Featured Commentary category, Page 41
Michael Puskaric: Regional partnering key to ending opioid crisis
The opioid epidemic has left a trail of devastation across the United States, claiming countless lives and tearing apart communities. In 2022 alone more than 110,000 Americans succumbed to a drug overdose with opioids accounting for nearly 70% of those deaths. Meanwhile, fentanyl and counterfeit pills continue to flood America...
Jennifer Huddleston: AI and privacy rules meant for Big Tech could hurt small businesses most
As lawmakers and regulators in the U.S. consider policy born of their Big Tech concerns such as data privacy and artificial intelligence, they should carefully consider how such changes could end up trampling the small and midsize businesses that drive innovation and competition. While policymakers may have Google and Facebook...
Cal Thomas: 2 contrasting congressional days
Last Friday in Washington, there was evidence of why only 16% of the public approve of the job Congress is doing, according to a Gallup poll. During a House Oversight Committee hearing on whether to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt of Congress for refusing to comply with a...
Jen Mizell: UPMC must show moral leadership
I started my career as a nurse at UPMC almost two decades ago because I wanted to make a real difference in people’s lives. That’s what has kept me going all these years, especially through the trauma of the pandemic. But as UPMC has consolidated more and more power, staffing...
Rob Richie: Ranked-choice voting for presidential elections?
Imagine it’s election night 2024. A few close swing states will decide the presidency — and test the health of our democracy. In that scenario, we can be certain of two facts: Neither Joe Biden nor Donald Trump will win a majority of the vote, and votes for independent and...
Danny Tyree: Is it nice to fool Mother Nature?
I was hunkered down paying rapt attention to the weather report on May 8 when an EF-3 tornado rampaged through a neighboring county. Understandably, I was intrigued by a May 11 New York Post article about a technological push to manipulate the weather. Eleven states already maintain “old school” programs...
J. Peder Zane: The rise of gut politics
A very liberal friend recounted his daughter’s pushback after he gently questioned the tactics of anti-Israeli protestors on campus. “She didn’t disagree with me,” he said, “but said that my concerns were unhelpful because they undermined efforts to stop the war.” I just nodded my head; it was, after all,...
Alexandria Wilson-McDonald: Attempted assassination of Slovak prime minister follows country’s slide into political polarization
The assassination attempt against Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico has been condemned widely by world leaders as an attack on democracy. In Slovakia, the violent act similarly saw a unified response from the country’s deeply divided political leaders. But how long this lasts is uncertain. Just as outgoing Slovakian president...
Rogelio Sáenz and Selene M. Gomez: Some states’ populations are like the U.S. overall — including 5 key states in the ’24 presidential election
Five of the seven states widely expected to be political battlegrounds in the 2024 presidential election have populations very much like that of the U.S. overall, in a range of demographic and socioeconomic measures. For decades, the presidential selection season has begun with the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire...
Daniel DePetris: Vladimir Putin has much to celebrate. But not the Russian people.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, the man who plunged Russia into a war that has proved far costlier than he anticipated, is riding high at the moment. Last week, Putin formally took office for a fifth term after a presidential election that the United States, Europe and international monitors widely regarded...
Brooke D. Anderson: Put women in the rooms where it happens
Before I became the president of Pivotal Ventures, I spent most of my career in national security. In my roles at the United Nations, the White House and the State Department, I had the chance to work on big, audacious challenges with teams I deeply respected and admired. But as...
Rep. Emily Kinkead: Justice, compassion and Ezra Bozeman
Lady Justice may be blind, but she is not heartless. When I was in law school, I read a passage in my Criminal Procedure textbook that has defined my understanding of the practice of law in a criminal setting. What it said was that the role of a prosecutor is...
Cal Thomas: Warren Buffet is wrong on taxes
Many people have made money by following the advice of Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett. His recommendations about which stocks to buy, which to sell and where to invest (or not) have earned him the “Oracle of Omaha” title. I prefer a modern cultural version: “the Taylor Swift of Capitalism.”...
