Opinion category, Page 145
Letter to the editor: Ending price gouging
Fidelity sends a periodic newsletter to its investors. Its June 17, 2024, issue dealt with the gap between the reality and the perception of the U.S. economy. The data shows the economy is healthy and growing, but Americans are very pessimistic. Our gross domestic product has grown over the past...
Joseph Sabino Mistick: Trump’s sideshow is back, and it’s grown old
I was determined not to lose any friends during and after the 2020 presidential race between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, and my plan was moderately successful. You want to be challenged if you write a weekly newspaper column about politics and government, but my email during the Trump years...
Richard Forno: Social media and political violence — how to break the cycle
The attempted assassination of Donald Trump on July 13 added more fuel to an already fiery election season. In this case, political violence was carried out against the party that is most often found espousing it. The incident shows how uncontrollable political violence can be — and how dangerous the...
Sheldon H. Jacobson: Who will pay for the Crowdstrike outage?
Crowdstrike did not have a good day on July 19. During a routine software update, the file that the cybersecurity firm issued triggered a logic error that prohibited Windows machines from rebooting. Microsoft estimates that about 8.5 million computers may have been affected by the event. This created a tsunami of...
Elisabeth Rosenthal: Why many nonprofit (wink, wink) hospitals are rolling in money
One owns a for-profit insurer, a venture capital company and for-profit hospitals in Italy and Kazakhstan; it has just acquired its fourth for-profit hospital in Ireland. Another owns one of the largest for-profit hospitals in London, is partnering to build a massive training facility for a professional basketball team and...
Letter to the editor: Red-light tech could increase fatalities
Regarding the July 30 article “Red-light district: Pittsburgh mulls tech to catch traffic light scofflaws” (July 30, TribLive): Pittsburgh City Council should consider the data from other cities that have implemented this policy. Washington, D.C., has been utilizing this technology since 2015, and fatalities have actually increased since doing so....
Sounding off: Politics week’s top letters’ topic
Why don’t we better protect our presidents, candidates? How many times have we heard the same refrain from a U.S. president, federal officials serving in the Secret Service, FBI and Central Intelligence Agency, and news media pundits after a president or presidential candidate has been assassinated or wounded in assassination...
Letter to the editor: Our pitiful world
What a pitiful world we live in when drag queens are in the opening ceremony of the Olympics, when illegals seem to have more rights than citizens, when many criminals are not held accountable, when the government wants to force its agendas on us and, especially, when a first-grader is...
Letter to the editor: Democrats’ bait and switch
I find it curious how quiet the mainstream media is about the bait and switch pulled by the Democrats. It was President Biden who got the votes and the delegates, not Kamala Harris. If the Republicans had done this prior to the nomination, you know we wouldn’t hear the end...
Laurels & lances: Doing good & doing nothing
Laurel: To a sense of purpose. When you mention “volunteering” and “dementia,” people have an image in mind. It’s about people coming to a nursing home and doing something with the patients. Maybe they read. Maybe they play music or just sit and talk. But it’s about an able person...
Letter to the editor: We should all be concerned about Project 2025
Americans of all stripes should be concerned about Project 2025, a transition plan for the Trump government put together by many people who served in Donald Trump’s first presidential administration. For example, the section I cite below was written by Ken Cuccinelli, who served in the Department of Homeland Security...
Gary Franks: If not mentally fit, Biden must go now
We have all seen the warning signs about President Joe Biden’s mental acuity. More than a century ago, the captain of the Titanic got warning signs about the conditions of the ocean that night. He ignored them. Will America do the same with Biden? We do so at our own...
S.E. Cupp: It fits well. All the president’s men …are weird.
“Weird.” It’s the new Democratic talking point being used to describe former President Donald Trump and his newly minted running mate, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance. It was first used by Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz in the wake of newly surfaced Vance videos in which he calls Democrats “childless cat ladies”...
Greg Fulton: The surprising John Fetterman
Many people, like I, viewed Sen. John Fetterman as merely a lesser version of Bernie Sanders when he was running for Senate. Progressives in the Democratic Party felt he was one of them and thought he would unwaveringly support their agenda, a “back bencher” who would sit quietly and follow...
Jess Ward: The discrepancy in Pa.’s unemployment — a call for reform
In Pennsylvania, we find ourselves in quite the conundrum: a low unemployment rate coupled with a sizable number of unemployment claims — 127,000 at the end of December 2023. This contradiction should serve as a wake-up call for policymakers. After all, if we can’t figure this out, what’s next —...
Letter to the editor: Harris’ bad policies
To the writer of the letter “Harris will protect our freedoms” (July 28, TribLive): I thank you for your service. You are certainly entitled to your opinion. However, I would recommend that you read the article “Counterpoint: Bad policies, not gender, will cost Kamala Harris the presidency” (July 28, TribLive)....
Letter to the editor: Trump shooter’s motives
I don’t believe the shooting of Donald Trump had anything to do with policies. Had it been President Biden there, the kid probably would have shot him instead. I think he wanted bragging rights. According to one of his classmates, he was dropped from his high school rifle team because...
Lori Falce: ‘You won’t have to vote again.’ Really?
Every year — at least twice a year — I do something that newspapers, editors, pundits, nonprofit organizations and government officials have been doing for generations. I encourage people to vote. I do it before the Pennsylvania primary, generally in April or May, depending on whether it’s a presidential year...
Letter to the editor: Clear examples of media bias
To those readers who are media bias deniers, I have two questions: When President Trump recently referred to “Black jobs,” it was widely covered by media and demonized. When President Biden recently could not remember Lloyd Austin’s name, he simply said that he appointed “a Black man” as Defense secretary....
Letter to the editor: Renewables key to economic future
Regarding Conor Lamb and Kate Harper’s op-ed “Western Pa. ready to lead hydrogen energy revolution” (July 17, TribLive): Western Pennsylvania has the opportunity to lead an innovative and sustainable economy of the future. However, it must resist the push for unproven methane-derived hydrogen and carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies...
Editorial: U.S. government didn’t do enough to bring home Marc Fogel
On Thursday, Evan Gershkovich did what he has been waiting to do for 491 days. He left his prison cell in Russia. He got on a plane. He started his journey home. For former Marine Paul Whelan, the wait was longer — 2,043 days. For Radio Free Europe journalist Alsu...
Paul Kengor: Remembering when we were family
Are you sick of politics? Tired of the bickering and division, including from politicians preaching “unity?” If so, then join me as I harken back to a better time, at least for those of us alive in the summer of 1979 who lived in this region. It was a time...
Jim Burn: Shapiro is best VP pick for Harris
Think like a coach. That was one of my fundamental tenets when I chaired the Pennsylvania Democratic Party. This approach was and remains important to evaluate candidates based upon who is the best person to put on the field to be successful. That is not often easy as many times...
Dan Morain: What Kamala Harris’ run for California attorney general can tell us about this campaign
Smart Republicans could see a day like this coming — and tried mightily to prevent it — back in 2010. That was the year Kamala Harris, a bright, young, charismatic prosecutor from San Francisco, ran her first statewide campaign, for California attorney general, and ultimately won. The race presaged the...
Letter to the editor: Lies about Biden and Trump
For years, the Democrats, the media and Hollywood have declared President Joe Biden is fit, mentally and physically, to be the leader of the free world. These same people have declared President Donald Trump is evil, a monster and a threat to our democracy. The Democrats, the media and Hollywood...
