Featured Commentary category, Page 106
Tonie Willis and Rep. Tina Davis: To cut down on crime, give newborns a fair shot
How does shackling expecting mothers protect public safety in Pennsylvania? The answer is clear: It doesn’t, not by a mile. More than 130,000 babies will be born in Pennsylvania this year, but not every newborn will be born with a fair shot. In state and county prisons across the commonwealth,...
Brian Dellinger: Power, Parler and the problem of Big Tech
Over the course of 2020, the previously minor social media application Parler rose to national prominence. The site served as a smaller, right-leaning mirror to Twitter, attracting an audience that included (among others) both U.S. senators and QAnon conspiracy theorists. Where Twitter forbade referring to a transgender person by biological...
Rich Askey: For schools, a light at the end of the tunnel
Finally, we can see light at the end of the dark tunnel that we’ve been walking through for the past year. With covid-19 vaccinations expanding, educators, parents, and students can look forward to a return to normalcy in our schools, where students will be able to come back to their...
Christine Sarteschi: Ideas to prevent mass shootings
Mass shootings are a serious public health problem. According to studies and experts in the field, prevention strategies remain elusive. One innovative area of study that has the potential to generate rich ideas for prevention is the directed study of thwarted, foiled or near-miss mass homicide plots. There is a...
Reps. Jessica Benham and Melissa Shusterman: Pa. Rescue Plan tackles long-term care for most vulnerable
The covid-19 pandemic has revealed so many inequities in our country — from socio-economic to racial, medical conditions and age. These inequities existed long before the pandemic but have been laid bare over the past year in such a way that we can no longer refuse to address them. Our...
Scott Bricker and Laura Chu Wiens: Biden’s jobs plan can help us move better
The Biden administration’s bold American Jobs Plan aims to invest hundreds of billions of dollars into public transit and transportation infrastructure. The plan has the potential to massively improve everyday Americans’ ability to get around safely, in addition to creating jobs, growing a sustainable economy and moving toward climate goals...
J. Christian Adams: Voter rolls without dead people is good first step toward election integrity in Pa.
All eyes were on Pennsylvania in the 2020 election. The commonwealth’s election process was one of chaos, with issues caused by mass mail balloting, blocking poll watcher access and ballot harvesting, to name just a few. Now some good news. Prior to the 2020 election, the Public Interest Legal Foundation...
Timothy Williams: Remember our history and welcome the strangers
Ten years ago, I left the United States to teach overseas. Since then, I have lived in five different countries and traveled to numerous others. I am often asked if living abroad is dangerous. It strikes me, however, that in all these years, I have never been verbally harassed or...
Joe Nocera: Bernie Madoff left behind only misery and heartache
Bernie Madoff is dead, and it is unlikely that even the people who once were closest to him will shed a tear. Not his wife, Ruth, whose life was destroyed when Madoff’s Ponzi scheme was revealed in December 2008. Not his brother, Peter, Madoff’s former chief compliance officer, who spent...
Robert Lysek: Public charter schools want real reform
It might surprise those listening to Gov. Tom Wolf constantly attacking public charter schools that the charter school leaders in Pennsylvania support comprehensive education reform and have supported it for years. What we don’t support are the arbitrary funding cuts the governor and anti-charter activists seek to prevent Pennsylvania families...
UPMC’s efforts to eliminate health care inequities, racism
As Black obstetrician-gynecologists, midwives and members of the UPMC family, we have come together to highlight the current state of affairs for pregnant women of color. The U.S., a developed nation, has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the world, with Black women affected disproportionately in comparison with...
Dave Kitzinger: Gupta should be confirmed as associate attorney general
Bipartisanship is often invoked but rarely practiced in politics these days. Unfortunately, the confirmation fight over President Biden’s nominee for associate attorney general, Vanita Gupta, has become the latest example of partisanship crowding out substance in Washington. Fair-minded senators like Sen. Pat Toomey have a reputation for rising above the...