Elizabeth Massa Hoiem: Talk to children — addiction info provides emergency first aid
Recent government support to aid families impacted by substance use is heartening. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced $28 million in grants to assist pregnant people and families, while Oregon lawmakers approved $27 million to fund education and drug prevention programs. But government funds are slow to...
Raymond Offenheiser: Here’s what’s going wrong with Gaza relief
Amid persistent calls from the United States and other countries that Israel needs to make it easier for life-saving aid to reach Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, the Israeli military closed two of the region’s few operating border crossings in Rafah, a southern Gazan city, on May 7. Responding to...
Trudy Rubin: The biggest story last week was not Stormy Daniels or campus protests
While TV news was glued last week to Stormy Daniels’ tell-all testimony and pro-Palestinian demonstrations, scant attention was paid to Vladimir Putin’s tsar-like coronation for a fifth term. Nor to his bellicose parade of Russia’s nuclear-capable missiles through Red Square last Thursday, the annual Victory Day commemoration of World War...
Doyle McManus: A lesson from Presidents Biden and Trump — the new normal is nonstop crises
A poll published by the Economist this month included a finding that was striking yet unsurprising: Almost 7 in 10 Americans believe things in the country have spun out of control. That’s a problem for President Joe Biden, who campaigned in 2020 offering a return to normalcy after four years...
Juana Saunders: Transparency would help restore confidence in our judiciary
The last time I saw my 26-year-old son, Gerald Thomas, was in Allegheny Court of Common Pleas Judge Anthony Mariani’s courtroom. The judge profiled and belittled him in open court, and needlessly extended his pretrial incarceration. My son died in jail shortly after. When I learned about the Judicial Conduct...
Joe Guzzardi: VP sweepstakes coming into final stretch
Former President Donald J. Trump may be tied up in a Manhattan courtroom, but he’s active online. One of his fundraising efforts asks supporters to help him choose his vice president. In a mass email, Trump asked, “Which person would you select as your next vice president? Type in the...
Jared Bahir Browsh: Sports gambling creates a windfall, but raises questions of integrity
Sports betting is having a big moment across the United States. While gambling on sports has been legal for decades in countries such as the U.K., it wasn’t until 2018 that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that states could legalize sports betting. Before then, sports betting had been permitted only...
Danny Tyree: Is ‘value’ a dirty word?
As I sit here admiring my 88-cent container of mustard, I can’t help feeling self-conscious. I know that restaurants advertise their “value menus” and retailers offer no-frills knockoffs of their glitziest products, but I keep picturing the corporate CEOs loathing such concessions as a necessary evil to appease the (ugh!)...
Dave Anderson: Discard the principle vs. compromise distinction
One of the most basic conflicts in politics, and in life in general, is whether to stand by your principles or be open to compromise. Woodrow Wilson is known as a president who stood by his principles regarding America’s need to join the League of Nations, an organization he proposed...
Seth Greenland: Have we learned nothing? The protester’s taunt, ‘Go back to Poland,’ is grotesque
When it was reported that a demonstrator near Columbia University had loudly suggested Jews should go back to Poland, I was already there. My wife, son and daughter and I were visiting Holocaust sites in Eastern Europe. My father’s family is from Poland and Ukraine, and many of our relatives...
Parmy Olson: If AI wrecks democracy, we may never know
This year promises to be a whopper for elective government, with billions of people — or more than 40% of the world’s population — able to vote in an election. But nearly five months into 2024, some government officials are quietly wondering why the looming risk of AI hasn’t, apparently,...
Claudine Sipili: The rising tide — bear witness to families swept into homelessness
Newly released federal data reveals an intensifying homelessness crisis impacting families across America. The Department of Housing and Urban Development’s 2023 Annual Homeless Assessment Report found a staggering 15.5% increase in the number of families with children experiencing homelessness compared with 2022, reversing the downward trend in family homelessness that...
