pandemic. But not every business was stopped from working in the past weeks. Some were deemed life-sustaining and were allowed to keep the...
Editorial: Penguins miss shot with arena development project in Lower Hill District
You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take. It’s an idea the Pittsburgh Penguins should find familiar. It speaks of big games and clutch performance, reaching for the stars and following through. Champions do the hard thing even though it’s hard, and the Pittsburgh Penguins have the Stanley Cup...
Editorial: Finding grace as we live through a pandemic
How sweet the sound. It has been two months since the schools closed. Two months since the chrysalis started to close around our homes and our communities. Two months since we retreated behind doors and pulled masks to separate ourselves from the coronavirus pandemic. And now we are finally hearing...
Editorial: Pittsburgh’s airport can pivot for new turbulent reality
Delays, cancellations and reroutes at an airport are part of the routine. That’s why there are the big boards that tell not just at which gate a flight is arriving or departing but whether that is happening on time or not at all — because nothing is a given. Including...
Editorial: Giving SNAP funds to students is a late reaction
The biggest problem with bailing water out of the bottom of a leaky boat is that it doesn’t prioritize fixing the problem over dealing with the problem. Fill a bucket with water and dump it over the side? It might be the first instinct, but that water is immediately replaced...
Editorial: Line drawn in sand at Pittsburgh skate park
Sometimes someone doesn’t use common sense and it ruins things for everyone. And sometimes a lot of people don’t use common sense and it just starts to spread like, well, a virus. That kind of outbreak could be happening around a Pittsburgh park. It started with the city’s shutdown of...
Editorial: More access is a welcome U.S. Supreme Court precedent
Pennsylvania will have a another place in legal history after this week. On Wednesday, the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in the legal suit Trump v. Pennsylvania. It pits the president’s administration and the Little Sisters of the Poor against the legal minds in the office of state Attorney General...
Editorial: Following rules the key to lifting lockdown
Everyone couldn’t wait to get to yellow. It has been weeks since Gov. Tom Wolf announced a color-coded path from a full coronavirus lockdown to a more moderate restriction. On May 1, he signaled the first rope to drop with northwest and north-central counties enjoying the slightly relaxed rules of...
Laurels and lances: Hunger, rats and food
Laurel: To comfort food. Hunger isn’t something new. While the economic instabilities of the coronavirus pandemic may have exacerbated the issue, food insecurity has affected the Southwestern Pennsylvania area at higher rates than the rest of the country for years. According to the City of Pittsburgh, about 21.4% of its...
Editorial: State should open or offer help for smaller counties
Pittsburgh is definitely the big dog in Southwestern Pennsylvania. The city can suck up all the air in the room. Look up pictures of the area, and you can be overwhelmed by the rivers and bridges, the stadiums and the glass and steel skyline. But cross those bridges or drive...
Editorial: The invaluable gift of nursing
When people are sick or hurting or injured, they often say they need to see a doctor. More often, what they get — and need — is a nurse. A doctor can diagnose and prescribe, but time and attention is spread across a large swath of patients. A nurse, on...
Editorial: The real danger of murder hornets
Oh, come on. Murder hornets? In the first four months of 2020, the news has brought massive bushfires in Australia, the U.S. killing of an Iranian general followed by Iran’s retaliation, the impeachment trial of President Trump, Britain’s break from the European Union, a deadly global pandemic hand in hand...
Editorial: The high cost of safe elections
Safe elections mean something to America. The freedom of the vote is something people have fought and died to achieve and to protect. We look back on the periods when people couldn’t vote because of race or gender or the simple fact they didn’t own land, and we shake our...
Editorial: Wolf needs consistent message
It’s a system used for stoplights and preschool behavior charts: red, yellow, green. Apply it to the coronavirus pandemic lockdowns and you have a series of gates that keep Pennsylvanians behind closed doors. Until May 8. On Friday, Gov. Tom Wolf announced a list of 24 counties that will go...
Editorial: U.S. Steel layoffs sign of bigger issue?
Maybe 2,700 doesn’t seem like that big a number right now. There are 30 million people who have filed for unemployment benefits in the United States in the six weeks since the coronavirus pandemic closed businesses and sent workers home. Last week alone, there were 3.8 million laid-off Americans filing...
Editorial: Port Authority needs to find answer
If you get a flat tire, you can put on the emergency doughnut to get to the garage for a real repair. You can’t just accept that the little round rim of rubber is going to do the job of a full-fledged tire. A half-solution can end up being no...
Editorial: Hospitals need elective surgery to survive
There are some things we want back after weeks in a pandemic lockdown. We want happy hour and Sunday brunch and a shopping trip that doesn’t feel like deploying on a military maneuver. But there are other things we need. New hips. Gallbladder removal. Coronary angioplasty to see if an...
Editorial: Pittsburgh construction signs of life
You have to start somewhere. Getting back to some kind of normal after weeks of coronavirus pandemic lockdown is going to take a first step, and Pittsburgh is getting ready to stretch its legs. On Monday, the mayor’s office announced construction projects within the city will be able to get...
Editorial: The LCB adapts, under pressure, like always
Deriding the way alcohol is sold in Pennsylvania is nothing new. The coronavirus pandemic and the state’s social distancing shutdowns didn’t build the walls around the bottle in the Keystone State. The system has long been one of the most controlled in the country, with the state acting as chief...
Editorial: Could PSU cuts show cost correction possibility?
Maybe the coronavirus pandemic can do something in Pennsylvania nothing else has been able to do. Maybe it will lead to reducing budgets at universities. On Friday, Penn State announced a series of moves to make the books balance in the face of a $100 million loss. The state’s largest...
Editorial: Is cutting polls smart in pandemic?
As a nation, we spend a lot of time telling people to get out and vote. As a news organization, we do, too. We want people to be informed about issues, aware of implications and prepared for the decisions they are about to make. But more than anything, we want...
Laurels & lances: Recover, release, rescue, return
Laurel: To getting better. Coronavirus is most dangerous to our older population. It’s most risky for those with other health problems, like cancer or diabetes. But that doesn’t mean it is a death sentence for them, even when they are seriously ill. James Toth, 89, and Yvonne Demagall, 92, are...
Editorial: Nursing home data key to covid-19 response
Testing and tracking. Those are the two things that will make it possible to get out of the black hole of coronavirus lockdowns. The state needs to know not just who is sick. It needs to know who is infected and not sick. That’s the testing part, and that is...
Editorial: Falling oil price shows high Pennsylvania gas tax
Call it irony. Call it supply and demand. Whatever you call it, the result is the same. Gas is cheaper than it has been in years. Shop around in the Pittsburgh area, and you could find it as low as $1.59 a gallon. The average in Pennsylvania is just $2.17...
