Featured Commentary category, Page 116
Christopher Baxter: With Spotlight PA, a team of investigative reporters hold the powerful to account in Harrisburg
There’s nothing short of a crisis in our state capital. Every year, more of Pennsylvania’s sprawling and costly bureaucracy operates without scrutiny from investigative reporters, the watchdogs tracking how our hard-earned tax dollars are spent, ensuring the vulnerable are protected, and demanding answers from lawmakers about waste, fraud and abuse....
Pete McCloskey: First coronavirus, next climate — the Republican threat to science
More than ever, our lives depend on medical science to provide reliable testing, diagnosing and mitigation of a deadly virus. Scientists in the United States and around the world are studying the coronavirus, working day and night to uncover the secrets of this disease and develop a safe, accessible vaccine....
Timothy L. O’Brien: Can we count on the postmaster general to resist Trump?
Postmaster General Louis DeJoy let the public know in a statement last week brimming with business-speak that he’s overhauling management of the U.S. Postal Service “to capture operating efficiencies by providing clarity and economies of scale that will allow us to reduce our cost base and capture new revenue.” DeJoy,...
Rep. Natalie Mihalek: Anticipated drug shortages highlight need for health care industry collaboration
What do flour, hair dye and toilet paper have in common? Grocery stores ran out of these products as the coronavirus pandemic first crept its way into our country. In the same way that grocery stores experienced supply disruptions at the beginning of the pandemic, the drug supply chain is...
Richard Edley and Mark Davis: Covid-19 funding needed for intellectual and developmental disability community
The coronavirus pandemic is having a profound impact on the well-being of people with intellectual disability or autism and the direct support professionals (DSP) who provide lifesaving support to them every day. Pennsylvanians with intellectual disability/autism largely have been the pandemic’s forgotten faces. These adults and children are among our...
Rep. John Joyce: TikTok, the spy in your child’s pocket, just tip of tech iceberg
During the coronavirus crisis, Americans have increasingly turned to technology for work, school, keeping in touch with friends and loved ones, and entertainment. Staying at home, we improvised and took advantage of the video chats and conference calls that connected us to the outside world. At the same time, droves...
Robert and Rachel Millman: Voting, our most important civil right
As we get closer to Election Day 2020, we hear a lot about our political divide, the unbridgeable tribalism of left and right. At the same time, we’re also told that voters hold common-ground views on a variety of issues. How can both be true? The answer is gerrymandering, a...
Tim Murtaugh: Joe Biden’s energy plan will destroy Pa.’s economy
President Trump unleashed an American energy revolution. During a speech at the Double Eagle Energy oil rig in Texas July 29, Trump detailed the historic accomplishments of his administration on restoring American energy dominance. “For the first time in nearly 70 years, we have become a net energy exporter,” he...
John and Gisele Fetterman: Let the ‘Dreamers’ dream
The Supreme Court was very clear less than two months ago: President Trump broke the law when he tried to end Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), a federal program that protects immigrants who were brought here without documentation when they were children. The program has allowed hundreds of thousands...
Jamie Wiggan: Could we unarm our police?
Video of a Minnesota police officer casually squeezing the life out of a compliant Black suspect jolted the world into renewed appreciation of systemic racism’s wicked clutches. For me — white, male, born in Britain — it prompted the memory of my first police encounter. I’d been driving in America...
Steve Westly: Will Trump still have to reveal his taxes?
Every American president since Jimmy Carter has revealed their tax records. In fact, President Trump personally promised to make his taxes public, tweeting in May 2016: “I told AP that my taxes are under routine audit, and I would release my tax returns when the audit is complete, not after...
Hussein Ibish: Hezbollah will not escape blame for Beirut
As if the Lebanese haven’t suffered enough. For months, they have been caught between an economic meltdown, crumbling public services and a surging pandemic. Now they must count the dead and survey the extensive damage to their capital after two giant explosions on Tuesday. The blasts, especially the second, were...
Kevin Mitchell: A compromise covid-19 restaurant and bar policy
Gov. Tom Wolf’s most recent and well-intentioned approach to covid-19 mitigations in the operations of restaurants and bars addresses an important health safety concern but unnecessarily creates other problems. Like other governors, his goal is to halt the increase in spread of covid-19, which has been heading in the wrong...