Stephanie Catarino Wissman: Pennsylvanians could pay more under Wolf’s proposed severance tax plan
For the seventh straight year, Gov. Tom Wolf is proposing a new tax on the state’s natural gas producers — and ultimately on Pennsylvanians. This year’s severance tax plan, like the others before it, could undermine the production of natural gas — which about half of American households rely on...
Rich Fitzgerald: Portable benefits system would protect gig workers
As we turn the past year, and look ahead to a better 2021, it’s also time to continue to build on our strengths, which became all the more evident during this pandemic. Our southwest Pennsylvania region has a diverse economy and has been fortunate to see growth in both traditional...
Dr. Gillian Beauchamp and Jessica Hessler: Syringe programs can save lives
Rosa had been diagnosed with endocarditis, a heart valve infection, and had undergone valve replacement surgery to repair the valve that now threatened her life. When released from the hospital, she lacked adequate housing, food and support to cope with the trauma of childhood abuse. She returned to injecting fentanyl....
Josh McNeil: The American Jobs Plan will build a better future for us all
We are at a critical moment in our nation’s future. In Pittsburgh last week, President Biden laid out a plan to meet the scale of the twin climate change and jobs crises with his American Jobs Plan. We need to get people back to work and build back our economy...
Greg Dudkin: We can save customers millions by providing protections they deserve
Here in Pennsylvania you can shop for your electricity supply. Just like you would shop for a car, you compare different offers and choose what is right for you at the lowest cost. Because utility companiesare delivering the electricity, we have no vested interest in which supplier you choose. But...
Reps. Austin Davis, Nick Pisciottano, Brandon Markosek and Summer Lee: Transforming the Mon Valley
Within the next two months, we will hit a milestone that one year ago sounded impossible — a covid-19 vaccine widely available to whomever wants or needs it. This will mark a turning point in our long struggle against this virus. In our region and in Washington, D.C., discussions have...
Faye Flam: Don’t believe the doomsayers. Vaccines will end the pandemic.
Following pandemic news too closely can be an emotional roller coaster, with dire public health warnings immediately followed by hopeful new studies. The latest soaring discovery: a new CDC study showing vaccines sharply cut all covid-19 infections — not just symptoms. That news puts to rest one worst-case-scenario: that vaccines...
Ken Regal: Extending the power of the American Rescue Plan
Editor’s note: The following text was delivered at a March 30 press conference alongside Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa. The American Rescue Plan is powerful. It makes major improvements to the public food safety net to protect our neighbors from hunger — particularly in boosting food stamp (SNAP) benefits — so...
John Crisp: Have we lost the battle on climate change?
I pay moderate attention to my carbon footprint. You probably do, too. It just seems like the right thing to do. I recycle. I drive a Prius. My house has solar panels. My yard is xeriscaped. I support green energy. I never vote for politicians who, head in the sand,...
Sabrina Fu: We must go deeper than our differences to heal our nation
As an American who has heard about thousands of shootings by now, I have never been asked about how I felt about any particular shooting — until a few days after the shootings at three massage businesses in Atlanta, dominated by women of Asian descent. Yes, I am an Asian...
Steve Samara: Investing in rural broadband
Legislation that will help bridge the digital divide, which in the last legislative session gained strong bipartisan support in Harrisburg, has been reintroduced this session by one of the state’s leading rural broadband advocates, Sen. Kristin Phillips-Hill, R-York. Senate Bill 341 would modernize regulations adopted decades ago for rural phone...
James Reston Jr.: A Jan. 6 commission can answer our questions
The Jan. 6 attack on Congress takes its place next to the other terrible national traumas of the past 60 years — the JFK assassination, the race riots of 1967-68, the Challenger space shuttle crash and 9/11. Like those other shocks to our national consciousness, Jan. 6 demands a seminal,...
Richard Chin: Which superhero should we call if the Suez Canal gets plugged again?
They finally got that giant cargo ship unstuck from the Suez Canal after nearly of week of trying and a fleet of tugboats. But the next time the Suez gets jammed by a beached supership, why not do the global economy a favor and call a superhero to get the...
