Editorials category, Page 84
Editorial: What is the future of hemp industry?
Growing a new industry isn’t as simple as having an idea. It’s not even as simple as having a product. An industry is bigger than a business. It’s about suppliers and manufacturers and distributors. Even with enough supply and healthy demand, if any of the cogs in the middle break...
Editorial: School’s paper donation situation
Ask and ye shall receive. It’s a nice thought, but it doesn’t always work out. Sometimes, though, it does, like it did with Sto-Rox School District last week. On Friday, guidance counselor Katie Couch looked at the total lack of copy paper in the district and the months left in...
Editorial: Home prices up, inventory down
People love to see a great house. HGTV is popular for a reason. People want to see what other people’s houses look like, and what their houses could look like, and whether they should think about buying another house or remodeling the house they already have. That old adage is...
Editorial: Pitt virus collaboration is healthy
COVID-19 is coming to town. You are forgiven if you don’t immediately place the name. It’s gone through a number of changes in recent weeks. It’s the new official designation for the disease you are more likely to know as coronavirus. The problem is that coronavirus isn’t a virus. It’s...
Editorial: Brain drain requires smart solutions
They call it brain drain. It’s the harsh truth that Pennsylvania kids can’t afford to stay in Pennsylvania when they get higher education, and it dances around the edges of a lot of the problems with the state’s colleges and universities. While the Keystone State boasts plenty of opportunities —...
Laurels & lances: Transparency, therapy, reflection
Lance: To keeping secrets. Every day, there are lawsuits that are sealed for a variety of reasons. On Tuesday, sealed paperwork was filed in Allegheny County Court of Common Pleas containing the details of the settlement between UPMC and Paris Cleaners Inc. on one side and, on the other, the...
Editorial: Helping victims helps us all
If you get hurt, you should get help. That’s more than common sense. It is the idea behind so much of the government we support. It is why we have firefighters and police officers, paramedics and hospitals, emergency management agencies and the National Guard. As a society, we are prepared...
Editorial: Special Olympics are exceptionalVideo
There are lots of ways to define the word “special.” There is distinct. There is different. There is “exceptionally good or precious.” All of those could apply to the Special Olympics. The Pennsylvania Winter Games were held at Seven Springs Ski Lodge Sunday through Tuesday. Every four years, the Olympic...
Editorial: Retire in Pittsburgh with $1 million?
Sometimes it isn’t how much money you’ve got. It’s how you’re going to spend it. Last week, SmartAsset released its third annual study showing how long a $1 million retirement nest egg would last in various U.S. cities. In Pittsburgh, you can stretch that pot of money to cover 23.14...
Editorial: Pick up after yourself, Pennsylvania
At home, if you don’t like how much your monthly bills are, you can cut back. Eat out less. Switch phone plans. Shut off unneeded lights and close the front door because, as parents say, you don’t have to heat the whole outdoors! But when it comes to taxes, that’s...
Editorial: Religion, speech free of fear
Sometimes it is the fear of something that causes more problems than the “something” itself. Anticipating a needle can be worse than the quick sting of a shot. And so it can be with prayer in schools. The First Amendment’s protections of religious freedom and the constitutional separation of church...
Editorial: Tranquilli and the scales of justice
The law is more than letters on a page. It isn’t just a static thing that exists flatly in tiny print in thick books. The law is a tool — a mechanism for weighing and measuring people in a way that has nothing to do with pounds or inches. And...
Laurels & lances: Bakers, groundhog, culture and taxes
Laurel: To a nourishing idea. Chatham University is creating a new baker training program that brings together its Center for Regional Agriculture, Food and Transformation with Community Kitchen Pittsburgh. Funded by a $215,000 grant from Bank of America, the pilot program launches in May and will allow students to earn...
Editorial: Will Wolf budget become impasse?
There was an important speech made Tuesday that is worth some attention. No, not the one in Washington that has spawned a million social media posts. It’s the one Gov. Tom Wolf gave in Harrisburg, outlining his 2020-21 budget proposal. For Pennsylvanians, it was a laundry list of priorities the...
Editorial: Iowa owes Pennsylvania better
The Iowa Democratic Party doesn’t just owe it to the people who participate in its highly-touted, first-in-the-country caucus every four years to figure out how to correct its problems. It owes it to the rest of us, too. On Tuesday, the Hawkeye State’s caucuses — a kind of Thanksgiving-table survey...
Editorial: Public schools and private info
Privacy and a public job are often at odds. Take a job with a government agency, and you are answerable to everyone. More than that, everyone feels a little bit (or a lot) entitled to ask questions about your job, your paycheck, your hours and exactly why you were hired....
Editorial: Where do bright ideas come from?
The visual representation of a good idea is usually a light bulb. Since Thomas Edison’s popular invention was, in itself, a stroke of inspiration, it seems apropos. It’s the symbol that is instantly recognizable in cartoons and comic strips. It doesn’t require a word to convey an idea. But it’s...
Editorial: Coronavirus is not alone
Every sniffle is starting to make people wonder about the latest looming monster. Coronavirus. Specifically, it is Wuhan coronavirus, a novel variety of a large family of viruses that include the hundreds of microscopic bugs that cause what we affectionately call “the common cold.” But nobody is afraid of a...
Editorial: Open records, not open identity info
Newspapers are big fans of open records. We want to be able to find out what our government and public entities are doing. What did they buy? What did they spend? Where did the money come from? Who did something wrong? How was it punished? How was it corrected? What...
Laurels & lances: Out of the box and in the pool
Laurel: To wacky new ideas. Hey, maybe Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto’s thoughts about gondolas connecting the Strip, the Hill District and Oakland is a little out there. Or maybe it’s up there? But give credit where credit is due. It’s definitely something new and different. The idea isn’t about the...
Editorial: Who should pick the Lt. Gov.?
Elect a president and you get his running mate, too. It’s like a buy-one-get-one-free offer. You don’t get to split the deck. You don’t get to take George H.W. Bush but swap Dan Quayle for Newt Gingrich. You don’t get Jimmy Carter without Walter Mondale. It’s all or nothing. With...
Editorial: Hazing can’t be dismissed
Hazing can be easy to dismiss as a common team-building activity, or even a comic exercise. It isn’t. Hazing is that time-honored practice of taking new members of an organization and putting them through a series of ritualized tests or torments. It might be beatings or degrading psychological abuse. It...
Editorial: DUI is deadly serious
How serious does a crime have to be in order to be considered a “serious crime”? In a precedent-setting opinion delivered this month, the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals called a Montgomery County man’s DUI a grave enough offense to preclude him from buying a gun. Raymond Holloway Jr....
Editorial: Marketing message money well spent
There is a lot that goes into altering the way a community is seen. There can be problems to fix. There can be changes to make. There can be new paths to follow. But there is also the message that needs to be spread. Hey, we’re still here! Things are...
Editorial: Literacy can be more than reading
When people think about literacy, they tend to think about the obvious. Can you read? Can you write? Can you navigate the written word enough to make it through your daily life, weaving around street signs and menus and bills and notes from your kid’s teacher? All of that is...