Thomas Melcher and Jeff Nobers: Joining the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative would hurt Pa.
Gov. Tom Wolf is unlawfully scheming to circumvent the Pennsylvania General Assembly and, by his own estimates, impose a $2.36 billion tax on fossil fuel-fired electric generation plants in Pennsylvania over the next 10 years. Wolf’s goal is for Pennsylvania to join the 10-state Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) —...
Donna Park: 75 years after Hiroshima, we can end the threat of nuclear war
In early August 1945, the U.S. government dropped two nuclear bombs on Japan, first on Hiroshima and then on Nagasaki. Regardless of where you stand on this decision, hopefully we can all agree that in the future, no innocent civilians — especially children — deserve to suffer and die the...
Paul Muschick: Some shooters defending liberties will ironically lose freedom behind bars
I wasn’t surprised when gunfire erupted outside a local store because of a simple request that a shopper wear a mask. That I expected it to happen is really sad. Mask rage has occurred elsewhere, and it was bound to occur in the Lehigh Valley eventually. Thankfully, the results weren’t...
David Zurawik: Cable news is the medium now setting national agenda
Once upon a time in a far more stable America, our national agenda was largely shaped by network news, The New York Times, weekly news magazines such as Time and The Associated Press. Media productions like the “CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite” not only determined what we would talk...
Zach Shamberg: State data on covid-19 in nursing homes is too confusing
At this point in the pandemic, we know that accurately compiling and reporting data is a critical tool for tracking and slowing the spread of covid-19. When the Pennsylvania Department of Health announced back in May that it would begin publicly reporting cases in long-term care facilities, I celebrated the...
Noah Smith: Focusing on Facebook and Google’s monopoly misses the point
The heads of four of the U.S.’s biggest technology companies — Alphabet Inc., Apple Inc., Facebook Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. — appeared before Congress last week to respond to criticism that they have too much market power. The hearing showed that lawmakers are beginning to understand what is and isn’t...
Kimmi Baston: Mentoring doesn’t stop even though we’re apart
Each year, during the last week of September, more than 700 elementary girls in Pittsburgh wait excitedly after school to meet the college women they’ll spend the school year with, having fun and building skills in a supportive group setting. For six months, the girls and their college mentors play...
Tim Haggerty: Prudence, not optimism, should rule back-to-school decisions
One of the advantages of being a historian is that you are never at a loss for a half-baked analogy, particularly after a couple of gin and tonics in isolation. The historical circumstance that keeps popping into my mind these days is the beginning of World War I in June...
Nathan Benefield: Transparency victory a call to action for lawmakers
On Sunday, Gov. Tom Wolf concluded a weeks-long standoff with the state Legislature by caving. Despite repeated veto threats, he allowed a transparency bill — passed unanimously — to become law, but without his signature. Wolf’s opposition to the benign transparency legislation, sponsored by Rep. Seth Grove, R-York, was a...
Martin Schram: This may be John Lewis’ greatest gift to us all
For two weeks, we have watched and listened to history’s recordings of the late John Lewis, speaking powerfully and movingly to us during his lifetime of courageously nonviolent combat in the name of our civil rights. But we really shouldn’t say our final goodbyes to the iconic man who is...
Janet Jai: The dangers of Pittsburgh’s new Bike(+) Plan, especially for children
Pittsburgh’s new Bike(+) Plan will be coming to all of Pittsburgh’s neighborhoods, maybe to your street. Be careful! This new bike plan may make Pittsburgh’s newly designated bike-path streets (and others around them) more dangerous — especially for children — and for drivers and pedestrians as well. Given the pandemic...
Timothy L. O’Brien: William Barr only claims to respect the rule of law
Attorney General William Barr is famously unflappable, the legal technician and savvy Washington insider unswayed by lesser minds or weaker wills. But on Tuesday, during a House Judiciary Committee hearing examining the past 19 months of his tenure, Barr’s legendary composure dissolved several times. His anger flared at moments when...
