Opinion category, Page 593
Letter to the editor: Babies’ lives don’t seem to matter
Life is precious. God is the creator of life. Black lives matter. Absolutely. Blue lives matter. Absolutely. Handicapped lives matter. Absolutely. White lives matter. Absolutely. Baby lives matter. Well, not really. God creates lives, but politicians decide which babies live and which babies die. Insane! Francis P. Murrman Sr. Greensburg...
Jonah Goldberg: De-emphasizing politics may be the best way to mend fences
The day before Election Day, Reuters ran a story about the personal toll politics has taken on some peoples’ lives. Mayra Gomez told her 21-year-old son she’d be voting for Trump. He essentially disowned his mother in response. Gomez says he told her: “You are no longer my mother.” Gayle...
Laurels & lances: Duty, responsibility and generosity
Laurel: To doing your duty. Some people plan to vote but don’t get around to it because they get busy or they don’t feel well or the weather isn’t nice. But some people really put in the effort. Megan Walker of Tarentum is one of those committed voters who doesn’t...
Letter to the editor: Will we eliminate Columbus Day holiday pay, too?
I agree with taking down Columbus’ statue because the taxpayers will be saved millions of dollars. No city or county or federal employee will be off that day, right? I mean, surely we wouldn’t give a day off to government employees to celebrate a mass murderer, right? Peter A. Mamula...
Letter to the editor: License plate cost confusion
In 2017, my wife and I purchased a new car. The dealer gave us a new license plate. Within the next year, we noticed that the plate was starting to peel in strips. In August, the service manager at the dealer told us the car did not pass the yearly...
Letter to the editor: Appreciating animal shelters
The first full week in November is National Animal Shelter Appreciation Week. Animal shelters provide much-needed services to keep our communities healthy and safe. Animal shelters provide a bridge between homeless animals and people wanting to share their lives with an animal. We are very fortunate in the Alle-Kiski Valley...
Editorial: Pennsylvania is more than 20 electoral votes
Late night humor is often political, frequently gleeful and generally a fluid blend of accurate and exaggerated. That’s comedy. Stephen Colbert may be the reigning king of the savage political snark, but Tuesday, he took a Twitter stab at the Keystone State that might have seemed like humor but could...
Brandon Arnold: Trump drug rebate gambit rests on shaky legal authority
$7.9 billion might not seem like much money when measured against the trillions of dollars the federal government has spent in response to covid-19 — and the trillions more it might soon spend. But President Trump has a $7.9 billion drug rebate proposal that almost certainly violates his administration’s authority...
Mark Hendrickson: Why fracking is a big issue
The “paradox of prosperity” is the strange tendency of many people who have benefited from economic advances to denounce and vilify the source of their prosperity, a sort of “bite-the-hand-that-feeds-you” phenomenon. One example of this syndrome is the perplexing (some would say “perverse”) antipathy that many Americans have toward fossil...
Letter to the editor: Where’s equality, diversity in sports?
BLM, equality, diversity: Baseball, football, basketball — I want to see the same number of white players as there are Black players. I want some Catholics, Muslims, Jews, Chinese, Japanese … . Silly? You bet! Frances Olyarnik Hempfield...
Letter to the editor: Beware masked men in high places
Once upon a time in America, bad men wore masks and robbed people. Today in America, bad men wear masks run for high political office, then use governance to rob people. The eighth Commandment is: “Thou shalt not steal.” David Scandrol Lower Burrell...
Letter to the editor: Columbus statue removal is not erasing history
On Columbus Day I was thoroughly amused by Larry Richert’s interview on KDKA Radio with Italian Sons and Daughters of America President Basil Russo, during which both host and guest expressed the belief that by removing the Christopher Columbus statue in Schenley Park, the city is erasing history and depriving...
Editorial: FirstEnergy shell switch should be explored
Big companies can be like Russian nesting dolls with layers upon layers of organization and ownership. The bigger the parent company, often the more companies are contained within other companies. Pennsylvania electric consumers could deal with a new middleman company in 2022. That’s when Keystone Appalachian Transmission Co. takes over...
Letter to the editor: Love, respect will guide us
To our beloved community of Monroeville and beyond, The Monroeville Interfaith Ministerium reflects the diversity of our community, nation and world. Each of our faith traditions — Hindu, Unitarian Universalist, Baha’i, Sikh, Jewish, Jain, Christian, both Catholic and Protestant, and Muslim — share a common core of love and respect...
Pat Buchanan: Can a disintegrating America come together?
On the last days of the 2020 campaign, President Donald Trump was holding four and five rallies a day in battleground states, drawing thousands upon thousands of loyalists to every one. Waiting for hours, sometimes in the cold, to cheer their champion on, these rallygoers love Trump as few presidents...
Terri Shields: Shuttle service would bring opportunities to Hazelwood
The City of Pittsburgh’s Department of Mobility and Infrastructure (DOMI) conducted a public Zoom meeting Oct. 21 on the proposed Mon-Oakland shuttle service. The new service, using electric vehicles, would connect Oakland with parts of Greenfield and Hazelwood, such as development at the Hazelwood Green site. The majority of the...
Colin McNickle: Hiked permit fees latest shale industry hurdle
A massive hike in the cost of new shale gas well permits raises serious questions about the operations of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) and could imperil the very industry that has contributed so much to the Keystone State economy, says a scholar at the Allegheny Institute for...
Letter to the editor: Questioning covid-19 death numbers
I keep reading about all the deaths that covid-19 has caused, and it is a staggering number of deaths in this country. My concern is whether these deaths are being reported accurately. I’ve dealt in the past with deaths of family members and how death certificates are completed. I have...
Letter to the editor: Christians coaxed to worship demagogues
The Roman ruler Julian, who reigned for a brief period in the mid-fourth century A.D. and who despised Christianity, had this very specific complaint about the early Christians: “As children are coaxed with cake, so have these Christians enticed the poor to join them by kindness. Strangers they have secured...
Letter to the editor: Are Christians among ‘peaceful’ protesters?
I have grown tired of watching “peaceful” protests on television. So many have turned into violence, burning, looting and even death. I believe most of these protesters are paid hooligans bused into cities to protest incidents they are not truly involved with, paid $15 to $18 an hour to participate...
Editorial: Behold the power of your vote
There is a lot of attention paid to endorsements in elections — that rubber stamp from one organization or VIP given to this candidate or that ticket. But if the 2020 election shows us anything, it is the critical importance of another E word. Empowerment. The most important thing about...
Jonah Goldberg: Pandemic and politics aside, it’s a great time to be alive
Whatever is going to happen with the election is going to happen. Most people have made up their minds, and it’s unlikely that any October surprise — or even a November surprise — will change that. The polls have been stable for literally years now, and as of this writing,...
Tom Purcell: However this election turns out, you’ll still have your vote and voice
It’s calm as I write this, the day before the 2020 general election. I hope and pray that the outcome, whatever it may be, is accepted calmly — though I worry it may not be. Americans’ growing divisiveness is concerning, but there’s one element of this election that’s worth celebrating:...
Sheldon Jacobson: Time for Big Ten to lead
The University of Wisconsin football team announced 12 covid-19 infections, including head coach Paul Chryst, after their rout of the University of Illinois Oct. 23. Although no one will likely know the exact details of what transpired, there are several issues that come forward from this sequence of events that...
Editorial: Wage gap is important but so is tax gap
Paychecks can often be a sticking point when it comes to government work. It isn’t that government employees necessarily toil in poverty. It’s that there can be a big difference between what the same work merits in public service versus private. The presidency, for example, comes with a $400,000 annual...
